Major geek thread

So I start work at a local News Paper next week as a lay-out artist. Which I'm really looking forward to because I applied there as an illustrator for the their daily editorial. But with the lack of work heading my way, I feel like a cheat every time I call my self a Free-lance artist.

My buddy Al and I did get an email from UNICEF though, asking us to do some work for them... so I sent em a costing on our behalf and I hope it works out.

In the mean time I've been doing a bit of writing for a second movie project, which involves a massive CGI snake :O

But that's more of a side project.

I've been hitting World of Warcraft pretty hard too, mostly PVPing my Warlocks ass off (Player vs Player). I did hit up the Ice Crown Citadel last week and cleaned out like 11/12 bosses, but then I got booted because my damn toon was lagging :(

... So I didn't get to kill Arthas.

That really pissed me off... so I decided to leave the raiding crap for a bit and just kill the Alliance. I managed to get my Lock from tier 9 to full Tier 10, as well as deck him out with ICC weapons and stuff, so that was kinda cool. O and I finally got done with this one achievement quest in the game called "Glory of the Hero" which granted my Lock a kick ass Proto Drake mount.

My warlock in PVP gear

But as far as PVP goes... man I forgot how much I missed it. Managed to deck my lock out in the full PVP set, so now his running around with like 1k Resilience and a shit load of spellpower. His Affliction so he rots faces :P

The hight light was defiantly last night though when during a session of Warsong Gulch I went one on three against a Hunter, warrior and a mage... and came out pwning em.

Today though I went shopping with my GF to pick up some stuff for Halloween. She's decided to go as a sexy witch... my outfit however is going to be a surprise :P

Coincidently, me being in this massive PVP mood as fas as my games go, today I got an invite to play the beta for Bloodlines Champions Online. It's this mad PVP based online game which is kind of along the lines of games such as Defence of the Ancients and Heroes of Newerth.

Igniter

But it's got these mad ass characters that I find very intriguing, which kinda lifted it over the other games for me. I tried out a few of the classes but ultimately settled on the Igniter as my fave class. His this freaky little dude who looks like a tribal pygmy guy on fire. All his attacks are fire spells and his all about burning things ... basically causing chaos. I'll be spending a bit of time with this one for sure. But it's all just killing other players, and the battles are very short... so you end up kinda burning out pretty fast when you've done like 20 battles back to back in like 15mins.

But being the new comer in this sub genre of RTS games... I hope it manages to pull a following.

I'm going to go put together my Halloween costume now... and will have pics up before I hit the clubs with it on the night :D

Rock on

... the wallpaper!

My lines coloured and put together by my buddy Albie.

No Photoshop

I have to re-install it. In the mean time here's a loading screen doodle of a guy playing the Bass.


I was actually going to make his guitar in Photoshop... That's when I remembered that I don't have it installed right now.

It's cause my hard drive died and I had to get another one... Don't worry; I didn't loose anything. I managed to find all my Witcher Saves.

I was going to do up that little demon thing in the pic with PS too. Maybe even add some fire and lighting, this would have been the most amazing doodle... in the world. It would have blown your mind.

Now it's never going to happen... until I re-install PS.

Occupied... for eternity!

Between loading screens

Been playing a few RPGs lately, and in between loading screens and decision making I like to doodle.

Click pic to enlarge

Based on true events

Click yo enlarge

Rejected :(

Mines on the right (click to enlarge)

Here's a cover remake I did for Coveredblog, sadly it got rejected. Original cover details here.

If I had gone to Colo-i-Suva

In relation to this.

All play and no work

Warning: Content may be too geeky for some readers.

A friend of mine gave me Dragon Age: Origin on the PC last Sunday, and I can't seem to teat my self away from it.


Let me just add before anything else, that I really enjoy getting into characters in RPGs. Thought the extent of my RPG knowledge is the Diablo series of games and Fable 1 and 2.

... O and world of Warcraft.

Actually thinking about it as I just wrote that last sentence, those are actually some of the bigger mainstream titles.

But I've never really been into the "Hardcore" ones... Usually I play anything where you just zone out and click in something until it dies.

I love a game where I can explore though... what ever the design of the game maybe, if it offers huge areas where you character can wonder around and discover things at his leisure, that stuff really ices my cake. As I said earlier, I also really get into my characters. To the extent that I played World of Warcraft for like close to four years and only ever had two serious toons.

My Warlock from WoW

I had a druid who was my noble hero, defender of the weak and champion of the Horde. When I'd play him I'd make sure to be very courteous and helpful when ever I could. I know it sounds super geek-fest lame, but that's how I saw the character.

I think that's why I started having so much fun when I made my Warlock. Now that guy was a farkin dick. I'd be the jerk who swears when ever something goes wrong, or diss on people if they didn't know what they were doing, and then swear some more at people who dissed ME for not knowing what I was doing.

Of course it helped a lot that I strived to have my Warlock in the best possible gear and such that I could get my hands on. If there was a armour set or weapon that caught my attention, I would "farm" a dungeon for weeks and weeks until I got it.

So of course being the highest on the damage metres meant that I could be a dick and not have people kicking me for it. But I did it not to be liked or kept around, I did it cause I could have nothing less for my character.

... what was the point of all this again?

O right... so I've been playing Dragon Age, and man is it awesome.

I love the way the game totally allows you to shape the out of of everything around you. Everything you do in it (EVERYTHING) snow balls into something that could either be a good thing or something that will totally mess you over. The game also has some of the most memorable characters I have ever met in a video game. To the extent where my best bud in the game, this warrior guy named Alister, I made sure that he had all the best gear I could possibly get before I started to find stuff for my self.

Clarence and Alister (Helmet)

My guy's name is Clarence :D

And he isn't a bad guy, but I do play him according to what I personally feel is the right choice at the time. But if it means anything to anyone who's played the game;

> I'm a Berserker/ Reaver, so yes I desecrated the holy ashes.
> I killed the elves and made friends with the werewolves
> I made a deal with that mage in that warehouse and sacrificed his salves to make my health bar longer.

... so yeah I guess I'm not the nicest guy either :P

I'm not going to do some bullshit review of the game, as there are lot of em available online, but as far as RPGing goes, This would defiantly be one of the bigger, better titles to pick up. Or even if you're out for something with a solid story and dialogue, this game is serious drama.

Now I'm hacking my way through the games expansion, but after this weekend I think I'll pace my self a bit.

Expect some Dragon Age related art to be up soon.

Just breath

I'm drawing some commissioned work about different types of breathing.

...and it's proving to be a challenge to stay focused.

Bored

I really need to ditch this free-lance thing and get my self a proper job. Free-lance kills in Fiji.

Goat Guru

This was meant to be be a sample for some commissioned work.

Waiting at the Doctors

Did this while waiting at the doctors this morning. They had colour pencils and I have the flu.

I was planning to give it to this kid that was watching me draw it, but in the end I couldn't part with it.

Shank: First Impressions

Yesterday I got my hands on Klei Entertainments mad side-scrolling beat 'em up SHANK.


Before I go on let me just mention that I am a massive fan of beat 'em ups; there's nothing I like more than zoning out and dealing a mess of death and carnage through wave after wave of enemies who all shop at the same store.

I still play Splatterhouse 2 every other afternoon just too see if I can finish it any faster. (25mins)

So when I heard about Shank and saw what it had in store about a year ago... to say that I was pretty damn excited would be an under-statement.

After months of following Twitter posts and development blogs, I finally got to play the damn game yesterday, and it was freaking awesome.

From the opening cut-scene to the awesome grind-house sound track (Downloadable here) and setting, Shank is a love letter to all things "action". Every Stallone movie, every Arnie pun... has prepared you for this game. And you get to live the action of those over the top movies that you grew up enjoying in glorious style and colour.


There have been a lot of comparisons between Shank and the movies of Directors Robert Rodriguez and Quieten Tarantino. Though the the game and these movies share the over the top action and characters, I see it more in line with the mock Grindhouse trailers they had put out with their movie ...um... Grindhouse.

The game looks like a Cartoon Network show on drugs, mind altering AWESOME drugs. The stylised visuals give way to a grim (granted a little shallow) plot that's enough of an excuse to spill some death.

... o and you will be spilling A lot of death.

Shank is a man out for vengeance on those that beat the crap out of him and had their way with his girlfriend. The story is told through both a single player and co-op campaign, which takes you on a frantic quest to take down the men who wronged you.


This is a bloody game; and even the said cartoon graphics don't do anything to take away from the sheer amount of violence and gore this game smacks into your face.

Shank is a monster with his his moves, as he slices, dices and shoots his way through a path of destruction that would have made the sensors crap their pants in the old days of Beat 'em ups.

And he does all this with such ease and delight thanks to Shanks user friendly controls. My GF was racking up 40 - 50 hit combos last night. But don't let this fool you, just cause the game is easy enough to get into, doesn't mean it's simple to master.

Yes you can just shoot stuff, or just grab people and stab em. But where's the fun in that?


Chaining together slices and gun shots is more rewarding when you mix it up with weapon switching and Shanks ferocious leaps. To some extent the combat is as mundane as YOU allow it to be.

It's up to you to use Shank's arsenal of weapons to kill shizz as entertainingly as you can.

You have three moves; which is a light Shank/shiv attack, a heavy slice attack and your equipped guns. As you gain new items you can switch between em through the D-pad.

So there's nothing more satisfying than slicing a baddie with a Machete (Heavy Slice) and then immediately switching that Machete to a Chainsaw to finish em off :D

If you have baddies keeping their distance, Shank can also leap at them with his pounce move, pinning them down thus allowing him to either stab the crap out of them, or my personal favourite, run a machete up along their belly, popping out at the head.

I am a sick bastard.

Slow-mos, zoom-ins and motion blur brings the in Shank to life

I've read some reviewers saying that the controls for Shank are not as responsive as they'd like it too be, I though it handled just fine.

Speaking of reviews, there are some out there that aren't too favourable towards the game, while there are even more out there that absolutely love it. As a fan of the genre, both the side-scrolling beat em up side of it, as well as the blood and violence, I can say that the game did not disappoint at all.

If the game does have any flaws, I couldn't see it through the awesomeness it puts out. Just looking at the details and the beautiful hand drawn graphics, you can tell that a lot of love went into making this game. As well as a lot of respect and appreciation for the source materiel.

I'm playing through this monster on Hard at the moment, and it is a killer. Because the baddies are badder and there aren't any save points. So if you die... you start at the beginning of the level. Which is better than the three lives limit you had back in the day, at the end of which you start at the beginning of the game.

But when you make it through a level in one bloody, flawless sweep of combos and death... the warm fuzzy feeling inside is sweet.

The outfits.Number 10 is DeathSpank

Towards the launch of the game, Klei Entertainment had put out Tweets on the many unlockable outfits that are in the game. I was immediately drawn to the Horror/Grind house outfit which is number 7 on the above list, and that was the first thing I set out to get as soon as I got the game. Which I did by killing a 100 guys with the Chainsaw.

It would have been cool if these outfits could be used to somehow customize your play style a bit. I remember a few years back there was a Spiderman game where you could get different outfits for Spidy, and they would enhance some aspect of the game. Like the symbiont costume I think gave him unlimited webbing.

Maybe in the Shank the Horror costume boosted like your Chainsaw damage or something, or the "Bruce Lee" yellow jumpsuit made you leap further, or the Ninja suit extended the time between hits to allow longer combos... nothing too major, but just a little something to make it beyond a cosmetic up-grade.

...meh.


Shank is an awesome game, and I barely tore myself away to write this blurg about it. It's definitely a nice little something to hold me over till I get my hands on the Splatterhouse remake in October.

I'm looking froward to playing the co-op campaign this weekend with my buddy Al... it's gonna be so damn sweet!

Had an idea...

...That failed me.

By popular demand?

Ok so it was a whole two requests but still :P

And try as I may I didn't want to touch Kurt with the zombie stick... would have been too obvious. I used the idea I had for him on Krist instead.

I'll get back to drawing zombies

Sorry Krist, your just too tall.

Just as soon as I finish listening to Nirvana :P

What am I seeing here?

????? from David OReilly on Vimeo.

Back on the Interweb!

So I've been off-line for the last three days because I was told by my internet subscriber that I had used up my monthly data allowance. This wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be.

I mean sure I missed going through my Google reader and chatting with people I see ever afternoon anyway, but I managed to get a lot of work done because I wasn't alt+tabing every five minutes to check out something random online.

I also watched a shizz load of Curb Your Enthusiasm which was mad fun. Plus I also got to catch the last episode of Death Note which mad me very sad, because it didn't end up the way I wanted it to.

But I still love it!

Watching all these comedies and anime stuff really makes me want to do a comic again. Looking back at some of my old stuff I can't believe I had the patience to do half the art I did, but working on 10 drawing pages a day has really built up my resilience.

I've kind of got a half baked idea for like a horror/ detective thing that I'm stabbing at in my head, and I want to get some of it out this coming week. I'm not going to tell you too much about it yet because I'm still going over the finer points of it my self, but I will tell you that I'm seeing an Adrian Brody looking guy in a suit that has tentacles coming out from under his shirt.

Plus I want to kind of go back to doing some black and whites, though I haven't really been away from it so long as to totally miss it. But I'd like to do something that uses my line art with some of the vector stuff that I've been mucking around with. Maybe use the vectors for background elements.

I don't know... we'll see.

Here's a few of the bits I did this past week for that magazine I'm working for. I think I'm slowly getting the hand of this vector stuff.

The Goon

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

I love this movie trailer. The crew behind the film did an amazing job of bring this awesome comic to life.

The film's suppose to be out sometime this year, you can keep up with news on the project over at the movies official site.

Trapped Dead

As I have mentioned numerous times before on the blog, there are certain video games that I would play no matter how they turn out.


Regardless of review scores or whatever... if it some how fills one of my shallow, sometimes absurd needs/ niches, I'll be all over it like a zombie eating a fat kid eating cake.

Well coming out sometime this November is a Real Time Strategy game titled Trapped Dead. It's being put together by a German developer called Head Up games, and it's just the kind of zombie fun that I'm lacking right now. The game will be presented in the traditional RTS isometric view, and it follows the exploits of these collage kids who are trapped in the middle of a zombie out break caused by some people messing around with a type of genetically modified corn.

Don't roll your eyes... you've read worse zombie plots.


So some how a virus stems from this CORN and is spread through a small Kansas city town called Hedge Hill. The two collage guys eventually meet up with some other people I guess (by looking at the screen shots) and then you gotta help these guys hide, scavenge and survive against the hungry undead.

Apparently the game is set in the 80s, and comes with a soundtrack to match... so I'm not sure what I should be expecting here. Is it going to be moody Cure-ish goth rock, or Soft Cell-ish synth pop? It might take away from the thrill of the game when your bashing heads in with a crowbar to the sounds of Kylie Minogue's I should be so lucky... lucky ...lucky ...lucky.

But the game is also said to have 4 player co-op, which should make it fun regardless of what's playing on the radio.


Man... who am I kidding, you an I both know that this game had me at zombie RTS, and I could be popping head shots to Boy Goerge and the culthure club and I'd still be rocking it.

There are so many zombie games out there, like so many that it could be considered an out break in it's own right... but zombies infecting the RTS genre is new to me. And though Head up have dished out some pretty mid-core games in the past, I'll defiantly be keeping an eye out for the Trapped Dead.

Plus I'm just a sucker for isometric games... which reminds me: I'm going to go down load Valves Alien Swarm now off Steam. Cause it's FREE!

L is bored

...gotta type faster L.

Watching a lot of DeathNote

Click to enlarge

... And I've been loving it :D

Kania Na Yalo Bula (Short Film)

Hey guys... here's the short film my friends and I made for the Fiji Kula Festival 2010. Shot in 8 hours on a budget of $80... we hope you enjoy it :D

It's called "Kania Na Yalo Bula"... which in Fijian means "Eat the Living"

Tomorrow I take on illustrator!

Yes it was a little random.

Yeeeeeah!

It's after the book!

What else was I going to try this new style on if not zombies?

Trying something new

So I've been doing a lot of drawings lately, all of em for the Aussie magazine I've been working for. Sometimes when I have a lot of stuff to draw, and I don't feel like sketching, inking and scanning... I just do something like this:

It's pretty much just making shapes and such with the selection tool and then filling it with colour. I'm not really sure what it's called, but I would like to find out so I can look at some other peoples work for ideas and such.

But I kinda like the style of. Since I'll be free for awhile, I think I'll do some thing with it, maybe like a ... I don't know... a Zombie?

We'll see.

Kania Na Yalo Bula (Eat the Living) Teaser

Here's a REALLY short teaser I made for our zombie short film. The film it self will be out at the Fiji Kula Film Festival next month :D

Video Editors Diary

A quick piece I did to accompany a guest blog journal entry I did over at my buddy Wilson's Failed Paradise site. It's for our up coming short film's production diary.

Check it out: Zombie Movie Production Diary 5: A video editors *slash* directors Journal

The Adventures of Lil Cthulhu

The sheer awesomeness of this... is just awesome.

"...souls make his tummy happy"

It also serves as a quick and easy Cthulhu 101 lesson. Know your elder beings!

Rick vs Cthulhu

Back to work

I've been so caught up with editing the short film my friends and I have been working on that I've been neglecting my work.

Plus I'm sick :(

So today I had to get back into the groove of jobbing again... thankfully I had an interesting page to get me started.

I had to do a drawing based on a poem about creepy things in the dark, lurking in a kids room. I really wanted to go all out with this one, but had to remind my self that it's for little children. But I still like it.


Maybe I'll revisit this and do a special one for the blog...

Dead Space hands on gameplay

These Dead Space 2 videos are bleeding out like crazy at E3. Check out this mad one with actual game-play and some tense cinematic moments.



Waiting till the end of Jan next year is going to be so damn hard. I needs me some Dead Space!



The sheer awesomeness of these clips is just awesome!

Film Project: Editing done

So I've finished editing our up coming short zombie film, which my friends and I will be submitting to the 2010 Fiji Kula Film festival.

After a couple of days of editing, I was very pleased with the results. It's been awhile since I sat behind a video editor, but getting into editing was like riding a bike. (I used to be a video editor over at Fiji Television)

The film came together very well, aside from a few sound issues here and there which I'm trying to sort out right now. But with the small budget that we had, and considering we did everything in one day, we managed to get done everything we wanted. No shots were left out because we couldn't do it, no scenes were too hard. And our long hours of practising the fight sequences really helped.

I also just finished laying out the colour filters for it, and am loving the look of the film.


After trying a few different colour choices, I decided to go with a cool blue look to the film, it's a look that I've seen a lot of indie horror films use. Aside from making the footage look slightly creepy, it was very useful to fix shots that were too bright or too dark. Maybe that's why the look is so popular?

The pics I've put up a little stretched, but that'll be sorted in the export render, which I'm hoping to try out tomorrow.


I'll put up a small clip of the film sometime this week, followed by a trailer next week, all this is for the Facebook page that I made for the movie, because all the other cool kids are doing it.

Can't wait to see this thing on the big screen at the festival.

La Horde

I got to watch the new French zombie film La Horde today, and man was it good.

I had seen the trailer for this film a few weeks back, and thought it looked pretty brutal, so I had some expectations when watching this movie... gladly it didn't disappoint.


Though not mind numbingly action packed like the trailer suggests, the Horde starts off with what is essentially a pretty thin yet highly effective story. Some cops are out to take down the crummy criminals who iced one of their buddies. They get to a location, intercept the baddies, and then suddenly there's a zombie invasion.

... like I said: thin.

But it don't matter at all, because the Horde is to zombies what Dusk till dawn was to vampires.

It sets you up for one story and then drops you in the middle of something else.

The version I saw was French with subtitles, so it was kinda hard for me to judge the acting. But everyone filled their roles convincingly, though there were a few through away parts in there just to get the initial body count up and running. The movie looks great though with mad pacing awesome action shots that kept me excited the whole time I was watching.

Sometimes the film was so frantic and the visuals so over the top that it almost felt like a comic book movie.

The zombies in the show were not Dawn of the Dead remake standard in terms of make up and what not, but they ran and screamed very well. The make on these guys were a little more than blood and injuries, but the film moves to jarringly that the lack of detail is totally lost, and what you're left with is a mad zombie feeding frenzy that you just want to run away from.


My favourite part would have to be this one bit where the main guy is on top of a car in an underground garage, just hacking and shooting away at an ocean of zombies that's gathering around him. And his not even the most bad ass guy in the film.

Watch out for the crazy guy with the axe!

This is not at all a review by the way, if you want one keep checking out The Horror Club cause they'll have a review for it up soon. But I do want to say that if you like action and if you like zombies, this film will let you pass the time with a smile on your face.

It gets weak sometimes, but it very quickly picks it's self up and gets back into the gory zombie action, which is really all I want from a zombie movie.

Splatterhouse E3 trailer kicks ass

I haven't bought anything new for the 360 for a very long time. The last game I got on it was Super Street Fighter 4, bought for my by a friend of mine in from Australia.

Up until awhile ago all I was waiting for game wise was Dead Space 2 that's been set to release some time in January next year. I might pick up some other odd titles along the way, but Dead Space 2 would be my MUST HAVE tile.

...well that and the new SPLATTERHOUSE!

I've been going on about this game for a few posts now, and so far everything I've seen regarding this game has been mind blowing. Including the new E3 trailer that recently came out.

It looks totally awesome, and shows us a little of the main characters with a bit of story too. Including poor old Jennifer being taken from little old Rick, before he puts on the terror mask!

Check it out for ya self... I swear of there is one game I pick up for my 360 for the remaining of the year, it'll be this one.



I think I'll just stash some of my next pay somewhere for this, in case by some odd reason I don;t have money when it comes out :P

Isacc Vs the Puker

Got this footage in my email today, the illusion of it being exclusive is nice until you find it on Youtube too :P

But hey... this way I get to share my joy.

Dead Space 2: First Gameplay video

Of all the games in all the world right now, nothing else has me by my throat like the impending Dead Space 2. This is the game I would cut of a limb for...

And this morning I woke up to an awesome delight; Dead Space 2 footage that was revealed at E3!

When I saw the vid it gave me chills.

Check out Isaac's new hover move, and the awesome blood splatter effects when you put baddies into stasis.



Will try my darndest to pick up a special edition for this one.

Film Project: Done with shooting

So yesterday we had the shoot for our up coming zombie short film: Kania Na Yalo Bula (Eat the living)

Man was it mad fun!

We got to the location at about 10 in the morning, had a run through of the shots and then got to work. With the three weeks or so of planning, everything went pretty smooth, but it still ended up being a very tiring day.


But it was the kind of tired I didn't mind at all because it was a lot of fun. My friends who took part in the film went through some serious stuff though, including my girl friend who was our leading lady.

Of all the things the guys had to out up with, I think the worst would have to have been the fake blood. It started off ok, but after filming for like almost 8 hours, that shizz got pretty sticky and very uncomfortable.

But I guess the irritation it provided helped a lot with all the screaming and running (yes running zombies) that was going on. Also because we only had one camera we had to do multiple takes to get the different angles.



At the end I realised that we had a lot of shots, which was good because they would prove very useful when editing.

While we were shooting though, it was apparent how bloody and gruesome our short film actually was, and it left us wondering if it won't too much for the film festival. I've seen some of the stuff they've accepted, which is horrendous in it's own right, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

My buddy Wilson should have a production diary up which in turn I'll link when it's done.

Great Cthullhu rises!

... to surf the net.

Walking Dead zombies on the loose

So I doing my normal rounds of the various websites that run through Google Reader, when I came across the beautiful pic.


This is part of the "first looks" shots of the zombies from the up coming Walking Dead live action TV show. As mad about the project as I was, looking at these pics have me foaming at the mouth in anticipation.

This show looks to be shaping up very well... and after the horrible season of Supernatural that just ended, I need a new show to follow.

Head over to Bloody Disgusting for more pics and a video interview with the projects director.