I've been working on "Fist of Fame", a college project done in assignment for Guerilla Games. Our group of eight students was to create a prototype for a game which would reinvigorate the 2D beat-em-up genre. In this game, the player would play the action hero in their own action movie. I mostly worked on 2D art for this game, but I also did some promotional materials like this trailer. And this poster:
And this case insert:
I wrote the story on the back in red in five minutes, and it still makes more sense than most Steven Seagal movies.
On the 21nd of January, we presented our game to the public at the HKU Project Market. Our stand was awesome. First of all, we had a bar with a giant tv playing our trailer on loop, all day, way too loud. We also had disco lights.
It was crowded at our stand pretty much the entire day, both outside and inside. Inside we had three computers set up for the public to play our game. As you can see, we had shirts printed especially for this.
Food was pretty good too.
Here's me explaining our game to one of the many parents and seniors who came to our booth for some reason.
It was all a huge success and it was great to get so many positive responses from the public.
Last week I left out one other calligraphy marker I had:
This is the PITT Calligraphy Pen by Faber-Castell. They come in a variety of nib styles, sizes and colors, the others of which I'll post on here some other time. When I made my last order on cultpens.co.uk, I ordered two of these along with the Pilot parallel pens just in case those turned out to be crap. I'll do a brief review of the PITT calligraphy pen to get that out of the way:
Just get the pilot parallel pen.
Here's a picture of the PITT's stroke in between the Itoya and the Pilot. PITT pens use india ink, which is always a plus. However, it's ink seems to be lighter than both the Itoya and the Pilot in a strange turn of events. Another downside is that a fresh PITT nib is already pretty soft and round, as well as prone to disfigurement. The strokes it produces already have quite damaged edges just after a few doodles with this thing. Using this thing on it's side would simply destroy it. A shame, since the PITT Brush pen (to be reviewed some other time) is generally held in high regard. PITT pens aren't anywhere near as expensive as copic multiliners, but the Pilot parallel pen would still be a better investment in my opinion.
The brush has never been my favourite tool for inking, because for a beginner especially it's hard to control. Even more of an inconvenience is having to have lug around a jar of india ink all the time, and having to clean your bristles after every drawing session. In came a solution:
This is the classic Pentel brush pen. I found this baby years ago at a local drawing shop. They come in several colors, but again I only cared about the black one. The mechanism is easy to use (even with the instructions being in Japanese).
Here's a picture of an unused pen with the bristles still clean. It's a brush-tipped pen with a handle-shaped ink reservoir. Squeezing the handle results in ink being forced into the bristles. The cap prevents the ink from drying up in the bristles. The ink is high quality as well. Here are some sketches I made with this thing.
The bristles are made of high-quality synthetic hairs. While they work fine, they lack the spring of a traditional brush because of the lack of a round belly. I treated the bristles on this brush pen pretty rough, and the last few months I've kept it almost completely dried.
The controls over ink flow is useful for those who want to work both with smooth strokes and rougher lines. I found it a bother however, so recently I found a replacement:
The Pentel Pocket brush pen is an updated design which eliminates the need to squeeze the ink cartridge. Instead, it uses a fountain pen construction. It's ink flow is simply perfect, and I haven't had any leaks with it either. While it's plastic, it's got an incredibly sturdy construction and a nice clip added on, as well as being compact. It definitely lives up to it's "pocket" name.
Only downside I have about the construction is that the handle has no texture or material for a tight grip. Not a huge problem however. On the plus side, the pocket brush pen also has a finer tip, making it better suited for lineart as well. No other tool has given me sharper lines than this thing. You need a fairly light hand for it though: the bristles are quite soft. This bums me out, since I generally prefer tougher tips.
Once again, the brush lacks the spring of a traditional brush. The problem seems to have only become worse with the finer tip. Several hairs at the tip seem to bend separately from therest of the brush sometimes. I don't know if this is just my pen, or if this is a common problem. Feel free to comment if you have any similar or other experience with this pen.
Still, the Pentel Pocket brush pen is a fine product, and the standard brush pen nowadays. It's great for both inking and sketching. Like I said previous week, it's the preferred tool of Japanese artist Yoji Shinkawa, known for his work on Metal Gear Solid and Zone of the Enders.
Before MGS4's release, Hideo Kojima toured the world with several production members, including Shinkawa. I managed to meet him during their visit to the Netherlands. I didn't care that much for meeting Hideo Kojima (probably rare amongst the hundreds of fans who attended) but meeting one of my favourite artists was pretty cool. Took pictures, and got my copy of MGS2 signed by Kojima, Shinkawa, and one of MGS4's voice actresses. Shinkawa also did a 10-second portrait of everybody who attended along with his signature. I must have looked so sad.
Yeah, I'm one of the five dicks who bought MGS2 on PC.
That's enough posts about my tools for now. Next week: the mystery project I've been working on for Guerilla games!
Welcome to my Sunday Art Blog! I’ll make weekly posts on here explaining what I’m doing, showing any new works I can publish, showing you what materials I use, as well as what artists I admire. At the moment I’m in my last year of studying game design and development at the Utrecht School of the Arts. Currently I’m wrapping up a college project for Guerilla games I did artwork for. Hopefully I can publish some of that work here in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s a post about one of my favourite drawing materials.
Calligraphy markers are usually cheap calligraphy alternatives designed for lettering purposes, but I love using them for lineart and solid blacks. Not having to mess around with a jar of ink is convenient too, making them ideal for work on the road.
Up until recently, I used this one, the Itoya Doubleheader CL-10. It has two chisel nibs on each end, one being 3,5mm and the other being 1,7mm. They come in six different colors.. Years ago I found the black version in a local Bruna, bought one, and tried it out. I was immediately hooked.
These markers look classy: The barrel is made from lightly textured plastic and provides excellent grip, while also allowing you to switch your grip without anything getting in the way. The barrel feels rock solid and the thick plastic clip is also very sturdy. I love creating broad strokes and sharp lines by simply rotating the barrel. Using the full nib on its length will result in sharp strokes of varying thickness. The ink is acid free, but not waterproof and not very black either. They're still great markers to start out with though, and I've made a lot of portraits and sketches with them.
Unfortunately, the sharp chisel nib you come to love in your first hours of use doesn’t last long. The tip starts becoming round and soft quickly, making it unable to create sharp strokes anymore. Soon after that the ink starts running out. While it’s still useable, you’ll find yourself having to replace your markers rather often to maintain a sharp stroke.
A while ago I was surfing cultpens.com, my usual supplier of drawing materials I'm unable to find in local stores. They were advertising a new drawing product by Pilot:
The Parallel Pen is a recent calligraphy pen made by Pilot. They come in four nib sizes: 1.5mm, 2.5mm, 3.8mm, and 6.0mm. All pens produce a 0.5mm line when the nibs are used sideways. You can buy them individually or buy a gift set containing three different sizes and a complimentary set of ink cartridges. Cult Pens carries a gift set containing all pens except the 6.0mm one, though I’ve seen other stores carrying gift sets with different contents. Even so, getting the gift set usually saves you a lot of money.
Instead of having a marker nib, they use a construction consisting of two metal plates between which ink is forced and spread out evenly. Unlike markers, the nibs don’t wear out, and they have replaceable ink cartridges.
While I loved the Itoya Doubleheaders’ design, The Pilot parallel pen is okay. The pens are quite long and just barely fit in my pen wallet. They have an extended hollow barrel shaped like a brush handle.
The one thing that scares me to death every time I unscrewed these pens was the thin plastic bit that holds the pen in place. One day I might easily screw the barrel on a bit too tight and shatter these things right down their length. The handles are the same for each nib size but can’t be bought separately, so be careful with them.
Each pen comes with a special nib cleaner in case you ever clog it up with paper fiber, and a special squeezable cartridge to flush the pen while holding the nib under water. Both individual pens and gift sets contain a manual including maintenance instructions, as well as tips and detailed calligraphy instructions.
The ink cartridges aren’t very expensive, but I don’t use any other color than black. When my 6,0mm pen runs out of ink I might put a spare red cartridge on there and see if I can use it for colouring. Too bad Pilot doesn't offer any shades of grey for ink. There is however a tiny little ball inside each ink cartridge, which prevents the ink from clogging up over time.. A neat bonus which even the newer Pentel brush pens don't have anymore.
Pilot commonly advertises a neat trick you can do with two parallel pens with differently colored cartridges inserted. You can hold their tips together to let ink bleed into another pen’s tip. When using this pen, the inserted color will gradually turn back into the pen’s regular color. I've never done this myself, so I can't judge this feat. Note that Pilot recommends not changing cartridges before they’ve run out of ink, and also not to re-insert cartridges that are still filled that you took out of a pen. If you want to work with lots of different colors at a time, you’ll have to purchase a lot of these pens.
It took some getting used to these metal nibs, as it doesn’t work under as many angles as a marker nib does. For broad strokes you need to keep the nib completely level. The ink also seems prone to some minor bleeding on certain types of papers so you need to find the right paper to use these on. The ink is again not waterproof, which is a shame.
Here's a comparison of both systems. While the Itoya produces smoother curves, the Pilot has darker ink and starts/ends way sharper. Their regular flow of ink is quite impressive. The lines skip occasionally because of me still getting used to their handling, but I also like the effect. Despite it's flaws, I'd still choose the Pilot over the Itoya simply because of the Pilot's metal nib and interchangeable cartridges. This will save some money in the long run.
I haven't drawn that much with the Pilot yet, but a while ago I found pictures of two of my favorite artists meeting up and trying each others favorite materials in a sketch jam. Ashley Wood had a go with Yoji Shinkawa's Pentel brush pen, and in Yoji's hand I noticed the Pilot, size 3.8mm.
And here are some Ashley Wood sketches done with the same pen
Oh how I love his stuff.
Speaking of Yoji Shinkawa and his materials, the Pentel Brush Pen is up next sunday!
