Star Control

It is time to revise my Star Control stuff again. The older stuff I had made was needlessly unfaithful. With enough revisions it's possible to get a redesign close to the source without sacrificing much likeness.

In the case of the Thraddash, the communications image contradicted the smaller melee pilot image. There's also dialog information and music to consider when shaping a redesign. I don't care for the voices, so the music works as a voice for me when I read the dialog.

The Thraddash are brutes, like an anthropomorphic rhino/boar/hippo. I suspect they were based on the G'nunk from Starflight since they respect combat prowess. The Melnorme has the following to say about the Thraddash:

"To make a Thraddash your friend, kill him -- but then of course, he's dead so what's the point?"

At first I wanted to combine some brute looking animal with both the Comm and melee image to make something new, but then someone suggested that the melee image is actually a pilot or combat suit of some kind. I think this solution was much better. Doing an in-between design is like... having people in antarctic and egypt dress the same based on the average temperature... or like democracy.

It seems my site died btw. I got another server I can use though, so we'll see what happens.

Source:



Redesign progress:

Megaman

I never liked the covers of the Megaman games, so I made an attempt myself. I think it failed at the composition stage and it totally lacks an idea. It started out as a cover idea which looked interesting as a thumbnail, but as I worked on it I realized more and more that it didn't work. Maybe I approached it wrong too. Realizing that, I turned it into a white background pinup instead. Now it does nothing more than present a few drawings without any finesse.

Head-scale feels a bit on the fence. It's not like the sprite (2 heads) and not comic scale (5-7 heads) either. I think mine is 2.8 heads or something. On the sprite, his head is between his shoulders, so I lose similarity points there too.

I don't like the cone-feet which became so pronounced in the SNES games, so I put the masses more towards the center of the legs. Not sure how that worked out though. I do like how MMZ tackled the legs and costume designs. Actually I think he has cone-like limbs in a few of the intro/equip screens from the NES games too, but in MM2 he mostly look tubby/trunky.

Megaman's face is actually close to white in the first game. This was because they used a bright yellow skin tone, and large white eyes. I think this works better with the idea that he's a robot. Borg, and all that. They actually changed his skintone to flesh in MM3. In MM4 we learn that Rock was a household robot which was converted into a fighting robot. He does have a flesh colored face in the MM2 equip screens though.

Megaman has always been a silent lethal assassin to me. He got in there and did the job without bla bla bla teen angst. His mouth is just a neutral line most of the time, and the first games didn't really have any lines/speech for him.

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So, where to go? Here's a few things I wanna do. A 'true to the game' MM1 cover, with the same amount of fun as the SMB1 EU cover. These are the original Megaman covers (they're missing the Famicon one which was kind of fun).

Maybe it would also be neat to make some illustrations like the Kid Icarus instruction booklet had. Also, I wanna continue my Mega... uh, -maiden(?) project which is like 6-7 heads, and that would require some larger enemies and higher detail resolution, which could be a fun elaboration.

The cuter 'Super Deformed' scales are fun too in a way, but (at least when it comes to robots) I tend to lose interest when there are no details to explore or they are exhausted too quickly by the eye. With too much simplification and focus on narration and gesture, designs can be a bit like... a 4 note jingle; Catchy and easy to get, but not quite satisfying on an intellectual level.

Rebel Squad

Here's something I've been working on every now and then. It's a little project based on the strategy games by Julian Gollop. You've probably already heard of X-COM, but he's also responsible for the Rebelstar and Laser Squad games. I thought it would be fun to take those universes and merge them into one. Well, here it is:

The Rebel Squad Project

As you can see, I went for a cute comic style. To be frank I'm not that fond of the realistic approach that has been used a lot in various remakes. The older games were cute and colorful, and X-COM featured a comic style intro. A lot of people I hear talking about X-COM also seem to want to retain or expand on the relatively complex gameplay with the base, hunt, character and strategy elements. Not many games have that kind of width and depth to boast.

Hohohoray

Just got these from HLJ.

I think stuff looks better in pairs, so I bought two of some. I think the same goes for character designs in concept art. If you're drawing a mass produced trooper, drawing a few of them helps you to get a better feel for how the design works in groups. See the next post...

Intercepted

Who can resist the Tie Interceptor? Not me. I was a bit skeptical about the low price in conjunction with "snap-together and pre-painted". I think they're pretty decent, and a little weathering and subtle lining could take them further. The details seem crisp, but the snap together seams are sometimes a bit sloppy in how the details meet. It's probably pretty unavoidable though. They mostly snap together just fine, but occasionally I had to do a little surgery with a model knife. I also used a model knife to carefully remove them from the sprue and trim off the junk.

The pilots seems to be about 1:72 size. The interior cockpit module has a front plate which can be painted before the hull is snapped around it, but otherwise I'd say painting the interior is a waste of time. Also, don't put fingerprints on the inside of the wind shield.

Here's some pics (exterior not weathered).

Peel Trident

When aliens arrive and find out that we designed something as awesome as the Peel trident sports-car - and didn't follow up on it... they are going to kill us all.

Handheld

Here's a quick rough concept of a handheld. It's a bit larger than a regular handheld, maybe 4" wide. It's meant to be usable and not a design turd for yuppies who want to fit everything in their pocket. The "SGRM", Shallow Games Restrictions Management, makes sure that only deep strategy games like X-COM, Dwarf Fortress, Total Annihilation, etc are playable on the device. If a Match-3 game is detected, the device explodes, sending broken glass shards into the face of the culprit.

Features:
+ Big screen, minimum 400×400.
+ Pressure sensitive touchscreen and pen with LMB/RMB
+ Analog joystick in the middle, reachable by both the left and right hand thumb.
+ Maybe some shoulder buttons on the back or on the side, I dunno.