Sssssssss-nailiens. Part 2.

Snailiens were originally born back when bro and I were discussing potential game ideas of what we would like to do in the future. We sat down, sketched out the ideas for the levels and the enemies as well as the bosses for it. Even had some of the cut scenes in there.

I can hardly remember all of it, as I'm confusing the memories of it with our Mad Cow game and other game experiences. But basically its somewhat a side-scrolling shoot 'em up action game of sorts with Captain Storm as the character you control. It's mostly inspired by all those games we grew up with, but I think Metal Slug was the main source inspiration behind this one, along with Earthworm Jim.

The coloured image of the snailien was one of the "Annoys" that I drew. There wasn't even a drawing for it, as it was painted directly onto Photoshop and refined over time. It took a long time to do and it's still one of my favourite Annoys. I don't think it was intentional at the time to make it into a snailien.

The rah-rah's of the videogame making died down as we moved onto other things. It pretty much went away over time, packing them away into boxes for safekeeping into our subconscious, nearly forgotten. The snailien emerged out of there to ressurect as an Annoy, probably as a gentle reminder to me, or for the V3 crew to get back into doing the things that we love to do.

Perhaps, somewhere out there in the universe, someone or some automaton is making a Captain Storm sequel while some three-eyed tentacled kid in glasses, drooling all over his bib, is playing it. When will Earth get theirs? =o

The many slugs in a police line-up sketch were all heads from the various snailien image scans cloned onto a single body. I was toying around with the design a bit to see how they would all look. If it ever gets back into a game again I think the diversity would be a feature for it because I couldn't decide whose head gets to keep the body so I'm throwing it all in there instead. It would be animated just the same anyways.

They dont seem to look important so none of them are the bosses. Instead they're all Private Procrastinators who make up the bulk of the Snailien forces. They're abled bodied too, which top brass snailiens sneer at, but have to put up with because they do get ALL of the dirty work done. However the top brass snailiens view them as inferior. The less evolved you are, the better. Legs and arms would be the bottom of the barrel in their devolutionary ladder. Yet all snailiens are born with limbs and just culturally conditioned themselves to lose them due to atrophy as the decades go by.

Sssssssss-nailiens. Part 1.

Better put on your tin-foil hats because these slugs are bad news. Sooner or later you'll be bombarded by beams of snailien thoughts of "Uhhhhh. " Harrassed by muzack snoring bots, assailing your senses by passive omni-media , leaving all of your brain to rot. Soon your pours will ooze out, tire you out, make you lazy and laying down for daily 10 hour snoozes.
It's the snailien agenda, they want you to lose. They can't stand all the busy bodies getting busy with their bodies, making a racket with their tennis rackets, training with their strained brains, living fully completely and free.

"Slow down now, lay down, be quiet! Stop!" Uhhh? Zzzz.

Brainstorming now in session.

Lazy on days like these.

I wonder what my subconscious is trying to tell me? <=O

I think the little fishies are goading him into action too but I have no idea what they're saying. Also, I dunno the story behind the mouse guy either. He's carrying a fishing pole with a bucket of bait, but why is he fishing? He likes cheese!

Scanned in the drawing of the characters and touched them up slightly on Photoshop. The cheesy background was drawn directly on Photoshop.

Annoidal Tendencies.

Ahhh! I've been snooping around my older files and stumbled upon my old "Annoys". I can't believe these were done 5 years ago! Arghhhh. And still no book. /sighhhhhh

Most of these Annoys were also drawn on the back of 3d studio max tutorial papers. The back of the paper's text would show through when I scanned it in. I had to smudge them out on photoshop afterwards. The aftermath created some nice textures I believe. =P

I had issues about drawing on real good quality paper back then. Still kinda do but not so much nowadays. Also had a fear of inking too. But inking on crappy paper helped ease those fears alot.

I also thought I have lost a story for one Annoy in particular but I was wrong. It's here! Probably my first creative writing story attempt ever (in my life).



Story goes as follows:

The Snail was afraid of frogs. He didn't want to be frog food at all. He just wanted to be loved. So one day, while he oozed on his way up a tree, he sees a sleeping monkey napping on a nearby branch. Desperately trying to avoid being the prey of the tree frogs, the snail thought he'd find sanctuary within the monkey's inner temple.

When Mojo the Magic Monkey Man woke up, he heard whispering noises in his head, and being a voodoo shaman magic man, he thought Gonzo the Great Gabboon (his patron diety) was speaking to him.. Mojo claps his hands with over-zealous joy!

"Aha! It is you! Oook!" he cries.

But really, it was the snail, who had burrowed himself inside the monkeyman's ear canal.

Mojo rejoices "Ook!, all these years have paid off! Alas! I have been enlightened! Ooook Ooooook!"

The snail was shocked upon hearing that and double-shocked at the fact that he can hear the monkeyman's thoughts! But just then, an evil thought came to his mind. So he whispers to Mojo from within.

"Yasss! 'Tis meeeee, Gonzoooooo..........."

"Okay, bud. Rule number one. Thou shalt not eat snails! Snails are your best friends!"
and upon hearing this, Mojo nodded. "I shall obey! he exclaimed. "Oook! I shall Obey! yes! Oooook!"

Later on that day, Mojo and the Snail travelled extensively. He rescued various snails from within the frog's tongue reach.. Fed the snails leaves and carried some of them to assorted places.
Mojo's puzzled by all these snail-saving deeds and also by the amount of weird commands that he's been given lately. "Avoid salt water, use clean water, do not clean out your ears" etc etc. None of them are anything violent! None of them taught him the rules of gorilla warfare, or how to craft weapons of any kind at all! It's about this snail, or that snail.....and throwing frogs high up in the air.

He couldn't figure out why his patron god isn't acting like the Fabled Fearsome Gabboon Banana Bushman of Death! But rather, he seems timid and fearful of alot of things. Mostly frogs and salt water. Mojo was disappointed. And confused. And puzzled. Surely his diety knows something about snails and frogs that he doesn't know about.... yet.

Then Mojo comes across a pond. A really big pond. And there's this Lilly Pad Party already going on. Witching hour's begun. The place was illuminated by fireflies, and served by barflies and other flies. Strewn Budweiser cans are everywhere. It was loud. Alot of croaking noises. After going through a clearing, he sees all the frogs socialising and dancing........Some are leap frogging, others are playing practical jokes upon the tadpoles. Others are making tadpoles. Being in a drunken stupor, they are really behaving like animals and are totally oblivious to Mojo and his friend snail lurking from behind the foliage.

End. (probably got bored and left it like that)

I dont know where the original coloured version is, but I'm gonna have to use a friend's site to show it in the meantime.

Ahhoy thar annoy!

I don't know what happened to the rest of the story. I guess it'll have to be finished one day when I'm either really really really bored or annoyed like I did them back then.


Going back to my roots, and drawing the Annoys again soon.

"Page o' Crap!" He says.

Getting a little to hesitant to post drawings all of a sudden. I figure crap is still better to look at than nothing at all.

I've always been meaning to clean the lines up, make it look proper and all that, but could never bring myself to do it ... yet. Maybe not now, but eventually I'll get around to it. At the moment I just got to accept things for the way it is and leave it at that. That is how I am, so my art reflects it. Grow from it slowly instead of rushing through it like I have in the past.

A friend of mine says an artist is supposed to be messy. I'll let the messiness do the art for me then. Maybe I ought to start spilling coffee all over the drawings to further enhance this messy effect. Crumple up the paper too, crease it here, or there. Whip it across the room. Step on it. All sorts of mayhem like that. I think that might be fun. Maybe I'll start my own "ism" that way. Messism? Crapism? I dunno. What do you think?

After drawing this, I had to make fun of myself to relieve the tensions. The bird guy at the top left hand corner of the page started the dialogue, then it snowballed from there as it reaches out to other characters. I try to see ho w they would react to what he says, which pretty much condemns the entire page. Some of them take offense to his commentt, others take it in stride, and so on. It's somewhat indicative of my own thoughts manifesting itself to the characters. Yeah, yeah, I suffer for my own art. =P

I take my stuff and myself waaaaay too seriously, so poking a little fun of it is good and keeps me aloof. It feels better afterwards than if I had left it as it is. The dialogue coming from the characters isn't silly enough but if I didn't put them in, it would pretty much remind me the seriousness of the attempts that I've been making at producing art. Its still a long ways yet. I can sort of see where it's going if I keep it up.

That's the purpose of this Blog in the first place. To fight the forces of Laziness and Procrastination always. To learn from it, grow from it, to bear it all for the world to see, to let it shine no matter how ugly or beautiful it is, to share, and to look back on it to see how it all progresses over time. Amen. *sniff*

World of Warcraft /gasp!

Well, normally I do not draw fan-art for some reason. Its nothing against fan-art in general.
I do not know remember why or how I got into drawing WoW in the first place. But I took alot of screenshots in the past with the intention of using them for later, whether that will be for posting WoW art for Blizzard later on (probably never) or painting backgrounds (to tackle my fear of painting backgrounds haha).
I started to reference from them to draw on-model for characters as part of the warming up process. It helps alot. I know, it was probably pretty obvious to everyone else allll along, but not to me, of course. I keep rediscovering things over and over again. Mild-amnesia FTL. Hopefully with this blog I can work some of those deep seated personal and artistic issues out.

While doodling them, I realise that this is probably going to be the only way to teach me how to draw armours and weapons (maybe a bit of perspective too) as practise. Maybe that's practise with a purpose, or just an excuse to draw WoW as a coping mechanism for not playing the game in months? =P

Ah well, baby steps!

Here's Pecking at You.

Just like the monkeys-on-your-backs, these things are much smaller and hover behind your field of view. Unlike monkeys-on-your-backs, they annoy you into doing something when you're not doing anything productive at all. When you're not paying attention they come closer to bore you a hole at the back of your skull. Your attempts to swat them away doesn't discourage them one bit. They'll keep boring you till you find something else better to do.

At least Annoypeckers are better than Snailiens who lull you into atrophy.

Undersea Misadventures.

What can I say? Been spelunking too much into the subconscious (which is fine by me). Weird things happen down there. The weirder, the better it is. I'm still trying to figure it out how it all works so that I can dive straight into it without having to spend hours and hours decompressing. By then the whole day's already gone and I'm way too tired to draw anything anymore. I can hear my brain static and the ears would be ringing afterwards. Then "it" shows up at my door and whispers "Let's play." and I'm like "Where have you been? I'm just about to go to bed." giving it the guilt trips that wives would give to their men when they come home drunk late at night. But man, I'm the one usually feeling guilty afterwards because I really miss out on what it had to offer. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but I see a George (dressed as a pirate) and a Kramer (the mermaid with shark on her head) from Seinfeld. Probably because I watch way too much Seinfeld.
Poseidon there is trying to lure a fish with his tongue that looks like a fish.
The pen running out of ink made frequent appearances in older sketchbooks. Probably will have to dig up more of that stuff later, with the pen doomsday prophets and all.
Annoy pecker on bottom right is sort of my personal stamp of approval. Not sure what is required to merit this sort of stamping either. It's a crazy bird. Don't let it get on your paper!

More annoypecker to come soon.