blaugust

Prototype Aerodactyl Model Kit

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aerodactylphoto

Remember those awesome dinosaur model kits from when you were a kid? I’m working on a Viridian Pewter City Museum collection – Pokémon model dinosaur kits! This is the first, Aerodactyl.

I model the design in Blender first.

blender

After making the 3D model out of flat planes, I mark out areas where the parts intersect. The model is then exported into a 2D file, using this excellent Paper Model Export script which allows me to set the scale of the complete model. After export, a number of things must be done to make each piece ready for cutting. The tail piece is shown as an example below.

Each point of interconnect initially gets exported as a normal “cut” line. This must be expanded into a 3mm wide line, and then the length of the line must be extended past the outline of the piece. Then the width of these lines is removed from the area of the piece.

 

tailexample

Each piece is laser cut and the whole model can be assembled by slotting the correct parts together!

tailphoto

I need to make a lot of fixes to the design still but the overall concept works. Unfortunately the other Kanto fossils don’t really suit being made into model kits, but there are some good candidates throughout the series!

Watercolour Wiimote Cover – Lucina

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WiimoteLucina

This custom Wii Remote cover features Lucina. The technique I used to paint it was the same as the Splatoon covers I shared last week. In my pictures today I show the considerations I make about the inclusion of the sloped sides of the cover. I try to keep detail out of the sides and all of the main features to the middle.

I also painted a cover featuring the Kanto Starters, but it looks like I sold it without taking a photo first! So I’m down one post for the upcoming Pokemon Week. It’ll probably be a mix of Pokemon and miscellany 🙂

LucinaSketch

“I brought you this lit bob-omb!”

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I drew this one after some early gameplay footage of Smash Bros for WiiU was seen. In it, people observed Olimar’s Pikmin bringing him items. Someone observed it would be somewhat humorous if the helpful little guys brought dangerous items to Olimar!

olimarbomb

I have no idea how I forgot to draw in the bob-omb’s limbs and face. I had them pencilled in but when it came time to ink I just went into “it’s just a bomb” mode I guess.

Lucas

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After Lucas’ announcement as DLC for Smash 4, everyone wanted to see more art of him! I was asked to draw him in his Grey alt-costume. I used this painting as a chance to experiment with some splatter effects. I put very wet washes of ink down around Lucas, then blew on the patches to make them splatter outwards. It’s tricky to control the results but I really like the effect that it provides. I hope to integrate it a bit more into some of my paintings.

lucasgreyalt

Zelda and Roy

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The plan for this week is to be posting mostly old art, and although I have been wavering on the idea I think I will go with it anyway just so I don’t end up in some kind of “but it’s old, I shouldn’t post it” mindset where I end up posting nothing at all.

As always with Blaugust, it’s important to keep momentum up, so we’re heading into what I’ll informally call Smash Week.

Tonight’s post is a painting featuring Roy and Zelda. It was requested by a Project M player, hence Zenda appearing in her OoT costume. Actually I guess it’s what she would’ve worn in Melee too, so perhaps they were a Melee player.

complete

WIP sketch. I think some of the issues with this painting could have been avoided if I worked a bit larger. Some of the detail was hard to tackle.

zeldaroylineart

 

Bonus: There’s a Zelda player that goes by the name Cosmo, and a while back I spotted someone asking “Has Cosmo made a Zelda guide?”. My brain said I had to make this! I kinda wanted to do a whole series with magazine articles that used awful vapid headlines that actually covered game mechanics in great depth, but it’s a pretty big time investment for someone who only dabbles occasionally in Smash.

zeldacosmo

 

Judd WIP

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progress

Today’s post is not a complete work, because the new Splatoon update has arrived and I must absolutely prioritise playing it over completing my blog post.

Besides I’ve started to go a bit cold on the art itself so it might get scrapped and started from scratch again.

Anyway it’ll let you get a little bit of insight to the creative process when I prepare files for laser engraving. Here you can see the initial sketch drawn up and my vector lines over the top in red and black. Red areas are for cutting, black are for etching. I took a slightly different approach with this piece as in previous pieces I have done the whole lot in black lines and then cut up the outline borders. I’m not sure which method is faster overall as I’m still a bit slow in the vector world.

Also, I only realised it yesterday but perhaps some of my fondness for Judd stems from his similarities to the wallet I’ve used for the past 10 years or so.

catwallet