I love wearing costumes, as many internet peeps do, and I enjoy making them too, despite the fact that I'm not too experienced in making costumes. Because of my lack of experiences, I've had to occasionally resort to blogs to find out how to do certain parts. I considered making a blog for my last-year costume (Booker from Bioshock Infinite) but never got around to it. This year I decided to give it a shot (I might try and post something about my Booker one later). So, here's the first part of my costume for this year, Wikus from District 9. Keep in mind, I'm not experienced, so I'm not sure how well this will all turn out in the end. Also, I'm a college student, so I don't have a large amount of money to spend on this. I have until Stockton-Con on August 8th.
Let's get started...
For this part, all I can talk about is my plan. I'm planning on being mid-transformation, so I'll have alien-bits sticking out of my arm and face.
So far, my plan is to use liquid latex for much of the alien skin, but I am considering having the arm bits attached to the torn-up white casual shirt I'll be using, so that I can just slip on the alien bits and don't have to apply each and every piece when dressing up, but I'm not completely counting on that working. This will also be my first time using liquid latex, so it'll be a trial and error process in the beginning. I'm also planning on contacting my optometrist to see if I can get a prescription for colored contacts (as it's illegal to buy them, even non-corrective ones, without a doctor's prescription).
Part of what made me decide to be Wikus for this year was what I discovered while working on one of my animations. I was making an Aliens animation and used rotoscoping for much of it, including the alien. For that I made paper claws (the ones that one of your friends made in middle school) and recorded me doing some of the hand actions with them on. I found that if you layer the claws on one another, it doesn't look half bad and is somewhat sturdy. It made me think of Wikus' alien hand, and got me considering this whole thing.
Again, I'm not completely counting on this idea working, but my plan for the hand is to construct the fingers out of paper claws and find a way to further strengthen them. They will then be painted, of course. Worst case, this doesn't work and I might get a Halloween glove and work with that.
Originally I thought "No gun..." mainly because of the price of the props on Weta's website (and custom ones on the internet), until I noticed that some people had made them from Nerf guns. I have a Nerf Longstrike sitting around that could be perfect for this project.
It won't be an exact replica, but I want to get the general feel down. I'll probably only do a paint-job and attach a few canisters to it.
I'm looking forward to putting this thing together. This will be the first time that I will be using makeup for a costume that wasn't the crayon-like stuff you get at Party City (not saying those are bad at all). I'll try my best to keep this blog up to pace with this project so that you can see my process.
3 Reasons Why A New WWII Game Wouldn’t Be A Bad Idea
I know, deep down in my heart, that a good number of people will disagree with me right after reading the title of this article, and they probably have good reason to, the WWII genre had been presented to us for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the same way vampire/zombie movies were and superhero movies currently are. Perhaps it's because I'm a WWII history buff, or perhaps it's because I was too busy playing Halo when the WWII trend was in full swing, but I just ask that you bear with me when I say that I believe it's time for just one more WWII game.
pintrest.com
Better love story than Twilight.
The last “great” WWII shooter was Call of Duty: World at War (with a few slight exceptions) and that was back in 2008. For those of you, like me, that don't immediately have a good sense of time, that was 7 years ago, plenty of time for a breather. I'm not saying we should restart the trend (I'm fighting an uphill battle just getting you to read an article with “WWII” in the title), I'm just saying that it wouldn't be the worst idea for Call of Duty and/or Battlefield to take one (or two, at most) dip back into the Second World War, and here's why:
1. There Are More Stories to Tell
Perhaps one of the reasons we all got so burnt out on the WWII era was because we kept telling the same story over and over: 'Murica fighting the Nazis and kickin' Hitler's fat face in.
imgkid.com
Insert foot here.
Call of Duty: World at War changed this up by introducing the Pacific Theater to the mix, and that was a great change in tactics and setting. You were no longer fighting like-minded soldiers through towns, you were wandering through tropical environments, fighting an enemy that was hiding beneath your feet. It was no longer a fight against the evil Nazis, it was a fight to survive the night, and it's a shame that it didn't come up until the end of the trend.
But it seems one thing we tend to forget is that WWII was a world war. You don't have to just be America fighting the Nazis or the Japanese. You can be the French Resistance fighting for freedom, or British forces fighting behind enemy lines. Maybe even turn the tables and play a German soldier. We demonized the Germans so much that we forget that they were also just fighting for their country. To speak out against or refuse to help the Nazi Government meant disappearing. You could play the rise of a Nazi soldier, see his revelation that turns it into a sort of Hunt For Red October story. It wouldn't be the most controversial thing Call of Duty has done.
callofduty.wikia.com
“Shooting up an airport of innocent people is one thing, but fighting for my life for a government that demands my unquestioning loyalty?”
There's also the possibility of an alternate reality story. We got that with Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, but it turned out to be a big disappointment, and we almost got that with Band of Brothers: Furious 4, but news on that fell silent years ago. But who hasn't watched Inglorious Basterds and wished they were the ones unloading a truckload of ammo into Der Fuehrer's face?
2. We Can Now Make Bigger And Better Looking Games
The Xbox 360 came out in 2005 and the PS3 came out in 2006, we had only had a couple years to play around with the consoles' power before our last proper taste of WWII. Since then we've seen a huge increase in video game power, thanks to the Xbox One and the PS4. Thanks to this increase in power, a video game can come closer to achieving the big scale battles that occurred in WWII. Battlefield 1943 was one of the first Battlefield games to incorporate really destructible environments, thanks to DICE's Frostbite engine, which has come a long way since then. Not only can you have destructible environments, but you can have more. More people, more buildings, more everything! Imagine playing a proper scaled version of the D-Day landing. Mile long beach, thousands of soldiers, bombs flying from every which direction.
en.wikipedia.org
“Remember, only 30 at a time! We can't render all of you!”
Why limit it to being the soldiers on the beach? Be one of the paratroopers parachuting behind enemy lines, be a fighter pilot fighting in a dog fight above the battlefield, recreate the Battle of Prokhorovka or Operation Goodwood with tank v. tank warfare, maybe even ship v ship battle like we saw in the short Battlestations series. Modern warfare may be compact and small enough to get away with the limits we had in computing power 7 years ago, but WWII was a war with massive scale that couldn't have been reached before.
3. It'd Be A Much Needed Change In Mood/Setting
Wanna know something I loved about Call of Duty: World at War? It's dark and gritty feel that would allow some few people to argue that it's horror. Just listen to the main menu music.
Don't look behind you.
I might be wrong, due to the fact that I haven't played Call of Duty since Black Ops, but it seems that shooters have always glorified war in some way. Even most of the WWII games did it. World at War took that idea of the greatest generation's glorious fight for freedom and turned it on it's head. Half of the game took place at night, the soundtrack contained sounds you'd only hear in your nightmares, limbs were blown off of peoples' bodies! World at War shares some very Saving Private Ryan-esque moments (it even features an achievement named after the film) and shares the idea of showing the brutality of war. You can't do that with modern warfare games, it's too close to home (time wise) and those who served in the modern wars are part of the gaming community.
One of the most powerful moments in a video game cinematic, for me, was the finale for World at War (spoiler alert, the Allies win the war).
Still gives me chills.
The actual footage pulls you into that “This all really happened” mindset and then it hits you. “60 million lives were lost as a result of World War II”. I'd hope a new WWII game would hit those same chords, maybe even harder. Show how the war affected civilians (China and Russia had massive numbers in civilian casualties) or even pull some influence from Band of Brothers and have a scene where you liberate a Concentration Camp. Maybe we don't have to go THAT dark, but just something to take our emotions for a ride.
A Call of Duty: World at War 2 or Battlefield 1944 would be awesome, but really it'd be cool to have any WWII shooter, Call of Duty and Battlefield just have successful and proven formulas. Perhaps I'm a black sheep, and everyone's perfectly content with the modern/futuristic shooters (nothing wrong with those). Perhaps I'd have to form my own video game developing company to see this wish come true.
I realize it's been a while since I've updated this blog, almost a year now, and it's more due to simply forgetting to post stuff than not wanting to post anything. I like the idea of having a blog where I can post my thoughts and ideas, but I find it difficult to keep it up to date and current. I'm trying to figure things out for returning to the blog world (what to post? how to keep posting?). I may abandon this one and start from scratch. Time will tell. Just thought I'd let you all know.
Woah, I've been falling behind! :O So many drawings I've done and I've been busy with schoolwork. For one thing, I am still doing the drawing each day thing, I've just forgotten to post them on here. Also, I'm currently taking Drawing for Animation, which is also producing some good pictures. In fact, I'll post some of them here now.
First homework assignment was to draw a self portrait that makes a statement about our relation to art and animation. What was my statement? I love sci-fi :) Ok, there's more. Mostly how my dream job is to work for Disney or Pixar (hence Stitch hitchin' a ride) and my dream dream job is to play The Doctor (hence me flying the TARDIS). For some reason the space clouds in the background are way more apparent than they were when I was drawing this. Or maybe it's just my computer screen...
Heads and faces. I'm actually impressed with myself on how some of these turned out. The faces on the top right were from photographs and we were given only a couple minutes to get the general appearance down.
Finally, some poses and anatomy. Don't have much to say other than the current assignment I'm working on is drawing poses of one of my own characters. Which character? You'll find out when I remember to publish another post.
It was after that last one that something started to spark. My careless attempt to draw a Bob's Burger-esque character had something that seemed to pop out at me. I needed to find out what.
It was with the not-quite-11th-Doctor drawing there on the right. Could it be? The "new personal style" I had been looking for? Right under my nose? And from a half-assed imitation of another cartoon? I had to try it out some more!
It was during this page that the whole thing came together. At last! I had found a new personal style!
On a bit of a Doctor Who high, I tested the style almost exclusively on Doctor Who stuff, as well as my first self-portrait in this style in the top right (waving to the War Doctor)
Other than the full self-portrait, this day was kind of a flop with drawings. Attempt at poses turned into scribbles, an attempt at a friend's original character turned into a pencil-head with a face, and an attempt to draw Csemer Boggie ended up looking a bit more like Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice. If it wasn't for the self-portrait, the interesting little doodle above the self-portrait and the hand above that, I'd be just about too embarrassed to publicly show this page.
For some reason, my new style took a bit of a twist in today's drawings, with the Anna and Elsa (from Frozen) drawings. I'm still playing around with the style, so it's still subject to change. One friend said it reminded her of Tim Burton's art style.
Stay tuned for more drawings from my Daily Drawings project!
I haven't completely forgotten! I was just gathering up some stuff to show, and I only recently got the camera on my phone working again. I've started getting myself into the habit of drawing every day. One page of my sketchbook a day! Here are the pages done so far!
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