Old School Gaming Drawings

I decided to do some drawings of classic NES games, since I already seem to have a decent sized collection of those. Unfortunately, for a couple things in both of these drawings I used one of my worst enemies - preset gradated shading. I absolutely hate the way preset shading looks. I still believe in doing everything yourself. Preset shading always looks so sloppy and out of place, like a child who just learned the concept of shadow colored it, and these pictures are no exception. These drawings were ultra rushed, so I got too lazy to color the sky and even draw or color the ground in the Super Mario Bros. one. The sky's gradated shading looks fine, especially since that's how Nintendo themselves shaded shies in the SNES Mario All-Stars, but the ground is straight up hideous. I quickly drew a bunch of slabs of stone with the mouse, then colored the cracks, the decided to rush together a preset downward shading for the rocks cos I was too tired to do it by hand by that point - bad idea. I plan on doing the ground over by hand and posting a better copy. For now, I posted production step pics below so you can at least admire the character work without that nightmare behind it. Everything besides the two parts I mentioned before (sky & ground) was colored by hand on the comp.

As for the Ninja Gaiden one, only the building in the BG are auto-computer done. The tops of the buildings look good, but I couldn't prevent that bright-ass red in the center that turns to grey. That's what makes it ugly. Once again, I was rushing to the max. If only I put more time into making this. I saved steps of this one as well, though, so I should be able to fix it. Everything else besides the building shading was done completely by me. The pcture is of one of my all-time favorite NES games, and video games, period. Ninja Gaiden was a huge part of my childhood, so I figured "why not do a picture for the blog for it". In this picture are - Ryu Hayabusa, Jaquio, Irene Lew, and a ton of enemies from the game that came out at a time when one was able to be intimidating whle wearing hot pink and purple.

I know earlier this month I said I was going to do more holiday drawings, but I've been occupied working with some people so I've had no time, and now the holidays are over. Well, I was going to do one for one of my personal favorites, Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas Celebration, a little-known but great special that aired in the late 80s, but I didn't like the way the pencil work came out and decided to forget it. I will, however, do a regular themed drawing of Herb and Rex, the two totally gay dinosaurs who hosted Will Vinton's holiday masterpiece soon. Until then, enjoy what's up.