Dead Cert

Dead Space looks great. Yeah, it's EA though. And EA suck right? I have never knowingly bought an EA game and to have one on my must-buy list is really quite something I can assure you. And they're really pushing this one. With a slew of carefully edited trailers, comic tie-ins and behind-the-scenes video they are going to great lengths to educate the audience about the joys of Dead Space. What I've seen so far is pretty good too. The real-time HUD implementation is class. The graphics engine and game mechanics look superb. And if you're going to pinch some ideas for a story then grabbing elements from both The Thing and Alien ain't a bad place to start. Of course it could still turn out to be a bigger stinker than a charity shop doorway after a tramps piss party but I'm keeping an open mind right now. It also prompted me to knock-up a new Mean Machines dude in honor of it's potential. I'll be doodling a lot more of these guys for games that deserve it so keep your eyes peeled if this floats your boat.

COD FTW!

Yes. It's superb. It's insanely superb. I want to play multiplayer ALL FREAKIN' DAY!!! I felt the same with Team Fortress 2 but no one plays that! No such problem with COD4 as the servers are packed with players. Ground War and 17 other guys going mental on each other is such a rush. A major plus is not having to listen to the usual crowds of pre-teen American 'doodz' with their squeaky, obscenity-laced drivel that we had to suffer with Gears of War. Speaking of Call of Duty 4, I threw together a background for the Live Theme contest they ran on the official COD website recently. Well, after the dust had settled and the votes counted I luckily got my entry chosen for the final pack! The theme is free and becomes available on Live on 16th November. My image will be seen on the 'Games' blade and doesn't look too bad seeing as I had little time to put it together. Congratulations also go out to the three other winners!

It's all GO! here…

During my tenure with NMS I was asked to help out on the other Emap tomes every now and then. One such stint was knocking out the mini-handheld magazine GO! which was a freebie with C&VG. Working with Paul Rand we belted out this portable abomination every month and, as well as the layout of the pages, I also drew these dinky robots for the review section. I don't have any copies of it mind but I did hang onto the artwork.

One of the first but not the final

Another very old image drawn right at the start of all things Mean Machines. Final Fight was a big arcade favorite of mine so it made it an ideal choice for this comic strip-tips combo. I did two pages but the second was wrecked when I attempted to colorize it and made a right pig's ear of things. What a monkey.

Mean Issue Zero

Dug this parchment out of my old college art binder, which was a big surprise, as I did not realise I had it anymore. This Ninja Gaiden doodle was my first ever image for Emap and also the first time I had combined ink and paints. Looking at it now I can see that blending orange and yellow hues with a solid black cloud inked with pen was a disaster waiting to happen. Still, the cover console strip that ran down the left hand side managed to hide most of it.
Art Class incoming
Going to begin a step-by-step series of posts that show how I draw a little comment character. Starting soon, I have chosen a Leadbetter figure and Bioshock is the game he will be customized for. In fact, I reckon Rich will make an excellent Little Sister as he is already used to skipping around in tight skirts with his hair in a ponytail…
Thirsting for games
There’s a bit of a good games drought in the Harrod household at the moment. I picked up Blue Dragon on Ebay the other day for under £20 but the post strikes are keeping it from me. I wasn’t overly impressed with the Blue Dragon demo but it will serve to pass the time while I wait for something better. Valves Orange Box might be the ticket. Played Half Life 2 to death but it was a superb game so I can quite easily go through it a second time on Xbox. Very interested to see how it controls with a pad this time around. That and Team Fortress 2 will hopefully be enough to tide me over till COD4 kicks down my front door.
Better in the red than miss Led
It now seems I am one of the 980,000 other people who never got that email with the Led Zeppelin concert code so I only have one thing to say. Arsecakes. Still, it might get recorded so I could at least see what went on and skip through the support acts, which no one cares about anyhow.

Feel old just thinking about it!

Long before NMS and Mean Machines existed I sat at home in my bedroom earning a few bob drawing fantasy art for various tabletop games companies and magazines. Most of my work was for Games Workshop in the form of Warhammer 40k. The success of this work earned the occasional stint for TSR and White Wolf but it was with GW that I did most of my work. Games Workshop was a cool and laid back company in those days. Not anymore it would appear. I found this out when I tried to secure some of my old artwork back from their evil dungeons earlier this year. I was up against the modern day equivalent of a castle wall with automated phones, personal assistants and legal departments throwing up every defence imaginable to prevent access to my old artwork. They were just too lazy to fish a few pictures out of a drawer and mail them to me. What was annoying was the fact that they placed an ad across the internet asking for artists to reclaim the material as they were clearing out the old artwork! They tell you to get in touch and then tell you to get lost when they change their minds. Any budding artists out there take note: Never send originals!

Little Men

Another idea poached from the pages of Famitsu were the comment box characters of the staff writers. Famitsu review section had its own little drawings of the four main writers and everyone agreed it was the best approach for the Mean Machines reviews. Not only did we miniaturise the staff we took on the super deformed Japanese style with the tiny bodies and massive heads. Sketching countless variations of characters was easy to cope with especially as a lot of the drawings were generic figures that could be reused again and again. It was not so easy when new staff joined the magazine and a brand new set of character drawings had to be made. I got so lazy near the end that I just drew the heads and stuck them on the old bodies.

Black lines. Don't do it.

My first few weeks at Emap were spent creating illustrations of one sort or another. I had a technical illustration background along with reasonable freehand skills so most of my day at Priory Court was spent preparing the templates for the launch of Mean Machines. I was put to work constructing the icons, symbols, score panels and the 'little men' charicatures. We took inspiration from Japanese magazines and game packaging. Famitsu magazine and a host of game manuals and boxes were always strewn across my desk for inspiration. It's also interesting to note that we never had any computers for the design department when Mean Machines began! All layout was created by hand then photocopied and stuck to paper templates using a wax machine. We endured this 'method' for two years before we got our first Macintosh Quadra for the launch of NMS.

Never forget your first

Mean Yob was probably one of the most successful creations from all of Emap's console magazines. It was Julian's sneaky way of telling the readers they were 'mentally challenged' and not take any flak directly. Yob was one of the first illustrations I did for Mean Machines and became a popular figure for contributors and other artists. For some bizarre reason I gave away most of my original Yob artwork when I left Images back in 1996. Luckily I held onto the first Yob painting I made and it's still in pretty good nick. This image was first sketched out onto CS10 paper and then inked with a .25 Rotring pen. For the life of me I cannot remember what I used for the colour but I was a complete amateur with brushes and avoided them as often as possible.