Arne - Retro gaming, concept art and ideas

[Carnifex]

those values are so damn fantastic.

[MattGamer]

h ahhaha! i played xcom once and got all confused with what to do. i think it was from a shareware cd with The Dig and another 999 cheap games.

is this the trailer you were talking about? looks fun!

[Prometheus|ANJ]

I don't think it looks much fun. They haven't shown any strategy elements though. Right now it just looks like one of the regular FPSes that are crowding the market. Fighting black goo doesn't seem too interesting, so I'm hoping it's just one of the many different alien variants.

Anyways. here's a WIP ZOIDS page. I have a few more concepts to add, and some of the stuff is 2 years old now and needs to be iterated.

Some of the picture are old, but I made this quickie tonight. It's morphological variants of an Anomalocaris.

[Geti]

I'm not feeling the new XCOM trailer either, but those animals make me happy I'm sensing some elements of that CC spider crab concept in the strider.

[obscure]

I'd have to agree with Arne & Geti here, I'm not really looking forward to the new X-COM game. I'd love for it to be good but it does seem awfully generic. The highlight for me was the obelisk that meterialises outside, could make things interesting. Perhaps a turn based movement system would pique my interest.

That being said, it really is still too early to tell though, the devs have said they want to include a research system and a 'base' hub where you get missions, upgrades etc.. I have heard and I hope it isn't true that the research system is akin to that of Bioshock 2 which to me at least was utterly useless and cumbersome.

Wow, that come off as pretty negative huh? OK OK, I'll probably still buy the game regardless

[MattGamer]

i will at least play the demo. you never know, the story could be a hit.

do you ever consider one of these concept pages finished? or do you just keep going until you get bored with it?

[FightingSeraph]

I really dig those new takes on old cartoons there, and here's a fact that few people know about: Felix had his own NES game made back in 1992.

[Prometheus|ANJ]

I mostly just abandon after having feature creeped enough. I don't like the idea of compromising
and dumbing down just to call it 'finished'. Of course, finishing can be relative to the complexity of
what you set out to do. I can finish a doodle for example, because a doodle doesn't have to be that polished.

Finishing something larger like a game project is much more work since many parts work in conjunction,
attracting and repelling differently as they are changed. Also, I see improvements in my skills every year,
and even if I didn't, I can always come back with a new perspective.

If a large game company gave me 6 guys, 1-2 years, and certain rights/licenses, I might actually be able to
finish one of my projects. I don't think that my games are more difficult to make than a low-medium budget game.
I tend to focus on emergence and openness in my designs, and a lot of that is free (assuming that game balance
doesn't become a struggle due to the emergence). None of my designs rely on tons of art assets,
tricky 3D engine innovations, making sure the player path and plot works, etc.

My X-COM project might actually require quite a bit of art assets though, because of the variation in environments.
The use of 3D models would make rendering all the character rotations and such a lot easier, but they still have to
be sculpted, rigged and animated.

I stumbled on the Felix NES game some time ago, but didn't check it out. I rarely like movie license games and such.
OCEAN might be responsible for that.


I just bought a whole bunch of AT-43 in the Rackham sale. It's prepainted wargaming miniatures. Rules get some
praise for being simple. Quality of the design vary, but I think I got some of the better ones, like the Red Blok army box.

Also:

Nibbled on an old sheet with StarGuard figures.

Tyris Flare rough from Golden Axe. I briefly toyed with the idea of just redrawing the sprites as chibi girls, but it's a lot of work.

[Geti]

I'd love to work on one of your games at some point, honestly. I don't have the capacity at the moment (or, you know, consent from you ), but most of my designs are inspired by your works in some way. I appreciate your focus on fun, solid mechanics and well iterated design rather than "so then we plug shiny graphics in and make money?" at the bottom of a load of uninspired drivel passed off as a design doc. I hope to get a good hold of that some day, though I should really diverge my art style from an emulation of yours at some point soon. [/musing]

The Myrmidion there is awesome, loving the shoulders, as well as the gladiator lizard guys, and the "actually camouflage?" idea. It'd be hilarious to have a planet all in horrendously bright pastel shades and hardcore soldiers running around in pink/yellow spandex.

[Prometheus|ANJ]

Yeah, I thought the camouflage bit was fun. I might order some new StarGuard
miniatures soon. I need to paint up the ones that I already have though.
Here are a few I've been working on (cleaning up mold lines, cutting the metal blob
bases off). I'm using 20mm bases with a slot, so I have to 'Green Stuff' the gaps like
seen on the leftmost FemBot.



Some quick Golden Axe chibi scale guys.

[Geti]

Skele-knight and Chicken legs. I think I'd likely need to see the longmen coloured before I knew if I liked them or not, currently leaning towards wierded out by their head shapes & proportions

[Prometheus|ANJ]

Color placements play a big role, yeah. However, in the case of the Longmoan, they have a lot of different colors, so I was thinking of playing around with different body shapes cuz palette swaps are cheap.

Experiment:


It's a little strange that I can't remember whether his shirt is blue and the pants are red or if it's the other way around.

Edit: oops, wrong URL probably.

+ Amazons WIP

+ Valkyries WIP - Doing some GS work on the bases.

+ Valkyries WIP 2 - Experimenting with rifle colors. Squaddies will be silver, leader bronze. I was going for gold first but it was so dull I decided to try out a green-blue wash.

Edit: Time to move onto something else.
+ Valkyries and Norgal

[Sammy]

great Golden Axe sketches and I love the abstract mario, he's just so iconic with those colors the eye just makes it work : ]

[Machineabuse]

It's a little strange that I can't remember whether his shirt is blue and the pants are red or if it's the other way around.

Originally it was red pants and blue shirt. They swapped that around in SMB3.

[Rusty]

I always get a great nostalgic feel when looking at your work dude (i grew up in the Nintendo/ Master system era, even Atari but i hate saying that because it shows what an old k*nt i am) Your stuff is a million times better but you've also kept the little fun stuff i enjoyed in those ol' games

Amazing!

[Prometheus|ANJ]

I was gonna put Ron Jeremy in there too, but didn't.

Would be interesting to do a Mario faithful to the SMB1 sprite...

The Atari 2600 had a few goodies, but only a few. I can still play and enjoy about 5 of them. Demon Attack is strangely addicting. Adventure is a classic. Gravitar is surprisingly complex compared to many of the other Atari games.

Or maybe you were talking about the Amiga rival Atari ST?

These old gals received a bit of make over. Scaled down faces and scaled up hips a bit. Liquefy is great. Faces and poses lack any sort of punch though.

[JakehC]

ooh, that second one was from back when you challenged Andrew! That was a pretty epic match up.

Love how all your girls look as if their flimsy panties are just going to droop off lol.

[Prometheus|ANJ]

It's a way to conserve weight. Those boots and shoulder pads are rather heavy, you know.


This one is 6 years old now, but I'm currently going over some old drawings and paintings to gain some new insights.



Playing with proportions

[Carnifex]

ohhh nice cenobites.

[JakehC]

ooh, please do some more demos!

[Prometheus|ANJ]

Painted like I used to paint (paint over rough lines). Forgot to save any progress shots, but it was pretty quick. Armpit-shoulder doesn't make sense, I know. Too lazy to learn anatomy or how to use ref. I'm sure I must have a similar shot somewhere in my collection of ... my reference... library. Yeah.

[Prometheus|ANJ]

This is a pencil+ink pen mecha that I recently drew at an indie game dev meeting. Mobile phone pic. Was a gift.

[Prometheus|ANJ]

The cybernetic soldier Pretty Marine Saturn wields a two part Glaive - a powerful weapon which she recently used to destroy the moon sized Millennium Repository.

[jMarkus]

havnt been around much... buy yo we used to oc right? I cant find anyone I used to oc with do we not have mIRC anymore? btw ur stuff is awseomse!

[oracrest]

Some quick Golden Axe chibi scale guys.

those look damn tasty!

It took me a long time to realize the thieves were carrying pouches. It always looked to me like they had big pouch growths on their backs that would deflate when you kick them enough. Kinda like this:

Between this, Altered Beast, and Streets of Rage, I really dug the deep dirty sound of the old Genesis sound chip.

[gamapoarte]

cool draws im from
argentina visit my page www.gamapo.com.ar airbrush art thanks

[Prometheus|ANJ]

This is a reinterpretation of an old basilisk concept of mine.


Hard and Heavy was originally a Giana sequel. Due to Nintendo's objections, the game was probably reshaped a bit. Still, you'll be able to spot quite a bit of stolen sprites and tiles in the game (Metroid, Kid Icarus, etc.).

Sprite ref

I've also been starting on a Cortex Command fluff / concept art doc, but a lot of info still needs to be copied over from old documents. Working on the ships now. I'm trying to use some unusual main-shapes and avoid greebled cigars and bezier blobs. Doing some aliens too. Peripheral stuff to buffer the setting a bit.

[Extollere]

I adore your panty-girls. Please never stop.

[Sammy]

tight basilik design

[bhanu]

This thread is like a treasure trove