I had such a fun experience with the Portal 2 fan piece, I decided to go further and paint a bigger one for the upcoming game BioShock Infinite. This game's set design and characters are amazingly well done, especially Elizabeth; she doesn't have that dead-eye lifeless look you seen in so many video game characters. To see what I'm talking about, do yourself a favor and check out the 15 minute gameplay trailer. The action is insane:
[link]Anyway, because I'm a big JC Leyendecker fan and the game takes place during his legendary Saturday Evening Post cover stint, I decided it would be cool to do a parody issue on the city of Columbia with the two main characters as the center. But after drawing my layout, I discovered that the smart folks at Irrational Games had ALREADY done this concept with a few Post parody Game Informer covers. But to me they didn't look particularly like Leyendecker's art, who had such a distinctive style, so I said screw it and just moved forward with my original design. Now, my version doesn't necessarily look like Leyendecker's stuff either (i.e. no where near as good), but I did try make it recognizable as such in the very least while still throwing in my personal stylistic touches.
A few notes: The was only one piece of online reference for the main protagonist, Booker, so this is more my personal interpretation of him. As for Elizabeth, I wanted the paranoia of Songbird's pursuit to resonate in her pose so that's why she's looking skyward. Columbia was done in all-gold because I wanted the city to look like an idealized El Dorado floating in the sky which also accomplished having the character colors pop.
As for how long this took? No idea. I nibbled away on it for like an hour a day in between work projects. Total blast to do. Thinking of my next piece now...
`ChewedKandi has certainly gone out of her way to keep the vector community on the right path. Always making sure that her talents are infinitely scalable, Sharon has put her bezier curves to excellent use, and firmly anchored herself as an inspirational leader. We're absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for June 2013 to `ChewedKandi. Congratulations, Sharon! Read More
Sta.sh
Love the homage to Rockwell.
Just love the whole concept and character design.