Battle On

It’s been way too long since I’ve committed to creating some artwork. Now that several of my friends are organizing the PIXELDRIP gallery for the Underground Tournament League, it seems like a good chance to get back into the groove. The piece that I plan on submitting is a project that I’ve had on the backburner for quite some time: an illustration of all the Capcom fighting game characters going against all the SNK fighting game characters.

It’s a straightforward concept that I originally planned on doing during freshman year at UCSB. I was practicing for a Capcom vs. SNK 2 tournament when I started wishing that certain characters from both companies had made the cut into the game. I figured I would create a drawing so that dream matches between characters could take place in some form.

I compiled a list of the characters and started doing some research on their designs and personalities. That’s when the logistical issues started to hit me. There were hundreds of characters and attempting to fit them all in one scene would be a nightmare. How would they be interacting? How would they match up with other characters? How would the picture be composed? More and more schoolwork started to catch up with me and I quickly forgot about the project. That was 2003.

It’s now seven years later and I feel I have it in me to actually complete this project. I’ve gotten better as an artist. I’ve studied more examples of densely packed group shots, specifically those drawn by George Perez. I have a better understanding and appreciation for the characters that would be appearing in the illustration. Of course, dozens of characters have been added to the Capcom and SNK rosters as well.

I’m choosing to document this process over the next month because it’s one of the bigger projects, figuratively and literally, I’ve worked on to this point in time. Also, it should keep me on some type of schedule if I plan to submit by the April 15th deadline. I have about a month to finish this.

This entire week will be dedicated to character studies, sketching and preliminary layouts. The next week will focus on sketching. The week after that will be inking and cleanup. The week after will be coloring. The final week will be submission and framing. I’ll be updating this blog pretty frequently with sketches, snapshots, and even video.