Zulu's art thread v2.0

[zuludelta]

To view my old art thread, click here.

Haven't been drawing or doing anything art-related in recent months... I believe my last art-related post (back before the forums got re-booted) was in June of 2008. A large part of that was because of real-world issues (of physical and metaphysical nature) impinging on my ability to exert myself creatively. And while said issues haven't resolved themselves (I doubt they ever will, at least not categorically), I figured I shouldn't let them keep me from doing the things I used to take great pleasure in.

I'll hopefully have some actual illustrations to post in a day or two, but in the meantime, here are some photomanipulations I've done as putative reference material for my budding GI Joe action figure modding hobby (the 3 & 3/4" scale, not the larger 12" ones... also, a tip of the hat to Pyroclasm/Bamphalas, whose GI Joe photomanipulation pics on the old forum inspired me to take this route in designing modded figures):


notes: Always preferred the original 1982/1983 "commando" uniform for Snake-Eyes as opposed to his later ninja-themed costume. This is basically the Sideshow Collectibles version of Snake-Eyes, but with his visor (never liked it) replaced with a much more practical and much more initimidating AN/PVS-14 night vision device.


notes: one thing that bothered me about the original Stalker toy was that he wore a green beret... a fashion faux pas for a Ranger. Back when the toy first came out, Rangers wore black berets and were fiercely proud of it, being only the third Army unit allowed their own distinctive headgear. Of course now, the black beret has been adopted as the official headgear of the whole Army, prompting the Rangers (after much grinding of teeth) to switch to their current tan beret. To keep with the original figure's monochromatic uniform scheme, I decided to switch Stalker's outfit to a desert tiger-stripe pattern and threw on a traditional keffiyeh to complete the SOCOM Middle East operator look (it does state in his original filecard that he's fluent in Arabic, Swahili, and French... three major languages spoken in the Middle East and Africa, so I think it fits in perfectly with his desert-themed get-up).


notes: Duke here is basically a re-working of the Resolute Duke action figure design. Aged him a lot (he is, after all, a First Sergeant, and most persons of that rank are at least in their late 30s/early 40s). Also decided to make him a bit unkempt in appearance, as most SOCOM/SF operators in the field are actually encouraged to eschew military-style grooming in order to better fit in with the populations they are embedded in.


notes: I took a lot of liberties with Tunnel Rat's design. Gone were the bellbottoms, which I replaced with gaiters. A silenced M4 assault rifle would be a more practical weapon (vs. the big honking M-60 machine gun he's usually portrayed carrying)... real "tunnel rats" (particularly the American ones who fought in Vietnam and the Soviet ones who took part in the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan) used suppressed firearms whenever they could, because using un-silenced weapons in tunnels could cause deafness and the muzzle flash could cause temporary blindness in the low-light conditions.

Maybe next time, I'll be able to post pictures of some actual modded action figures  . 

[TAP43]

Great looking stuff, I really like the reasoning you give as well adds to the visuals.

[Glitch Girl]

Since I haven't seen the originals, I look at these and I barely tell they've been maniuplated.  Nice clean work there ZD, and like TAP, I like the reasoning behind the changes. 

[zuludelta]

I really like the reasoning you give as well adds to the visuals.

I like the reasoning behind the changes.

Thanks guys. One thing that's always bothered me with later iterations of the GI Joe figures and comics is the lack of attention to detail by the designers. On a property with more fantastical leanings (i.e.; Transformers, most superheroes), superfluous design decisions don't bug me so much and I actually come to expect and accept them most of the time. But with something like GI Joe, I expect a reasonable level of research going into things like costumes, uniforms, and weapons. I was reading last month's (or it might have been January's) Toyfare magazine where they interviewed one of the guys who worked on the prop and set design for the upcoming GI Joe film, and it boggled my mind how little regard he had for grounding the film's look in a contemporary military theme. It almost read like he had a misplaced sense of pride in it, relating an anecdote about how the director had him re-do the weapons a few days into the filming because he'd requisitioned some "ray guns" for the characters to use. An interesting anecdote to be sure, but an ultimately horrible portent for the film if you're a fan of the original Larry Hama comics.

I think the difference in design preferences between the film designers (and some of the guys updating the current line of GI Joe toys) and a lot of the guys harping on the coming movie and some of the toy line's current questionable designs can best be summed up by this demonstration:

Mention the word "Ranger" to an old-school 1980s G.I. Joe fan and the picture that'll come to their head would be something like one, or both, of the following images:

 

Mention the word "Ranger" to the guys behind the upcoming film's designs (as well as some of the current engineers and designers working at Hasbro) and I'm willing to bet that this is the image that pops into their collective imagination:

[zuludelta]

Some more photoshop manipulated GI Joe concept images:

Torpedo

notes: The team's primary Navy SEAL and one of my favourite Joes (I have an uncle in the US Navy, and the fact that it was explicitly stated in Torpedo's original filecard that he practiced a Filipino martial art gave me a sense of cultural pride and familial connection as a kid). They never did come out with a toy that seemed like a fair representation of what a Navy SEAL is... all the toys were basically just frogmen/divers... which is just one aspect of a Navy SEAL's abilities/duties (I mean, SEAL does stand for Sea-Air-Land Special Warfare Operator). Also, for a native Hawai'ian, he's always been depicted as pretty pale. He's also been portrayed as being unnaturally young for somebody with the Chief Warrant Officer 4 rank (IIRC, it takes 12 years of enlisted service to just qualify for Warrant Officer selection in the Navy, and on average about 3 to 4 years to advance a grade... at the very least, we're looking at 18 years of service -- there's no Warrant Officer 1 rank in the Navy -- for him to get where he is). Anyway, kitted him out with a woodland camo pattern dry-suit to allude to the SEAL's capabilities as not just an underwater demolition expert, but as a land warfare specialist as well.

Snow-Job

notes: Another character that I feel has been somewhat innacurately portrayed over the years (an episode of Robot Chicken springs to mind). Snow-Job was actually the team's first marksman/sniper and a rifle marksmanship instructor to boot. Still, as a kid, I thought he looked ridiculous wearing his polar environment duds all the freaking time. Thus, the decision to go with a woodland camo pattern PCU (Protective Combat Uniform).

Beach Head

notes: Probably the team loser in the double-entendre codename sweepstakes (Beach Head sounds like something you get for $10 in Pattaya). Always liked how he was characterized in his original filecard as a cool, unflappable operator (totally unlike the hot-headed screaming cut-up in the cartoon). Gave him a loaded "Ranger rack" as an homage to the odd-looking ammo vest the original toy wore.

Alpine

notes: The team's mountain warfare specialist/accountant. Always thought he sounded like a Beverly Hills Cop-era Eddie Murphy in the cartoons. I don't think he ever made a significant appearance in the comic.

Flint

notes: One of the more polarizing characters on the GI Joe team. Most kids I knew either loved him or hated him. I was definitely in the "hate" camp. Not only because I thought he was an arrogant son-of-a-you-know-what in both the comics and the cartoons, he was always getting his mack on with Lady Jaye, one of my first decidedly unhealthy childhood cartoon crushes. As a visual though, I thought he was very very cool. Swapped his black beret for a green one: It figures that Hasbro's designers would screw that one up... they'd already given the ranger on the team a green beret, so why not give the Special Forces (Green Beret) guy a black beret 

Roadblock

notes: The team's rhyming machine gunner and the second runner-up in the awful ethnic stereotype contest (losing behind Spirit and Quick-Kick). I thought Larry Hama did a good job making him a respectable character in the comics, losing the pseudo-jive talk from the cartoons and imbuing him with intelligence and sophistication. I read somewhere that the reason the upcoming movie is using a relatively new character named "Heavy Duty" in place of Roadblock is that Hasbro wants to cut any ties with the cartoon version of Roadblock, which, even by 1980s standards, was a pretty ridiculous stereotype. Anyway, re-imagined him as a light/medium/general-purpose machine gunner, as I think a highly mobile force like GI Joe would have little need for an on-foot heavy machine gunner (as the toy was originally designed). Besides, an infantry heavy machine gun needs a crew of at least two personnel to operate it, and a vehicle such as a Humvee for transport. And yes, I know that the Army's standard general-purpose machine gun is the M240B (the gun the second iteration of the Roadblock toy came packaged with), but I decided to go with an M60E4/Mk43 Mod 1 because it's still used by many SOCOM operators and unlike the M240B, it can be fired accurately from the shoulder, while according the official Army field manual, the M240B should always be fired stabilized against the ground, either with a separate (and heavy) tripod or with the integral folding bipod.

[zuludelta]

As I alluded to earlier in this thread, some RL issues have been getting in the way of my artistic endeavours. Most of you don't know this but I suffer from idiopathic/essential tremors (although "suffer" seems too strong a word... I think "inconvenienced" or "annoyed" is more appropriate and less melodramatic). It's basically a diagnosed case of really really shaky hands ("idiopathic" just means the neurologist can't figure out what's causing it). I'm not the only one in my family who has it... my maternal grandfather had the condition (he worked as a landscape and portrait painter and barber for a time, but switched to subsistence farming when it got worse), and I've got 2 aunts and an uncle (coincidentally, also worked as a painter) who have it relatively worse (it's one of those things that generally increases in severity with age). For the most part, I've dealt with it okay... aside from the occasional awkwardness in social settings (it sometimes looks like I'm nervous when I'm not), it doesn't really bother me. The tremors have been increasing in severity lately though (nothing I'm worried about, just the gradual worsening that comes with another year, exacerbated, I think, by some non-neuro meds I've had to take), such that it's interfering with one of my favourite activities: drawing.

I've been recalibrating the sensitivity on my intuos tablet so that it picks up my larger pen movements but doesn't pick up the smaller 6-16 Hz "shakes." The thing is, I'm so damn self-conscious of it that I can't objectively see if it's working or not, so I just wanted to post two quick sketches here, just to get people's feedback if there's anything off about the quality of the line:

The Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious:


Random 4 year old kid:


And please, be brutally honest, no sense being polite if it ends up not being constructive... and just to give you a sense of comparison, here's a sample sketch from before my tremors started visibly affecting my line-work:



 

[Gremlin]

First off, those shops are really cool. I like your take on these guys, and I've never been a big G.I. Joe fan.

As for the drawings. Yes, there is a difference in the character of the line, but I'd say not in the quality. I actually really like those computer sketches. I don't know if it's the difference in medium or the result of your tremors, but it feels kind of...I dunno, improvised? Not sure how to describe it.

Needless to say, I like your style, and I'd say by all means, keep at it.

[Uncle Yuan]

A) Sorry to hear about the essential tremor - it's frustrating disease.

B) I think the stuff looks great - a little rougher, perhaps, but line is only one component of the art.  Are you familiar with Chuck Close - portrait artist, did these GIGANTIC photo-realistic black and white portraits?  Then he was in a car accident and wound up a quadriplegic with only very minimal use of his arms.  Now he "paints" by dipping his fingers in paint and making fingerprints.  And his art is still amazing!  

[zuludelta]

Thanks for the responses guys, really appreciate it.

I'm trying to re-work my style a bit... these days, I get a lot of inspiration from the works of Brazilian artist Gabriel Ba and American comic book artist/graffiti enthusiast Jim Mahfood (the guy's probably best known by "comic book civilians" for doing live art renderings at alternative/indie hip-hop concerts, oh, and for creating the designs for some limited edition Colt 45 malt liquor cans a couple of years ago), that dungy, sketchy, "urban" look just speaks to where my sensibilities are at right now. 

A) Sorry to hear about the essential tremor - it's frustrating disease.

Thanks, but I haven't really thought of it as a disease (even though it technically is). In the spectrum of debilitation, it's somewhere between being nearsighted (a physical impediment that can be reasonably compensated for) and oh, I don't know, having halitosis (socially awkward condition that can be a source of laughs for all), I guess.

It was a bit of a hassle when I was in the army reserves, though. My platoon sergeant wasn't buying it when I tried to explain my shaky salute form     

[zuludelta]

Here are some teaser images of a 1:18 scale custom figure of G.I. Joe undercover specialist Chuckles I collaborated on with my older brother, although "collaborated" might be giving myself too much credit... I did the rough unskilled work (taking the base figures apart, doing rough beveling of the wrist and elbow posts) while he did all of the hard work: painting the itty-bitty flowers on Chuckles' shirt and subsequently ruining his eyesight (ha ha) and all the paint ops in general, doing the fine Dremel-ing, and customizing the shoulder harness and knife-sheath. All in all, it took us about 3 and a half months' worth of Sundays afternoons to get this puppy done (a lot of that time was spent just learning how to do the basic things, since this was our first collaboration together on a custom action figure).







The colour scheme was inspired by Chuckles' appearance in the 1987 movie and in the 1980s comics, as seen below:



We leaned towards the slightly orange flower pattern of the cartoon instead of the outright bright pink of the comic book.

Strangely enough, I don't think Chuckles has ever been depicted in the comics or in the cartoons wearing his gaudy original toy colours, which is why we've always thought of the white-shirted Chuckles as the definitive version.

My brother is considering re-engineering the hip joints, to give the figure a much wider, Microman-style, range of motion which will allow for deeper stances. Pics, of course, if and when that happens, will be posted here.

EDIT: And I know I'm biased, but I prefer our custom figure over the actual toy that's set to be released later this year by Hasbro, which looks nothing like the character in any prior incarnation:

[zuludelta]

here's Quick-Kick:

notes: A sentimental favourite of mine, Quick-Kick was my first ever GI Joe figure. I got him when I was 8, I think. As much as I dig the figure for nostalgia reasons though, I can't escape the notion that he just looks horribly goofy and dated compared to his brethren (and that's saying something, seeing as how by 1985, the Joes were well on their way to becoming the Village People).

G.I. Joe team, circa 1985

Anyway, I pretty much ditched everything from the original figure design but stuck him with some unzipped-cuff flight suit pants (to at least give off a similar aesthetic to his original gi pants). Kept the hachimaki ("under-helmet" samurai headband) just so he retains a link to his 1980s self. Added an MP5 submachine gun and some fast rope harnessing and Quick-Kick is now transformed from shameless Karate Kid cash-in to the team's premiere close-quarter combat specialist. Bonus points to the person who can identify the actor whose face I edited for the 'bash's face.

[Glitch Girl]

I really like how Quickkick turned out.  Though why only one knee pad? 

The face really looks familiar but I can't quite place it and it's going to drive me crazy for a while.