Help needed: fave gaming scenes

CiDeRmAn

Hello there everyone,
I have a wee request to make of you.
I am not only a gamer, retro and otherwise, and the owner of many really nice gaming things.
No, in another life I also am an artist, I paint in acrylics and love to do landscapes, and all sorts of things.
So, what I want from you lot is some sources, some screen shots from your favourite games, scenes you'd love to see painted and hanging, framed, on the wall.

I'm not bad at all at the painting lark, sold 15 pictures over the last year, and I would be really interested in painting some scenes from videogames, given that they really offer opportunities to the artist that the real world can't match,
Ico, Metroid Prime, SoTC, they to name just a few.
But if anyone can come up with some good ideas, and more importantly the media to paint from, I'll be happy to try one or two out over the next couple of months.

So, let me know what you think, or post some pictures up here.
Heck, show me your own paintings, sculptures what ever of videogame related matters!

Here's some of my paintings, just to show I'm not spoofing!

o1s1n

Nice paintings!

I have wanted to make gaming artwork for years but have had to focus on stuff for college. (Never really thought my tutors would appreciate giant pictures of Link and the like)

The stuff I was working on towards the end in my studio had nothing to do with games. However I was drawing them out of pixels with ink and pen. (I love pixels!)

You'll have to excuse the bad photos, I didn't have my Nikon back then..shame really. As they don't do the stuff any justice.

The middle bit was an LCD set into a wall with a black and white pixelated fire burning. Doesn't really come across in the pictures. Looked well cool though. The crackling sounds coming from it were also a bit distorted. There were also headphones hanging down from the ceiling with a sound piece. But again, won't bore any of you with the arty farty crap surrounding that. And then there was that cool convex mirror in the middle warping the whole room. My mother stole it for her kitchen







There were a load more (Think I must have done about 20 in total) but will leave it at that.

Here's a closeup with what I mean by the pixelation. They were all made up so that when you stood close you really couldn't make them out. -









Haven't made anything since I left college a year ago. Until now. After discovering Hama beads I am convinced they are the way of the future with gaming artwork.

Got a few the other day and although I was extremely limited with colour and board size (They were only 14x14) I managed to get some basic mario sprites out of it -



So yeah, I have 6 giant boards coming and am going to put in an order for 40,000 beads. So expect a masterpiece in the coming months

/Edit actually my girlfriend made the Boo, star, brick and a coin. Better credit her before she punches me in the head.

CiDeRmAn

I feel suitably humbled, the art installation is brilliant, whilst the Hama bead art is wonderful.
Very, very cool, very tactile too, sweet...
You could use photoshop to pixelate some more modern art and, given the right no. of colour shades of beads do a picture of Samus from Metroid Prime!

You could also try doing it with acrylics and a matt texture material, then do dots of colour instead of beads!

Also, love the fireball, my fave bit of the picture!

o1s1n

Thanks for the kind words

That installation was a culmination of learning over 4 years in NCAD fine art painting and 1 year at a portfolio course. So if I didn't get the thing looking at least half decent I would have thrown myself off a very high building!

Really am happy with how the Hama beads turned out. It's suprisingly easy. All it is is bead for pixel (The boards I was using were too small to do that though, so there was editing involved)

If you want to do more complicated work, there are some good free bead generator programs out there. I made the following in easy bead patterns (They're my next two projects when the beads come in the post I think)





As a matter of interest, how long do those paintings take you on average? I had to give up on painting for my last year of college as they just took me way too long.

Retr0gamer

I liked the shadow of the colossus painting you did ciderman. You could try painting something from the intro of Vagrant Story, it's quite stunning for a PS1 game. Maybe even something from Panzer dragoon Orta which has a unique style.

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2002/news/10/14/panzerx_screen007.jpg

http://www.captainwilliams.co.uk/sega/saturn/panzerdragoon/images/orta_episode2_shot1.jpg

o1s1n

Shadow of the Colossus painting...? Giz a look!

Atavan-Halen

Excellent artwork guys! I'd love to be as good as that someday. I painted Dante from DMC for an art project but it didn't turn out well at all. As for suggestions anything from Okami. I LOVE the style of that game.

CiDeRmAn

o1s1n wrote: »

Shadow of the Colossus painting...? Giz a look!

I would show it if I could remember where it is.
I painted it a long time ago, and I did it in water colours too.
If I tried it again I'd do it in acrylics, my medium of choice these days.
The other thing is that it was from the art cards that came with the game, I'd really rather a fresh screen grab from some moment or whatever.

I always wanted a scene where Wanda is riding in the fore to middle ground, with the bridge stretching away above him, off into the infinite...

o1s1n

Water colours? Fair play. They're an absolute bitch to use.

Acrylics are my favourite too. I have tried oils on a few occasions but cleaning the brushes is way too much effort. And the drying time is unreal.

Although, if you can use them properly and are willing to put the effort in they're absolutely amazing to look at. You can't get that kind of luminosity in anything other than oil.

Shadow of the Colossus is just full of scenes you could paint. Actually I think you could probably pause it at any section and the image would be paintable. From huge chasms to vast open planes, ...I love it!

Just bought 55,000 hama beads from an ebay seller in the states. That's gonna be fun.

(Girlfriend is currently making Pac man and ghosts to go along with him)

Retr0gamer

Hmm, you guys are making me wish I had art as a hobby and not baking. Then I remember how good my chocolate chip, banana nut cookies are.

NeoKubrick

That's some sick stuff you both have there.

I think you'd find some pretty interesting landscapes in Cyrodiil from Oblivion, Cider. The Imperial Tower is a magnificent sight in-game. The whole world is beautiful, but the Tower shadows the majority of the map and still is a significant sight to behold after all these years.

CiDeRmAn

And it takes me anywhere from 4 hours to 14 depending on the difficulty or even just getting it *right*
Often the picture that looks to be simple turns out to be a mean mistress, whilst the complex one takes a couple of hours.
I did a lovely picture of the giants causeway in an hour and a half, you wouldn't think it though, while a coastal view took me 16 hours of work.

Atavan-Halen

Yeah, but I'm sure it paid off Decided to draw a quick sketch of Amiterasu from Okami after this thread and now I have a very cool idea for a retro mario. I put a pic up of the sketch on my facebook (which I think theres a link to on my profile) because I was happy with the way it came out, so that will be my main method of uploading for now.

CiDeRmAn

Well, I'm going to get my current picture done, should be by next week then I may have a carack at something game related, more ideas and jpegs will be surely appreciated everyone.

o1s1n

There's a great thread with lots of high res videogame artwork here ->

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=276451

Might be of some use to you.