For Entertainment Weekly's end of the year wrap-up, I was asked to do the drawing for the Best Video Game of the Year- UNCHARTED 2! (I had never heard of it.)
For all the D&D I played as a kid, I haven't invested into the first-person shooter video games- though I have a kind of admiration for them. My video game of choice as a 12 year-old dork was "The Legend of Zelda." So, I had to do some extensive visual research, as this game bills itself as a kind of hyper-real Indiana Jones-esque shoot'em-up. (No, I wasn't able to convince them they should buy me a PS3 for authenticity.)
A few alternate ideas that I sent- along with the final sketch.
The final sketch took an unusually long time to resolve. In drawings of this kind, it is a lot like assembling a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, and for hours it seemed I was missing all the center pieces, resnapping the edge pieces together again and again.
One of my favorite passages from this drawing-
Probably 95% of my drawings are done on one sheet of board with minmal Photoshop surgery... but this piece was a bit different. It really wanted to approach it a bit more graphically - here are a collection of some of the parts of this image.
I even got my beautiful bride to pose with my son's Nerf gun. I really get so little chance to draw this kind of old fashioned '15 year-old's notebook' drawing with evil henchmen and Beretta hand guns, etc.- I tried to enjoy it!
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6 comments:
I love this! Simply amazing.
Why did we not ever play D&D instead of having mid term reviews? What were you thinking, John? Tsk, tsk.
Illustration looks good. They got you with the Indiana Jones comparison, didn't they?
thanks for showing us some process! awesome piece!
Great Illustration John! My name Shaddy and I was the lead concept artist on Uncharted 2... Although I see that you don't play games I think you would like, nay LOVE Uncharted 2. If you get a PS3 I will send you a copy and you can tell me what you think:)
Hi Shaddy, great to hear from you. Loved the art on this game- great work. I didn't get the PS3 for Christmas this year, but I'll let you know- (hope my wife reads this post)
Excellent post. The alternate sketches and shots of the elements/WIP are really enlightening. Many thanks.
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