VIDEO GAME GORE SHOW IN PHILLY!

"EVOLUTION"
Posters now available here!

I finally joined The Autumn Society after a year of deliberation. Illustration has always been my second love after graphic design. I fell in love with joe's project after the 8-Bit Show in Philly. After seeing how much fun everyone had with the 3G Show in CA I could not put it off any longer. I contacted Joe and Jeff to learn about the next show. I couldn't have picked a better time - the theme for the next collaboration was Halloween and video games; Video Game Gore! I couldn't be more excited. (awesome promo flyer by Evan M. Lopez).



I had a handful of ideas for this show. I had it narrowed down to 3 concepts and picked the one that made me smile the most. The remaining two go in the "vault" for possible execution at a later time. I chose killer consoles, the evolution of one console coming into the market and smashing the previous top dog of home console gaming. I originally was going to start with the Odyssey2, but the Atari 2600 is really the first truly loved gaming console to reach an icon status. And I just went from there...I did have to be selective since I could not include every console. Runners up were Sega, SuperNintendo, Nintendo64 but all in all I tried to stick with landmark consoles and overall sales. The original Playstation sold amazingly well when I did some research. And the 360's and PS3's sales are so close in sales and love I made them a team destroying their previous versions. For the final frame, if we are to go by sales, the Nintendo Wii has destroyed both the PS3 and 360 without question since the general public has embraced this "not so gamer friendly" family oriented console.

I wanted to keep some variation in the weapons and damage to each console. Since i used a bat in the first, I stayed away from wrenches, swords, etc things of a similar shape and operation with any of the others. A shotgun once, so no gun, bazooka, etc.

From the start I knew I wanted a long history frame type collection of scenes. Grayscale across the board with bright, blood splatter as the backdrop (I guess Frank Miller was in my head at the incepetion) all on a clean, crisp white. The scenes were done by freehand as rough sketches, some were done right from the initial sketch while others took a lot of longer to figure out with many variations. The complete grayscale component was ditched and I ended up adding color for the weapons and other minor details. The Wii was my most difficult scene since i was fighting with scale, weird angles, not finding the right weapon and how to damage two consoles at once. I was really happy with the final scene and loved that I could sneak in both consoles' system malfunction signals. Where as the PS2 chopping through the original Playstation stayed true to the first sketch.

I wanted to do the splatter by hand and stay away from the default (and cliche) "ink" brushes in illustrator. The blood splatter was done with acrylic paints on plain cardstock. I used a nice mix, added some paper, cardboard, rice and packing peanuts to the blob for added text and depth for guts and tissue. Along with some other variations I knew I could play with in photoshop. After scanning the painting I was able to create about 8 unique variations of blood splatter backdrops and adjusted them accordingly to each scene.

I am really happy with the final piece. I wanted something fun and sentimental and I think I achieved that. I hope that it is well received this Friday at the opening. I plan on making individual scenes available for purchase as small prints. I look forward to seeing everyone's completed work - there has been some really amazing sneak previews of pieces over at Autumn Society and I am honored be a part of it.