Social Profiling № 5: Three's Company

If you're unfamiliar with the "Social Profiling" facebook experiment you can scroll down to the tags at the bottom of the post to catch up properly. I did the four initial profile pics as promised, but I still had a good number of people who wanted one, but didn't get one. As a compromise I decided more or less right off the bat that I would paint them anyway, but more directly from an existing picture, rather than inventing a new scenario to place them in as I did with the initial group. Then I got busy and didn't get a chance to do any. Time to catch up.

Unlike the initial four, these new portraits will all be done on a whim, with various things inspiring me to do them rather than saying "OK, I have 4 to do and 5 weeks to do them" as I did on the first set. This is nice if I'm not finding anything inspirational until a suitable picture or idea turns up.

Christine

This is what happened with the first picture. Christine injured herself in a fall, and coincidentally I got a stress free afternoon off work a few days later, so I thought "Time I painted her a picture." If you're a regular reader of the blog you'll have seen this picture already, but just in case you're not, here it is again (uncropped this time).  All the images are expandable from here on out by the way.

I have to say, I was really pleased by how easy Christine was to paint. So easy in fact that I started, and then 90 minutes later I was done. No step by steps because I was so into the painting I forgot to save until the end (usually I'll get paranoid I'm going to make a mess of it and save several times as I go along). She's got a great smile, and primarily it was capturing the smile that was my reason for painting this particular picture (Though she grins like a loon in most photos, in this one she was doing herself proud in the big beautiful smile stakes). After all, if you've injured yourself and are feeling down you don't want someone painting you all gloomy and morose looking, right? I thought the red went well with that too - usually an angry colour, in this case it has a very festive vibe I feel. So, other than the fact that Chris seemed very pleased with it (didn't use it as her profile pic though) there's not much else to say.

Dan

When the initial list of people came in that wanted portraits painted I went and took a look at their facebook photos. This one of Dan jumped out at me for some reason, so I saved it. I've been looking for a good reason (and time) to paint it for six months. My chance came on Dan's birthday. Perfect reason for a profile picture. So I set to work.

The original image has another person in it, leaning on Dan's shoulder, so I just left them out. This time I also remembered to make step by step saves (but not that many) over the two hours of painting. With the exception of the first the others are about 30 minutes apart.

Not much else to say about it - I don't even know why I found the photo so captivating - maybe it's the unusual lighting, or the angle, or the roughness of his cap, or his peculiar thoughtful expression. I do know I made a bit of a mess of his eyes, and I had no idea how difficult painting a beard would be. Lucky I had the practice on those though, because next up we have another beard, and glasses again.

Robby

Finally we come to this picture. Of the three it probably looks least like the subject, but, if you know him, and have seen his beard lately, there's no doubt who it's supposed to be. I'd been planning to paint Robby for quite some time, but never got around to it as none of his photos really grabbed me as the one of Dan had. But then he uploaded his latest profile pic, and I knew it was one I had to paint.

Oddly, this was by far the hardest picture of the three to paint. In fact usually when I have a painting go the way this one started to I give up and either start again or abandon it all together. This time I had a something to keep me going, and I'm glad I did as it turned out OK in the end. Not an exact likeness, but pretty close With his recent beard growth he does look remarkably like Hagrid from Harry Potter, if you were making that connection.

Why was this one so difficult? I honestly don't know. Paint wasn't blending the way I wanted it to, colours weren't coming out the way I thought they would, everything was going wrong. The Magic Line occurs at about the one minute mark in the video I've embedded below. Oh, yeah, the video - Remember I had a reason to keep going? That's because I was recording the whole thing. It's not painted at the speed you'll see it here of course - it actually took about two and a half hours, but I recorded in timelapse, giving the video a reasonable viewing length of 2:25. Things usually go smoother than this - but my wife says that my struggles with it don't come through at all in the video, so I suppose that's something right? If you want to watch the video large click the little You Tube link right where the colour wheel is located.

Incidentally, it looks like my time is going to get tight again for a little while shortly, but until then I have a reasonable amount of things to post about. We'll see if I can keep posting while the clock is tight eh?

The Impossible Amy Pond

Y'see, I'm back again? That month away was an aberration. One that's likely to be repeated from time to time, sure (as I said in my last post, it comes with the job). I've fallen behind though, my skills were atrophying while I was away, it was time to stretch some muscles. I never learn in some ways though, and the piece I'll be presenting today was a mistake. I pleasant and enlightening mistake to be sure (and how many of us would not be here today if it wasn't for pleasant and enlightening mistakes I wonder), but a mistake all the same. As usual I'll bore you all to death with a blow by blow account, but lets see the finished piece first shall we.

You can click it to enlarge to it's original size if you want.

I started out with a number of goals, and none of them was to produce a completed piece. My intention was to paint a bit, learn a bit and end up with something half way between a speedpaint and finished piece... I should back up and explain more. I wanted to challenge myself before eventually moving on to using real paints. One of the things I take for granted as a digital 'artist' is that I have an extremely wide palette (16,777,216 colours if memory serves), and I never need to mix paint - I just pick the colour I want and go. If I'm to make the switch to real media I'm going to need to learn about mixing colours, and that scares me a bit.

So I decided to see if I could produce a piece using a 'real' selection of paints, and mix all the colours I needed from there. By 'real' I mean my base colour selection would be taken from a set I long ago found online (I forget where, sorry) representing real paint colours by such and such manufacturer (I forget again which one - bah).  It's over on the left there if you're interested.  You may note a glaring omission if you open the image full size, but we'll get to that soon enough.

Every other colour I needed I would have to be mixed manually from those - which thankfully Art Rage allows you to do; although they don't have a separate palette window yet, for reasons that escape me, so it has to be done on the canvas. You'll see that a lot in the upper right corner of the following images.

So those were my initial goals.  I was going to create just a messy experimental piece more concerned with colour than anything else.  Spend an hour or so on it and call it a day.  I wanted to pick an image with an interesting colour palette though, or I'd just be slapping down any old thing and saying "oooh, pretty colours" and not learning anything from it.  Fortunate then that while I was Pondering what to paint I stumbled across this post on io9 (spoilers in there late to the party Who fans, so be warned).  That picture of Amy really jumped out at me, so I decided that would be what I'd work on.

Since I was intending for this to be rough and ready I didn't spend all that long  in preparation.  How many times have you heard me say that over the past 12 months?  Yep, every darn time.  Anyway, here are some images of the early stages.  I should warn you, they're bloody horrible (and enlargeable).

And really, that's all I'd planned to do, except that eye was pretty good.  Wouldn't hurt to do the other eye right?  And then that's pretty good, so may as well do the nose, and so on, and so on.  None of these things were brilliant, but they were good enough that I may as well see how the next bit turned out.  This went on until I got to the following stage, which was the tipping point (I've written about The Magic Line before - go read it, it's funny...  honest?).  So just changing the hairline made a world of difference (I'd spotted it as being way off long before, but didn't bother to fix it until this point).

After that I had to finish it.  I mean it's still not epic, which is probably understandable as even though it was based on the photograph I was still partly making it up as I went along.

Oh, and the colour that was missing from those 'paints'?  Black.  Seriously, there's no black - not even close to black.  I mean I almost never use pure black anyway, but the darkest colour there was miles off the mark.  I did my best to mix colours in such a way that they looked darker, but I couldn't really do any darker than this deep green I had.  It's the colour of her pupils and stuff.  Yes, I could have cheated and put black in there, but that would be missing half the point wouldn't it?  Oh, and another thing I didn't do was add layers underneath as I often do when painting digitally - everything had to go on top.  I could add new layers (A good way to simulate the paint drying - yeah, I was using 'wet' paint as well), but I couldn't put them under ones I already had in place.  So, the background was painted after the subject, which led to some difficulties around her hair. I couldn't erase either; except for my sketch lines, which I figured would be pencil, even though they were brown, and the palette paint, which in reality wouldn't have been on the canvas anyway.  I probably has some other arbitrary rules, but those were the main ones.

Oh, and don't get me started on painting the hair.  How do real painters manage?  Hair is really bloody hard at the best of times, but with no black, wet paints, no real idea how to mix 'ginger hair' colour and then having to paint around it...  It's bloody difficult!  Real artists are awesome!

Enough of me moaning about the ultimate ginger though, here's some more of the step by step, cropped in animated gif, or clickable for Big-image-o-ramA (TM) if you want to peruse at your own pace.

 

A few more notes before I trundle off.

• You can probably clearly see that the initial sketch is nowhere near the same as the final image. This is because I was correcting on the fly - you can see I have quite a bit of trouble getting her jaw-line right, especially on the left (her right). If I'd planned it out properly to begin with the final image would probably be a lot closer to the (cropped) source.  Then again, maybe it wouldn't be.
• I'm really pleased with how the leather on her jacket turned out - which is odd, because I hated it while I was working on it.  In the step-by-step it just magically appears, but I think I spent at least an hour on that alone.  The fir collar's OK too.
• The entire image looks sort of yellowish.  I think the main reason for this is having that green background, pushing everything toward green, and the very yellow/green base I came up with for her face in the initial couple of steps still shows through a little bit even in the final image
• I'm not happy with it...  but I do like it.  I'm not happy because if I'd known it was going to turn out half decently I would have spent longer on the prep, and hopefully that would have meant it would have resulted in an even better picture (I say this every. single. time).  But I do like it for itself - It's not the best likeness of Karen Gillian (who plays Amy Pond),    but it is quite an interesting portrait in its own right...  I think...  I'm too close to it - you decide and let me know (oh, who am I kidding? No-one ever comments, except 'anonymous', and that's usually my brother because he's forgotten his google account login).

Alright, if you read all that you deserve a treat.  here's the same image after I took it into Photoshop wondering how it would look if I did have a true black available and hadn't used such saturated colours to begin with (so it's more blue looking).  It's less true to the source photograph, but I do think it looks more dramatic, so here you go (click to enlarge.  Natch.).

A Musing 4: Stress and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I've been away for a while. Had you noticed? Poor May, no love for May. Poor blog, missed it's first birthday. Why? Well, therein lies a tale, and I'm limited in how much I can tell you. But it does lead to this current blog entry, and I'll post some speed paints and such in with it as examples, but, as the title may lead you to believe, it's all due to stress. Nothing to do with Motorcycles though - but a more meaningful title would get me in trouble at work...


Work is, as you may have guessed, the main reason for the stress and the main reason I've missed over a month of blog time. The repercussions of this may last a while as I get back up to speed, scan in sketches, finish paintings I started but didn't complete and so forth. You may wonder why work would be such a disruption, so I'll get on and explain.

I work in the video game industry, and, if you've been paying attention over the past few years you'll know that games are big business, and they're also a little complicated to make. I'm a vehicle artist, and had been exclusively for about 6 years when something happed to change it. Someone mistook something that wasn't a vehicle for a vehicle - a number of somethings as it happens, and I had to work on that instead.

Vehicles are defined more by how they're built and how they act than how they appear, and what I now had to build looked like a vehicle (hence the confusion), but needed building and had to act nothing like one. After 6 years I suddenly had no-idea what I was doing. I also had far more work on my plate than I could possibly do in the time frame I had by working normal hours.

There's (unfortunately) nothing unusual about this in the industry I work in; I don't think I've ever worked on a game where I didn't have to work a fairly high number of additional hours at least a few times during it's development. At no point in this article will I be moaning greatly about this because it comes with the territory. I've worked on 15+ games in the last 10 years, and as I've said I had to work extra hours on all of them. I'm used to this by now (though I have to admit it's tougher going as I get older), it's a fact of my life, so there's no reason to complain about it - there is however reason to explain the effect this can have...

At first this new workload was manageable. Stressful yes, since I was re-learning everything I thought I knew in order to make what needed making, but the hours, while longer than usual, weren't soul crushing. This was back in January, and as you know I posted plenty in January - I still had enough time to work on side projects and I didn't need to regularly work the weekends. At least I thought I didn't - turns out I was wrong. But for the time being I was managing, and still fitting in time for profile pics, sketching, speedpaints, and a level of Little Big Planet 2. Oh, and updating the blog of course.

Then, disaster! Due to being a complete numpty I had misread a vital piece of information, and massively overestimated the time I had to complete the work I had left to do. I thought I had about two and a half months, what I actually had was six weeks. Bugger! Around the same time it became apparent that I also had more work to do than originally thought. I can't explain exactly why without releasing company secrets, but suffuse to say that what I had built wasn't going to be sufficient due to technical constraints, so I had more to do. Double bugger! Suddenly I had about three months worth of work to do in 6 weeks. This is where the stress comes in.

This happened prior to my last blog post, but the enormity of the situation didn't sink in until right after I'd written it. Suddenly the stress I was already managing shot through the roof - I had to work far longer hours,and kiss the weekends goodbye (though I didn't work as long on the weekends as I was during the week). The time I had to produce personal art dropped to a minimum, and with it any time to update the blog.
Just for reference, here's the last speed paint I did before everything hit the fan:

I still managed to get some stuff done though, 5 minute sketches here and there mostly.  I wanted to do speedpaints, but usually by the time I was in front of a computer that wasn't at work I just had no energy to bother (don't forget, my artistic output at work during this time was through the roof - I don't think I've ever cranked out as much stuff in so short a time before, and hopefully I'll never have to again; it was knackering).

One day, a few weeks ago, I walked outside and realized every tree was green.  I'd been so focused on work I'd completely missed the change.  The last time I'd paid any attention during daylight they were just getting blossoms!  How does that happen?  Well, it did.  Time loses a lot of it's meaning during crunch - the only number that matters is that representing what you have left to do.

At one point I did find enough energy to have a go at painting though, and this was the result:

Time Taken: 30 Minutes

Utterly dreadful. The likenesses are fairly good, but the general tone of the piece, and the proportions of the people... well, it's ghastly isn't it?. My friend (one of the subjects in fact) said I'd made him look like a Punch and Judy puppet. He's not far off the mark, if it was a Punch and Judy show put on by Tim Burton perhaps...

I put it down to stress. In fact over this time I noticed a trend even in the little sketching I managed to do. Firstly it was predominantly heads and faces, since I'm more comfortable doing those, and secondly the quality varied greatly depending on how stressed I was at the time. A morning sketch might be quite good, but a technical problem around lunch would increase my stress level and I would draw dreadfully in the afternoon. Then something happened that would pretty much prove my theory to myself; We had a power cut (or outage as they say around here).

We all had to go home - we couldn't work at all with no power. I should have been more stressed than ever - still loads to do and one day less to do it in! But I wasn't. The fact that I physically couldn't work that day was oddly freeing. It wasn't my fault that I couldn't work, so why worry? At the same time I caught up on facebook for the first time in a while and noticed that a very nice friend had injured herself badly in a fall. Not just a friend, but an admirer of my work (clearly she's mad as a spoon too, but nobody's perfect). I decided to paint her a profile pic to cheer her up. I figured it would be dreadful again, but no, no stress equates to this:

It's not perfect, but it only took 90 minutes or so, and is far better than that last speedpaint. Clearly the lack of stress helped a lot.

Not enough evidence perhaps? Well, I did manage to squeeze in one more speed paint between then and my finishing on the workload. I think you'll agree it has quite a lot in common with the "Punch and Judy" one from earlier:

Time Taken: 35 Minutes

Dismal isn't it? You'll note the same dark scratchy look as the previous one, but this time there's even less colour. I'd think it was OK for a 10 minute sketch, but 35? Oh dear, not good at all.

Anyway, I got the work done, finished it on the very morning of the last day of the deadline. I was quite pleased with that. Weight off my mind! Time to paint again. Well, apparently I can't de-stress over night, so the next piece wasn't completely brilliant, and it's clear I've backslid somewhat - but at least it doesn't look like the artistic equivalent of a suicide pact:

Time Taken: 35 Minutes

After that I did a self portrait for my own facebook profile pic. A little narcissistic sure, but I hadn't updated it since January - some more important things got in the way.

Time Taken - 45 Minutes

I'll leave it on that then.  I have a few updates now queued up I guess, what with all the quick sketches over the last month and the fact that I have a game due for release any minute (not the one this work was for, the previous one - I tend to move on long before a game is finished), and I may be able to post some images if I'm allowed.  Plus theres all the stuff I'd started but not finished - maybe I'll have a chance to now.  I was going to start painting for real once I'd finished all this work, but I've backslid too far, so I'm going to try to get back to a comfortable speed in the next month or so.  Fingers crossed I actually manage to give it a go...

More Speed Paints, Less Exciting Titles.

Given how busy I've been of late I didn't think I'd actually get another post done until next month, but here I am tapping away at my keyboard once again. As you may have gathered from the title of the post this one is another round up of speed paints, this time with an emphasis on "Speed."

You may recall some of the the Christmas Paints I did back in December that strayed over the self imposed line I had designated for Speed Painting, taking longer than an hour. Since then I've posted one more set of speed paints which varied wildly in the time taken, but did seem to hover around the 45 minute mark. Well, this time around I decided to deliberately step on the gas, and with a couple of exceptions these were knocked out intentionally faster than usual with a limit of 30 minutes. How were the results? Well, have a look and see for yourself...

Time Taken - 30 Minutes

Not much to say about this one, it's based on an Asian girl and doesn't look all that much like her, although you can tell her race at least. She's wearing black and shiny, but I don't think Adam Hughes (master of black and shiny) has anything to fear from me for the time being.

Time Taken - 15 Minutes

This is based on a photograph of Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester from the show Supernatural.  It looks a little like him, despite how blurred and rough it is.  I was aiming to capture a rough likeness very quickly, since the previous one looked nothing like the subject.  I think I succeeded, and for 15 minutes it's fine I guess.  Not likely to hang it on my wall though.

Time Taken - 25 Minutes

Made a right mess of the proportions on this one, but I'm quite pleased with the skin tones.  I'd like to say what it's based on, but I have no recollection.  I didn't adhere all that closely to the reference anyway.  It also puts me in mind of some paintings I've seen, but I'm not sure which ones (I know that a painting wasn't the reference since I never use them for speedpaints).

Time Taken - 40 Minutes

Yes, I spent quite a long time on this one, and it doesn't really show.  It's a dog, in the snow.  Not much else to say.

Time Taken - 45 Minutes

The less said about this one the better really.  I wasn't using any reference, but that's really no excuse to speak of.  Let's move on and I'll try to pretend this never happened while you laugh at me.  Okay?

Time Taken - 20 Minutes

Made a right plumb duff of this poor womans face, but other than that I quite like it.  I've done worse work in a longer time frame (Like the previous piece for example.  Yeah, I know, I said I would but I couldn't.  Some things are just unforgettably bad).

Time Taken - 20 Minutes

It's based on a thumbnail that io9 had on their front page a while back.  I would like you to the article, but I can never get direct links to work since they redesigned the site to have more advertising in your face, so sod that then.

Time Taken - 30 Minutes

A long time ago I was involved in creating a child safety video for the South Wales Constabulary (two of them actually, the other one is lost in the mists of time... I hope).  I didn't do much on it; I did the VO and helped behind the scenes of one of the shots but that was about it.  Anyway, to my knowledge the film was never shown to any children, but in the circles I used to hang out in the name "The Golden Helmet" lives on in infamy.  It's hilarious (if you can understand the accents), and I think you can find it on You Tube.

For a change I painted him in Photoshop rather than ArtRage.

Time Taken - 20 Minutes

It's supposed to be a caricature of James Cagney, but it didn't turn out looking much like him.  I quit elike how the eyes came out though, but the rest is a bit feeble really isn't it?

Time Taken - 40 Minutes

I had actually forgotten about the Cagney one when I started this one, otherwise I would have picked something else rather than have two in a row in Black and White.  It's some feet, and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.  That's really all I have to say about it.

Now, since more things external to my quest to become a half decent artist raise their heads daily I'm not sure I'll have much of a chance to update for a while (or much worth updating with either).  I will try and make it back for the first anniversary of the blog at the end of the month though.  I might not have anything new to show, but at least I can repost what I think was the best and worse work I've done this year eh?  Until then (if I can make it)...

Facing the Future

And here we are again with the third attempt at capturing the likeness of the woman known as Nephania.

If you're a relative newcomer to the blog you can see the previous attempts here and here. You may want to go read them for a refresher even if you've been around a while. Since you won't have bothered doing that, here's a refresher. Found a photo of Nephania and chose it to be my litmus test for how my illustration is coming along. I picked this particular image for four reasons:
It's a difficult angle to get right at the best of times.
I was previously unfamiliar with her, which removes preconceived notions of how she should look.
She's got a very distinctive profile, making it easy to judge how well I'm doing.
She's ridiculously pretty, which is harder to capture than the looks of someone like Me, or Jeremy Clarkson say.

My rules are simple, I have to replicate the image using nothing but my eyes, a piece of paper and some pencils - no grids, tracing or other mechanical assistance (and in this particular case no eraser, but that's not actually a rule).  If I'd allowed myself to use such things I'm pretty sure I would have a spot on likeness, but I didn't.

What I didn't know when I started (back last year, not this latest picture) was that she's not only a model, but a bloody good photographer too - so that put me in my place I guess. OK, enough preamble, here's the pic.

Which looks... better I guess. I mean this one pretty much looks like her, despite the few proportional issues. What are they you cry (or actually maybe you don't, maybe you spotted them right off the bat). Well, her jaw is the wrong angle her head is too low (The top of the hair should be a little higher), her neck is too thin her arm too thick and her boobs are too big. Other than that and her eyebrows it's a fairly close match. Look:

Obviously the illustration is in white (negative).  I'm quite pleased with her actual face though - I mean look, everything more or less lines up, and the angles are pretty close.  I find it amusing that things at the top of the image are too small (the top of her head), while things at the bottom are to big (her lady bumps).  I have to wonder if this is something Freudian, whether it's just because I have my drawing board at too steep an angle or whether I'm just incompetent.  I'm going to go for the middle option, while secretly thinking it's a bit of the first and last.

Here, for the sake of reference, is a comparison of all my efforts thus far:

You can click it bigger if you want a better look at the reference lines.

I left drawing this one for far too long.  I meant to draw her again before the end of last year, but I wasn't confident and didn't want to do it if I was going to make a complete mess of it again.  Obviously I did just that in the end, but not near as much as I had feared. I won't leave it this long next time... maybe.
This one took the same amount of time as the whole of the first one and as long as the layout on the second more finished one (an hour).

Next time we'll see if I can finally nail it (and yes, I almost typed "her" there, stop sniggering).  With any luck it'll be a close enough likeness that I can move on to a different picture to butcher for my litmus test.

Midweek Madsanity

It's not usual for me to post on a Tuesday, but it just so happens that tonight I came home at a reasonable time, had a Son that went straight to sleep at bed time, had practically nothing to watch on TV (watched one shortish show), and I don't fancy playing a game. This means it's not even 9PM and I find myself in front of my PC. I can't remember the last time that happened when it wasn't a weekend!

With all those stars aligning you'd expect I'd have something fantastic to show right? Sorry, out of luck today - Just some sketches from the last few weeks. I actually prepped these over the weekend (scanned, laid out uploaded etc.), but didn't get time to write the related post, so here it is.

Good
Quite a bit to see in there. Nothing today is truly outstanding (same as any other day there then), but I do like the dimensionality of some of these. The proportions may be off, and the anatomy a bit wonky, but some of these actually looks like they're sort of 3d - either in terms of mass, or in terms of emotion. None of these were drawn from reference, and yet the Hulk-a-like in the top left corner is clearly rather angry (You don't like him do you?), The girl in the robe is quite pleased with her morning coffee (looks a little like my wife as it goes), And the small figure under Hulk-a-lot has some attitude to her pose. I'm quite pleased given that they're all off the top of my head, even though I still clearly have a long way to go.

Bad
It's fairly sad that of the two sketches that were from reference this time both of them ended up in the Bad pile. The first is the inked one. He was based on a character from Castle while it was paused and my wife was off trying to get the lad to go back to sleep (he had a cold). I can't help but think that had the paused image been of Beckett the end result would have been rather better (A little Stana Katic makes everything a better IMO).

The other is in the bottom right corner, and if you can even work out what it's a sketch of I'll be impressed. It was hands down the worst thing I'd drawn int he last couple of weeks, so in it goes. Other than that there's the usual collection of freaks, mutants and almost but not quite goods. The girl in the middle would be pretty good if it was just her head - but with the rest of her body in there it just looks peculiar. Maybe it's the lack of perspective, or maybe I just suck.

OK, enough of that, here are some more feet!

Ugly

Yeah, I threw in a crane and a couple of drawings of a helmet too (the astute readers will already have guessed what the next Blart is, if I ever bring myself to do it properly). I just figured that nobody wants to look at a picture that's nothing but a bunch of poorly rendered feet, so I added the bonus. Hopefully you'll see a difference in the quality of the feet in my other sketches too (in as much as some of them have them), but I still need a reference for anything remotely decent.

Fireman Sack's Big Birthday Adventure

Before we begin I may as well point out that if you visit the blog for the art (You poor fools) then you might want to skip this post because there's no art in it. Well, some sort of art, but not the type you usually get. I'm not really sure why I'm even making this post - it doesn't really belong on here, but I guess it does explain part of the reduction of art output over the last two months. The rest of the reduction I've gone into before; and I've mentioned this too in passing, so you may as well see it.

Little Big Planet 2 may be the greatest time suck ever invented by man. It's a game, but unlike other time sucks such as RPG's or MMO's the actual game is really quite short. It has that in common with those FPS games with a focus on Multiplayer like Call of Duty or Homefront (Which you should totally buy...), but it's online experience isn't really the focus either, although it has 4 player co-op and verses portions. No, Little Big Planet 2 is a time suck because it allows you to make your own levels. The original LBP allowed this too, but LBP2 takes it to another level entirely (Har-Har).  My son loves the game proper, and I'm addicted to making (mostly dreadful) things.
So with my Son's birthday approaching I thought it would be nice to merge these two things.  I would make him a level as a birthday present.  Yes, yes you capitalist mooks we bought him a real present as well - it's a bike; he loves it.  But where's the care and attention in that?  By making him a level it could be custom tailored to his likes and interests.  I was off the mark a bit since he got into pirates in a big way when it was half finished, but thankfully he didn't completely go off fire engines.  Anyway, lets get on with it.

This is close to the start of his level. When it begins he meets a Sackbot bearing a remarkable resemblance to Fireman Sam's Station Officer Steele who tells him he'd better get off to work or he'll be late. Sackbot's are just programmable characters in the game. In the game's levels proper they look like cardboard robots - that's my Son's character in the screen above(which looks like them) - but they can look like anything really - this one looks like a potholing Steele, since Steele likes potholing. Anyway, you travel through the caves for a bit. The screen above is right before a cave-in, which is handy since without it you couldn't continue.

Here's a random skull inset into the wall. It's possible to "lethalise" the level at the beginning, making it harder - When you do that the skull jumps out of the wall and laughs at you, but usually it just sits there as decoration.

As well as the cave-ins and the random skulls this quiet cave in Wales also turns out to be an active volcano.  Who'd have thought it?  You have to use a grappling hook to traverse to the far side.  He's 4, it doesn't have to make sense as long as it's awesome.

This bit is in a cave with a giant electrified 4 in the background. In order to proceed you have to grapple up a wall, but when you do so the wall splits off from the cliff and falls down to form a bridge (With a jump pad on it allowing you to ascend). The arrows at the top there tell you where to go once you've made it up there - they light up and everything.  Complicated stuff this you know...

Eventually our hero is ejected from the caves through this well looking thing.  I was going to have it be a mini volcano, but then I forgot, so there's just a big spring that kicks you up to the surface.  I claim no responsibility for the awesome background as it comes with the game.  Actually most of this comes with the game - everything is built of preexisting materials - you just reshape them to your needs.  And yes, everything has a sort of homemade crafty look to it, hence the stitching on the grass.  Those water droplet looking things are score bubbles by the way - you collect them for points.

Around the corner you meet Elvis the firefighter who's forgotten how to drive the fire engine.  He's the only character who's actually named, which is relevant to a joke later on.  Of course it's only a joke if you know the show it's based on, and are 4.  It has nothing to do with his name - Elvis, as far is my son is concerned, is a Welsh firefighter, and not the King of Rock and Roll. Thankfully I don't believe he thinks Mr. Hitler is a greengrocer (though he knows he only has one ball, but has yet to realise this means testicle).

Here's another picture of the fire engine. I spent an hour building it, I may as well get some mileage out of it.

This is the halfway point of the level (and this post).  Yes, really, it's quite an epic when you're 4.  In this bit you drive the fire engine around the city putting out fires, like this one:

No, the city really isn't all that pretty is it.  That's because I was running out of the time I already didn't have.  I'm working on a prettier version of this that I can take my time over.  It will be quite some time coming what with everything else I have going on.

Once you've put out a few fires you get called tot he mansion that's now ablaze. When you arrive you get out of the fire engine and are greeted by this little cutscene showing you that you need to rescue this ostentatiously dressed woman. The female firefighter at the scene informs you that you can't use the big hose on the engine until the house is empty (and I think that sounds vaguely rude personally).

You both don your fire helmets with built in hoses and wade into the fray.

That's quite an inferno.  The hardest and most time consuming thing to do in the entire level was to have the other fire fighter follow you into he building and then go off and fight the fire downstairs while you go up.  Then, after the rescue she gives it up and follows you out again.  It sounds so simple but it took hours to work out, with many minutes of me yelling "Stop following my guy upstairs you tart!".  It made doing the end sequence a lot easier due to what I'd learned doing this (seemingly) simple bit though.

Once you save the unnamed and overdressed woman you hop into the fire engine and use the big hose to douse the fire. Then the Woman says "Thank you so much, if you go in the back room there's a reward for you." Up until now the back room has been blocked by fire. This shot is from the now fireless house on the way to the room. Before you get there though all the lights go out.  When they come back on it's to reveal a cake in the shape of a 4. Then the camera pulls out to reveal your firefighting chums who shout "Surprise!"

"Happy birthday" says faux Officer Steele, "Elvis has baked you a cake."  "Yes," continues Elvis, "It took me all morning to make."

The number 4 cake promptly catches fire and Elvis looks devastated (This is the Elvis joke - Elvis is the worse cook in the world). Shortly afterwards the cake explodes, but not before the fire has popped the balloons. How sad.

It's all Okay though because then a whole host of assorted characters run into the room, fireworks fly, holographic sun and moon start whizzing around and basic insanity happens. Officer Steele looks confused and Elvis looks crushed but everyone else is having a fine time. The end, fade to black, and then the words Happy 4th Birthday.

The whole thing took a few weeks to make (it might have been less but I was busy with work and sick a lot of course) and he loves it, or seems to.  We had to play it through 3 times back to back, the final time with the lethaliser sticker in place (He just about died himself when the skull popped out laughing at him).  So all in all quite the success.  I put it up online for others to play (You have to in order to have multi part stuff like this as it won't all fit in the game's memory at once) and a grand total of three people bothered to try it, and one of them didn't like it.  Well, bollocks to them, my Son did and it's his present, so there.

If you're interested in actually experiencing this epic adventure yourself (and have Little Big Planet 2, and have in fact made it through to this point in the post), you can find it under my game name (which just so happens to be the same as the one I write the blog under; HarlequiNQB), just do a text search in "Community" and this and my other levels should pop right up.  Or you can search for "Fireman Sack's Big Birthday Adventure" instead, but the first option is quicker.

Okay, now that's out of my system I promise not to wrote another post specifically about a Little Big Planet 2 level ever again.  Unless I do something completely awesome...