Borderlands

Some of the first screenshots that in my opinion proudly show the new art direction for the next project from Gearbox, the coders of "Brothers in Arms", a WWII shooter for the PS3, Xbox360 and pc platforms.
When this game of first announced its graphics showed that it would most likely be your average run-of-the-mill first person shooter and most people didn't really care much about it given the fact that there are many admittedly fabulous games competing for the gamers' attention already: Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Killzone 2 and many others do come to mind.
This radical and most welcome change in its visual style however is just what the doctor ordered and many favourable comments in various forums reflect that.

The art style chosen for Borderlands looks very similar with the one that was chosen for two games in the past.

One is Crackdown by Realtime Worlds:




The other is the newest Prince of Persia by Ubisoft:





As seems to be my usual mantra I hope that the game plays as well as it looks - and hopefully there's going to be some gameplay videos to satisfy that wish.

Trouble.

I had some trouble with a couple of large-scale works and decided to invite a friend over to my studio in order to get a response whoch might be helpful.

And I was right: our talk and some of Leonidas' thoughts on one of the works helped me to overcome the block. I started painting my first explosion on works other than comics and it worked beautifully.
Why is it that every time I try to paint I get this crippling mental block which prevents me from allowing direct influences from media deemed more popular (and supposedly more vulgar...) like sci-fi movies or comicbooks or most importantly videogames?
Things that I'd be doing without a second thought on my comics such as this:



I have serious trouble when I try to use them while painting a work.
And it's ridiculous because with painting you have no constraints of scale, medium, materials or otherwise.

No constraints except from those which are self-imposed and have not been yet clearly identified in order to be addressed - and hopefully eradicated...

PixelJunk Eden

An amazing game with a truly fascinating art style - and not mentioning it sooner is a huge omission on my part...

Study for a city

Aeroplanes

This is an older work made on a gesso panel with egg-tempera and gold leaf as a small study for planes in a golden sky above my cities and towers.

Teaching Art History

This is another work made on a small gesso panel as a study for an interior scene in a room atop a tower.

Tank with a floating mine

Did this drawing after Masamune Shirow's tanks from his manga "Dominion".
The concept for the mine came from a buried actual mine as well as from the buoys scattered in the sea around Folegandros island

Everyday Shooter (PSN)

Another great example of Video Games as an art form.

Terrace with onlookers

Study for a Terrace

This drawing was done as a study taken from Ubisoft's new Prince of Persia.
The whole world's design and rendering is astonishing its vistas a truly inspiring achievement.

Tower and bridge

Grand Theft Auto IV against the World.

It's strange how an art form (which many videogames are in my opinion) in its first steps can be so much more interesting than visual arts lavishly exhibited in galleries and institutions everywhere nowadays...
And it's also quite peculiar that while videogames, like comics before them, had no inhibitions about taking everything they needed from other art forms, pop culture of the day, movies, literature etc. visual arts are doing exactly the opposite.

Visual and plastic arts in general have an incestuous relationship with their form: they just tend to reproduce their own past or present "achievements", always either looking solely at the History of Art as a source of inspiration or restrict themselves in simple commentary of today's newspaper headlines.
But simply adhering to history as if it was the Word of God rarely teaches us how to truly cope with the present moment.
On the other hand, if a work limits itself to just a simplistic comment of whatever is in vogue at any given time, it loses all meaning as soon as the trends change and the headline fade.

Grand Theft Auto IV

It is its exacting attention to every detail that makes this virtual city, this Liberty City, so absolutely real.
Whether it's the sound of a radio station from a passing car, the hilarious one-liners being shouted ("You stupid malaka!", "Do I have to kill to get woman???" etc.) from random bystanders, the way you drive over the Brooklyn bridge while listening to Jazz Nation Radio and the setting sun is making everything look like an Edward Hopper painting...
One could go on and on like that forever.
If videogames ever got close to becoming works of art this is one such instance where one at least succeeded.
And there are many more.

The Japanese (again).

Prince of Persia

A truly majestic and inspired take on the Prince of Persia series by Ubisoft.

The fans demanded from the developers a new approach on the Prince closer to the concept sketches posted here and there on the internet - and the devs did just that.
Well done indeed.

Dead Space

This is an image from a great looking game called "Dead Space".
Amazing design on the armor and its assorted weapons.

Head of a Warrior

Ultron-13

Fish at Sea

The Japanese

This is a photo from one of my own works.
It's title is "The Japanese" (obviously...).
It's drypoint etching worked over with egg-tempera and gold leaf on paper.