Finally recovered from TFcon last weekend (and from all that other stuff I was doing leading up to it). It was another excellent show that was tons of fun. Here are just a few of the highlights.

There were a lot of costumes this year. This trio is actually a band that plays Transformers music and they’ve got a show in Toronto on Fan Expo weekend.

Here’s my comic projected on the screen for the Script Reading. People really dug the comic and were telling me that I did a great job on it all weekend. This will probably be the last time I am able to work on something that extensive for TFcon, so we’ll have to see what happens next year.

Here I am holding some artwork from the comic along with guests Marilyn Lightstone and Venus Terzo. They both had a great time at the show and were fantastic during their panels and the script reading.

Bumblebee and Prowl were parked outside.

Here’s Internet Personality Vangelus and everyone’s wacky buddy Guber. I am also in there, doing what I do best: filling in the negative space. Guber is a staple of TFcon, but he was actually not going to come at all this year as he was traveling in Indonesia. But he changed his mind at the last minute. Only myself and one other person knew that he was actually going to make it, so his appearance was quite a shock! It just would not have been the same without him.

Breakdown and Knockout are in the house.

IDW style Rodimus is here and ready to party. Pretty amazing to see so many costumes these days. It doesn’t seem like that long ago when Transformers costumes were not even thought to be a possibility.

Here’s the cool stuff I bought. Generations Deluxe Shockwave, Cliffjumper, Wheelie, Springer, Swerve, and Tank Megatron, Generation 2 style Fall of Cybertron Bruticus, Transformers Prime Ultra Magnus and First Edition Optimus Prime, and Generations Blaster along with Eject and Ramhorn to go with him. Also, in the non-Transformers front, I got a Marvel Universe Wolverine figure. Prices were fairly good this year, if you were willing to walk around and look.

All in all it was a super-fun weekend with many memories. Good times with good friends, trivia, late night Slurpee runs, poutine, karaoke, and a whole lot more. I wouldn’t miss it for the world, and I can’t wait for next year. See you then!

Sayonara.

The Canadian Transformers convention is here again! TFcon is absolutely the best time of year. In a way, its seems like it hasn’t been very long since last year’s show. Mostly because it also seems like I’ve barely done any artwork since then. I have done a lot though, it was just all for school. But after I was finished with my extended period of school assignments, I went straight into working on the TFcon script reading comic.

TFcon 2013 – Van-Guardian’s Gang by *ninjatron on deviantART

Here is the last page of the comic, featuring the convention exclusive Heroic “Gobits” Van-Guardian and Roswell teaming
up with a few new friends from another universe! Ultra Magnus, Rodimus
Prime, and Blackarachnia join forces to take down the forces of evil.

You can read the entire 6 page story, with artwork by me, and find out more about TFcon on the TFcon Website. The conclusion will be revealed during the live script reading, featuring voice actors Jack Angel, Dick Gautier, Venus Terzo and Marilyn Lightstone as well as members of the audience.

Even though it doesn’t seem like TFCon 2012 was that long ago, it feels like ages since I’ve been to the Toronto area. It’s been way too long and I miss it dearly. Can’t wait to see all my buddies and buy all the toys. Hope to see you there too!

Sayonara.

And it had been quite a battle since this blog was last updated.

At the end of April, school ended for the year. It was a hard battle right to end. Not only did the workload pile up, but I got really sick with a throat infection. And I mean like… really sick. I had a terrible fever and was miserable for weeks. It took 2 rounds of different antibiotics before things finally cleared up. During all of that nonsense, I was pretty much unable to get any work done, so I was granted extensions on a couple of the major projects. This was a big help,  but of course that meant I had to keep working on school stuff all through May. By the time it was all finished and submitted, it was June and I was exhausted. What a fun start to the summer!

Anyway, not that I really care about marks or anything, but all the work amounted to straight As in both semesters, so that’s all right I guess.

 Here’s a cool alien thing I made for a class in Decemember and posted a few weeks ago on my deviantART.

The Final Boss by *ninjatron on deviantART

Yeah, this was what school was all about. I’ve never really enjoyed going to school, but, clearly, this isn’t so bad. Beats taking a math class.

My birthday was this month. I spent that very special day at the dentist’s office getting an emergency procedure. After that I felt like my brains had been scrambled from the bottom up, so I didn’t do much partying. Still have to get back for another visit to finish it off. This is summer fun, let me tell you.

So even though I’m finished with school until September, I’m still hard at work. Once again, I have to finish drawing the script reading comic for TFcon. Which means I don’t really have much time for blogging right now, and probably shouldn’t have written all of this in the first place!

Sayonara.

Hello again. Happy new year and stuff.

As part of the Video Game Art course I’m taking, we had a class on Video Game history. One of the projects was to create a pixel art scene, as if it was a game played on a classic console.  So I created this Godzilla scene. There were a number of limitations placed on the artwork as part of the project, so click the link to find out more information.

Godzilla Pixel Art Scene by *ninjatron on deviantART

You wish you could play this. I know it. I do too. Alas, it’s not a real game, it’s just artwork.

Sayonara.

Hey! Did everyone have a lovely apocalypse?

This weblog has been neglected for far too long. Well, I have an excuse. If you’ve been keeping up with me on Twitter, you’ll know that I went back to school. Well, not that same school I didn’t like from a million years ago. A different school here up north. I’m studying Video Game Art.

I wanted to update much earlier to share some of the projects I had completed, but this program is so insanely busy and there was so much work to do that I just didn’t feel up to blogging. Now that the first semester is finished I feel like I can finally step back into the world of Internet.

So, now I’m going to share a few of the projects from earlier in the year. Keep in mind this program basically lets in anyone, so not every student has experience with digital art or with any kind of drawing at all. Thus the early lessons covered fairly basic stuff, and the projects were set up just to make sure everyone could follow instructions. That said, everything I’m showing here is an A+. Not that I’m bragging or anything.

 

This was the first project. Not very impressive, I know. It was just an exercise to get people used to operating Photoshop. We had to draw something, add some text, and include a video game related image. So I made this pseudo-Game Boy thing. The image is from Final Fight, one of my all time favorite games. My tablet wasn’t cooperating very well with the computer at school so the lines turned out kind of weird. I just went with it and got it done.

 

The next project was to find some line art of a video game or comic book character and color it, so I was right in my element. The original drawing of Optimus Prime is by comic book artist Robert Atkins.

We had to create some kind of fantasy landscape in Photoshop using filters, layer styles, and blending modes while including a found image. I created this hellish river of lava. The monstrous skull at the top of the mountain is from a dog.

Here the assignment was to create a fantasy landscape using custom brushes of our own creation. I made this painting inspired by some concept art from the Transformers War for Cybertron video game. I actually had to do this one twice, as my computer decided to reset for no reason in the middle of a save, ruining the entire file. I was very angry! Thankfully, I upgraded to a new computer shortly thereafter.

After all of that, we moved into working in 3D using 3D Studio Max. I was pretty familiar with much of the Photoshop stuff that was being taught, but for 3D, this is pretty much all new to me. We had to model a weapon or object, and so this is what I made.

It’s the NES Zapper gun! This was pretty challenging but I learned a lot and the result is pretty accurate to the real thing.

It has been a very busy couple of months for me, but very productive too. Sometimes it might even be fun. This post is contains but a sample of all the stuff I had to do. I’ll do another post with some more school projects later.

In other news, I guess Christmas is still a thing.

Sayonara.