NekoShowguN

I first found NekoShowguN's works when searching through the developmental works of Grasshopper Manufacture's Lollipop Chainsaw, and illustrator that hails from Japan, the young artist first made her debut as part of the Osake art collective Digemout and has done art for music games such as GuitarFreaks and DrumMania. Before that, Neko normally did rather dark and/or sexualised fan art of Nintendo characters that had its own unique appeal in its own way...

But her highest profile work to date is as lead character and weapon designer for Goichi Suda's Lollipop Chainsaw, the very thing that I discovered her through. There is something absolutely gorgeous about Neko's art style that I still can't get over to this day (And numerous times, I have tried to draw in a similar manner to the way she does, and of course failing as I do). I have always wondered how she was able to make all her characters look so good while at the same time so wonderfully expressive (As seen below).

Expression sheet for Lollipop Chainsaw's heroine, Juliet Starling.

Juliet's iconic weapon.

As a certain article said, Neko's art always had this uniquely glossy if not pulpy look to it, which just seems to unique to me and while I feel allows her works to stand out all the more, especially among all the other concept artists we see these days. As tiny as the Lollipop Chainsaw art book turned out to be when I first ordered it, it was still a worthwhile buy just to see her gorgeous concepts (But darn it, they really could have printed these books out bigger!)... Looks like I might end up get Suda51's next art book.

*squints*

Shanen Pae

I have been following 'Go-bear' since my primary school days (Which would be nearly 20 years come to think of it...), and I have watched her improve on her art with each passing day, I watched her as she experimented with a variety of art styles and techniques, tried new things, learnt new things (Did I mention that she was already able to do some basic animating at a really early age?), and truth be told, anything from her would just leave me in a state of awe, be it a little doodle or an absolutely polished piece of work that she had grown sick of. 

It was only about 2 years that I finally managed to pick up the courage to approach her, despite how different we seem to be from one another, I felt that we were able to get along pretty well. And to this day, I still think to myself about just how lucky I am to befriend someone as talented and down-to-earth as her.

Specialising mainly in concept art, Shanen briefly studied at Pasadena's Art Centre College of Design (An art academy that is as renowned and as prestigious as the California Institute of the Arts and Sheridan College) and took a course in Entertainment Design, below you will see some of her amazing original works, with the last few being a part of what might possibly be her magnum opus.

I absolutely look forward to the day that a studio decides to adapt one of her concepts, until then, I will continue to admire of her gorgeous works. It is just impossible to pick one aspect I love the most when it comes to her works, everything is just so perfect to me, the lighting, colour usage, lineart style, expressions, perspective, body shape and language of all her characters... I just never loved anyone's works as much as I do hers!

Despite how she constantly denies it, she remains one of the most inspirational people I have ever known in my life. Other artists and designers that I admire tend to come and go, but she is the only artist that I have stood by for this long, and something tells me that I will continue supporting her until the very end itself.

The Animated Self - Further Information about Lurk

Don't worry, I will get new concept art done later on.

As you can see, I chose to go with one of my horror narrative ideas for the final PPP project. Seeing as the teaser trailer won't give too much away, I thought it'd only be right to write a little more about the story.

Lurk was a survival horror video game concept that I had worked on for one of my classes during my final year, it was based on a rather lengthy dream/nightmare (Call it what you will) I had a long time ago, upon waking up, I had quickly penned it down for future use. 

Several events occurred throughout the dream, one of them involved me sitting in a subway train, a woman whom I believed to be my mother sat across from me, looking so frail and weak, the strangest smile on her lips as there was a blank look in her sunken eyes… And for awhile, I just looked back at her, things were quiet save for the noise the train made as it travelled through the tunnels… 

And like a video game, everything faded to black. It was as if a cutscene was playing, I was seeing everything from outside the train, even though I knew my physical body was still inside the train, something huge had stopped the train, I could only describe it as some hellish sort of demon… 

Something even worse happened then, a stewardess had somehow fallen out of the train… flames suddenly burst from the entire thing's body before it attacked her, for some reason the scene shifted and all I could see was the side of the train as blood splattered everywhere… I think I could actually hear people screaming, trying to escape.

In another part I was scavenging for weapons and food, this had possibly taken place before I had gone onto the train with my mom, for some reason I had decided to enter a deserted underground club of sorts, it was nearly pitch dark, save for the light of a few functioning soda and snack machines, and some surprisingly expensive looking pool tables (The ones that had their own lights), the dim blue lights that came from all these sources did nothing however to help me to see better.

I found myself picking up a few pool sticks then, including some broken ones with splintered ends, before I suddenly heard quiet weeping in one of the dark corners of the room… I obviously got the hell out of there afterwards.

Other random bits in the dream involved me meeting with my cousin and his family, and even my siblings in another train station, they were surprisingly well equipped with all sorts of guns… I didn't add this bit in obviously.

Inspiration was also taken mainly from the Silent Hill series, along with various other horror games as I worked on new settings, characters and monsters that hadn't been in the dream. While I have yet to even come close in finishing the script for this game, a 'sequel' is already in progress (Oi vey).

Cover Design

Everything was done in ink and markers, I was still trying to familiarize myself with Photoshop and my new tablet at the time, and so I had only use Photoshop and Indesign for cleanups, the layouts and the title design. Markers to this day however remain one of my most favorite traditional mediums, even though I had been told numerous times by an old lecturer of mine that they should never be used for professional works...

Characters

Monsters and Stages

I couldn't exactly remember how Malorum (The one on the right) looked in my dream, and while he was the only creature that I had seen, I had to mess around with his design just as much as I did with the others. I never liked the more traditional designs for demons, and so I tried incorporating some more twisted human features to it, so that it bore some similarities to the other monster designs.

The hotel setting was also a new addition as I had to figure out other settings to include in the game aside from the subway, I know I had sketched down some other ideas, hopefully I have them saved somewhere in one of my external hard disks...

I later on tried to do a new set of concepts for my admission portfolio, this time they were colored digitally, though the lines remained traditionally inked. In all honesty, I really disliked the flat coloring I did for these character concepts, I was really tempted to go back to using markers (Maybe next time), but at least they gave a pretty clear view of the characters' designs.

Felicity 'Filly' Marshall

Helen Marshall

I had a lot of issues when it came to their face designs, for starters, Helen Marshall's change of appearance overtime made her look like two entirely different people (And not in that way, really, it just looked like two completely different characters standing beside one another). I was also told how Father Alex and 'Peter' looked related to one another when they weren't, and so during this update, I hadn't bothered to add 'Peter' in.

Mrym and Malorum

This was probably the only thing I liked from my updated set of designs (Seeing as I also decided not to ruin them by coloring them in), a mistake from the older designs made me decide to design several different versions of Mrym, and so some featured scraggly hair sticking out from other the hood while others had more pupil-less eyes.

Sister Diawara and Father Alex

Sister Diawara is just one of those designs you find yourself favoring over the others simply because she is so fun and colorful looking. I was upset when it came to her redesign however as I thought the original marker render I did of her actually looked better.

Yeah… I'm going back to the markers next time.

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