Altaïr

At last, after a good glitzing this quick sketch is complete. I remembered at the last minute that Altaïr has a nub for a ring finger, apologies. Also, I found the first game to overuse the bloom effects so in an effort to stay true to the game's glowing atmosphere I present over used color-dodgy-ness! Desert sun will melt your eyes don't ya know!!

Altaïr, master assassin and badass extraordinaire.

Altaïr WIP

Okay I know I am late on all things gaming but wow. Seriously wow. It's been a long time since I have enjoyed a game just as much as the Blood Omen and Soul Reaver Saga. Legacy of Kain was the culmination of these two games and it was dripping with awesome.

Now it's Assassin's Creed. The first game was clunky and rigidly structured with a storytelling that was kind of bland not helped at all by Altaïr's terrible deadpan voice actor with an American accent in a Middle East body. It just didn't make any sense to me and grated on my brain so hard I put the game down when I went to the first city of Damascus.

I hated this game! I sucked at it so terribly in every aspect: combat, remaining anonymous, riding the horse. Even the horse's animation bothered me. Something about it just wasn't right and coming from Red Dead Redemption the Assassin's Creed horse was downright terrible! Why does a horse matter to me so much? Because I am a girl and I like horses. There I admitted it.

I picked up the game for a second time months later and suddenly these little nuances didn't seem so glaring. It wasn't an amazing game, dragged on with the 'go to view point do side mission',  I still sucked at the combat (going through the last parts leading up to the game's ending took me hours and was harder for me than any of the previous missions all combined!) but I liked the game enough despite Altaïr's mastery at stating the obvious. Perhaps he'd be better off being a silent protagonist?

And everything changed for the better in Assassin's Creed 2. Everything became much more rich! Suddenly there were facial expressions! No more deadpan doll faces! The story was presented and progressed in a more cinematic way! I started rooting for Desmond to escape, and he seemed engaged in what was going on around him instead of being so aloof and asking all the noob questions as a TOOL to explain things to the player.

The Assassin chosen for this game, Ezio, opened with so much character and a personality that grew with ambitions that the player could really connect with. While there was still an evil plot to uncover it wasn't orchestrated by being forced to listen to your target drone on about how their beliefs were just and virtuous and quite frankly insane.

The game made me love it even more and had me laughing here and there with Ezio's antics and it even made me feel guilty for dispatching guards that sighted me on rooftops. I realized they were innocents just doing their job but sadly it was simply easier to kill them than to avoid them. Whereas with Altaïr, the unstoppable force, I didn't feel as guilty since the guards were presented as mostly being corrupt (save the citizen missions). Oh well, they were only pixels after all.

I love this game series and I am totally hooked!

The last shadow you'll ever see!

Clipper Ship

Okay, been listening to too many sea shanties so I just had to get this one out.

Never drawn a ship before but I fancy these kind of clipper ships. All those big sails!! I surmised that a dock and some buildings were in order but I hadn't planned for them until the very end when I switched this to a night scene. No. No buildings or dock for you! You are floating on a lonely ocean in the middle of nowhere.

It's funny how this one turned out because it was originally this:

"I'm a daylight scene with crazy dramatic water!"

Oh crazy water... I will return to you someday! It's just the ship I painted was really boring and didn't fit on your whimsical surface. Oh wells.