Everything old is new again...

[Anaphiel]

... if you keep fiddling with it months after you actually "finished" it.

http://homepage.mac.com/anaphiel/.Pictures/try%20again%20small.jpg

This was the second all-digital piece I completed back a couple of years ago, and it's bugged me looking at it ever since. So I took it back out last week and spent a few hours polishing it up and getting it up to speed with my more recent work.

Still has some rough areas (perspective probs, the right hand is laughable, etc.) but at least now I can tell I painted it. The original version is viewable on my website (still temporary after all these years). Intended as chapter art in an updating of the classic Bungie game Marathon.

100% Photoshop (PS6 initially, touched up in CS) with a Wacom Intuos 2. Some of the walls have a concrete texture from photos (I reused some of the wall textures I made for the game), but everything else is hand-drawn without ref.

Made on a Mac with a very good monitor, so if it looks like a big black blob on your PC, that's why.

[Morlok]

Looks good on my alienware laptop :beer:

[Wart]

MARATHON! WOOT! (Judging from the logo anyway, but its been years since I played that game. Although, heh, I remember running around to terminals that looked a lot like that one. Wow, this is bringing back memorys). i really love this peice. I don't really know why, it just seems to have a lot of... felling. Anyway, shows up nice on my PC, so don't worry about that.

[JackalAnubis]

yes! I love marathon. you really captured the feel of those marathon splash screens, btw craig mullins did some sweet ones for that series! I really loved the growing claustrophic insanity spewed forth from those rampant AIs (Durandal!) .....something that was missed in the Halo storyline. nice piece

[Anaphiel]

Thanks for the comments guys.

I'm always surprised that people still remember this game, but I think the story elements, atmosphere, and sheer carnage-infused fun of the game made it a favorite of a lot of folks.

JA, Mullins' work probably inspired me to do a lot of what I've done, although our styles couldn't be much more different. Dan Milligan and John Wallin Liberto have also done some pretty impressive Marathon-related art seen right here on this forum as well.

[cycrincy]

wow nice i wanna see more

[Anaphiel]

This was another old piece done as splash art for the M1A1 project, bringing the old-sk00l Marathon 1 gameplay to modern gamers using the oopen-source Aleph One engine. Fun stuff, works (more or less) on Mac, PC, and linux.

http://homepage.mac.com/anaphiel/.Pictures/Counterattack%20small.jpg

Again, I spent a couple of hours touching it up, adding a basic background, etc. The bot on the right is one of the Marathon Automated defense Drones... the goal of this section of the game was to activate the automated defenses of the ship, and the drones were a big part of that.

I paint in B&W first to get the values down, and then brush color over the B&W... I haven't mastered actually painting in color on the computer. I used to think I was cheating somehow, but then I learned that Adi Granov and a few other artists whose work I admire a lot do the same thing. But I was a little let down to find that I didn't invent that technique ;)

Sorry for the size of this one. I don't have a smaller one handy.

[Wart]

And where might I get a hold of this updated version of Marathon? (Or, when will it be done?)

[Anaphiel]

There are a couple of Marathon recreations out there. M1A1 is a pretty exact recreation using the version of the Marathon 2 engine that Bungie released as Open Source. The engine has been updated to support OpenGL and a bunch of other more modern effects. The main page for this conversion is at Fileball.net:

M1A1: Marathon made modern (http://fileball.net/marathon/item.fb?451353496)

I think it includes the textures I did for Marathon:Resurrection (which I'll get to in a sec), but if not Fileball has them available as a separate download.

One caveat: the PC and Linux versions of AlephOne can be a bit tricky to make work. There is a really good write-up of getting the SDL version of Aleph One to work here:

Marathon on the PC? (http://home.earthlink.net/~battlecat7/Sites/Adam/alephone.html)

Marathon:Resurrection is an Unreal Tournament total conversion that makes Marathon into a full-fledged 3D game. There are a bunch of netmaps out, and the original Marathon 1 single-player demo as well.

Marathon:Resurrection (http://resurrection.bungie.org/g_soon.htm)

Fileball also has a lot of downloads for this mod.

Hope that piques your interest a bit. Feel free to email me if you have questions. I'll help out if I can. (anaphiel@mac.com)

[Wart]

Yes it does. Thanks a lot. You (and your art) rock.

[JackalAnubis]

very nice! I think I've seen some of your drawing on HBO? like there was one with the MC holding a wounded marine? good stuff, btw ever play halo pc? my handle is PDT Jackal

[Anaphiel]

Heh. That is my stuff on HBO, but it's pretty old. I like to think I've progressed a bit since then. Maybe I'll have to go back and re-work a couple of those pieces as well...

I did the Halo pieces after one of the E3 demos, before I had any good detail reference for the MC. All I knew was that I hated the marine models (still do actually), so I didn't even look at the marines in the movie, just made mine up from scratch. Unfortunately the Chief looks like I did the same thing. It's like a police artist's sketch of the MC based on eyewitness reports ;)

And I do play Halo PC (Halo Mac actually), but I haven't played on line much. If I see you around I'll be sure to say hi.