Uncharted

With Uncharted 3 coming out, I revisited the art book and cutscenes for the second game.  I don't consider myself that much into shooter games, but I really got hooked by the awesome character-driven story mixed with the epic dynamics and set pieces of summer blockbuster/popcorn films (which are my favorite).  I remembered that there was this one cutscene of the genocidal antagonist that really showed how damn intimidating he was.  After watching that scene, I got hooked all over again and watched the game's next 50min+ worth of cutscenes.

What a good bad guy.

As I was watching, I thought back to some of the character sections in the art book and realized that what made them so engaging and fun to watch is that the creators really integrated this incredibly fleshed out history into all the characters - their backstories are hinted at, but are also very dictatived, through what they each say and how they react to certain situations.  The artbook (along with an Eric Goldberg interview on supporting characters) also taught me how some characters essentially act like mirrors to bring out aspects and traits of other characters (more often than not the protagonist).  All of this, combined with the spot on acting, delivered some great chemistry.

When the last cutscene ended... I'm not sure how to describe it, but you know that sweeping feeling you get after finishing an amazing book or an incredible movie?  Whatever it was, I totally had it.  It was just such a great reminder as to why I wanted to do animation and storytelling in the first place - to really take an audience on a ride through performance and give them that exact same feeling.  What made everything in Uncharted so damn engaging is that the characters' history, design, and so forth, were researched and very thought through.  I've been writing more in my sketch book lately and have been more contemplative into everything I draw (more than ever before), so I feel I'm on the right track to getting there one day...

Started experimenting with color in my sketches.  Just bought some new color Copic markers but they're really saturated and I was aiming for more of a harmony between the browns and red.

Digital idealization(?) - the problem could be solved by either decreasing the shirt's saturation or increasing the saturation on her skin, but it looses that popping contrast

PS- I think I had to generalize a lot of these thoughts I wrote down here... I want to go into so much more detail (character design , specific lines of dialogue that really reflect the aforementioned history/personalities, reactions, etc) but I'm such a bad/slow writer that I don't think I can string it all together... I'm much more verbal.  I suppose this will have to do for now.