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MurderousAutomaton — Creepazoids: Evolution
#characterdesign #characters #metal #y2k #toydesign #newmillennium #elcucuy #early2000s #early2000sstyle #atlantis #devilgirl #monsters #retro #robots #sciencefiction #skull #retroanime
Published: 2020-02-01 06:26:13 +0000 UTC; Views: 13168; Favourites: 189; Downloads: 66
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Description
Hoo-boy, this was a fun set!
Remember that era in the late ‘90s through the mid-2000s when cartoons and toys began re-hashing old lines from the ‘80s? To bring them up to "new millennium" standards, they injected them with all the current trends of the time, which mostly meant ripping off anime, extreme sports and The Matrix. To make it even weirder, a lot of graphic designers back then were new to Photoshop, so many a toy package was rife with simple, overwrought filters and heavy-handed base effects. What resulted from this strange recipe was an amalgamation that became quintessentially 2000s.
So, in honor of that magical time, I present Creepazoids: Evolution--a New Millennium re-branding of the Creepazoids franchise! So grab your Razor scooter, load up some Powerman 5000 on your iPod, and take that red pill!
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Comments: 77
Oh, yeah, definitely! I actually only have two characters left for the current set! I should have it up next weekend. 
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Oh wow, can't wait to see next! 
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Thank you! I'm actually way ahead of schedule at this point, since we're kinda stuck at home. I've already got six characters done for series 32, and the last three are already sketched out!
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Yeah, I'm stuck at home too. But at least I'm all done schoolwork! That's a relief.
Great to hear that you're so far ahead. That'll be exciting to see. I'm guessing the Creepazoid ideas never stop coming?
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Yeah, that must be nice! You're totally done with school now, right? Do you have any specific career plans, or keeping things open?
Totally! Seems like my brain is now hard-wired to assess Creepazoid concepts at the drop of a hat. I'll see a piece of art of TV show that I find interesting, and immediately my brain tries to figure out if it would make a cool theme for a set. 
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I've got a couple other job and education ideas planned, actually, but with what's going on I've not been able to do much job hunting 
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Yeah, the job market is pretty bad right now! 
I wish I could do something to help! Best of luck on your search! And drawing in the meantime is a pretty dang good use of time, I'd say!
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Oof, yeah that doesn't sound fun for your brother. 
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Nice! Have fun! What kind of stuff are you planning on drawing?
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I'm focusing on anatomy for now, drawing individual body parts, especially hands and feet which I've struggled a lot with in the past.
I do look forward to the new Creepazoids! That's always fun to work on.
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Nice! That's a good idea! Always wise to nail down the fundamentals. I'm trying to sharpen my anatomy as well! Hands and feet are definitely tricky! Luckily, you can easily look at your idle hand as you draw for reference, but feet are a bit harder. I guess there's always Google!
Good question! I guess it varies from design to design. Generally I have a pretty clear idea in the my head, so those drawings usually just take a half hour to an hour, but sometimes I end up finding a new direction as I draw and play around a bit more, so those could take over an hour. Then I clean up the lines a bit in Photoshop, which usually takes about 5-10 minutes, then add color (30-40 minutes, depending on complexity), then shadows (10-20 minutes), and then it's pretty much done! I guess each one takes around 2-3 hours altogether.
I actually have a lot of sketches I've done for characters that I decide not to pursue, so there could be like 10-13 character concepts for a set, then I cut it down to 9. Sometimes I even finish a character before deciding to cut them, so there are some lost Creepazoids out there! I should put them all together in their own "Rejects" set!
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Yeah, you have no idea how many references I'm using for practice.
Sounds like you take a lot of time to experiment. That must be a lot of fun. 
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That's good! Reference helps a lot! And eventually, you begin to memorize things and don't need to rely on it so much. Muscle memory, in every sense of the term.
Yeah! It's always fun to thoroughly explore a theme for these sets! Sometimes that results in lost characters, but it's fine. That just means the ones that make it in are the cream of the crop!
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Ooh, some cut characters? That may be fun to see!
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Yeah! Maybe I should post some before the big 300th Creepazoid this summer!
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That'd be awesome to see!
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As someone whose most formative (i.e. childhood and teenage) years were during the 2000s - oof, that's aesthetics af my dude
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Ha, ha! Thanks, man! This period was pretty influential for me, too! I'm a bit older--turned 20 in 2000--but the styles of this age really seemed to resonate with me! I still wear wallet chains. ...And I'm not saying my closet is full of black cargo shorts, but I'm not not saying that.
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I swear to god, dude, Zuba and Macks were in, like, every 2000s movie, and I think I personally knew at least four Cherry-Bomb-like girls
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Ha, ha! You are correct, sir!
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This is up there with Fluorescent Wasteland, Just Deserts, Overcast and Squaresville in my favorite sets so far.
Good idea with 3-D; there’s no way to *improve* one of the best Creepazoids, so just go in a whole new direction.
Because I’m a guy with too much time on his hands I’ve been narrowing down the “collection” I would have on my shelf if these were physical toys, and all of the female characters from this series + 3-D v2 end up on that list.
I’ve got all the designs for my Soviet set on paper, so now I’m trying to develop my linework skills on wacom. On paper my lines can be really detailed and tactile like yours kind of, but the lack of resistance on a tablet kind of leads me to just making big smooth strokes (the artwork on my page, while fun, is NOT indicative of my actual art skill level). If you have any pointers on Photoshop brush settings, setup etc. I’d love it, but I’m sure I’ll get there with practice.
And now for some theme ideas. As you can probably tell I most enjoy ones that are kind of a general implicit aesthetic that we all find “familiar” without it being obvious.
-90s-ish macabre/goth whimsy- Another vague one. Think Jhonen Vasquez, Lenore the Dead Girl, American McGee’s Alice, Monkeybone, Psychonauts, The Cell, Stolen Babies “Demented Carnival” and Amanda Palmer Dark Cabaret style stuff. Basically the tons of different directions people went following Tim Burton. I think you were probably a participant in the tail end of this era.
-Grimy Industrial/Grunge- Alien 3, Se7en, HR Giger, Nine inch nails, Aggrotech, Akira, the Saw and Hostel movies, some early PC FPSes, etc. Very stark, rusty, (maybe even S&M) dangerous metallic style. You’re probably familiar with some 90s comics and Macfarlane toys that fit this better than I’m familiar with as a 2000s youngster. If that’s not enough you could make it a general “edgy” set with Thrash Metal atomic war imagery, Death Metal bleak mythic imagery, etc.
-Psychedelic, Shpongle, Alice in Wonderland, that “Faerie Art” you see in New Age stores, Roger Dean style set. Maybe have some characters as mellow 70s stuff with some being hyperactive 90s raver imagery?
-A grossout/underground comix/punk Rat Fink, Robert Crumb, Ralph Bakshi kind of set.
-Cryptids and Conspiracies... X-Files, basically. You can probably think of a ton of culturally ubiquitous examples but if you want I can send you "charts" by 4channers detailing lists of all the obscure, unsettling ones that have worked as prompts for a lot of my artwork in the past. You could probably do a set of all the different "alien" design archetypes alone.
-"Unsettling" saccharine 50s aesthetic set... think David Lynch and Fallout, to use the examples that immediately come to mind.
-A set that is a "roster" of wrestlers or racers or band members or something, kind of like how Teal Steel was a specific "team."
-An entire set of aesthetic variations of one character design. Think "Into the Spider-Verse" or other such superhero comics scenarios.
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Wow, thanks, man! This is definitely one of my favorite sets, too! I'm really happy with how it all came together--I think the best sets are the ones that manage to feel cool but are still poking fun at themselves. 
Anyway, yeah! 3-D was one of my favorite individual Creepazoids, so I was a little leery about doing a "version 2" of him, but I realized a DJ-style Jet Set Radio character would probably be the 2000s equivalent of an '80s new wave android, so I had to do it.
Oh, nice! Good choices for your shelf! Maybe someday we'll actually get these in our hands! Can you imagine?
Awesome!!! I saw that you had sent a note! I'll check it out after I finish answering my comments! I can't wait to see them!!! Sorry I didn't get back to you earlier on the Wacom stuff--I actually struggle with that, too. I still do all my pencils by hand, and just use Photoshop to darken the lines and my Cintiq to add shadows. There's something mechanical about using it for lines that I just can't get past--I feel like my lines lose all their character. I've talked to a guy that teaches art before and he said it takes about 3 months of solid tablet use before you can break that mental disconnect. I guess I should probably put the time in, but there's something so satisfying about using pencil that I can't move past. Sorry I can't be of more help!
Anyway, these are great concepts! Yeah, I was totally into that late '90s "Goth cartoon" aesthetic back in the day! I've always been a fan of Tim Burton, so I felt right at home in that style. It's probably pretty obvious, but El Cucuy is a reference to Vasquez's work.
-Yeah! I did a ton of that "edgy" dark art back around the early 2000s! McFarlane was a huge influence, especially his collaborations with Clive Barker. And of course Silent Hill, Marilyn Manson videos, all that stuff. I had a few drawing series that explored that style--it might be kinda fun to resurrect them as Creepazoids! I even did a series that spoofed that overly dark style (especially the concept of returning to a cherished childhood fantasy world to find it dark and nightmarish, like McGee's Alice and McFarlane's Oz), that used McDonaldland. I called it McDonaldland: The Fallen Arches.
-Yes! I've thought about surrealism and psychedelic art as a basis for a set, too--I actually have one planned that will focus more on surrealism in the art world, mixed with a spring/Alice In Wonderland aesthetic. I guess this concept will be more Victorian/turn-of-the-century than '60s or '70s, though. But rest assured Magritte will be referenced again.
-Oh, yeah! That underground art was pretty wild! I was actually going to reference Crumb in the "Horizon" set I did a while back, but it ended up not working well for the sci-fi angle. Prismer of Warr was kind of a soft reference to Bakshi's Wizards movie, with Frazetta's art mixed in. I could definitely push that aesthetic further!
-Nice! I actually have a set written out that would be like a National Enquirer newspaper, with each character being a cryptid or urban legend or something along those lines. Lots of aliens, Bat Boy, Sasquatch, that sort of thing. I've thought about an entire set of aliens, too! There's a lot of material to work with there.
-Oooh! I actually just wrote down notes for an unsettling '50s set! I plan on calling it "Uncanny Valley", like the name of a suburb/housing development, and the central character is a typical '50s family man, but every other person in his world is just slightly "off" in some eerie way. I still have to work out the particulars...
-Oh yeah, that'd be cool! I like the "team" format for sets a lot! I had planned a "Monster Mosh" set that would be all Halloween monsters as members of a Rob Zombie-like industrial band, but I haven't gotten around to doing it yet. Wrestlers and racers could be a fun angle, too!
-Oh, that's a cool idea! One character in nine different styles! I actually did a drawing series like that about ten years ago, where I took that ThreadBare character (a character I created in college, but also showed up in series 18) and drew her in like ten different styles. It would be fun to revisit that concept!
Thanks so much for your ideas, man! I always enjoy your comments! ^_____^
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And, while I’m at it, more uninspired but still potentially really cool ideas would be a medieval fantasy set, a military/weaponry set, a steampunk set, a noir cyberpunk set, and a generally “cyber” set in that it’s internet and computer themed.
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Oh, those are good concepts, too! I actually have a dieselpunk military set in mind--something similar to tabletop gaming pieces. No specific era or historical reference point in mind, just fantasy/sci-fi soldiers in a dingy, drab, possibly post-Apocalyptic setting.
I also thought a set based on the aesthetics of Heavy Metal (both the classic era and the '90s resurgence) could be pretty cool! Crazy exaggerated female characters, spiked shoulders, huge guns, giant knee pads, cricket shin guards, trench knives, that sort of thing. Could have an overall post-Apocalyptic feel as well. Maybe a dash of Tank Girl and Judge Dredd in there, too. Hell, I guess it'd just be a British comic set.
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