DON’T… BLINK! A Holiday 2D

Doctor #10: “Don’t blink.  Blink and you’re dead.  They are fast.  Faster than you can believe.  Don’t turn your back.  Don’t look away.  And don’t blink.  Good Luck.” (Doctor Who: Season 3, Episode 10 © BBC)

It’s 2D Tuesday here at Addicts and it’s my turn to show you one of my creations.  Back in mid-December, I was in a bit of an artistic funk with all the snow messing up the decorations I liked to use for my art.  Courtesy of my friend Joodah and her beautiful work, I decided I needed to put on my big Wookiee pants and soldier on with my art.  I love plugging my peeps so here’s Joodah’s wintry work that made my 2D heart grow three sizes that day.

She made the SLH 2D prior to the snowfall, but I dig how it looks in winter.  Her Santa is all Christmas.  Thank you Joodah for being an inspiration!

At the end of my 2D Winter Discontent piece, I asked for ideas of what I could make in the snow.  Reader tinypaperairplane thankfully responded and suggested that the winter color pallette would be perfect for a Weeping Angel. Well, here ya go lady.

First off, what’s a Weeping Angel?

Just kidding.  The funny thing to me about doing this 2D is that I’m not a huge Dr. Who fan.  Seems like a weird fit for me but thankfully my Mom is a Whovian and courtesy of her I have watched quite a bit of the show.  I think the Weeping Angels are awesome!  Only thing I like more is Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.  The angels are one of the newer additions to the show but I love the concept of a statue that is out to get you that is invulnerable and moves in on you when you’re not looking at it.  I probably also like them because my Mom thinks they’re scary.

The quote I started this post with is one heck of a proposition.  The only person I know that is good at not blinking is Samuel L. Jackson in that Capitol One commercial.  As a casual watcher, I figured it’d be better to share another Doctor Who quote to explain the Weeping Angels.

“Fascinating race, the Weeping Angels.  The only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely.  No mess, no fuss, they just zap you into the past and let you live to death.  The rest of your life used up and blown away in the blink of an eye. You die in the past, and in the present they consume the energy of all the days you might have had, all your stolen moments.  They’re creatures of the abstract. They live off potential energy.” (Doctor Who: Season 3, Episode 10 © BBC)

What do these scary beings have to do with the Holidays.  Well, they did turn up in the 2013 Christmas Episode of Dr. Who (The Time of the Doctor), and the episode revolved around a town named Christmas, so I think it fits.  Funny Addicts fact:  Bunny and I both were working on Dr. Who-themed 2Ds at the same time and we didn’t even coordinate it.  Great minds?

Anywho… shall we begin?

Every 2D has to start of with an image.  For this one, knowing it would be a toughie, I picked a pixellated angel I found in an Oogle search.  I love this design because it’s a blast from the past making me remember using “fuse beads” to make designs with my Mom’s iron.  They were always a perfect present for family members.  I’m sure there’s one or two somewhere in storage.

My first attempt to this 2D was an exact replica.  I used black snapdragons for the outline, grey trash cans for the color and just left the snow for the white. Here’s how it turned out.

This post could have ended there but I wasn’t happy.  Stupid winter had wrapped my snapdragons in brown paper and muted the trash cans.  Bumblebee Man would say No Bueno.

I wouldn’t let winter defeat me.  Tinypaperairplane had to be right about the color pallette so I went back to the drawing board.  Scrolling through the available decorations, I looked for what could replace my snapdragons and finally realized the black iron fences might work.  I’d never used these for outlining but hoped I was up for the challenge.

Because these fences are larger, I decided my angel was going to be twice as big. Go big or go home, right?  I used the fuse beads image as a guideline and started laying down the angel’s dress.

The little strip of cement on the bottom serves as my center point btw.  I kept going with the dress and decided the angel’s arms might look cool using the grey trash cans.  You can see I marked out where I wanted the arms to start while making the dress.

At this point I decided to veer away from the original image and try for a different look.  I just wasn’t feeling the angel covering her eyes.  I wanted something more fierce.  Back to Oogle I went and I really liked this image.

Now she’s a scary baby.  I used this as inspiration to make the arms for my 2D.

Next step was to get her head situated.  Angels have tons of detail but I wanted to go a little simpler.  Propane tanks worked quite nicely for the fanged mouth.

The beauty of keeping the face uncomplicated was that it allowed me to also use single lines for the angel’s fingers.  The outline of the head looked a little strange to me so I added cobblestone walls for her hair.

The next step was to knock out her wings.  I went back to the fuse beads image to do this and the stone walls seemed like a good decoration for the outline.  The other decorations already kind of popped out so it seemed fitting.

With both wings outlined, here’s what she looked like.

And I hated it!

I seriously almost gave up at this point and was about one impulsive act away from scrapping the whole thing.  The wings completely frustrated me.  Here’s where the biggest tip for 2D came in.  It’s not a race.  You don’t have to show off your art until you’re ready and if something just isn’t working… take a break. Who cares if your teenager thinks it looks like a bat, right?

And that’s just what I did.  I took an entire week off from the 2D.  As an added bonus, Bunny had her Adipose 2D ready because she is much more talented than me.  Feeling mentally rested, I re-attacked the wings.  To help, I found another image online.

I liked the look of these wings much better.  I tried using the grey pavement behind the wings but didn’t like how it overlapped the edges.  Here’s what it looked like without the overlap.

Since this wouldn’t work out to my liking, I tried to figure out how to give the wings a feathered look.  Fortunately for me, and the angel’s continued existence, inspiration struck.  I could use the carved ice sculptures to fill in the wings.  Sure it was tedious, and used up all the cash I’d saved in my 2D town, but it was worth it.

Voila!  Wings that I could live with.  Still not perfect but much better than those ugly bat ones I had previously.

The last thing I tried was throwing pavement behind the dress of the angel but I didn’t like it as much as the snow.  The snow was the reason behind my color choices so it needed to stay.

And I was finally done after two weeks.  The ice sculptures took a bit of tweaking until I was completely happy (and incidentally leveled up my town too) but I had a final product.  Initially I wasn’t in love with the design but after some encouraging words from Alissa, Bunny and my beautiful daughter, I actually like it.  It may be different looking and possibly a little ugly, but it’s mine.  Anyways, here’s my 2D rendition of a Weeping Angel in all it’s glory.

TTFN… Wookiee out!  Oh yeah… DON’T BLINK!

All original art and content © Up All Night, LLC and TSTOAddicts.com
All Screen Shots of Game Graphics & Dialogue and Game Graphics from files ™ and © EA, Gracie Films and FOX