LUUUIIIGIIIIII...

 I've drawn a companion piece to my Creepy Mario picture. It's creepy Luigi (click for full screen view, open in new tab for even bigger):

 Very pleased with him and it didn't take too long either!

Finished the initial sketches for all the characters I've been designing, now to tidy them up and colour.

bye 

The first dump of May

 We hit 10,000 views last Friday so a massive thanks to everyone who has visited and fed the Blogodile over the years. I think the stat-tracking started in mid-2010 so there are probably some uncounted views but yeah, hopefully the next 10,000 will come quicker! 

 To celebrate we've given the Blogodile a wash and a make over as you've probably seen so let me know what you think of the new design.

 Also decided to leave my Creepy Mario picture as it was (with a couple of adjustments) as it received so much great feedback. I did start adding textures to his clothes but in the end decided it was good enough without so here's the finished piece:

 Lanny is hopefully going to get it printed as a poster so I will post a photo of it when he takes one.

 Finally here is the completed version of episode 1 of my Lego Minecraft videos:

 There's still some stuff that needs changing and adding. I've changed the font of the 'BLOGO' logo on the title card as well as changing the Minecraft text colour. I also want to change the font of the text in the instructions. Any ideas let me know.
 In the future I want to do a 3D animation of a Lego-style Minecraft box opening and the instructions and blocks falling out to start the video rather than just a title card. Finally, a friend's idea, I will add a page at the start of the instructions listing all the blocks required for the entire build.

 That's all for now bye

March 2012 Update (with added Star Wars)

 Hello.
It's been too long since I posted anything and I've lost the knack of starting a post with a load of bullshit so I'm just going to post pictures and tell you what they are etc... (Don't forget to right-click > new tab if you want to see the images in full resolution)

 I decided to add a lightsaber to my graduation photo and it received a massive amount of positive feedback on Facebook (I graduated last year with a 2:1 with hons in Computer Games Design):

 Then my friend Dan of Toxic Games (creators of Q.U.B.E) asked me to do one for him! I'm in the Q.U.B.E credits as a tester! My first credit in a game :) It's a great game and you should definitely check it out. You can find it on Steam and loads of other places.

 Similar stuff again here although a lot more recent. A friend asked me to Star Wars up some photos of his brother and nephew, both of whom love the films, so here they are. I'm very happy with how they turned out and they are probably some of my best photo manipulating in Photoshop so far:

Jack

and Jamie

  Next up is an image I have only finished tonight. It's a Photoshop painting of an angry parrot, created as a promotional image for my friend Steve aka Phrazer for his soon to be released track 'Angry Parrot'. Visit his Soundcloud and listen now!

 This last picture is a WIP of a creepy Mario drawing I am slowly doing. I made the mistake of posting it on Facebook as it is here and got some really positive feedback meaning that I decided it was good enough like this. I really want to finish it though:

 In other artwork related news I had my first potentially paid commission for a website header but it fell through and they used their own design. I was very happy with the work I did and it showed progression in my design skills but I won't be posting the work on here as it might act as promotion for their website and basically fuck that. I learnt quite a bit from the experience though which is great!  

 Finally my two housemates (Pete and Ollie) and I have been playing a lot of multiplayer Minecraft on the Exiled Gaming server and have made some really cool stuff. We have set up a Youtube channel for videos of our adventures on the servers as well as some up-and-coming building instruction videos by me.

 Here's our first video. I'm blocodile and I don't have a mic (subscribe, like, comment, share etc):

 Hope you like what I've had to show. Hopefully Blogodile droppings will become more frequent again soon. Please like, follow, comment and all that stuff if you feel like helping me out :) 

 Bye.

16 Bit Lanny

 I've been doing some more work for Lanny. This time he wanted three 16-bit style pictures of himself in Mario, Sonic and Link outfits. I'm not sure what he wants them for, possibly the music Grad Show, but here they are (font is aansa): 

 I'm glad I copied the 8-bit Mario last year to give me a very basic idea of pixel art as drawing with a small amount of pixels is a lot harder than I would have thought. I found you have to really think carefully about what goes into each pixel to make it readable at such a small size and with so few pixels to actually use. Noses are particularly hard it seems. But yeah I think they're ok.  

 In other news I got the new Mortal Kombat which is amazing. I'm not very good at fighting games but I thought the demo for MK was great so bought it. I've played through the story now. It's weirdly done and very very cheesy, like the films, but I think it suits the game and its 90s roots.
 The final boss fight against Shao Kahn is a piece of shit and instead of being a culmination of the rest of the game, where the player uses all the skills they have learnt to beat them, you basically have to cheat and run away. If you fought real people in MK the same way you have to fight Shao Kahn everyone would hate you... I tend to be a lot more critical of things when they're really difficult and take me an hour to beat!
 But the game is great so buy it if you're thinking about it. I've mainly been playing as Sindel. Hurry up and get PSN working Sony!

 That's all. Skyway update coming tomorrow or later probably. Check out and like the Facebook page (link on the right hand side here). Also click the Enormous Blogodile like button at the top of the blog, if you want :)
bye

Day 18 (Just a Doodle)

After the runaway worldwide success of Day 16 I did another animation:

Day 18 (Just a Doodle) from Oliver Elliott on Vimeo.
You're welcome.
Veteran Blogodile fans will remember the Super Mario image from the early days (http://theenormousblogodile.blogspot.com/2010/01/itsa-me.html).
Bit of an audio glitch at one point by the sound of it but plllllllp.
Days 19 and 20 up laterz.
Bye

Hi..

..I'm super mario galaxy 2. I was designed during the 16 bit era but due technical limitations on the available systems at the time I wasn't able to go into development.

Luckily, thanks to the Wii, I now exist as a fully playable game, but don't worry, none of my design document has changed since the early 90's so if you're not accustomed to the functionality and accessibility of contemporary games in 2010 you can feel at ease.

Judging by my cartoony visuals and endlessly patronising, unskippable dialogue sequences you'd think my target audience was young children however this couldn't be further from the truth. As will become immediately obvious when you play me, I am aimed primarily at experienced digger drivers and the sort of people who post speed runs of my older brothers on the internet.

The character you play as in me, Jumpman, can perform about 20 different types of jump, although funnily enough you will only ever use two of them as the rest are either completely useless or are more dangerous to Jumpman than most of his enemies.

As I mentioned earlier I am developed for the Wii and, although it does run me fairly well until anything bigger than Jumpman moves on screen, I myself do present some of the console's limitations. For example, like many pre-playstation one games, dialogue is presented in speech bubbles rather than as actual audio and, given how little is said in the game, this, on an admittedly laughably current generation console, surprises even me.

Well that's all for now, I might see you again if Ollie lets me back on his blog. Bye.

This took far too long

Mario's new villian. Enochio. He hates foreigners.

*sigh*

It'sa me...

I like Jim Croce a lot. I guess he looks a bit like Mario. I had a go at the old school Mario design to see if I could pick up anything about simple but successful character design. I didn't really pay attention while I was doing it though so I'll have to go back and have a look later on. Here's hoping I've picked some things up subconciously haha.

Impressively the design uses only 3 colours: red, yellow and shitty. Despite only 3 colours being used over 143 (I think) pixels on a 16x12 grid we can still distinguish Mario's face, hat, hair, eyes, moustache, shirt, dungarees, hands, buttons and shoes. Clever stuff.

I've never really been a fan of Mario. Probably because we've never had a Nintendo home console. My Mum's got a Wii on the way though. Wario is cool. I prefer Crash Bandicoot :)