Okay~ whew... next convention coming up right away. Otakon 2010~ In the east coast this time! I'll be at the con this coming weekend, sharing a table with a couple friends.

http://snowpuma.deviantart.com/

http://shiroboi.deviantart.com/

You can check us out at the Artist Alley. We'll be at table U8

Here are some photos of the LAVAPunch (http://www.lavapunch.com/) table from San Diego Comic Con 2010! I'll try to make a habit of taking pictures of it for every convention.

Here is the demo setup~

These are some of the sketchbooks I was selling, including the Skullgirls one.

Buttons!

Some of the prints and books that were on the table, from other members of LAVA Punch. http://www.lavapunch.com/ I took a photo of the actual comic anthologies, but it has people's faces on it- and while they are probably cool with that, I didn't put it up just in case.

Though, I did take a photo of Teerawat's http://www.teerawat.com/ awesome poster for the new anthology~ Spaceman: Unarmed and Ready To Launch. A series of comics that have different stories/interpretations of an armless astronaut named Spaceman. Mine is that evil lookin' asshole in the bottom middle hehe.

And here is something awesome from our neighbors. Delicious fake fooood *w*

Oh, and here is the full image of the pose Filia is doing for the Otakon image~

See you guys there!

-Alex

Also, thank you to those who got to meet up with Mike Z and try out the game at Evo. I'm glad we were able to show the game at the event.

Our next convention is going to be at San Diego Comic Con. I'll be sharing a table with my comrades at LAVA Punch. We'll be in the Small Press section. Our table number is C06. Most people will have an easier time navigating by isle number. We are between 500 and 600. Go to the right and back corner of the Exhibit Hall to find the small press section. Here's a screencap of our location on the map.

Feel free to stop by, try out the demo, get some neat SG sketchbooks and/or buttons, and check out the comics and shirts from LAVA Punch.

Also, I should take this time to plug my friend Mike Vega's book "Ichigo Girls Summer Special" for which I did a summer pinup of Parasoul for. You can check out the book at the Club Stripes booth at booth #1633

Here's the pinup of Parasoul, maybe you guys can recognize the bikini she is wearing, haha. :]

I hope you guys are having a fun summer, and we hope to see you at the convention!!

-Alex

Alex here. It's been awfully busy for us as of lately, but I just wanted to let all of you know that we'll be at the Artist Alley of Anime Expo this coming 4th of July weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center. We'll have a demo of Skullgirls with us.

We'll be at table D18! Feel free to stop by the Artist Alley and give it a try!

In the meantime, here is some new art~

Hope to see you guys there. Thanks!

-Alex

We'll be at Fanime Con 2010 in San Jose if anyone wants to stop by and say hello this weekend. You can find us at the artist alley sharing a table with my comrades from Lava Punch (http://www.lavapunch.com/) Come by tables T251 & T252 to say hello. Mike Z, the lead programmer and designer, will be at the con for only Friday. So, if you have any questions particularly related to gameplay, I recommend coming by on Friday to ask them. Also, I should take this time to mention that you can always email Mike at zmannnn at gmail . com as well.

In the meantime, here is a picture of Peacock:

See you there!

It never occurred to us until recently to set this up, but we did get a few emails asking about it so we decided that it's better to have this option just in case. We've set up a donation button to help with funding for the game and speed up development. We'll also be looking into other possibilities. If you'd like to contribute, feel free to help out! We'll see how this turns out. And either way, thank you all for your wonderful support so far! T^Tb

The character section has finally been updated- check it out to learn more about the main characters. Of course a lot of the finer details are kept a secret for now, but expect to see more info and updates in the future. Great thanks to John, Alpha, and Kent for helping put the stuff together~

On the topic of characters, here is some new Cerebella art~

-Alex

Mike Z showed our ground-shaking demo and I thought this would be a good time to show pictures of our Virtual Boy development*.

*Development subject to change or be discarded. Images were fabricated to stimulate grief and woe.

http://www.justin.tv/clip/67b18e78f4eb3bc5

Hey sup guys~

This is Alex Ahad / o_8 the main artist/creator of Skullgirls (I'm going to assume some new traffic came into the site, based on the emails we've been getting). This past weekend, our lead programmer/game designer Mike Z was at West Coast Warzone 2, a huge tournament event at Long Beach, CA. http://www.warzonetournament.com/ He had our current demo on display there, and it was even put up on the stream for a little bit.

Check it out here! Finally~ some gameplay to show in motion :9 Plus, you get to hear Mike talk about the game, which is of course a big treat as well~

http://www.justin.tv/clip/67b18e78f4eb3bc5

(much love from one of our staff, Kent.)

The demo was so powerful, it caused an earthquake!

On the topic of Filia, here is some new art of her too~

We plan on updating the character section soon~ stay tuned for that hotness!

-Alex

It's been a bit busy as of late, dedicating more time to getting the game put together. We've had some good responses to our job inquiry a few weeks back, and were able to get a lot of Filia done thanks to them. There is still have a long way to go before the game is publicly presentable, but we have definitely made some significant progress in the past few weeks. We're currently in talks with a few potential publishers, but I can't go into further details on that at the moment.

There is always room for more help, so if you are interested and/or would like to learn more, feel free to send us an email at skullgirls.jobs @ gmail.com

Check out the Jobs section for more information. Thanks!

-o_8 / Alex Ahad

And now for some assorted Skullgirls art~

Cerebella!

THIS IS A BUST: Parasoul infiltrates the mob's casino.

Painwheel

More Cerebella~

Ms. Fortune

Valentine heartily wishes you a Happy Valentine's Day!

And in the meantime, while waiting for the Jobs section to be updated, I figure it would be a good idea to post the detailed description of what we will be needing.

We are currently looking for artists in these positions. Please send a resume and portfolio when you send in your applications. If you could also state your name and the position you are applying for in the subject of the email, that would be wonderful.

Send your emails to skullgirls.jobs @ gmail.com

---

These are the positions we are currently looking to fill:

----

ANIMATOR:

We are looking for skilled character animators who can emulate our style.

-Can follow a model sheet / preserve the style, proportions, and faces

-Can work at a fast pace

-Good at both strong overall animation, and animating details/secondaries.

-Understands the importance of mass, volume, and a sense of 3-dimensionality for the characters, despite being a 2-D image

-Understands the importance of strong silhouettes and impact in fighting game animations

-Familiar with: Photoshop at least. Any familiarity with an animation-specific program is great too, as long as it can work with files.

-- Animators and clean up artists will be given a brief test to see if they can get accustomed to the style, and if this is the type of work they would like to do.

----

CLEAN UP ARTIST:

We are looking for people who can trace rough animations and make the final character art. It is VERY important that clean up artists stay on model as consistently as possible.

-Can follow a model sheet / preserve the style, proportions, and faces

-pays attention to details

-Knowledge of animation is a plus, but the animators should have taken care of animating by this step.

-Understands the importance of mass, volume, and a sense of 3-dimensionality for the characters, despite being a 2-D image (this is especially important at this stage)

-Familiar with: Photoshop at least. Any familiarity with other art programs (such as SAI) is great too, as long as it can run with psd files and the results fit.

-- Animators and clean up artists will be given a brief test to see if they can get accustomed to the style, and to see if this is the type of work they would like to do.

----

ENVIRONMENT ARTIST:

We are looking for environmental / stage artists

-Can follow the "dark deco" / 1940's art direction

-Able to do stylized backgrounds, as well as realistic. Or at least able to somewhat adjust to either. Most important is a keen sense of composition and lighting

-Can think of concepts based on descriptions and/or work off of a rough sketch/thumbnail as a base.

-Familiarity with the style of fighting game stages and their mannerisms is a plus

-Familiarity with the era / setting is a *huge* plus

-Familiarity with 3D / 3D lighting is a plus

-Being good at character art, for when/if we need to add NPCs would be nice

-Being good at/familiar with animating is a plus

-Chances are, since we have a couple stages in progress right now, we'll test the environment artist by showing them a thumbnail of a different stage, and some examples of existing stages, and have them make a very quick first pass at the stage.

---

If you guys have any questions or would like to know more, feel free to send us a message to the above email.

I hope you all have a wonderful extended weekend. Hope to hear from you soon :]

-Alex

Hey everyone, I finally got a job down in California. I'll be working more closely with Alex once the all the dust settles. Here's to a new year!

Alex and I were looking for files a few days ago and we unearthed this old flash site I did back in 2006. Alex provided all the art assets and I did all the flash-y things.

You can check out the site's contents HERE!

In the end we scrapped this concept and went with a different design using other web languages. John does a better job making websites than I do, and I'm grateful that he's helping us out.

If we find any more gems or mummified remains, we'll let you all know :D

Though i guess it doesn't matter what I do, we're all on Peacock's naughty list. owo;

Happy Holidays everyone!! Alex is out of town right now and I have the nastiest artblock ever :(

Not my best work, but that will do.

Have a safe holiday everyone! We're juggling a lot of stuff right now and its been difficult trying to keep track of everything.

Since Alex is out, you can relay your thoughts/input/messages to me at alphagamboaATgmail.com

We need your help and support! The site alone needs a lot of work @o@ Thanks John for keeping this site patched up while we pull out our hair on other things.

EDIT:

Scratch that, made contact will Alex from the other side. Relay all your messages to skullgirls.jobsATgmail.com

After some new adjustments to the sprite style and looking for a good way to go high-res, we have found a novel, efficient approach. Now we are looking for animators and artists who can emulate this style. The process no longer requires pixel pushing, but functions more like drawing and animating by hand. This means that following the original drawing style is more important than ever before, but I also believe this will feel a lot more natural to most artists.

Here are some examples of the sprite style:

(The actual animation speed is subject to change in the final. Also, her colors are not her main colors, but we are using these colors for easier use with palettes.)

The way we are handling shading involves having a separate image with greyscale cel shading.

(click the thumbnail to see the image)

These sprites are actually at half the working size. The sprite is shrunk down by 50% in-game. Click on this thumbnail to see the full size.

Here are some further examples.

Basically, what we are currently looking for help in is cleaning up rough sketches of inbetweens/keyframes to be clean lines like this:

We are also looking for help in the greyscale cel shading.

If you are interested or know anybody who might be, please send us an email with a resume and/or a link to your portfolio to skullgirls.jobs@gmail.com

Thanks, and if you'd like to help, we hope to hear from you soon :]