TF2 Payload antics

"GET BEHIND LITTLE WAGON" -heavy

I believe I'm not alone when I say it's difficulty to push an idea into a finished product.

just a kernel of an idea, I wanted to sum up everything TF2 into one piece. All of the silliness and drama players have with one another.


Although the actually sketch of the piece took me a two weeks of slowly getting it done. It got to a point where I had to scan it in no matter what. Flaws and all. I knew that it'd be better that I could at least finish it up with digital colors.

There came a point where I felt drawing too much detail would actually waste time when I could fake it with colors

the original lines are pretty decent, I was insecure if the size of the characters would work, heavy being the largest character but he's huddled smaller then anyone else, and other characters are crammed in there without really explaining how they all fit in.

the problem with adding texture early on is that it's difficult to blend colors at this point, but instead I keep beside me color references using in game screenshots.

very rough blending of shadows

bullets, grenades and rockets are added in

more refined detail in the coloring is added. A vague idea of the health icons and red team icon. Later I added multiple layers of color dodge to help the effects glow, and more colors were blended together. In the end it turned out really well for 2 weeks of hard work. Here are some tight close ups.



It's easy for me to work on this, because it's the game that inspires me the most. But It's hard really summing up everything that I love about the game into one piece, but this is fairly accurate. There are players who do nothing but complain and players who work hard for others. Is it fair? Does it matter when your awesome cartoon characters with ridiculous guns that don't take much skill to use. The only thing I do regret is that I didn't capture the amount of bullets and rockets flying around at the time.
Maybe next time?