games and movies — 2017 → 2021
Games andmovies.
Five years of frames drawn out of the things I was watching and playing — fight games, action scenes, a comic adaptation. Each one redrawn as a single hero moment rather than a screenshot.
why these frames
The reference is never the goal — it is the excuse to draw light, weight and the half-second around an impact.
Five years of frames drawn out of what I was watching and playing. A paused fight, a poster I wished existed, a face lit by one screen. Nothing was commissioned and nothing had a deadline, which is exactly why the risky choices happen here first.
The rule across the whole set: draw the moment the camera would miss. Not the punch — the frame before the punch lands, or the second after everything has already gone wrong.
01 — watchmen
We know there are other dimensions than this one, but this is the dimension where we live, and we will not live in fear.
02 — paul phoenix
That was a good match. Let's fight again!
03 — kazuya
A fight is about who's left standing. Nothing else.
04 — rage art
The kanji burns a full second before the fist arrives.
05 — snow stage
Snow makes every hit look slower than it actually is.
But the counter hit will put you asleep the same. My punch. My B1.
06 — lili
Grace is just violence with better posture.
07 — electric
One frame of electricity, fifteen years of practice.
ここで死ね
08 — devil's pit
Some fathers throw you into the pit; some are the pit.
09 — deathfist
The punch you can see coming still lands.
10 — the knee
Two hundred pounds of bad news, arriving at knee height.
11 — strings
A string is a sentence — you do not get to stop halfway through it.
technique
Line first, then two planes of colour, then one light that decides everything.
Every frame starts as a rough ink pass to find the pose. The background gets flattened to two or three planes so the figure has somewhere to sit, and a single light source is chosen before any colour goes down — a neon sign, a headlight, a muzzle flash, snow bounce.
The finish is where the mood arrives: grain over the whole frame, bloom pushed until the highlights blow out, and a colour cast strong enough that the image reads at thumbnail size. Motion is drawn, never filtered — smears, trails and blur painted in by hand.
12 — witcher — snow
Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all.
13 — witcher — embers
To be neutral does not mean to be indifferent or insensitive. You don't have to kill your feelings. It's enough to kill hatred within yourself. Embers stay in the air far longer than the people do.
14 — witcher — the swing
There is never a second opportunity to make a first impression.
The swing is over before you hear it begin.
15 — mgs — headlights
Headlights are the cheapest way to turn a man into a target.
16 — mgs — chicken hat
The most serious mission in the least serious hat.
references
Fighting games, Metal Gear, The Witcher, The Matrix, Alien — the visual grammar I grew up reading.
The fight-game frames come from Tekken, where rage arts and stage lighting already look like posters. The Witcher gave the opposite problem: no neon at all, so the drama has to come from weather — snow, embers, tall grass.
Metal Gear and Alien pulled the series toward film language: wide framing, negative space, and the confidence to keep a face in shadow. The Matrix pieces are the most literal homage in the set, and the only ones built on a single flat colour field.
17 — matrix — the agent
A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.
18 — matrix — the red
I'll give you what you want, but you have to give me something.
A kiss.
I envy you. But such a thing is not meant to last.
19 — drew
I'll have three burgers, three French fries and three cherry pies. What do you guys want?
20 — alien: covenant
The crew always finds the one room they should not open.
20 — VINCENT VEGA
Royale with cheese!
on the series
Fight games taught me framing: one impact, one light source, everything else out of focus.
Nothing here is traced. Each frame starts from a paused moment, then gets rebuilt: the pose exaggerated, the background reduced to two planes, and the hit sold with colour — green for impact, yellow for rage, blue for the electric.
The Watchmen frame is the outlier and the oldest: black shapes, one wrapped head, no motion at all. It set the rule the rest follow — draw the second before or after the action, never the action itself.
Let's make the next one.
design with guts — art with soul