Thursday, July 13, 2006

ZOMBIE KONG!!!


(click on the image for a larger version)
IT WAS BEAUTY KILLED THE BEAST,
AND NOW HE'S BACK!!!

I got an email a couple of days ago from fellow Zombologist, Nik Holmes at Zombie Dollar$ asking me if I had any Zombies I could dig up. Inspired, I decided to create one for his site right there, right then. My thoughts turned to Kong and how he got a bum deal and what lengths Carl Denham would go to for a cash in ... anyway, extrapolations aside, I came up with Zombie Kong.

So, I scratched out a number of sketches till I got the pose I wanted, scanned in 'the chosen one', and worked over it in Flash (which is full of handy blur filters now), then stuck it through iphoto where there's a quickstop filter that antiques the image by washing out the color, then clicking the color boost switch punches out the adjusted color. Then I imported the image into photoshop where I scanned in my copy of "The Infernal Device" by Michael Kurland, a suitably beat up 1978 edition with adequate cover creases and worn edges, selected the creases and removed them from the cover image and placed them over my ZOMBIE KONG to give it a worn look and bingo! ZOMBIE KONG LIVES!!!

You still here? Go check out Zombie Dollar$.
Zombie Kong ©2006, Ian Culbard

28 comments:

  1. Oh wow, I think my heart just stopped

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  2. Tres bon squire. Very glad you and Nik got to talking :-)

    Is it me or are we zombifying all our sites? Don't get me wrong, that's a GOOD thing.....

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  3. We're like Zombie Dollar$ infected monkeys. It's Nik Holmes' fault, letting us out of our cages.

    I do hope Paul is alright. Still, I suppose he's primed for zombification now.

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  4. Anonymous1:57 pm

    And I'm sure everyone can imagine how giddy I was when this rose its rotten head from within my inbox! I'm currently unearthing the rest of his rotting simian carcass as we speak (he's a big fellah!) and he'll be towering above the rest of the zombiedollar$ army sometime this evening.

    On a seperate note, I had no idead this fellah was reanimated especially for the site.


    WOW!!

    Ian, thankyou so much, and also thanks for informing me of the blur effects in Flash! Only just got my upgrade to 8 and had no idea.

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  5. Hey, Nik. Honored to be asked. Thank you.

    As for Flash 8. There's a bottom menu bar, it's next to 'properties' under the heading 'filters'. Any object drawn in needs to be converted into a symbol for you to be able to filter it. With text you can just do that from the get go. Also, there's a 'blend' option in properties. So, say you have a symbol that's layered and when you give it an alpha of say -50 and you start to see the layers showing through, you click blend-overlay and that totally gets rid of that. Which is an awesome add on, because when doing shows it was always a bit of a bind making sure that symbol elements were broken apart so when they faded they didn't show all their layers.

    Also, if you draw into flash, the brush tool is pretty cool because you can calibrate the line you get. So if you start playing and think it's a bit lame, that'll be the setting. you can ajust this in the bottom menu bar and get some pretty cool results, from a dirty line to a super clean swish line. Have a play around with that one, but it's probably the best brush development the programmes ever had.

    In short, Flash 8 absolutely rocks!

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  6. Anonymous3:21 pm

    Imagine what he smells like! Yuk!!

    W P

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  7. That sight is amazing, a real treat, so it’s awesome to see your work featured among all the rest. And fine work on Sir Zombie Kong. It’s a visual feast for the eye, (no zombie pun intended) :)

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  8. Anonymous6:58 pm

    just when you think gigantic killer apes can't get any more cool...

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  9. Many thanks and welcome to Strange Planet, Alina.

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  10. KONG LIVES !! Nicely resurrected -

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  11. If they make a movie of this make it a decent running time,I want Jackson's Kong Special Edition to have an hour cut out not added !!!!

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  12. Oh yeah it's a great pic too !!!!

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  13. Anonymous9:01 pm

    Wow, thanks Ian, not only do you supply me with an awesome pic for my site, you give out great tutorials too! Had a fiddle with the brushes in Flash and was amazed! If only freehand had these options I wouldn't have started using Illustrator. Am now seriously considering creating art directly in Flash as opposed to importing from Freehand and Illustrator.

    Thanks again
    Nik

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  14. Nice to hear that people got something out of the info regarding how I did it (had a few emails along the same lines).

    Illustrator, freehand or Flash, doesn't matter. It's all vector based. You can important what work you've done from Illustrator and work from there.

    The thing I hope is that in the next incarnation of Flash they apply the same quality of bitmap tracing that Illustrator has (and the brush tools). Hell, why not make it all one thing?

    Vector rules.

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  15. Hello and welcome to Strange Planet, goobeetsablog (aka; Brian), and thank you.

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  16. Hello Geneviève. Many thanks and welcome to Strange Planet.

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  17. Hey, this is cool!! Dig the colours and the pose - good stuff! I'll be back!

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  18. Hey Clio, thanks and welcome to Strange Planet.

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  19. The tutortial was awesome ~ very detailed and informative! I really feel like I learned something, thanks!

    Oh, and I LOVE the ape man too! ;)

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  20. cool. many thanks and welcome to Strange Planet.

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  21. Zombie kong....sweet, i always thought king kong was cool, but as a zombie, he's only gotten better. nice.

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  22. Hey Nate, thanks for dropping by and welcome to Strange Planet.

    P. Jackson made so many wonderful horror films, it only seems right he should make a buttock numbing five hour sequel.

    Right now I'm tied up doing commercials, all NDA. Gotta do an illustration Friday or something or I'm gonna go bananas!

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  23. Very funny, I'd love to watch that movie! Love your style, makes me smile.

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  24. Hey!! Excellent rendering!! Keep up the excellent work!!

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  25. Anonymous9:43 am

    Wow. Just wow. The only thing cooler than monkeys (er...apes) are undead monkeys. And maybe robot monkeys. Or ninja monkeys. This ia awesome. Love the textures and the pose!

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  26. great styling of kong there. thanks for the link, i may have to conjure up a zombie myself.

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