Alien Storm by Sega

Here's my tribute to Alien Storm, an often forgotten game from Sega (sometimes dubbed as "Golden Axe 2000") and I think it is reflected by how little fanart there is for that game. For those who don't know, Alien Storm is essentially a beat-em-up where you fight grotesque aliens with various futuristic yet short-range weapons mixed in with some melee attacks. It doesn't take itself seriously and I've always liked the game's sense of humor.

The truth of the matter is that the sketch for this pic had been done and over with for almost a year, but I just didn't like it enough to color it: the proportions, face and pose always bothered me. I wasn't willing to redraw it, but since I had come this far, might as well color it then.

I did color it to look more... dramatic than I originally intended. I always wanted to do the second level, the one with the near sunset, but later chose to make lighting as if the camera (our POV) is adjusting exposure on the flame, making nearly everything else darker and more contrasty. The level is unrecognizable, reduced to a mere silhouette, but the characters pop out more. All the original line drawing is also gone because every detail is rendered with light and (lots of) shadows. That is a first for me!

It features all three playable characters and most of the baddies, but I use arcade colors, not the ones from the Genesis port. The main guy is ok in red in the Genny port (he's blue in the arcades), but the girl is ugly in yellow. I wanted her to be the star, she had to be in arcade red and that color worked better with the kind of lighting I was going for. I would have liked to include the truck from the (arcade) intro but there wasn't any room.

As for the inspiration for the pic composition, layout and mood, I first wanted to make a very similar pic to my Tyris Flare (Golden Axe) fan art from last year. It is one of my most popular pics at Deviantart so why not give the people what they want? So you have a lady, center stage, in a fighting pose but still in the "heat" of the action. But I also wanted to crank it up, make it more flashy in colors and also not repeat the mistake from that old pic and give the nod to the other characters in the game, even if far away in the background. That's all good here since the other characters serve as light sources. Then I probably took inspiration from the box art from the American version of Alien Storm on Sega Genesis. And the more I look at it, the more I see some Duke Nukem 3D box art in my pic so I wouldn't discount that.

Overall, my goal was to fill a niche and make the definitive, very best Alien Storm fan art. The game is still obscure so my fan art is probably a long shot. I don't expect many favs and comments, but I did try to make it flashy, sexy and easy on the eyes so even people who know nothing about the game might actually like this pic. I hope so anyway.

So I finally got this project out the way so I can move on to other projects. Probably more girl fan art!