Couple things first, here's little tidbit about the title of my Blog: If you Google the name Nebres you get a gazzillion pages on Rudy Nebres, one of the greatest Comic illustrators out there. You might think I'm saying that cause he's my Father but he really is a Great artist and innovator in the Comics industry. I mean, he's the sole reason for me NOT pursuing a job in the Comic book industry in fear that he would be my competition.
He's THAT good.
Further along in Googling Nebres you'll get pages about a priest named Bienvenido F. Nebres who I may or may not be related to. About five pages into the search I might show up if I'm lucky.
I'm the other Nebres. :)
Only recently did certain events brought about the existance of another *
Nebres* showing up in Google. Late 2007 I suffered a stroke. To my surprise, My friends from the Chaotic design staff at 4Kids greeted me when I woke up with a get well card. Imagine my shock when said Card was an actual mock up of a playable Chaotic card named after me. Everyone involved with the card presented me the card at the hospital. I can't spin a good yarn to save my life so I encourage you to go
*here* and
*here* for 2 really good reliable sources about the story.
So during my recovery, I'm thinking to myself, how do you thank anyone for something like that? I was truly honored they did that for me and mere handshakes and hugs was not proper thanks for what those guys did for me. So for my drawing therapy I chose to thank the fellas the best way I knew how, I'll Draw them as character cards in the world of Chaotic. Why should I be the only one. So I did just that. I did my little project like I would normally do for any card design commission, I drew B/W designs of Chaotic characters with my Friend's names. These drawings are what I would normally hand to a colorist prior to color. I dare NOT insult all the colorists by trying to color this stuff and I dare NOT insult Sam with an attempt at flavor Text. I am miserable at Color and Writing. I am not writing my wild ideas about the character backgrounds because they all involve game-breaking nonsense so I'll leave that up to the Game Gurus. Those who know me personally know that I'm insanely detailed about background stories for every aspect of my designs. I will not do that here. My friends know I do not like showing my stuff. I have no website and no concrete available "Portfolio" of my stuff. But thanking my buddies is long overdue so I succumbed to making a Blog with some of my work on it. So this Blog will showcase the work I did to thank the guys. Maybe I'll update it from time to time with other drawings but this is more important. So I present to you all, my ideas for my Friends as Chaotic characters. I'm gonna do this in parts instead of presenting all the drawings in one whole complete post. That will give me enough time to thank EVERYONE with a design just in case I missed someone. I truly want to thank everyone involved with the making of the card. Here is the first group of characters and a short description of who they're named after. There are also random tidbits about each character here and there. These are in no particular order.
*WARNING*
These are NOT real cards (I wish they were though)...These are only ideas from my imagination!
Enjoy;)
Arthur "Sam Shady" Murakami is one of the most smartest people I know. In fact if something were to mysteriously happen to me, I know he would be the first one to figure it out. Sam is one of the guys that was in the earlier stages of development for Chaotic. The guy practically reinvisioned the game. So naturally I see him as the Master of Chaotic, bar none. I never want to play him in this game. Fortunately the only chance to duel each other was dashed by certain circumstances during production. These unfortunate events prevented me from playtesting Chaotic with him, but that's another Blog entry all together. Other than the Creator of Chaotic, Martin Rauff, Sam is the only one I consider as the true visionary responsible for the Chaotic game mechanics today. So when I think Chaotic , I think Sam. Sam likes Penguins. So I didn't bother to go researching his Chinese sign. A Kick-ass Penguin in Mugic Armor is much better a design to represent him.
Barrios
Adrian Barrios is Lead Character Designer for TMNT and one of the guys I worked with in 4Kids the longest. Adrian is one of the most versatile Artists I know. The kid is a damn Prodigy. He can adapt to any drawing style, which is important for character design when every production changes according to the Art Director. Adrian loves Pirates so Barrios is modeled after a Pirate. Adrian was born in the year of the Monkey so I modeled barrios after a weird, mixed Spider Monkey design. The right arm claws was a reference for Adrian's favorite X-Men character Wolverine. The left-handed Sabre has a complex presentation FX which if this was a real commission, I would discuss with the colorist about fx suggestions so the sword mechanic would show better in the final image.
Beaumont
Chris Beaumont and I were born on the same day. We are in many ways alike. We love the same Toys, We love the same video games, We both love Lego. Chris designs and makes
Cubeecraft, free hand made toys over the internet. I respect any person who can make their own toys. So I wanted to intigrate the Cubee toy in the character design. I liked the idea of a water elemental trapped in a toy but the water elemental design was too similar to Chris' Imparu design. So The Beaumont elemental is a amalgum of all the elements. The character can be summoned from the Cubee toy. The Beaumont was inteded to be a weapon card used by anyone but I like the idea that he's his own seperate living entity.
Bradshaw
I met Andy Bradshaw right after he stayed on with us at 4Kids doing TMNT props. He came straight out of toy design from a toy company called Art Asylum. His designs are off the hook. We both love Star Wars. I love all things Jedi and Andy digs The Sith. We hit it off anyhows. So I designed Bradshaw with sith-like elements in it like Darth Maul's Tattoos. The idea was to make Bradshaw a crackshot hunter with a double energy bladed composite bow. This is another example where I would talk to the colorist about using color to enhance the mechanics of the bow.
Conroy
Keith Conroy is one of the best Background designers I know. His backgrounds deserve to be in the movies let alone in a half hour Kid's show. Keith is also one of the only background artists I know that truly understands Layout from Script to Storyboard, a notion I feel is essentail to the making of any animation series. That being said I wanted to originally honor his name with a Background. But I suck at Backgrounds. Conroy's head is loosely based on a chinese Foo dog design because Keith's Chinese sign is Dog. Note also the little fella standing with Conroy based on an avatar that Keith created called Irondog.
Randolph
Khary Randolph is one of the best Draftsman in the illustration business I know. Chaotic was truly privelaged to get him on board in the earliest stages of Chaotic card development. Khary is responsible for designing the majority of the earlier Chaotic characters. I feel he and some of the early artists like Adrian, set the "Look" for all the chaotic characters. That style is strictly adhered to by other artists (including me) who designed characters later on. That set the bar for Chaotic's art direction that's still followed to this day. Khary made the look of Chaotic DAMN cool. He designed Maxxor and Chaor, two of my favorite drawings, so I designed the Randolph Character to be a fusion of the famous Overworlder and Underworlder. I wanted him to look Bad-Ass like a character called Brolly from the Anime Dragon Ball Z.
That's it for now. I don't want to post too much. If you feel like you were left out YOU WERE NOT. I did a card for everyone listed on Emilio's
blog entry including a few others . Hell, I'll thank a bird if they pooped on the card during it's creation.
Till next time :)
Chaotic © 4 Kids Entertainment and TC Digital
Emilio Lopez is one of the best colorists I know. Emilio colors my measly designs and has made my drawings look much better on more than one occasion. I based his character loosely on the chinese folk character Songoku which was Emilio's costume last Halloween. Emilio was born in the Year of the Monkey so that worked out nicely that I made the Lopez a monkey like character. (I know a lot of people that were born in the year of the Monkey.) The Lopez has the most re-works I've done cause I just wasn't happy with earlier sketches. I think I felt that the Lopez looked too much like every Songoku drawing out there. so I made the Lopez multi faced and multi limbed so he can fight multiple opponents all around him. Note also I used a design Emilio created for his E-mann avatar. The design is a really cool Death's Head graphic. I stamped it on the face mask and tip of the staff.
If Jimmy Tran's charm doesn't win you over there is something definitely wrong with you. Along with being a great Animation Colorist, Jimmy is also a really good Break Dancer. The Tran design is based on the premise of a Perim fighter implemeting break dance moves in his fighting style. The look of the Tran is inspired by Jimmy's character on the Nebres card. The idea is these guys are a group of Assassins and Tran was one of them. Going Rogue, Tran left the order and fights for his own reasons now.
