superheroes

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) – Spoiler Review

| Splendid River
I promised that I would do a detailed and spoilery review of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, so this is it. If you haven’t seen the movie, stay away from this review as far as possible.
Before I begin, I’m gonna get it out of my chest that this movie is suffering from what I would call “Internet Extremism”. The critics when given too much power when they judge something on the internet went way too far with their reviews, and with that influencing a huge amount of fans and audience to be overly and unreasonably harsh on the movie. I personally have read a lot of critiques on what make the movie bad, and while some of them are fair, a lot of professional reviewers from the press (rottentomatoes, imbd, metacritics, etc) gave the movie the absolutely questionable score of 1/10 or 1/5, together with words like “mess”, “garbage”, “trash”, etc. I’m gonna go ahead and say up front that if you have even a tiny amount of respect for the craft of cinema itself, or if you’re actually a serious and professional critic with just a little knowledge of movie making, you’ll realize and appreciate all the great things that Zack Snyder achieved with this movie, even if you don’t like it. Because cinematically speaking, the movie has done some fantastic work which I’ll mention.

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Fantastic Four

Image | | Splendid River

Fantastic Four, one of my first ever comic book movie/American comic group of characters that I’ve ever known, and they’re still one of my top favourite with their super cool villains and awesome powers. I used to draw them all the time after seeing the 2 movies made by Fox in 2005, but there have been so many great comic book movies since then that I kinda forgot about them. So here’s another interpretation of mine for the family of heroes and their arch nemesis Doctor Doom. If it ever happens in my life time, this is kinda what I imagine them as a cartoon show.

Buncha A-holes

Image | | Splendid River

Is anyone here obsessed with Guardians of the Galaxy like I am? I’ve seen the movie twice in theatre and listened to the Awesome Mix Vol. 1 thousands of time and still want more. So here’s a little tribute I did for one of/if not the best Marvel studios’ movie yet. This is what I imagine a cartoon version of the movie should look like.

Adult Mutant Samurai Turtles

Image | | Splendid River

Because these designs of mine are clearly not teenagers nor ninjas. These are my interpretation of the TMNT’s characters, in which I tried to incorporate a lot of elements from different species of real turtles, and Japanese attire, while still maintaining individual personalities of the turtles. I also tried to make the Shredder a bit more Japanese, and Krang a bit more like a modern android. I will continue doing other characters later.

You can see the sketches here https://www.facebook.com/hahuyhoang.art/photos/pb.471650312872103.-2207520000.1404894666./701157753254690/?type=3&theater

Saint Giong

Image | | Splendid River

Saint Giong riding his Metal horse into battle with a flaming bush of bamboos for a weapon.

Saint Giong – a legend from Vietnamese mythology. He didn’t speak a word until he was 3. When our country was invaded and called for volunteers into the army, he started talking and the first thing he asked for was lots of rice to eat. After meals after meals, he stood up and in a blink of an eye, turned into a gigantic and powerful adult man. The Emperor made him a metal armor, and a metal horse, with which he rode into the battle and defeated the enemy like a walk in the park. When his weapon was broken, he pulled a bush of bamboos out of the ground and used it to fight off the rest of the invaders. When the war ended and the country in peace, he rode his metal horse straight for heaven and never came back. People made shrines and temples in his tribute and worship him as a Saint.

See the sketch here: www.facebook.com/hahuyhoang.ar…

Click the following link to purchase a T-shirt with this drawing on it. There’s 2 versions, one with only the line art, and one with colors, it’s all up to you
Colored T-shirt: www.zazzle.com/saint_giong_col…
Line art T-shirt: www.zazzle.com/saint_giong_tsh…

The God of Thunder

Image | | Splendid River

The Vietnamese equivalent to Thor. His name – Thien Loi, literally means “Sky lightning (or Sky Thunder)”, and he’s the God of Thunder in Vietnamese mythology. Usually he wields an axe and guards the gateway to the Kingdom of Heaven, and protects Ngoc Hoang (The King of Heaven). This was done for Sketch_dailies but I’d like to push it even further in the design, this one is still a work in progress inspired by some stage plays.

The Amazing Spider-man

| Splendid River
Spider-man colored from the sketch I posted the other day (www.facebook.com/hahuyhoang.art/photos/pb.471650312872103.-2207520000.1395731011./651804798189986/?type=3&theater). This was done at the same time with the Ultraman piece, which was also a great experimentation with colors, lighting, and stylization. Like I said before, Spider-man is my all time favourite super hero, so I like to occasionally draw a picture of him, and this time especially is to welcome the new movie The Amazing Spider-man 2 coming up this May. I really am excited for it, the trailers look awesome.

Ultraman

Image | | Splendid River

Yup, Ultraman, now in colors! This was a wonderful experiment for me in lighting, colors, and a few new stylizing techniques. Also, it shows the power of the computer when it comes to this kind of stuffs. You can take a look at the sketch I posted the other day done in ink in sketchbook and compare to this one – https://www.facebook.com/hahuyhoang.art/photos/pb.471650312872103.-2207520000.1395645021./652074794829653/?type=3&theater .

Also, click like to my facebook page on the link above to follow more of my frequent sketches over there. Thank you .

50 years in Space and Time

Image | | Splendid River

I’ve been drawing a collection of caricatures of all 12 Doctors from Doctor Who, including Peter Capaldi, who will be replacing Matt Smith this Christmas. This was done for the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, the longest running sci-fi TV Show of all time. I got my ticket and am planning to go to the 3-D screening in theatre for the 50th anniversary episode this Saturday – Nov 23rd, exactly 50 years after the very first episode aired on BBC with William Hartnell.

I started watching Doctor Who the new series last year – 2012, and became obsessed by it because of the wonderful, beautiful, creative, and emotional stories that the show brings. To me watching DW is like watching every single genre of films ever, from comedy to sci-fi, from romance to horror, from fantasy to detective, from film noir to art house… everything. Every episode feels like a super good feature film, and they all crossover in incredible bigger story arcs that will blow your mind every time. It’s not about The Doctor himself, it’s not about all the gimmick of CGI, it’s not even about how hot The Doctor or the companions are. It’s all about good stories, and inventive ideas. Now I have seen many TV series, but Doctor Who is hands down the best of all.

Happy Birthday, Doctor Who.

Animation: Justice League

Video | | Splendid River

 

Facebook: www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1…

After 3 months of the summer animating from time to time gradually, I finally finished this short animation test for the characters from DC Comics’ Justice League for personal practice. I set for myself a time limit of approximately 5 seconds to show all the powers of each character, including: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Hawk Girl, and Martian Manhunter.

The images of the characters are a little bit different from the character designs because I simplified them a little bit for the sake of animating them easier. This time I got for myself a lot of useful and interesting experience from animating these, more than the last time with The Avengers (watch here www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnTNer… )

The song in this is the Justice League Animated Series Theme Song.

These are done with Photoshop CS and Adobe After Effects. All characters belong to DC Comics, and this animation was done only for educational purpose, no commercial use.