Virtual Character Tourney - Bracket Delta - Round 15
Propaganda below (May contain spoilers!)
Sergey Ushanka propaganda:
(Unclear how much of the history I'm about to give here is true and how much is in-universe urban legend.) Sergey Ushanka was a Russian programmer in the 80s who fell ill with a deadly brain disease. In order to save himself from brain death, Sergey decided to digitize himself… and went about it in a much more violent way than you might think. Cue lines of code written in blood and fed into the machine and a brain violently shoved inside of a PC tower. Impossibly, due to the interference of an eldritch deity that preys on people's fear of technology and being replaced, his plan succeeded, and he did achieve a digital form… of pure unadulterated suffering. His human mind couldn't handle the rigidity of computer code, and now he spends his days stalking the internet, forcing those he encounters to bear witness to the indescribable torment he experiences.
Demetra propaganda:
Demetra is a program designed to deceive players of Game Over, a virtuality reality-based video game secretly created to mind control children. Interestingly, she's aware she isn't real ("I'm sorry, Juni, but it's in my programming"), is capable of expressing her own emotions (she sheds a tear while betraying the main protagonist), and can act against her directive (she helps him and his companions escape the trap she leads them into).
It's been 20 years since Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over released to theatres in the US on the 25th... 6 days ago. Yeah, this is fairly late. I wanted to take my time with this and not rush it. I think it turned out well.
I originally sketched Carmen and Juni fully, until I cut the sketches in half each once I finished the sketches. I simplified their game suits to fit the art style and so they're easier to draw. I also took some creative liberties with Carmen's game suit, including giving her a life counter on her chest that she lacked for whatever reason.
Hers and Juni's life counters are also glowing, you'll notice. That idea is from the Game Boy Advance tie-in game, where one of the powerups is you shooting a laser out of your life counter.
The pixel effect was inspired by the main cover for Archie Sonic Universe #72, which used a similar pixel effect, as if they were going inside the virtual world.
The movie's logo is different too. I changed the glow effect on the logo from blue to green to match the rest of the poster.
The background of the poster is actually a screencap. Well, technically two screencaps fused together.
I must admit, as much as I love SK3, there's also plenty I would fix and retcon. Plenty. And honestly, the film and its premise feels more like an episode or special of a TV show (funnily enough, the plot point with Valentin going after the Toymaker for paralyzing him was originally an episode idea for the unproduced Spy Kids cartoon that Robert Rodriguez talked about in the SK3 commentary). Doesn't take away my love for the film though, as there's still a lot to like about it.
Listen yall, lots of things are really very shit rn for many reasons, but I’m genuinely still not over the fact that I get to have a whole ass computer in my pocket. It’s got multiple games and everything! Most of the games I played as a child would fit multiple times over on my phone! A little computer in my pocket! That’s so fucking cool!