A. Aronsson’s WeBOLLog

Before I started making impossible figures in three point perspective I drew them in parallel projection. What I’m posting here is my greatest figure from that category. I made a few sketches in 2004, the idea was to prepare for a Photoshop project where I would create a piece that would look like a real Halo level, but I never got around to that part of the concept.

In 2006 Stuntmutt, the writer and artist of One One Se7en (now only updating sporadically), was getting married and as I’ve had lots of good times using his versions of the Halo characters and cooperating with him in person, I decided to dedicate this to him, his art and his new family.

While the happy couple enjoyed their honeymoon a few of the (Halo) community people had made guest strips which got posted during the absence of the original author; and this illusion was created to complement my guest strip (left).

Originally you had to figure out that there was more to it if you clicked the blinking crystal (2552 Sep 7 and the next)… I’m not sure how many who actually found it, or even understood the comic. Today I present the larger art directly for easy access.

As I usually do not create pieces with this amount of details, I was a bit indecisive of how to present it online. I ended up creating my own flash viewer; which you can launch by clicking the image below or this link. Hover the question mark in the top left corner for controls.

The entire figure was drawn and colored in Flash. As there was a lot of work to do I used the application I felt the most comfortable with, and Flash has really intuitive drawing utilities, I think, it only lacks in accuracy and resolution as it’s not really made to create print art. The work in 2006 spanned from late March to mid May, and as I only did contract work around that time I could spend a big chunk of my time on this.

Back then I also created this file to see the creation process over time. Only step #1 and #2 are from 2004, the rest are from 2006. This file has not been displayed publically before and was planned to never be, so please feel a bit privileged when viewing it now!

And as nobody will probably figure out the secrets or interesting details, I will list what I can recall. I think there was something with the number of weapon spawns and MCs as well, but I can’t seem to make any sense out of that now.

• You can see the original comic strip in the upper left corner of the artwork.
• There are weapons present from Halo 1, 2 and 3, referenced from the comic.
• There are flags from CTF, skulls from Oddball, a hill from KoTH and a bomb from Assault.
• The grenade cache to the right is a reference to Sgt. Johnson’s immunity to the Flood.
• Hidden text(s), but I won’t tell you where!

Lastly are a few screenshots from the levels I used as inspiration for the art direction. I grabbed the images from my own collection of Halo panoramas.

• Hang ‘em High, a favorite, also the initial project name was Dang ‘im Possible.
  
• Prisoner, you might recognize the color on the floor and gangways.
  
• Boarding Action, notice the level numbers.
  

Phew! This was way more information than I initially planned to write about this piece of art.

This was the pinnacle of my modding “carrier” of Halo 1, which was shortly after it begun. After that I mostly experimented with weird stuff and looked for hidden things.

Here lots of shaders have been swapped, as well as models, projectiles, particles and mainly… vehicle speed. I managed to get the level dark, so the fire from the wheels would be clearly visible.

It was a ton of fun to record, maybe I should boot up the old Xbox with a patched map…

2003-08-25

This is a collection of videos from Halo:CE on the Xbox from around 2003. Most of it is with modding or other hacks (everything but the first clip!). The source material was captured with various weird USB or PCI devices, so sound and image quality varies greatly. Sound can be especially bad, beware.

2003

This is another Halo Hacking video. It features flying Ghosts, Warthogs, Scorpions and a little more. As well as overpowered weapons, swapped shaders and textures, which is quite noticeable.

As I was so busy exploring the innards of the game at the time, I didn’t have any brains left to come up with a sensible video title, so “Bah” it was.

2003-08-18

I’m going to repost some of my old videos, from the days when hacking/modding Halo was the hottest thing ever (in the Halo community anyway). The first one is Happy Hacking, released a few days after PfhorSlayer had put out his lists for resources in the mapfiles. In the beginning we used those to manually change hex values in the cached mapfiles, then you would re-upload them to the Xbox and hope for them to boot. It was very exciting, and also resulted in the discovering of the Engineer, Flamethrower and Gravgun, which were unused in the actual game.

2003-08-08