"To My Son" - The Devil Likes Rock 'N' Roll

To My Son is a pretty slick short film by Guts N Films directed by Guilherme Petry as part of a grindy tribute to the annual Rock 'N' Roll day, July 13th. Featuring the devil himself talking to his very own prodigal 'son,' we're made aware that his dark spawn is actually the lifestyle associated with most famous rock acts.

And after the Devil takes credit for the creation of the entire Rocker lifestyle - We get to witness all the sex, drugs, alcohol and general debauchery that plagues rockers till the bitter end. Long live the curse of 27.

Gallery Nucleus Teases Some Imagery From "Heroes In A Half Shell - A TMNT Tribute"

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LA's Gallery Nucleus is currently gearing up for the premiere of their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles exhibit, and we've actually stumbled into a few amazing images floating around on Tumblr from the likes of AwesomeRobo faves Reyyyy and Sachin Teng.

They both created some fantastic takes on the entire TMNT squad, Krang, Master Splinter and a few others. The exhibit will feature over 60 pieces of tribute art and will launch July 12th and run till August 3rd, so if you happen to be in LA be sure to check the show out! And as a full disclaimer, this has nothing to do with the Bay produced reboot, and is sponsored by the Nickelodeon CG show. Check out Sachin's awesome pieces after the break!

"Mother Brain's Revenge" By Leigh Flurry

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Created for Streets Of Beige's 16 Bit Brawl exhibition, UK based illustrator Leigh Flurry created this most excellent tribute to arguably the best Metroid ever (In the side scrolling category). Featuring the likes of Mother Brain, Craid, Crocomire, Phantoon and all the other bosses in Super Metroid, his tribute is quite an eyeful.

Check out a breakdown of all the individual elements of Mother Brain's Revenge after the break, and you can view the rest of the entries for the Streets Of Beige exhibition over here. Enjoy!

"Bartkira" - Volume 1 Has Landed!

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Finally! After an entire year of organizing and production the first chapter of the crowd sourced Simpsons/Akira mashup comic is now live. The quality of the illustrations vary, but it's to be expected with a collaborative project of this magnitude. We can thank the existence of this project to 'Neo-Britain' resident Ryan Humphrey and Harvey James, who initiated this bizarre, amazing mashup.

At it's peak, the project had over 700 artists collaborating to execute the full recreation of the 2,000 page, 6 volume manga. Due to the obvious legal ramifications, the book will never be on sale in it's entirety, and instead released online for free. However, you can purchase a highlight book, featuring some of the best work produced from the 6 volumes from Floating World Comics for $15.

That aside, I really hope you guys have a lot of free time on your hands, because the first 350 page Volume is now available online for you to read over here. Check out our other Bartkira article over here, featuring a few of our favorite pages from the WIP project at the time.

"Satoshi Kon" - An Animated Tribute

We lost visionary anime director Satoshi Kon just under 4 years ago after a brief battle with a deadly illness. Over the years his mind brought us some wildly imaginative features and shows, including the likes of  Perfect Blue, Millenium Characters, Tokyo Grandfathers, Paprika and Paranoia Agent. All which I remember fondly. Kon had a knack for creating compelling female characters in his work, always focusing on typically unexplored aspects of social stigmas and the human psyche.

At the time of his death he had just begun work on his next feature, Dreaming Machine- an as of yet incomplete feature that's currently residing at studio Madhouse..Founder Masao Murayama recently claimed, we still don't have enough money. My personal goal is to get it within five years after his passing. I'm still working hard towards that goal. As of 2013 only 600 of the 1500 shots required have been completed, so I'm hoping that this project will pop up on a crowdfunding site sometime soon.

Vimeo user HelloWizard put together a fitting tribute to Kon's animated work, covering a directorial career that took off in 1997 with the fantastic psychological thriller, Perfect Blue. Set to the creative opening track of Paprika, which was composed by long time Kon collaborator Susumu Hirasawa.

Hotline Fortress 2 - Wrong Number

Youtube user Nonamesleft was so inspired by the slick Hotline Miami 2 trailer that he set out to recreate it in an unlikely format- Valve's Source Filmmaker. The filmmaking engine is the same one used internally by the Team Fortress and Dota 2 teams to create the stunning cinematics to promote the game, and Nonamesleft seems to be one of the community users who's mastered the usage of the format.

Using a bunch of Team Fortress 2 models, a few custom made chainsaws and some really slick cinematography, Nonames left faithfully translated the top down trailer into the 3D realm with some amazing results. In lesser hands this would have been a cool fan film, but this legitimately looks like a professional effort for a Valve game I'd love to see. In the meanwhile I'll stick to anticipating Hotline Miami 2, which should be released sometime later this year. Check out the trailer that inspired the homage after the break.

The Art Of Ricken - An Interesting Take On Western Comics

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I've grown a little disenchanted with American comics- The eternal series of reboots, side universes, deaths and rebirths wore on me over time, making even the most cataclysmic events be lessened by the idea that 'it was all a dream,' or 'this was only a one shot not related to canon cycle #235.' Over time manga has become a much more worthwhile time investment, because I know there's always a beginning, middle and a definite end to any Japanese comic. I'm not saying there haven't been high points in mainstream US comics, there's been plenty- Alex Ross' Kingdom Come is one of my favorite comics of all time, just about everything Alan Moore has touched has been nothing short of incredible, and the wildly twisted reboot of Animal Man for the New 52 reboot was really refreshing.

Thing is, despite how amazing any of these takes on superheroes are, there's a lack of continuity that can be truly maddening. A desire to make money off these heroes keeps them going forever, which really highlights an interesting cultural difference towards creators of comics at home and abroad.

Comic rants aside I recently ran into the work of Ricken, who really caught my attention as a Japanese artist enamored with western comics. So much so that he's had the chance to work for the likes of DC Comics as a cover artist on a series of different franchises, ranging from Birds Of Prey to Batman Incorporated. While so many artists have over time found themselves influenced by anime, it's really cool to see the exact opposite- a Japanese artist working hard to emulate a western style with his work. Even Ricken's character choices for his illustrations are truly curious, with now obscure characters like Supeboy and Jubilee (I always thought she was awesome) gracing many of his pieces. More of Ricken's awesome work after the break!

"Replay" - A 17 Minute Metal Tribute To Videogames

One intense week of work, 38 song covers of classic videogame tracks and a total of 17 minutes running time - This is Replay, an incredible videogame themed passion project created by FamilyJules7X. Spanning a total of 42 years worth of videogames starting with 1972's Pong and ending with this year's Dark Souls II, it's an absolutely amazing medley from start to finish. Enjoy!

Why would I do that, you may ask. Why would I give myself a week to produce a 17 minute medley with 38 songs and also incorporate techniques like green screening I've never even practiced for video before? Because if there's anything I've tried to do in these past 4 years of being on YouTube and not just with video game covers, it's push myself to my absolute potential. What you're watching is literally the best I can do given a week to put a video together and I'm not sure I can ever top this in that amount of time. I had a ridiculously fun time making this. 

Grand Theft Auto V - The Commodore 64 Edition

80's obsessed Youtube user/pixel artisan Majami Hiroz has been at it with his awesome 'demakes' of hit videogame franchises over the last year or two, and his latest creation turns Rockstar's impressive open world title into a masterful Commodore masterpiece.



Spoofing the impressive reveal trailer that introduced us to Michael and the lively landscape of  Los Santos back in 2013, the memorable words of the hilariously dysfunctional father pop up in a series of subtitles with a chiptune version of Small Faces' Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake playing. Compare to the original trailer, above.

Project 2501: An Incredible Homage To "Ghost In The Shell"

Illustration juggernaut Ash Thorp finally unveiled Project 2501, a tribute to Mamoru Oshii's groundbreaking 1995 adaptation of Shirow Masamune's classic cyberpunk manga. Project 2501 being a reference to the original antagonist of Ghost In The Shell, an aggressive artifical AI that escapes the confines of the bureau that created it, Section 6. While the project began as a visual tribute by Ash Thorp to some of the iconic imagery present in the timeless opening of the 1995 feature, his take ultimately attracted a worlwide collective of artists from various mediums eager to contribute to what a remake of the movie would look like.

While I must admit that I was expecting an actual CG rendered remake of the 'creation,' opening due to the way it was teased- It turns out that Ash and his team actually did an entire series of visual pre-production pieces instead. Proof of concept shots, CG renders, posters with an intent focus on the iconic opening sequence of the 1995 film. In this groundbreaking sequence, we witness Colonel Motoko being created to a haunting accompaniment of a vocal track featuring the ancient Japanese Yamato language (View below).



What Ash Thorp and his team did was really awesome, creating a series of tribute images as to what a 'respectful' western adaptation of the movie might look like. I absolutely loved looking through all the imagery created by the likes of Thorp, Furio Tedeschi, Maciej Kujiara and many other talented artists. Here's to hoping they find a way to actually recreate the entire sequence via crowdfunding, or expand this tribute project into something much larger sometime soon. You can check out a collection of stills and illustrations from the project after the break.

A respectful homage to Shirow Masamune’s manga and Mamoru Oshii’s seminal film Ghost in the Shell, this is a modernized direction that still tries to stays true to the original creator’s vision. What started as a photo tribute directed by Ash Thorp and Tim Tadder (photography), soon became a worldwide collaboration of more than 20 artists from around the world, with each and everyone coming together to help breath life into the project, resulting in the artistic interpretation you see below.

"Another World" - An Incredible Cinematic Tribute To The Classic Scifi Videogame

A group of dedicated fans from Poland recently set out to recreate the opening of Another World, a classic 1991 adventure title by Delphine software that was revolutionary at it's time for the usage of rotoscoped graphics. Even as a kid I remember the title was mind blowingly fluid and cinematic for it's time, even more so with it's follow up called Flashback.

The recreated intro follows the protagonist, genius physicist Lester Knight Chaykin heading out to his underground lab in a sleek Ferrari 288 GTO during a thunderstorm to work on a top secret experiment. While attempt to reconstruct what happened when the universe was born with a particle accelerator, lightning strikes and sends Lester hurtling into an alien world where his adventure begins.

The team did a stellar job recreating the intro (Compare it to the DOS-riffic original below), and are actually hoping to perhaps get a Kickstarter going to adapt a longer form, 15-30 minute version of Another World with the techniques they learned from this project.



Handmade in Poland! Over 800h of work, months of preparation, 5 shooting days, weeks of postproduction, countless hours spent on building movie props and set pieces.

Another World aka Project 23 emerged a few months ago as an idea for a short film inspired by a well-known game Another World . Initialy it was planned as a short promo video for the Pixel Heaven 2014 event, but during months of preparation it became clear that it will be something much bigger.

Paul Robertson's Bubble Bobble Themed Tribute To Everything (And More Goodies)

Now that Mercenary Kings is finally out and doing great, Aussie pixel pseudo-god Paul Robertson has gone back to making regular posts on his Tumblr. His latest post features his heartfelt tribute to the first arcade game he ever laid eyes on, the classic Bubble Bobble by Taito. Channeling his inner child, he crafted over 100 Bubble Bobble-ified takes on chracters from every pop culture corner conceivable, ranging from anime, 90's cartoons, videogames and beyond.

Robertson has also been up to some really amazing pixel gif creations, which you can check out after the break. And as a secondary reminder, Mercenary Kings is the gaming equivalent of Metal Slug and Borderlands having a beautiful pixelated baby, and I personally can't get enough of it. Pick it up on PS4 or PC.

Bubble Bobble was the first game I ever played in the arcades and it pretty much decided what my career was going to be. So I thought I’d try out some Taito inspired characters. There’s 100 all up 

"Attack On Titan" Opening - The Pencil Drawing Version

Attack On Titan is without question, one of the best things happening in Anime right now, offering a really cool narrative that's rife with mystery. A planet overrun with mysterious titan entities intent on wiping out humanity, the stories of the last remaining enclaves of humanity, and a plot focused on some truly intriguing conspiracy theories about who is creating these monstrous creatures. It's like that smoke monster in Lost, which left people guessing for seasons at a time (Except AOT actually has answers behind it's mysteries to offer).

Youtube/Niconico Douga user Animesakai took his love of the series to the next level, embarking on an incredible journey to recreate the memorable opening of the series using pencil drawings from observation. The duration of the project? 8 months with a total of 423 drawings generated during that time. To put it simply, that's insane.



For comparison, you can watch the original OP above. After translating his description of the video, Animesakai mentioned that part of the reason he created the video was to show off that analog art can be just as amazing and fulfilling of an experience as the much more convenient, prevalent digital art format. I can imagine he learned a ton during the experience if you look at it from an observational drawing standpoint. Kudos to him for following through till the end with the project, and give Attack On Titan a chance if you haven't already- It's available on everything from Netflix to Crunchyroll.

The Colorful Art Of David Alegre

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David Alegre is an up and coming illustrator, a member of the burgeoning Tumblr-o-sphere of fresh talent and a concept artist at Zynga. He also goes by the name of Scrotum Nose, an interesting alias but nothing out of the ordinary in comparison to some other great artists we've stumbled into since AwesomeRobo booted up. What I particularly liked about Alegre is being able to see him take inspiration-In this case the works of Sachin Teng, who has been an influence on many an artists as of late (Myself included) and see him make it his own.

It's most evident with his really cool take on Dr Wiley from Megaman (Above), which has the same notes..The square composition, the noisy overlays, the themes of fragmentation. Yet in a few months from now Alegre will have assimilated the elements of another artists style (Among others) to further hone his own distinct style. Alegre's work falls into the category I'd call 'fun,' with varied subject matter, heavy stylization and a penchant for the colorful. Check out more of his awesome work after the break!

The Akira Project - An Incredible Fanmade Tribute

The Akira Project was first born back in July 2012 as an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for a fan trailer, in response to various reports that the Hollywood film adaptation was stuck in development hell. Rumors swirled of versions of the feature that sounded nothing like Otomo's original vision, and many feared that another iconic franchise would simply be, well..Lost in translation.

In an act of fan solidarity made possible by the power of crowdsourcing, the Indiegogo campaign never reached it's full funding goal, but succeeded in attracting swathes of artists from around the world that had their lives changed by Akira at some point or the other. While the initial concept was to simply show Kaneda riding his bike around Neo-Tokyo, the power of 40 artists from around the world allowed the vision of the fan trailer to expand significantly. Following 3 days of filming in Quebec back in late 2012, the project went quiet due to a lengthy post production period.



A year and a half later we finally have the final product, and as many fans probably feel - It's kind of what we wish any adaptation of beloved franchises would be in this day and age. I think this global initiative successfully expresses a frustration with studios typical handling of source material, and we hope that Akira will get a proper adaptation that lives up to Otomo's timeless creation someday.

The Akira Project is a crowd-sourced, non-profit project meant to create a live action fan trailer of AKIRA, the renowned manga-turned-anime film from the late 1980′s; a stunning example of both mediums as art forms. While Hollywood has been working on a live-action Akira movie for a few years now, we, as fans, wanted to take a shot at making our own adaptation. A chance to stick as close to the source material as possible. A chance to do Akira Justice.

After a year and a half in post-production, we are proud to present the project to Akira fans the world over. We hope to have done justice to the timeless work of Katsuhiro Otomo and look forward to, someday, seeing the full scope of the Akira story translated to the big screen as a live-action. 

Mite - What Happens In The Underbelly Of "The Shining's" Hotel?

Directed by Walter Volbers, Mite is a really interesting short that walks a fine line between a tribute and an original short all it's own. Opening up with a shot of the dark halls of the Overlook Hotel present in Kubrick's The Shining, we're eventually thrust into the iconic patterned carpet into a gorgeous alien world inhabited by microscopic organisms unaffected by the horrors above.

The short took a total of ten years of on and off work to complete, which is reasonable considering that Volbers used it as an opportunity to transition out of more traditional cell animation into CG, using the now discontinued Softimage XSI modeling software to accomplish his curious vision.

What If Akira Was Created By Jack Kirby? And Other Mashup Goodness By Mark D'Alfonso

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Michael D'Alfonso eats, breathes and sleeps mashups. He refuses to take a character and present it straight up as it is, instead opting to stick in a blender of pop culture to create something that's striking in it's familiarity yet always unfamiliar in it's presentation. The piece of art that really caught my attention was his Jack Kirby styled Akira tribute, which absolutely nailed it on the head, straight down to the worn and torn comic cover look.

While some people look down on fanartists as simply pandering to fanbases for attention, if done correctly you can get some really cool and original takes on popular characters. Check out more of his awesome work after the break.

Mitchell X Mondo X Marvel - A Staggering Amount Of Cool Marvel Portraits

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Currently on display at the Mondo Gallery in Austin, artist Mike Mitchell created a very comprehensive set of awesome retro portraits of Marvel characters circa the early 90's. The main tell were the somewhat retro outfits, and the appearance of characters including Ghost Rider and Jubilee. All the characters are presented in a profile stance (With the exception of the always third wall breaking Deadpool) with different colors in the background to help them pop.

Mitchell created  of these in total, so check them all out when you get a chance! We selected a dozen of our favorites for you guys to peruse after the break.

The Art Of Totto - Path Of The Fanartist

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Totto is a self proclaimed fan artist from Tokyo, who set out to learn painting and drawing in order to pay tribute to some of his favorite characters and franchises. Like many other young artists currently rising to visibility in Tumblr, Twitter and other social platforms, fanart tends to speed up the process of getting a following, more so than original work. Part of me wishes that wasn't the case, but I won't deny that it's fun to see different people's takes on iconic characters from movies, cartoons, anime and so on.

Nintendo is where Totto's fanart allegiance lies, with a bunch of cool pieces dedicated to Zelda, Animal Crossing and Super Smash Brothers, with a comparable amount of original work thrown in for good measure. With nice, warm color palettes and a visual style that resembles retro videogame concept art, Totto's an artist worth keeping an eye out for. More of his work after the break.

Human Revolution - A Stunning, Fanmade Deus Ex Short Film

Directed by Moe Charif of Dcode films, Human Revolution is a high end, fanmade short film that's been in the works for over 2 years. And honestly, it looks like it was worth the lengthy wait. For anyone familiar with the narrative of the critically acclaimed 2011 followup to Deus Ex, the game follows the story of Adam Jensen, a security consultant who finds himself augmented following an accident that nearly takes his life. This short in particular is more centered around his kidnapped girlfriend Megan Reed, who is asked by her captors to activate a mysterious device against her will.

Upon Adam pinpointing her location, what follows is probably the closest thing we'll ever see to a Deus Ex themed cinematic experience, including some absolutely stunning cyborg action sequences. We're also given a glimpse into Adam's daily struggles with the fate that was handed to him against his will. I never asked for this.