{"id":162785,"date":"2019-09-18T00:00:15","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T16:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.geek.com\/featured\/-1804193\/"},"modified":"2019-09-18T00:00:15","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T16:00:15","slug":"the-art-of-alien-war-interview-with-contra-rogue-corps-artist-emilio-lopez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/test\/wordpress\/2019\/09\/18\/the-art-of-alien-war-interview-with-contra-rogue-corps-artist-emilio-lopez\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Alien War: Interview With \u2018Contra: Rogue Corps\u2019 Artist Emilio Lopez"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Featured image provided exclusively to Geek.com by Emilio Lopez.<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Contra: Rogue Corps<\/em> was one of the biggest surprises to come out of E3 2019<\/a>. The recent anniversary collection<\/a> notwithstanding, it had been many years since we\u2019ve seen a new Contra<\/em> game. Rogue Corps<\/em> contains all of the wild over-the-top shooting action people expect from the franchise. While it certainly pays homage to the series\u2019 legacy, it introduces different camera angles and gameplay styles to set it apart from its predecessors.<\/p>\n

Story plays a large role in Contra: Rogue Corps<\/em><\/a>. Instead of CGI or in-game cutscenes, Rogue Corps<\/em> tells its narrative through a series of motion comics. We had a chance to sit down with artist Emilio Lopez<\/a>, who worked on the motion comics and art seen in the game. He explained how he became involved with the project, his process for creating Rogue Corps<\/em>\u2019 art, and went over some of his favorite pieces of class<\/a>ic Contra<\/em> games and artwork.<\/p>\n

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Geek.com: For those who may not know you, can you tell us a bit about your career as an artist?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Emilio Lopez: I started as a freelance illustrator. I then went to animation where I worked on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles<\/em> cartoon from 2003 to 2009. After that, I went on to comics and eventually ended up working with Konami. Not on Contra: Rogue Corps<\/em>, but on a couple of other projects. I did some promotional work on Metal Gear Solid V<\/em> and did some illustration work on Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner HD<\/em>.<\/p>\n

How did you become an artist on Contra: Rogue Corps<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

EL: This is a fun story. The company I worked for on this project is Konami Cross Media NY, Inc. I have a long history with those guys. I worked with them when they were under a different name (4K Media Inc) on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles<\/em>. They contacted me about this project. It was really cool because I\u2019m literally working with all the people I worked with ten years ago.<\/p>\n

On the Konami game creation side, we had talked about working on something for a long time. Then this project came up. The Cross Media folks vouched for me, as did Konami USA. Nobuya Nakazato, who is the director of Rogue Corps<\/em>, made the final decision for the artist to work on this project. That\u2019s kind of how it all came together.<\/p>\n

What is your personal history with the Contra<\/em> franchise? Which games are your favorites?<\/strong><\/p>\n

EL: I\u2019ve never actually owned a Contra<\/em> game. That\u2019s kind of a horrible thing to say [laughs]. When I was young my parents didn\u2019t have a lot of money so I went over to friends\u2019 houses or went to a cousin or family member and played the Contra<\/em> games. Back in those days, you had to take turns playing. With Contra<\/em>, you could play at the same time since it had co-op. That was always good.<\/p>\n

My favorite one is probably Contra III: The Alien Wars<\/em> on Super Nintendo. That game was Contra<\/em> taken to the Nth level. It\u2019s always over-the-top. One minute you\u2019re doing normal Contra<\/em> stuff and then all of a sudden you\u2019re riding a missile or a hoverbike. That one\u2019s my favorite.<\/p>\n

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What can you tell me about your process when developing art for Contra: Rogue Corps<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

EL: One thing about doing motion comics is that they\u2019re not actually comics. They are essentially limited animation projects. They require storyboarding, editing, sound design — that sort of stuff. A lot of that is working with a team trying to create the visuals. Our art director, Jason Narvaez, created the storyboards. I would then work from those storyboards to create the images for the motion comic. Doing one drawing — especially if you plan to have it move or do something — means cutting up the drawing so you can animate it. This is not only a drawing assignment, but it\u2019s also an engineering assignment. You\u2019re trying to figure out where you can cut portions of a character so they don\u2019t look weird when they animate.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no standard formula for creating motion comics. Each studio who\u2019s ever done motion comics has their own different way of doing things. I\u2019ve done two motion comics fairly close to each other. I did Contra: Rogue Corps<\/em> and a Carnage<\/em> motion comic. That one was a lot different from what we did with Rogue Corps<\/em>. It was interesting seeing that and also using a little of that information to help me with this project.<\/p>\n

Were you able to come up with your own designs or did you need to adhere to a specific vision?<\/strong><\/p>\n

EL: All the main cast of Contra: Rogue Corps<\/em> already existed before I got onto the project. A lot of it, at least for the main characters, was adapting that into the motion comic. We did have a lot of additional characters specifically for the motion comic. We had a lot more freedom with those. I only designed a few characters. We had Adrian Barrios, who was the former TMNT<\/em> character designer, come in and do a couple of characters. He designed Aero Captain Lily Panzer and a couple of other characters I can\u2019t talk about. When it came to the main characters, Nakazato and the team in Japan were more specific. They wanted to keep them within a certain line of thought, which we kind of got.<\/p>\n

In a film, the director and producers care about the guys who are up in the foreground: people who talk and stuff like that. They\u2019re cool with the background guys as long as they keep to a certain aesthetic. I did a lot of incidental characters like military guys and other people; other warriors and other Contra guys. I don\u2019t think there were any big drastic design changes when it came to making these new characters. They asked if we could do a little bit of this or that and then we were good to go.<\/p>\n

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Which characters and\/or environments did you enjoy working on the most?<\/strong><\/p>\n

EL: Hungry Beast, the giant angry-looking panda [laughs]. It\u2019s so outlandish and silly. It was a lot of fun to draw that character.<\/p>\n

We had a bunch of different environments. But for my favorite, I\u2019d have to say it was a part of the second chapter. It\u2019s an introduction to all the Rogue Corps<\/em> characters, which is totally an environment created by our team. It doesn\u2019t appear within the actual game. It\u2019s this chop shop looking place where a bunch of cyborgs kidnap people and take their parts to make all kinds of other stuff. Keith Conroy, who was the former background designer on TMNT<\/em>, designed that environment. We got to design that area. The guys in Japan seemed to like it. That was one of my favorite environments because I got to draw all kinds of crazy cyborg stuff; bloody gurneys and all kinds of horrible things.<\/p>\n

For the things you specifically created, did you take any inspiration from the older Contra<\/em> games?<\/strong><\/p>\n

EL: What we worked on was an amalgam of old and new. That also goes for the whole game, it\u2019s an amalgam of old and new. We looked at the past and saw how we could work those elements in but keep them within the realm of the newer games.<\/p>\n

What are your favorite pieces of class<\/a>ic Contra<\/em> art?<\/strong><\/p>\n

EL: I have to confess, it\u2019s kind of crazy that I\u2019m working on the same franchise as Tom duBois and Jim Lee. Jim Lee did Neo Contra<\/em> on the PlayStation 2. Tom duBois\u2019 covers were just nuts. We also have him doing a cover for Contra: Rogue Corps<\/em> that\u2019s inside the inner sleeve for the USA edition of the game. It\u2019s such awesome stuff.<\/p>\n

I do have to go back to the original Contra<\/em> cover, the one sort of questionable cover with the two characters who look very familiar [laughs]. That\u2019s my favorite piece of Contra<\/em> art. It\u2019s just these two bad-ass looking guys with headbands and no shirts.<\/p>\n

What does it feel like making art for such a class<\/a>ic franchise?<\/strong><\/p>\n

EL: It\u2019s kind of crazy. I didn\u2019t expect it to happen. When I first got on the project, I was in New York City for something unrelated and I got contacted by the guys at Konami Cross Media and they were like \u201cYeah, we got a project we\u2019re working on and we\u2019re wondering if you\u2019d like to participate in doing it,\u201d and I was like \u201cYeah, sure.\u201d Then I told them I was in NYC so I went over to them (after agreeing to the NDA) and they showed me a bunch of gameplay and character designs and said they were doing a motion comic for it and I was like, \u201cWow, alright.\u201d It\u2019s crazy how everything just came together for me to be a part of this.<\/p>\n

It really hit me when I went to this year\u2019s E3. I walked into the Konami booth and saw my artwork on the walls and got to meet Nakasato-san in person as opposed to getting translated emails from him. I feel that was the moment where I was like, \u201cWow, we\u2019re doing this thing, aren\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p>\n