Custom-made Portal shelf art, spied by reader martinf1 via Bob’s House of Video Games.

Provided of course that your summer days involve hardened killers, big guns and chicks on poles. Ahh, how I recall my youth, wasting away many a lazy afternoon carrying out ruthless vendettas against those who had done me wrong, squeezing the life out of them by any and every means necessary. This really takes me back.

I think I may have mentioned that I have a certain level of… anticipation at work for Shank. The game played so smoothly at E3 that I’m honestly a little breathless thinking about it. Two more weeks. One day at a time.

In the meantime, enjoy these concept sketches because they are gorgeous. My favorite is the movie poster design.

I won’t pretend to know much about the toy/figurine scene other than what I catch briefly over at Tomopop, but I think that even with my limited background in the field I can comfortably say that this Celsius Aran figure by Dave Quiles is amazing. Collectors of such things, can we agree on this?

The figure has hand carved lines and sculpted accents that just make it pop, and the detail is simply incredible. As if making a beautiful creation like this weren’t enough Quiles also included LED lights that light up Samus’s helmet and make her arm canon pulse with power. It’s pretty much 360 degrees of awesome with some LEDs shoved in there.

Sadly, awesome cost a lot of money. It seems this little sucker will cost you around $1,000 if it hasn’t already been bought yet.

Celsius Aran Custom [Plastic and Plush, via Tomopop]

We’re hard-pressed to call a book full of concept art for Alien Breed: Impact created by clearly talented artists “kinda nasty,” but, well, part of it features images of gross bugs and stuff. More to the point: gross alien bug things.

If you’re into this kinda thing, we’ve dropped the whole set of images into the gallery below.

Master Chief…all Victorian like.

Over the course of two months, artist Christophe worked on this steampunk version of the helmet worn by the Halo Spartan. After a series of misses, Christophe was able to use four layers of acrylic paint and PCV pipe to create the effect.

Oh, forgot one last material used — the awesome! I hate when I forget that. Hate it.

Master Chief Goes Victorian with this Halo Steampunk Helmet [Hawty McBloggy]

And yet, he has a style and flair all his own. It’s probably all of the voodoo. LucasArts Games released a group of images showing the development of LeChuck’s look in the upcoming Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge Special Edition.

I really like the page with all of the faces. It’s a hard line to walk between cartoonish and sinister with this particular character and I’m pleased with what they’ve come up with. What do you guys think?

Says Alex Varanese of his stop-motion animated shoot’em’up:

I’d like to think I’m the first person to be inspired by Michel Gondry and R-Type on the same project.

And I’ll be damned if it’s not dying for a collaboration with Crayon Physics creator Petri Purho.

the art of alex varanese – my desk is 8-bit

Do you like art? Do you like videogames? Do you like the art created in the production of videogames? Would you like to see George Wendt in a movie about beans? I can help you with the first three.

This Saturday, the Gnomon Gallery will be opening a show of concept pieces from God of War III. On display will be paintings, 3D renders, even charcoal sketches which will presumably demonstrate the creative process behind generating the look of one of gaming’s most iconic franchises.

You can see a few more of the pieces which will be on display below.

The Art of God of War III [Gnomon Gallery]

Simon Cottee (who we last saw creating something wonderful via Sleep is Death) has filmed a short documentary which delves into the world of pixels and pixel art. It features interviews with a number of indie developers, including SiD’s Jason Rohrer.

The main argument is that while some developers try to give gamers a sense of nostalgia with their pixel art graphics harking back to games of old, they’re actually creating a “warped” version of the past, with clear, blocky images that look far from what we used to play with. It’s pretty interesting stuff, and if you’ve got a spare ten minutes, it’s well worth watching.