Spotlight: July 7, 2022
Welcome back to the Halo Community Spotlight!
We’ve got some news to share with you about how our spotlight offering is going to expand and evolve over the months to come, but first we’ve rounded up some of the latest and greatest works put together by our incredible community.
Let’s dive right in...
CRÈME DE LA CRÈME
The campaign of Halo Infinite brought with it some new faces for folks to get to know, and our top spot to ImShizo who has done a series of tremendously terrific art pieces of the Harbinger, the Pilot, the Weapon, and the Master Chief. The style and detail looks like they've leapt straight out of the game and onto an artist's canvas.
HARUSPINE HANDICRAFTS
Another venerable trinity emerges here in the form of offearth3d, CreedDesignCo, and artofaauditor.
Darryl (Offearth3d) has put together this stunning cosplay of an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, based primarily on the BDU as it appeared in 2007’s three-part Halo: Landfall short film directed by Neill Blomkamp.
Deacon (artofaauditor) is a huge Halo fan and has such a wonderfully distinctive gouache style which has brought to life many of the characters from further-flung corners of the Halo universe, such as Forthencho, the Lord of Admirals, from Greg Bear’s Forerunner Saga.
Recently, Deacon has turned to Halo 4 for inspiration with Cortana’s rampancy, with one of my favorite pieces yet!
The finished piece is magnificent, but I am also captivated by the process that goes into creating something like this. Fortunately, you can watch a timelapse of the creation of this piece on Deacon’s YouTube channel as well.
On a similar note, CreedDesignCo has shown their love for Halo 2 by recreating the cover art of the game, showing off the process of putting his own spin on Benjamin Giraud’s iconic image.
You can also check out the full, final piece here.
ERUDITE ESSAYS
And speaking of Halo 2...
We all find ourselves ardently explaining to somebody why the thing we love is the best thing in the world. Often, those people don’t have a clue what we’re talking about but will be polite enough to listen anyway.
Reddit user MILO_BUDDY may be twenty-six now, but they have uncovered an old English assignment written during childhood espousing the virtues of Halo 2 as the best game ever. We share this with you today, knowing that it is seen and understood by many thousands of people who will nod their heads in enthusiastic agreement.
VALIANT VIDEOS
On the video content front this month, we wanted to spotlight a truly incredible project that C3Sabertooth has been working on for some time. Just as we've been collaborating with modders to restore old Halo content, C3Sabertooth has endeavored to animate some of the original storyboards from Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2.
A while back, many of the storyboards for the original Halo trilogy were uploaded by former Bungie artist Lee Wilson, giving us a closer look at some of the rough outlines for older versions of the stories we’ve come to know and love over the last two decades.
From alternate details in Halo: CE to the cut final act of Halo 2 where the fight was finished on Earth, C3Sabertooth has meticulously compiled these storyboards with animations and explanatory interludes which makes for a great viewing experience of this slice of Halo history.
I’m always a sucker for fan-made trailers and video tributes, I actually spend about as much time watching them as I do the official media releases because fans are so often able to tap into the thematic and emotional beats of the story.
One such example of that is this fan-made trailer for Halo 3 by the memorably-named Captain Punch.
Finally, to cap off this section, anybody who attended the recent Twenty One Pilots gig might’ve heard some familiar tunes which Wolfkinic kindly recorded for our viewing pleasure!
A GATHERING OF GREATNESS
THE HALO SPOTLIGHT IS EVOLVING...
As we look ahead, we’ve been discussing what more we can do to continue serving and spotlighting the amazing folks of the Halo community—and we’ve got some exciting things cooking for you all.
There will now be three spotlight blogs in rotation on a bi-monthly cadence, each bringing a different kind of offering.
- Halo Spotlight: the spotlight you know and love, slightly shorter by default now to make room for these additional features.
- Community Corner: a new blog series dedicated to spotlighting and interviewing individual members of the community.
- Spotlight Evolved: a new blog series dedicated to different aspects of the Halo franchise and its connections with different communities.
What this means is that July will feature your regularly scheduled Halo Spotlight (which, hey, you’re reading right now!) as well as our debut Community Corner issue later in the month. August will have a Halo Spotlight and a Spotlight Evolved piece, and so on...
We’re looking forward to sharing more of this community-centric content with you to continue celebrating the farthest reaches of talent boasted by the Halo community!
FIN
And with that, there’s the final matter of housekeeping, which is that all of you who had something featured in this installment should be sure to fill out the submission form so we can grant you your Fire Unicorn rewards!
Until the next time.