The other day I saw that some art students had been given the task of “Tronizing” Disney characters. I was in awe of the whole lot but I was like, “Hey! They didn’t do Buzz… what a rip!” But then it hit me… they didn’t do Buzz! I get to do Buzz! So here he is. A little old school Tron mixed with a little new school tron.
This Buzz says, “Who needs 3d?”
This piece started with a simple Buzz graphic that I did back in 2002. Just today I added the cartridge, label, titling and carpeting to complete the effect.
Back in 1997 I was really into Quake. I loved to play it and create custom skins for it. I wasn’t the best skinner out there… but I enjoyed some notoriety in the community. I did several skins for Quake… my Elvis skin was requested for the Omicron Bot Project… one of the most popular bot addons in the day. But my first skin was what you see here… Good old Buzz Lightyear.
The original graphic is much smaller and didn’t have any green. I used colors that allowed the player to change what would be green into any color they wanted. So I modified this original a bit just to make it look right.
Note that I apparently never finished his backside.
In 2002 I was very into pixel art… and I really wanted a Buzz Lightyear Lego minifig. Alas there wasn’t such a thing until 2010. Here is what I imagined a Buzz Lightyear Minifig would look like. Naturally I stuck to the basic shape of the typical minifig. There wasn’t a lot of custom heads and such back then.
I don’t recall how many different faces and items I used to create this in Photoshop today. All I remember is that I got everything from Google Images; everything is an actual item and those are David Tennant’s amazing eyebrows.
This Buzz says, “I’m every person… It’s all in me.”
Today I figured I’d take the letters from Buzz Lightyear’s name and see if I could create him using them. Here’s what I came up with.
This Buzz says, “Hi! Try a Buzz leg.”
A few years back I discovered Homstarrunner.com and the wonderful Halloween episodes they put out with all of the characters in costume. I did a whole series of my own costumes for Homestar. Homestar as Buzz Lightyear was the first I churned out.
I drew this so I could get an idea of what a Buzz would look like as a baby.
This Buzz says, “Gaa gaa goo goo.”
I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. Now that I’ve done it… I’d like to do it again, but better.
This Buzz says, “You gotta know when to hold um.”