Community Spotlight: Omni42

For this Community Spotlight, we are pleased to be sharing the creativity of Omni42, who brings together his passion for the Metroid and Halo franchises by recreating Metroid themed maps using Halo 5’s Forge level editor. He is also a talented artist, sharing redesigned Power Suits, and even a comic! We felt he was a worthy community member to Spotlight!

Omni42

I’ve been a fan of Metroid for most of my life, ever since my next-door neighbor (who was allowed to own a game console long before I was) let me mess around with his Gamecube. Even then, Metroid Prime caught my eye in a way that nothing else did, and I was hooked. But even though I’ve always enjoyed making art, I never made much of anything related to Metroid until recently–Samus was just too hard to draw! And after the many years of content drought that followed Other M, I became less engaged with the fandom, until my interest got revived via an unlikely source: Halo.

I remember the good old days of arguing with classmates over whether Prime 3 or Halo 3 would be the biggest hit of 2007, so I wasn’t exactly a die-hard Halo fan for a while. But Halo eventually became my other favorite game franchise, and when Halo 5 came out in 2015, I was one of the first group of people making waves with Forge, its level editor. I’d always enjoyed messing around in Forge in previous titles, but Halo 5’s version of it allowed for so much more creativity, and it wasn’t long before I started using that creativity to recreate my old childhood favorites again. My first Metroid map, Primus, made the front page of Kotaku, and I knew I was hooked all over again. I made a ton of Metroid assets and maps over the next few years–some recreations, some original, some with full puzzles, powerups, and enemies. My flyable Prime 3 Gunship is still one of the most-downloaded Forge prefabs of all time.

After that much time spent rekindling my love for the series, it was only natural that I gave drawing Samus another shot. The biggest difference was that now I had an action figure to use as a reference. At first, I couldn’t do much more than trace the pictures I took of it, but as I got used to drawing Samus, I eventually became confident enough to make something a little more ambitious. And thanks to the COVID quarantine, I had enough time on my hands to really go all-in. It was the first time I’d made something like this in many years, but with a lot of feedback from friends and family, I eventually made it through and created the comic that got me this feature. Being featured here brings everything nicely full-circle, because through all of these creative processes, Harmony of a Hunter has been a constant source of inspiration for me. Whenever I had a hard time getting my brain in gear, listening to Harmony of a Hunter was my go-to method for getting my creative juices flowing.

Our Thoughts

Glaedrax

Omni42’s Samus Returns comic is simply breathtaking. Not only it is very well drawn, but it’s also taking notes from the Metroid series storytelling, by conveying a story mostly with visual and very little dialogue. It works very well and is a fantastic interpretation of this famous ending scene! I also really like his 3D work, especially the Metroid Prime 2 dioramas.

Image Gallery

For more of Omni42’s works, please visit one of the links below:

Patreon
Omni42
Omni42