Custom God of War Vans by KyozoKicks.

When I first started customising Vans, over two years ago, I had in my mind a bucket list of games I hoped one day to be given the opportunity to paint. Many of those I have been fortunate enough to already realise in Zelda, Little Big Planet and more recently Sonic the Hedgehog. The list of games I have yet to touch on remains long, with appearances from Bioshock, Uncharted : Drakes Fortune, Grand Theft Auto : Vice City and until recently, The God of War franchise.

I was recently approached to design and paint my own pair of God of War Vans, arguably one of the most well regarded series of video games on the PlayStation platform. I would be able to tick a long overdue game off of my wish list.

Read about the creation of these shoes, and view more photos after the jump

Doing the source material justice is always paramount for me personally when designing a pair of shoes, I’m very aware that in all likely hood I will be given just one opportunity to visit a certain game. So behind the hours put into both designing and painting a pair of shoes is the research. I look for more than just images and references photo’s when designing a pair of shoes, I play the game, I watch videos and read old reviews, I scour DeviantArt and watch fan made movies on YouTube, when I’m in a position to do so I’ll get the ‘Art Of’ books too. All the while trying to get a sense of how the gaming community perceives the game. What did I learn about people’s connection to God of War? They love Kratos.

What a fantastic character Kratos is, revenge, brutality, extreme violence, a beloved anti-hero. My attention quickly fell upon him as inspiration. Starting on a base off-white pair of Vans, a representation of Kratos ash-white complexion, The majority of the shoe is covered in deep red markings mirroring the tattoo blanketing the left side of the character. Beginning over the left eye the marking sweeps over the shoulder onto and down the arm. I wanted the red markings upon closer inspection to reveal texture, with some areas are darker than others. To achieve this I used a dark grey undercoat, and then only two coats of red. Whilst the tattoo was something we associate with Kratos, seeing it so clean and untouched is something we don’t. To remedy that problem a deep red, almost brown, large dried on blood splatter was painted across the front, hinting at that extreme violence. Still the shoes looked too clean so they were artificially aged, using an air brush light layers of brown, grey and black paint were added, Unfortunatly the full effect was not captured in the photos

The rear of the shoes were the most fun for me to do, taking inspiration from the God of War III box-art I added the eyes of Kratos, with the tattoo adorning one eye, the scar the other. As the shoes focused on the character of Kratos rather than God of War as a whole I thought they were an important and necessary addition, something very personal and unsettling to hold eye contact with such a character.

To see work in progress and high resolution photos of these shoes visit my Facebook page HERE.

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