welcome to the compound
Miscellanous posts, shop talk.
I was walking home from the store this morning when it hit me that it would be awesome if they combined a Kaka clan member with a “Prime Field Device,†both being living weapons and all.
So, behold! Tau-9! The Tau for Tao, and the 9 for cats having 9 lives.
“Good Guy confirmed… processing… Request large portions of food.â€
Here’s a little treat for long time followers, back when I was just beginning to see how nice vector-drawn inking could look, I decided briefly to see how a do-over of my first long comic, Revolver Knight would look. Unfortunately, I was pretty burnt out from doing the series the first time around and kind of stopped at there, well that and a couple one-off side story things.
I still have a little interest in revisiting the cast, and they got a cameo in last year’s “Christmas special.â€
Putting aside the general train wreck of mashed up anime and game tropes the story is made up of, on a technical level it bugs me that I have such uneven page margins and the text flow is off in a few spots. I did better attempting to detail the backgrounds while simultaneously screwing up the perspective- partly because I was just beginning to use the program for line art. Eventually I learned it was easier to cheat completely and abuse the skew and perspective tools! Also, FireAlpaca has a lot of helpful ruler tools, but I haven’t really put them to work yet.
Things I do like- main character is incredibly lazy, the frilled lizard sitting on his back, and a cameo by I-No in the crowd watching the unseen parade.
I’d be lying if I said it was a productive day today. I have mostly hashed out the basic rules and mocked up a starter party for my card game, but nothing I care to show off just yet (I’d like to show it off when things get more polished for sure.) Past that, I spent all day waiting on a package that never came and navel gazing, so it’s fitting to post and self-crit a little, don’t you think?
Here’s some character design ideas I had for a continuation of Mega Man Legends before I talked myself out of doing anything with it in favor of trying to come up with original stuff.
I like to think that seeing as how the Bonnes seem to just fall back on pirating when they need the money, Tron wound up getting into engineering legitimately and earned herself some kind of prestigious position, while Roll toiled away in some small-town garage without that stream of ruin-exploring money coming in.
I also figured with the ending of MML2 alluding to the revival of the “old system†we might be seeing the return of older era characters, so I figured it was about time for a Protoman/Zero-esque friend/rival to show up. Never hammered it out much so I wound up skewing him more towards Zero (with a bit of Z Gundam in the armor, cough)
So, since my last Gundam post, I managed to utterly shatter the Zeta’s hip joint after dropping it while applying the “realistic” decals. After about a day’s worth of repair attempts, I wound up caving (after a few days dwelling on it) and buying a second RG Zeta, bent on doing this one “right.” I took my time and really made sure everything fit as snug as it could while applying the stickers as I went, since putting them on at the end was both awkward and what lead to my little mishap. Zeta Number Two went off without a hitch, even though I did cheat a little by borrowing parts from the first one (just the head because the eye sticker cooperated a lot better the first time and the accessories as a temporary measure before I redo them up to more careful standards. I just really wanted to show off early.
That said, as much as I love ogling mech models and building them, I’m not a master builder by far, I pretty much just snap and go with a bare minimum of tools on the side, an exacto, some clippers and a file. I don’t really mind leaving the original finish on my kits since I kind of like them to stay a little toy-like. I should get some markers or learn a little finesse with a brush, because the decals with this kit felt like they exist to punish a guy for not doing things the hard way- they’re not quite transparent on the colored portions, but it’s not too noticeable unless you’re right up in there, and worse, some cover up molded in details. They don’t look bad if you follow up by pressing in along the panel lines with a toothpick afterwards, as they conform to the surface well, but I still imagine they’d look better actually painted in. Maybe next time. Then again, I almost prefer the clean, more anime look it gets without decals period. I more than likely won’t bother with using the whole sheet again at any rate, since while I like the extra stripes and trim lines, the random too-tiny-to-read warning labels around basically every joint don’t do much for me, and I’m not the biggest fan of the ver. Katoki-ish “let’s stamp the mech’s name and serial number all over it” treatment. I’ve seen worse by far, but the larger decals on the main back booster and shield cover up a lot of panel lines and don’t manage conform down into them as well as the smaller ones elsewhere.
Currently I’m displaying it in Wave Rider mode, which holds together impressively well considering how the thing looks. The weakest link is probably the struts connecting it to the back, which frankly don’t do all that much once you have the wing binders clipped into the sides of the shield. They’re made of the softer plastic that the internal skeleton is made out of, which doesn’t like to stay put in either mode, but has backup tabs to rely on. It’s probably for the best they remove easily though since it’s easier than managing the ‘canon’ wraparound motion. I can take or leave the rifle resting across the top of the machine, it doesn’t disrupt the look too badly, but it still juts out similarly to all those old Transformers who had a ‘battle mode’ consisting of a car with a pistol tied to the roof. Also, it’s not super apparent just looking at it, but the legs are actually pretty secure rather than dangling loose like it appears, since the front hip armor is snugged into notched in the wing armor.
As mentioned before, the wing armor and rifle are borrowed from my broken kit and don’t have all their stickers applied yet, though that mostly means that it’s just missing a bunch of white accent lines along the red wing edge.
Even with my fuck up, I totally loved building my first Real Grade kit. I’d love to do another some time, though the selection is kind of limited and the Zeta seems to be the only transforming MS in the lineup. Maybe I’ll shoot for a Valkyrie model next time. I think I may take some pics and comment as I go along on my next build, for the hell of it. This one was especially fun since the internal skeleton you build around is more than just a gimmick like I expected hearing about Master Grades from friends, it makes the final product feel a lot more solid and stable when it’s done. You’re still not going to treat the thing like an action figure, but the fact that it isn’t hollow somehow leads to an overall more satisfying piece, and much like how I loved the D Style line, the fact it retains its transformation ability is a big selling point for me.
You can find your own RG Zeta for about 30 bucks on Amazon. I guess another perk of Gundam kits is they’re easy to come by and pretty affordable overall.
Given that I’m halfway through the year and technically on track, I thought it would be a good time for a little self-assessment on this sketch project, and while I’m at it, go over what I’ve got going on as far as future projects.
Overall, the idea of making myself draw/post every day was simply to overcome my inertia and attempt to keep myself from getting into more major slumps or depressions like I had through the latter half of last year, especially. I guess I could blame a lot of it on my chief motivation for creating over the past 3-4 years in particular was just, “who cares?†I’m hardly anybody online, but I’m not really ashamed of what I’ve done or presently do, so I don’t feel a need to completely reinvent myself, but at the same time I do kind of dislike the overall scattershot content I have over the years thanks to shifting from “Seanbaby knockoff†to “taking this niche of games kind of seriously†to “I’m a real webcomic artist, honey!†to “okay, whatever.†Scattershot is a pretty good description for my approach lately, really. I have a lot of time during my day job where my mind wanders and I have about a dozen projects I’d *like* to do, but really struggle to focus on any one thing. So, by making myself draw a bit daily, I’m keeping myself from feeling rusty while at the same time, hopefully actually improving.
One major thing I’ve failed to stick to was I wanted to practice backgrounds and environments. In part, I kind of feel like the ones I have done haven’t been interesting to post, due to plain-ness and character art getting more attention/feedback in general. I do have a bit of an easier time doing a backdrop around a character, but I’d aimed to produce some re-usable assets to make future comics a bit less plain. I saw a pretty cool tip for drawing rooms on Tumblr that helps with spacing things out, though my ability to actually draw the furniture itself isn’t the most helpful.
Another thing is I’ve been trying to get away from just drawing lazy headshots and busts as filler, just as a general practice- in [+/-] I’ve tried to present a largely banter-centric comic in passably interesting ways, and people do seem to appreciate the effort! I feel like I’m getting a better grasp on figure drawing, though I’ve always been weak at drawing from life and using models. I have an easier time staring at a subject, ‘downloading it,’ then tweaking the details after the fact to strengthen the resemblance. Legs and hips are still a problem area for me, and feet are awful. Still, by blocking out areas and doing line art over them, I’m liking the result a lot more than just trying to sketch out the full body. That’s part of why I’ve been using a more painty style off and on, it also tends to look a bit, I don’t know, “richer†than when I do my default anime cel shading thing.
Off the canvas, I admit I’ve been having time management issues I need to get around. It’s not so much a big deal for these, but I worry about procrastinating on commissions (though it’s been a while since I had one.) It’s not been a problem in the past, it’s just a habit I want to break. The hell of it is, it’s not even like I’m wasting time gaming or anything, I keep getting tired or falling into funks and just watching YouTube or or staring at the wall for hours on work days, then spending my days off just reveling in not needing to do anything so I don’t start until fairly late in the day. I’m fighting that trend today already by writing down my thoughts instead of just stewing about it! Maybe I’ll try drawing a background to celebrate.
Of course, this is all just me talking about myself, which I don’t enjoy nearly as much as it might seem I do. I really do appreciate any feedback you guys have on my work, and I try to reply to all my comments unless you’re somebody I happen to chat with on messenger on the side a lot anyway. So let me know if I put up something you like, or if you notice something particularly glaring I ought to work on in the future, let me know!
So in the background here, I’ve pretty much got the new series I want to start, Angel Dust: Bleed plotted out, but have been putting off starting it because I have trouble with beginnings and I want it to have a good, strong start. I waffle a little on whether to begin all the way at the beginning or start somewhere further in, but I think I’m pretty settled on starting with the latter so when some motivations are revealed it will have a bit more punch. I’m hoping that you’ll all like it, it’s a bit different from what you might be used to from my usual recent work.
I’m still picking at [+/-] off and on, and plan to finally post a proper comic on Freedom Wars next week since I’ll be off. I would also like to start doing some one offs just about the girls for the hell of it since they’re fun characters to write. I’ve got a lot of material in my head about their backgrounds, motivations and so on. Some alternate-setting stuff would be fun too. One I was kicking around was kind of a Slayers-ized account of my Guild Wars 2 play, another kind of a throwback to 80’s cyberpunk anime aesthetics.
The other project I’ve been picking away at slowly and mentioned before is an attempt to make a dungeon-crawler/JRPG themed card game where the players build and fight through a dungeon while taking on each other for loot and glory. I’m about to where I’ll have something testable, so I’m actually kind of excited for this project in particular, especially once I get the basics nailed down and can begin the fun part of making a buttload of characters and dungeon chambers. It would be really cool if I could get this to take off enough to make it into a legit product down the line, too. As a fun side thing too, I think it would be fun to do some fandom-themed “doujin pack†boosters to go with it… as if I weren’t already likely to put a bunch of shout-outs to my inspirations into the core game anyway.