So, uh, stay tuned. I'm working on a much longer blog post, and it IS for today, that being, September 14th, 2016, but it may or may not get posted today depending on how bad the glitching is.
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At least not yesterday. Well, that's a lie. I did. Just...not the art I needed to. See, funny story there. I knew going to ComicFury would be a bad idea, and it's precisely because of how easily I can get distracted while there. But in this case! Not a distraction reading. Not a distraction talking. Oh no. A distraction messing around with an art resource. Specifically this one. (Ah, be warned. It can be NSFW. You can remove clothing and this isn't Barbie Doll anatomy at play. Which is one reason why it's such a good artistic tool: it's actually surprisingly versatile with its more realistic physics and real thought put in.) So from it, I made the entire main cast of female riders, plus Ana. And this is what I came up with. Now, I have information on their heights, from my October 8th blog post last year: Ruby, center stage, is 5'10". The program didn't quite have the best mask option, and at the time I was still new to messing around with the hair so I wasn't able to get the right style of hair for her, and the program didn't include any coats so I used the closest thing to one, and it didn't exactly have hairties or bracelets (not to mention, no bows) so I had to improvise and it didn't have arrows so I had to substitute a sword for one, but otherwise...this is pretty much what she looks like. Whitney, AKA Sky, AKA Shini, superhero name Sky Shinobi, is the tallest, at 6'. Now, her outfit wasn't really in there at all; there were no Power Rangersesque uniforms. Those are her civilian clothes. There's also no helmet, but I did get her headband and her cloth wrappings (though, in her actual uniform, they don't cover her mouth), not to mention, was able to substitute for her helmet with a headpiece and visor, which is semi-cannonically part of her outfit, just...not quite like that. Her spirit totem, clairvoyant eyes, manifests as two twin pistols, so that's accurate enough. Sally, full superhero name White Sailor, real name Samantha Spencer, is 5'8". She wears a standard sailor fuku, which this captures. Now, the program didn't exactly have bazookas, yet alone a bazooka tied to thread, so I had to use the sealed form, a necklace with a whistle on it, though unfortunately program limitations placed it beneath. Still, this is probably THE most accurate of the whole bunch. That's a combat-ready Sally. Hannah, superhero name Aeris, is also 5'8". (Though, somehow she ended up slightly taller than Sally.) Her spirit totem is a simple white staff, as shown. Her shoes and socks and pants are fully accurate, and I think this pseudo-sailor outfit is in fact what I have for my notes, too. Plus, so too is the ballroom mask in there. And, this is the hair type I had in mind. So, quite accurate for a combat-ready Hannah, though civilian...not so much. Amy (full name Amethyst) is the furthest over, and starts the story at 5'6" and ends at 5'11". The gold you see over her hands is a manifestation of her spirit totem, which is...literally, her fists. She's obviously a vampire (being Ruby's daughter and all that), thus the classical black hair/red eyes combo. I'm not quite sure if this is her combat outfit, but she hangs most around Vili and has a similar fondness for fighting (albeit being more kind outside of one), so the similarity is intentional. Vili (real name Suzane, superhero name Violet Ranger) is also 5'6" tall, and while I sucked at getting a combat-ready look (no ability to give her a smirk, and my limited understanding of the program hindering my ability to give her a combatant stance), the look's accurate enough: hair, eyes, outfit, all basically what I had in mind. Her combat knife there is her spirit totem. (Though, now that I think about it, I forgot to include her gloves. Whoops!) Which brings us to D.D. (real name Melony), who is 5' tall. Pintsized, but mostly accurate. Her hair's wavy strawberry blonde (at least in superhero form; it darkens to more brown outside), which I think was captured well enough, though I don't think the frilly dress was captured quite as well as I'd like. Still, wand in one hand (not quite the right design, but oh well), this is a fair approximation of her. Ana there in the other corner I don't have many specific notes on. Basically, black hair, milky blue eyes is all I have; I just assumed she'd wear casual clothing. So there you have it. My cast. This is an immensely-helpful artistic tool for me, mainly because I've never actually drawn most of them. The only one I've gotten close to drawing is Sally, and badly at that. I've had their looks in mind for ages. Hannah in particular. (Though, Hannah has a different look in civilian form, one of the only riders with a drastic transformation. Sally's is basically her dark green hair turning to a dark brown; Vili's from dark purple to black; D.D.'s fades to brown. Hannah goes from long blonde to shortish black. She's also among the five riders to have a clear wardrobe change in civilian form, the others being D.D., Whitney, Sally, and Gary.) But in spite of that, I've never taken the time to draw them out. Now! Granted. The program has its imperfections. There's no program in existence which can, start to finish, create a character and have that be what I need. I've used three FaceMaker programs commonly before. I've used another program on rinmaru games. (Which apparently keeps on updating with time, so might be worth taking another look at.) I've also used the anime character maker. These are all good for me, because with my limited artistic skills...I can't really show you myself. Here, see what I mean, when I tried to take the image above and make it myself. Now I don't know about you, but I, personally, consider the above to be an absolute piece of junk. It contains some details which are canonical that the program lacked, but everything which was so natural about the other one is so stilted and forced in this one.
The anatomy, the proportions, the expressions, everything just isn't quite as good here. Because I am not a good artist, and I cannot bring my vision to life. Not in the same way with my own worthless hands as I can with the programs. So they're a useful tool. A bit of a crutch! Yes, there's no denying that. But a useful tool, all the same. Meaning, it was time well-spent, because it helped me get a better sense of the characters. When the only one prior to this that I had down was Ruby. Turns out: art is hard.
Really hard. My tablet is ridiculously hard to use, to the point where manually using my mouse is faster. Speaking of my mouse, when I'm drawing, my lines are incredibly unsteady, and the auto-correct feature is virtually worthless, so my lineart is atrocious. I spent three hours (give or take) on the cover page last night. And know how much I got done? The lineart and the flats, both not nearly as well as I'd like. Know what that leaves me to do? Detail work: things that were left out of the lineart and flats for simplicity in coloring's sake. Texture work: making the clothing Ruby is wearing actually look like clothing. Multiple coloring layers, to add depth to the drawing. Lighting, adding shadows and highlight. Maybe more miscellaneous details I'm overlooking. This, for what amounts to one drawing. One, fairly large, drawing. One, single, piece of art, on a single page. ...Some of my pages have six. And if you multiply an average of four or so per page, across 22 pages, and you've got, what? 88 drawings I need to make? And this is my woes for just one. So, uh, yeah. Red Hood Rider is being made. It's just being made at an abysmally slow pace with a lot of quality already down the drain. It's done.
I've made up my mind: if I don't have all the pages finished, tough luck, I'm releasing them anyway. I don't care if that means I've got zero pages or 22 pages or all 23 pages colored. I'm releasing on October 8th, no matter what. I brought out all 23 pages, with the clear intent: I'm going to use them to draw. And I will draw well. I paid ComicFury a visit, mostly to upload my pages. But also as a way to slowly get into the community, bit by bit, piece by small piece. I'm not going to religiously track the forums there--that'll eat up too much time. Would love to, but I can't. Instead, I'll drop in every day or so, pick and choose, and go from there for what I can. I'll need to download them on my laptop (where the drawing will happen), and also need to reattach my tablet because I think it'll be helpful. But I'm going to be doing this. Maybe not immediately (Dancing with the Stars apparently started tonight), but soon enough! I swear it. I'm going to release Red Hood Rider on October 8th. No matter what gets in my way. I'm almost there.
I'm almost there. It's actually less than one page, like half of one page. So I'm seriously almost there. I'M ALMOST THERE. I mean...crud, I've got less than a month left, butstill. For the drawing half, I'M ALMOST THERE. It's seriously almost done. I'm getting there. Red Hood Rider will soon become reality. That's a promise. I know, I've been promising it since last year. Pretty much at this time, last year, in fact. I wanted a December release. Then I wanted January. Then, February. Then I pushed it back to July. And now, back to October. What's so different? Because I'm there. Nothing can stop me now, not even myself. I'M ALMOST THERE! Today, at work, I spent some time doing some expanding on someone I felt could use some more. Namely, in this case, Sally. I know, she's a secondary protagonist, she already gets a lot of insane upgrades relevant to other characters, butstill, this was a cool one so I thought I'd give it to her: Hornet Swarm. Basically, homing missiles weren't something I'd thought of as being in her arsenal until now, but it makes total sense for them to be present, and this technique would be the ultimate extension of it: each missile would have variable warheads to it, akin to Ruby's trick arrows, except using Sally's elemental powers combined with a touch of real-life warhead types and some sci-fi ones here and there. Speaking of sci-fi, each warhead would be capable of shooting lasers, as a 'stinger'. This, by itself, would be impressive, but it's actually a move learned fairly early-on. What makes the move impressive is when she combines it with ALL her attack multipliers: I'd have to look at my old blog post (never did get it into my notes) regarding what types of missile attacks I gave her, namely, whether she has missile massacre techniques, but regardless of whether she has them or not, she has others that would be sufficient ON THEIR OWN. RPShotG (as in, RPG + Shotgun) is a technique I developed for her a while back, involving a blast of energy. Her quad-barreled assault (half attack power for four times the attack rate, optionally on both arms for eight times the missiles launched) is another one. If you combine them with them launching those homing missiles, suddenly, you've got a swarm of drones, for both attack and defense, each with massive utility. On the attack side of things, you've got an attack which can attack from every angle, delivering laser shots, and then accelerating. You see this in mecha shows all the time: the attack will blast through unprotected enemies...and for those with protection, the missile accelerating into impact often punctures through whatever defenses exist, and then delivers that payload (which in Sally's case...can be any of her powers, from generic explosion to poison to acid to gas to power nullifier). If that fails, then the sheer number of drones with their physical mass can be used to basically trap the opponent, doing anything from crushing them to carrying them off a cliff. (Mind you, Sally's still a rider, so whatever she does, it's nonlethal. It's just that if she has need for this technique in the first place, she's up against superhumans that are strong enough to survive that sort of punishment.) On the defensive side of things, you've got the lasers able to blast most attacks out. If one laser isn't enough, use more laser. If that's still not enough to stop an attack, have a drone intercept. If that's still not enough, then have multiple drones in attack form intercept. If it's still not enough, then have the drones just form a massive wall using their combined strength to form a solid shield. And if the attack is capable of getting through that, use drone detonations and movement to subtly push the attack away from Sally. ...When all else fails? ...Sally just dodges. Because, unlike a queen bee, she can move from her spot freely. She's able to move continuously as she's doing this. Furthermore, this technique only requires one hand, leaving the OTHER hand free to use her thread-based abilities. Her drones can also increase her movement speed and help her fly, by carrying her along. (She can fly at that point in the story anyway, but not easily.) This also doubles as a nice distraction: because it's expected the queen would be at the center of the swarm, she can just move to a remote location and let her drones appear to be protecting something when they're not. It's very largely akin to a cross between Ruby's Arbalest Armor and her Archangel super modes, in that it unlocks Sally's powers at their fullest: all her rocket techniques, AND all her thread techniques, AND all her elemental powers, WHILE still at full combat strength, speed, and endurance (if not higher for all). The only drawback? Sally has to continuously produce new drones for this form to be at its most effective, similar to how Ruby needs to shoot wings in her Archangel form, but this is only a little more tiring than firing a normal rocket/blast/arrow technique, which they can do almost indefinitely. Even if not for that, Sally just so happens to be the rider whose element represents endurance (well, one of them, anyway), so this is not a serious risk. Her chance of getting magical fatigue is infinitesimally small. Oh. And back to the actual art part. Last night, know how I said I wasn't gonna do anything? Well, I didn't really feel like much, but I did do something, at least a little. I'm not sure I'm liking what I'm doing with Dale, but I quite like the drawing of Ryan. I think that it quite well captures that "he" is still Ruby, just...in a different form.
Soyeah. That's been my Red Hood Rider updates thusfar. We've had our nap, so I need to get on to the actual pages and finish them. October 8th is rapidly approaching, and also pushing me is the wall we have up at work, where my goals for 2016 (Red Hood Rider among them) are prominently displayed. I also have to avoid distractions. Including for things which aren't necessarily bad (Heroes of Gistou, the new novel, is among them), but which will guarantee that I don't make that date if I work on them instead of on bringing Ruby to life. Understandable, given the staff meeting.
Anyway. Good news is, I like what I'm drawing. Bad news is, between family night and the staff meeting, I haven't drawn much. I've got an hour and a half to spare, but...I'm not planning on doing much in it. Too tired. I mean, it could've been worse. I almost got myself addicted to an MMORPG just because of that google search I did yesterday in regards to my art. You probably wouldn't be surprised to learn I found four extra archer images. (Which from that game, appear to be from the Ranger class. In particular, the first. The fourth needs a flip to be in the right hand, but otherwise fits.) The number of beautiful images from the game Aion made me interested in the game itself, and it's apparently entirely free to play and that got my trigger finger a bit itchy. The main reason I didn't is because it apparently requires a download. I'm sure that's safe enough, it's just something I'm not sure I'm ready to commit myself to doing for the desktop. I never download anything for it, unless you count saving images or word files or the like. So...I'm hesitant. I bookmarked the link, so I didn't flat-out refuse, but I also didn't go through with it. Almost did, though. As far as the actual art goes: I didn't do anything on the page, which means I'm not only a day behind, but also waaaaaaaaaaay behind on pages, but I think it'll be much easier, because I did do something important. Now, granted. I didn't finish the image. But...take a look for yourself. So I know the proportions and anatomy aren't perfect. I did this entirely without reference images in regards to their bodies, going purely off of memory and feel and guessing for what it should be. I did use references for Gary's face and for Dion's face, in that I took the art pages I've drawn OF them (there were two inked pages of Gary which proved useful along with about four or so of my drawn pages), and used them as my starting point.
I did want one thing right, though. Even if the proportions and anatomy would end up being "off" (Gary's stance is pretty bad, and Dion's shoulders are way too wide in relationship to his legs), even if the clothing wouldn't show as intended (those "black sweats" have an appearance more akin to black jeans fabric-wise; they're too tight), I wanted them to have their feet all end in the same spot (thus the bottom line), and for based off of that, their differences in height to show up. And I think I succeeded there. There's only a 2" difference between Gary and Dion. Maybe the way Dion's drawn makes it look a little more than that (probably like 3-4 inches), but there's still a notable height difference in spite of them having faces that are about the same size (and therefore, proportions). And Dale's right in the middle of them. Plus, the real accomplishment here: I managed to give each of them different facial structures. Now, the key is...I need to actually be able to make those faces consistently, in order for me to avert Six Face Syndrome, which will be incredibly hard with different angles, perspectives, and most importantly sizes. But with this handy guide, instead of being impossible, it'll just be difficult! Just gotta say: holy smokes, what a beautiful image. (I also found another one.) I need to draw Ruby like that at least once, for practice, because it's just...well, that kind of look is exactly the way she's supposed to look.
I found it completely by accident, too. See, I was trying to find a way to patch a bad art job on the page I started yesterday. I also didn't want to draw him in the outfit I had place Dion in both because I didn't think it suited his personality and because it was a pain to draw. (Especially that.) So, I came up with the idea he would cast a spell, and quick-shift from one wardrobe to another. It might sound ridiculous, but that's a legit use of vampire powers, and it saves me a lot of trouble, so I figure, why not? It is my story, after all. Anyway, I found that image by accident, but I really like it. What my plan is for tonight is for me to make a drawing with 3-4 guys on it: essential is Gary and Dion, with the extras in this case being Dale and Ryan, in that I need to draw them so that I can get a better nail down in their differences and attempt to avert Six Face Syndrome (more like two, actually) and basically, get it so that I've got actual character models in place. Then, from there, continue on the art. Soyeah, got some work to do, but plenty of time. Nothin'.
That's what I have to show for today. I need to clear my inbox (I need to do that every day since I get like 30 emails every day from job sites and 100 or so from mafia-related business), and I need to double-down on the pages and actually draw them. |
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