Dake Does Blogspot

secret midnight posting

2011-06-29T21:44:00.001-07:00

SSSHHHH

Silver Age Sentinels

2011-06-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

As I watch City of Heroes attempt to successfully download for the fourth time today, I think I've decided to hammer out this, and see which of the two reaches the finish line first. Right now we're at 2%.

I don't have the sheet on hand, and I don't remember what Skills I've given him ranks of, but the character is originally a quantum physicist. His name is Frank Fobbleson (this may change. I'm currently browsing 420chan and staring at names) and he's married to the lovely Ms. Phoebe Fobbleson (Frank now confirmed).
After one of those wonderfully comic book-y lab accidents, Frank Fobbleson was blasted out of reality while attempting to create a bridge between alternate universes.
Meanwhile, the mysterious monolith soon to be known as Quantum explodes into existence at the feet of Kangchenjunga...

Although he doesn't need to, Superman eats, sleeps, and brushes his teeth-- these activities aren't consciously part of his Clark Kent disguise, but rather part of his psychological profile as a whole. He grew up in Smallville, raised by the Kents, and that human upbringing is inherently part of his makeup.

Quantum is a character lacking those human habits and necessities. Essentially, he continually flies around the world, helping people, stopping only to locate where he is needed next. He does not remember his life as Frank Fobbleson-- he is in fact, another person entirely now. His past and personality are now the 'suit' he wears, which isn't exactly a suit, per se. The 'cloth' cannot be torn or destroyed, nor can it be removed from him. The 'suit' and the 'man' are one and the same now, the exhaust of the energy of the hyper-intelligence of all the collected universes, realities, and dimensions.

The lab accident replaced, or maybe instantly reincarnated, the energy known as Frank Fobbleson with the new energy known as Quantum, I suppose.

And then there's poor Phoebe Fobbleson. Quantum is clearly built upon the foundation of Frank Fobbleson, leading her to believe that she can retrieve or access her husband's identity. Her attempts to make the energies individual are based more on appeals to his heart, his emotions, his memories. Although she misses her husband, and is willing to spend the rest of her life trying to get him back, she knows his never ending crusade is doing the world good, and will thus never resort to building some kind of dark matter disruptor machine to halve the whole.

If these characters were built for a story, rather than a role-playing game, the story would definitely be centered on Phoebe, as she works towards rebuilding the past. Her frailties and faults would be in sharp contrast with the demi-god who is an unyielding architect of the world of tomorrow. It would be less a story about a man and a woman, and more about the past's struggles to remain relevant, causing it only to impede on the progress of the present, with the stakes being the whole of the future.

As far as mechanics go-- the sheet depicts Frank Fobbleson. He has a few ranks of Highly Skilled, but most of his points are poured into Item of Power. The Item of Power is in turn decked out with Alternate Form, giving him increased strength and speed. His punches land somewhere around 3d6+6 (again, I don't have the sheet. 3d6 is the bulk, but I don't remember if the +X is +2, +4, or +6). He has a Special Attack, which can only be activated after he uses Environmental Influence.
Essentially, he creates a 'storm' above the map. The storm is a dip in reality, like a hole in our universe, where energies are drawn together. Acting as a conduit, Quantum uses these pooled energies as an offensive maneuver. This attack deals around 2d6+4. As he levels up, the power and damage will increase, as will the amount of time he has to spend in the air, gathering the energies. He will eventually be able to shoot smaller blasts of energy at a more rapid rate.

City of Heroes has once again collapsed and fucked up, so I think I'm done trying to make it run. It managed to work its way up to around 40% this time, which is admittedly farther than past download attempts...

Wallpaper?

2011-05-16T09:56:00.001-07:00

So I made this. And I really like how it came out. I think I want to start playing with inks more...

Thor Stuff

2011-04-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

I was doodling after class yesterday and decided to draw Thor.
Then I decided to color it.

Time Wasting

2011-03-08T10:30:00.000-08:00

Tumblr!

I set up a tumblr account, although I have no idea what I'm going to be doing with it that's different from this thing. Maybe I'm spread out over the internet too much. But... I like the crazies I meet online.

There's a group who does this 'one movie in four frames' thing, and it's become my newest fetish.

Awesome.

BAMF

2011-03-01T20:23:00.000-08:00

Joking with a friend about superhero costumes, I worked this out while taking a break from the Idas stuff. I'd love to take this idea to finish, since I think the costume is really cute, and there are a couple neat ideas in the design that I'd like to follow through to the end on. It's super generic, but I think that's part of the charm.

The friend is telling me to finish it, so I guess that's that. In a couple days, I'll hammer out another draft.

Showing off stuff like this makes me feel absurdly self-conscious. I know nobody looks at rough work with too critical an eye, but I just end up staring at it, going, "That needs to be different. Light doesn't work like that. What's anatomy, Dake? Why does this look like sloppy crap, sir?" Stepping out of your comfort zone is definitely a good thing...

It's down, it's dirty, it's rough. Deal with it.

Ah Well

2011-02-28T12:59:00.000-08:00

The folks over at Project: Rooftop recently held a costume redesign contest for Aquaman, and this was intended to be my submission. Unfortunately, the attachment kept getting lost, and I didn't find this out until after the deadline had passed. Thus, we arrive at the conclusion of my troubled relationship with AT&T, as this kind of nonsense is totally unacceptable.

I love Aquaman's classic look too much, so the design is nothing revolutionary. Since this was for a costume contest, the pose is very boring and generic, but that's because it had to showcase the design. Mera was tons of fun to work on, as was Black Manta. The fish-- not so much. Easy, but tedious.

Color by Numbers

2011-01-31T07:38:00.001-08:00

Alrighty. Let's just dive in and do this.

Layouts always start while I'm scripting-- I actually do them both simultaneously, just because it helps me map out how long I want a scene to carry on for. It also helps me manage how much space I have to work with. Using the thumbnails, I create a full-size document in Photoshop and build the panel borders first. My thumbnails almost always indicate the panel dimensions I'm looking for, so it's a pretty easy and quick process. Then I'll go in with a brush and roughly block in the shapes and compositions. I'll also type out the dialogue and place it in a general area I'm thinking it should be in.

Mostly this stage is just to test out camera angles and refresh the script if I find I have too many or too few words.

Then come the actual pencils. I also might move the camera, if I really think it needs to be somewhere else, or if I can improve on what I mapped out in the roughs. My scanner is really small, so I draw on printer paper (SIN OF SHAME, I know), but since my pencils are mostly obscured by the coloring process, what's the point in using a massive scanner and really nice paper? In the future, I'll probably change my method, but for now I like it.

I'll also lock in the position of the lettering, overlaying the bubbles and adding in the tails. As a general rule, the first person to speak should always be on the left. There are times you'll need to break this rule, and there are ways of doing so gracefully. Crossing tails is not one of them. Never ever cross dialogue tails. You're cleverer than having to resort to that, find a way. Rework the dialogue, bump someone else's words into the previous panel-- do what you need to, but never cross dialogue tails.

I like to color backgrounds first, usually because they're the most technical and boring, while characters are really fun to work on. If I start with characters, I usually find I lose my energy by the time it comes to background stuff, and the results suffer because of that. This page's backgrounds were super easy. Usually I like to have strong primary and secondary light sources, as they make things dramatic and atmospheric. How you light something can really save your ass, and is usually the difference between something looking really cool and really crappy. Even if your camera is the most boring thing in the world, your scene can still be redeemed if it's interestingly lit.
On towards the characters. I like to start with the skin, as that grounds the characters for me and gives them a soul. If I start with the hair or clothes, it just feels weird, and the results are never something I'm happy with. Dark to light, light to dark, I go either way, but usually dark to light, as layering the highlights helps me work in unison with the lighting established in the backgrounds. While I usually do my backgrounds all on one layer, I'll keep skin layers separate, so I can go in and fiddle with the hue and saturation if I need to.
I repeat the process for coloring hair and clothes. As scenes typically last for more than one page, I build a color library while working on the first page, and then just reference it for the remainder of the scene. By the third or fourth page, the game is pretty much just color by numbers, remembering light sources and opacity levels for the layers.

After finishing the characters, I'll go in and play with some effects in the Layers Style section-- usually Overlay. I throw on a subtle black line around the characters to help them pop from the background, and roam the canvas for a couple minutes, looking for things to touch up. This is also the point where I'll make the special effects, if any are required.

I probably should have acknowledged these earlier, but I always have these four books in a pile next to the computer or on the desk. They always get put back on the shelf, but I always find myself wandering back to them, going, "Now, how did they..."

The splatter stuff you've been noticing in the backgrounds in Idas? You can totally blame Drew Struzan for that. I guess more than any other Struzan work, I'm usually looking at this Hellboy poster detail:
So that's that, gang.

Round Three

2011-01-22T10:52:00.001-08:00

Well, here we go again. I'm starting to pump out the third chunk of Idas on Monday. I used some kind of stock Photoshop brush to create the tiny little stars around the sun. Pretty cool how it came out, I think.

The pose the girl is in looks reeeeallly familiar. I looked through all my reference folders and books, searching for that pose. Eventually I just settled on it being such a generic, dull pose that of course it looked familiar, because I've seen it everywhere.

Let me know if I've accidentally swiped from someone, though.

Merry Christmas, Gang

2010-12-23T20:55:00.000-08:00

I'm sure I'm missing out on some wonderfully catty jokes about Idas' pointy elf ears, but I'm just not funny enough to think of any right now. So you get this, you filthy animals.

I hate these holiday pictures. It always feels obnoxious and attention whore-ish. At least I avoided putting Idas in a turkey suit for Thanksgiving.

It started out as a doodle and just... grew. I haven't played with inks in a really long time, it feels like.

Needs More Yellow

2010-12-19T11:59:00.000-08:00

As far as rendering goes, this page is probably the lightest I feel I've gone on it. Usually I'm working and reworking secondary lighting and throwing down grunge brushes, but this time I let the basic round brush do most of the work, and I'm happier for it. It feels a lot more open, I think, than the busy clutter I'm usually working with.

Panel Pencils

2010-12-14T08:22:00.000-08:00

There's something that got lost in the finished panel, I think. I'm going to work on using the pencils, not just treating them as placeholders for shapes and colors.

Some Kind of Genesis

2010-12-09T18:28:00.001-08:00

I guess we'll start out with a picture of where all the other stuff I'll be posting is born. I'm going to try to not forget my login info, and post regularly, although at this point I have no idea what I'll post about.

I see Helvetica isn't available in the fonts section. That's pretty sad. Maybe if I play with the Html a little bit...

2009-12-13T19:24:00.000-08:00

TEST TEST TEST

IT WORKS!