The Drayke of Draskalmory

Well, I started a new full-time job recently, so apologies for any lateness of my posts; chances are I’m not going to get around to a full 2-week summary for this season (besides, its already 5 weeks in now, ain’t it?). I’ll just say that you should be watching Attack on Titan, Gargantia, Devil Survivor, Hataraku Maou-sama, Railgun II and Nyaruko II at the least. There’s actually alot of quality out there this season, its all good.

A friend also pointed out to me that I’d foolishly forgotten to add Shimaihen character sheets despite promising to do so on the Aniventure page. This is now fixed. They’ll be on that page, and also HERE, for your Aniventure usage. It’s a vastly upgraded version of the original sheet incorporating alot of the things I’ve learnt and had suggested to me to improve the layout, so even if you don’t use Shimaihen but do use the original, you should still upgrade your sheets to these ones.

Anyway, as for the rest, here’s another artwork for you:

It’s Susie Drayke, the Princess of Draskalmory. Susie was an NPC in my second Retoria Dungeons and Dragons campaign; and one who was universally reviled and hated by my players. A massive ojou-sama type; arrogant and self-important, you know, the classic princess. Moreover, she was after another NPC (who was also the love interest of one of PCs), Prince Darien Silverscale.

In a moment where they went back in time, they accidently altered the timeline so that she did in fact marry him and then spent several sessions figuring out a way to fix this; which founded one of my favourite mini-arcs. Nevertheless, her attitude was very fun for me to roleplay; and I felt she needed a re-drawing (an earlier version of her was found in the 2011 calendar, if you care).

Amusingly enough, I recently re-introduced her granddaughter, Arasia (or ‘Sia’) Drayke in the third campaign; I think she’s generally found more acceptance so far, probably due to her better personality (tsundere combat nut!).

Anyway, here’s the wall version:

That’s about it for today, but stay tuned.

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Astaraye: Fabulous Fusilier

Yikes, its nearly been a month again since I posted last, I am getting lazy.

Anyway, here’s another new sketch of Astaraye, previously seen in her heroic form here, and now 550% more fabulous:

Well, see, recently in our third D&D 4th ed campaign in my setting Retoria, everyone finally reached Paragon. In Raye’s case, this has meant her becoming a Verunan Azure Fusilier. I then realised, after the fact, that their uniform on her would make her look hilariously fabulous, so I had to draw it. I even gave her the classic Lelouch/Zero pose and a Phoenix Feather in her Tricorn Hat to add to the fabulous factor already made pretty high by the double capes and uniform in general (however, she has dropped the long sleeves once worn by her sponsor, the pirate queen Lilliana LuGunther Veruna, in her youth).

Anyway, here’s the wallpaper crop:

In other news; I started a community succession game in Dwarf Fortress called Lakebones, the topic for which can be reached at Bay12 here. There is still space for about 3-5 supervisors and any number of migrants if you wish to join in. Don’t know what Dwarf Fortress is? It’s a hyper-real simulationist roguelike with the eventual goal of being to create and interact with everything in a fully proceedurally generated world. At the moment, the highlight is its Fortress Mode, but the Adventurer Mode part of it is certainly gaining in momentum. You can read about it at the Wiki here.

As for Aniventure Shimaihen, its still making good progress, and at current projections I should get it out before the New Year, though theres a growing chance I’ll have to slightly overshoot that and release in January 2013. At the moment, the bestiary is clogging me down a bit, and I may restructure it to be more lightweight (which, if I follow the idea I currently have means fewer creatures, but still about 80, rather than the original proposed 120~ish). In more positive light, the massive errata section is nearly done, and the mutations/create your own race section has basically been complete for some time; so I’d say its about 85% complete at this time, clocking in at around 120 A4 pages right now.

I’m also working on a companion Microsoft Excel character sheet for it with several (wonderfully complex) autocalculating features that I’ll release the full version of here at the same time as I let Shimaihen out. For now though, you can check out this Early Alpha Version 1A that has most of the complex bits done for the first page.

I’ll also get around to looking at the next anime season soon, probably posting the preview mid-December if I can manage it.

Lots of bits and bobs, eh? I guess that happens if you leave posting for a month! Anyway, stay tuned, thats all for now!

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Drakahn of Perpetual Motion

Tiny, short post today, just for the usual sketch. This time its featuring another Drakahn NPC and resident gunslinger from my 3rd 4E Dungeons and Dragons Campaign, Astaraye Couslynd:

Click the image for the full size version

Most of the time, she’s just called Raye, though.

When I first concieved her character concept, she was meant to demonstrate visually to my players the progress of things like clothing fashions and general technology in the 50 years that have passed between campaign 2 and campaign 3. But since then, she has developed a good chunk of her own personality. Mostly, she combines (ditz + childlike demeanor + extreme acrobat + bottomless stomach) into a rather bizarre combo, but I guess it works. One of her great-grandmothers is Alicia Silverscale (seen in the previous post), and she has Teres Couslynd on the other side (a Rogue with a brief appearance in campaign 2). She certainly inherits her bounciness (and eye/tail colour) from the latter, routinely leaping 20+ feet with her powers (she’s a Pursuit Avenger/Acrobatics Rogue).

Frankly, I’m rather happy about how she turned out here; it perfectly communicates what she’s about, and every element of her, from the denim hotpants to the break action pistols turned out decent. Even the classic anime ‘Blehh!’ insult with the pulled eyelid worked!

This one has no wallpaper version, sadly. I tried a few things, but couldn’t get her to work well at this point. Perhaps later, if I re-illustrate a new large version of the party Assassin/Sorcerer Sasha, I might do a joint wall like the prior Alicia/Zakura one.

Thats all for now. I’ll probably post an initial thoughts about the new anime season when I’ve seen ep 2 of everything. Some things have suprised me about it, actually.

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Return of the Desirable Drakahn

Whew, I’m recalling a rather old and obscure post with this title, one I made back in 2009, nearly three years ago. But hey, its relevant, because I also decided to re-visit good old Alicia Silverscale with my most recent sketchwork.

Its actually kinda interesting when you receive that “holy cra~? Did I really used to think that this was amazing…?” feeling when studying old artworks. Because I really used to think the stuff on that old post was great. Not so much these days!

Anyways, I present to you a brand new Alicia:

As per normal, click to see full size.

And as will continue to be normal from now on, all the full size images are stitched images from two different scans (darn those bigger sketchbooks, though I like the extra space). The stitching on this one is probably even more obvious than the last Illyana one. Oh well.

Anyhow, if you take the time to check the older sketch, you’ll notice that her outfit is considerably different. Her leather tunic is now beneath a waistcoat and is a regular kind rather than a studded one, she dropped her tiara, her weird lace-bracer things got upgraded into more correct looking long composite gauntlets, her spats became proper trousers, her pauldrons look less rounded, and her bastard sword, Azurewrath, got a re-design (though it was invisible in the old picture that included it, as spectresheathing is her favourite ability).

This is, actually, more how I envisioned her originally, but I guess I couldn’t quite put that onto paper when I was less skilled all those years ago.

Since I’m actually on the third dungeons and dragons campaign in my setting now, which is 70 years after the one she was a main NPC in, she is no longer with us in game. However, her great-grandson is now a Player Character, after the same player married her son in the previous (2nd) campaign, which is pretty cool.

Anyway, I actually decided to draw her again partly after re-creating her using Soul Calibur V’s Create-A-Soul. I managed a decent match there too, though some concessions were made where parts were missing. I figured I should properly do her visage on paper as a result.

Here’s a wallpaper of this:
Another ridiculously simple rendition, but oh well.

By and the by, seems like my crazy idea to try an IndieGoGo drive was an utter failure, at least so far. Not a sausage has been raised! Never mind. At the end of the day, if I’ve increased awareness of Aniventure, however small an amount, then I guess its still a success in the long run. Still a bit of shame though, would have been nice to get an ISBN number for it.

See you again soon.

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And here we go again…

I think I’m beyond excuses… another month, another post. I imagine its going to stay this way for the near-future since I seem to have so little time to give to blogging at the moment.

For one, I’ve been distracted by Xenoblade Chronicles of late. Damn good game. Add to that the fact that I have a new epic Space Opera campaign for Aniventure to be planning for, now titled Homura no Tengoku (Flame of Heaven) which I’m rather excited about. So yeah, I’m consumed by stuff to do already.

However, I will definately attempt to push out an Anime Preview as per usual, so don’t worry about that.

Oh, and as a side note, I’ve finally started typing up the supplement for Aniventure. This was previously titled ‘Magic & Mayhem’ or something dross like that but its gained a new title for now of “Aniventure Shimaihen” (lit. Companion Volume) since that is really what its going to be, with a bestiary of fantastic Japanese mythical beasts, a crapton of new powers, rules, archetypes, a new race and mutation system and more besides. Given the amount of content here, I don’t think you need to hold your breath in waiting for it. Its very much at the early stages still.

Additionally, I’m quite happy with the current beta of The Enemy Within, its polished enough and relatively bug-less, something that rarely happens, so I find it quite likely I’ll actually meet my crazy New Years goal of getting a 0.8 version of it out this year, even if its not as comprehensive as I would have hoped. But comprehensive can be shot for what I care, because a bug-free version is a hard thing to get done.

Right, so I’ve nattered about alot of positive progress in things other than blogging, so, as you know, that means I have to proceed to dump some artwork needlessly. 😀

Today, I’m giving an unholy trinity of lovely ladies, two of which are also in widescreen wallpaper size for your desktop enjoyment.

As always, click on them to get full sized! Lets begin!

Yep, its an Ilyana, whom I’m ever obsessed and fanboyish about, sporting a customised outfit with a propensity for excessive bolt symbols. I like to think my Dungeon Crawl version of her looks a bit like this. She mostly retains her standard colour scheme from Fire Emblem, mind you.

Interestingly, this was a sketch I originally did the outline draft for ages ago, but I was really unhappy with it, as I could tell I’d done something wrong but couldn’t place my finger on it. Anyway, it laid dormant until I came back to it just yesterday, where I promptly understood exactly how to fix it in a sudden revelation. Moved her head around, readjusted the arms, made the cape more billowy, and actually went on and coloured it.

I have to say she has larger eyes than usual for me. I typically attempt to veer away from the extreme end of anime eyes, and keep a semi-realistic shape. Still, for some reason, it works for her, so I kept it. She also somehow manages to make teal look like a fashionable colour. 😀

But, considering it was pretty much a disaster previously, a page I tried to ignore on my pad, the fact that I saved it moderately well is something I’m pretty chuffed about.

Anyhow, lets keep it up…
You may kiss her hand. Hurry up, don’t breach ettiquette! This is the Duchess-Apparent of Draskalmourie, the delectable Susie Drayke. Also probably known as Scourge of the Frozen North to certain members of my party in my long running Dungeons & Dragons. She has spent nearly all of the campaign chasing Darien Silverscale, the Prince of Silesia, until quite recently. Her obsessive antics have always been a pet favourite of mine, though for the characters, one of my PC’s whom is also interested in him also suffers tremendously, especially when they accidently went into an alternate timeline where the two Drakahn were married.

As a Drayke, she has a set of red eyes and a green tail, though since this is a head & shoulders, her tail is not visible here (check out other Drakahn if you like). Drakahn noble houses are very strict on their colourations, as veering away from the colours suggest the child is actually a bastard. Sapphire or Red eyes are prestigious, as they suggest a greater connection to their divine dragon ancestors; with the Great Sapphire Dragon God Rahlyah and the Golden Demi-Dragon God Dyia respectively. There are also other demigod dragons: Revynne, Arawne, and Zephyris, and all the noble houses can trace lineage and colours back to one of the five somehow.

I think thats enough Drakahn sociology. As for the actual sketch, this is one of my favourites. It was a new experiment in doing a haughty kind of pose and also the first time I’ve attempted a paper-fan. In case you were wondering, she is wearing a court dress, so her skirts, if it were to be present on the picture, would be the huge kind! 😀

Here’s the final one (which is not wallpaper sized, sorry):
Heh, its Carlie, making a re-appearance at last. I originally put up a sketch of her as one of my very first posts on the blog back in the dark ages of 2008, and gave her an update in this post in 2009. As noted in both those posts, Carlie is from Seiken Densetsu III, which I actually haven’t played in a while now, but remains one of my all time favourite SNES games.

Anyway, I figured it was about time to give her a nice update into the twenty-elevensies. I think I’ve improved just a little bit since her last incarnation, though at the time I no doubt thought it was teh sh*t and all that. Since she’s an elvish high priestess, I didn’t spare any effort on the weave bits, which took quite awhile. Embellished leather armour is actually hard to do, I think. Also spent ages getting her curls to look nice (like Jeanette’s) but I’m glad of the effort. Not sure about the rod thing; this was originally meant to be a flail (as Carlie uses) but I couldn’t get it to work and it still looks a bit dodgy, but I had got to point where I didn’t want to redraw her hand again, so she had to be grasping something. Oh well, still like the piece in general.

I guess, at some point, I need to also give the Romancing SaGa girls a new rendition! (actually I already did a Sara from SD3, but I can’t find her to scan her in… so that’ll have to wait)

That’s the end of this post for… WAIT! Nearly forgot! HAVE AN ALICE!!

Yessiree, Detarame recently broke 225K. I entirely missed 200K, hence the arbitrary selection of 225, but whatever. Thankyou for visiting me and being excited about the random crap I generate, and I apologise for my consistant lack of postingage, but what can you do, eh? It was fitting for Alice to be here, I think, since Marisa celebrated 100K quite awhile back.

Anyway, that is really it. Stay Tuned!

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Modded Player Tiles for Stone Soup

Well, I was pretty bored today, so I decided to randomly attack Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup’s player tiles and do some pixelart.

Kinda surprising since I barely posted about it yesterday, huh? Heh…

The main objective I set myself was to change the base Draconians around so that they were instead made into Drakahn, the Quasi-Dragon race that inhabits my long running D&D 4th Edition setting (see Alicia, Darien and Mirielle for examples; they are mostly human with dragon tails/eyes and little horns). This turned out to be a pretty good success:

I had a bit of an issue to begin with; as I forgot that Draconians, by default, are not allowed to have Hair, so I also ended up having to replace the Dragonheads in the sprite file with Hair options for Drakahns. This was alright since the dragonheads looked idiotic anyway, but it took a bit of testing to get the alignment correct. The bonus of this was that all the hairstyles have natural horns stuck to them for free now, so thats good. See below example:

The other issue was that I long felt there needed to be more available hair colours, less chunky outfits and such like, so that more anime type characters could be created at my random whims. So some purple/green/blue hairs and such were added, some outfits were trimmed (you can see the trimmed red short skirt and leather vest above!); and girls base figures were made less butch and more evidently effeminate (better hourglass figure).

Finally, Merfolk were made into proper mer-people rather than scaly fishfolk (again, more akin to mermen and mermaids of legends, with human upper features; just with gill-like ears). Spriggans were turned into pale nymph types as well rather than sinister looking charcoal creatures with glowing yellow eyes. Whilst arguments can be made for scary sidhe-folk that are dark like that, I prefer the D&D interpretation…

UPDATED 22/05

My next new objective was to make proper clothes for all the characters that are doing well!

Eucliwood Hellscythe the Necromancer (from Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka?)

Shirou Emiya the Transmuter (from Fate/Stay Night)

Ilyana the Air Elementalist (from Fire Emblem 9/10)

Shinobu Oshino the Vampire Assassin (from Bakemonogatari)

Also, in general, revised alot of little things, lots more outfits and hairs added. Fixed Vampires which had gone out of alignment. The new version is now the only one downloadable in the below link. Please use it and replace the old one if you have it!

Anyway, if you’d like to use this modified tileset, get it here
Remember to use save target as. YOU NEED TO RENAME IT TO player.png

You need to put it in:
X:\Program Files\Crawl\dat\tiles
Where X is your drive; and assuming you used the default path; but regardless, it’ll go in the dat\tiles\ directory wherever it is.

Since I rather enjoyed this little bit of modding, I might do some more in the future, but we shall see.

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