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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Ex-Cali-Bur’s dubious revival

And, its time for another short sketch post… and another revival in the process.

In this case, we have the return of everyone’s favourite sentient psychotic sword with the soul of a little girl, Ex-Cali-Bur, otherwise typically known as Cali, who recently returned in cameo to my Dungeons and Dragons third campaign (she had a rather major part in the first campaign).

So, as usual, I decided her rather terrible line-art sketch from antiquity (seen here) needed to be given an update. Here it is:
Turned out quite decent, actually. She ditched the gloves and knee socks in the new design, and of course, generally looks alot less fat and mannish (lol). She also appears to be rocking out using her own sword form as a guitar now, but whatever.

As a reminder, she’s a sentient longsword that typically acts as a hyperenergetic spoilt rude brat that loves mischief. Which is what makes it so frankly scary that she’s also a mighty weapon with staggering power. She can also eat other bladed weapons to take their characteristics. After which she belches and sneezes out a sphere containing her previous qualites. Lovely.

The idea behind her design is that you can see how the features on the weapon correlate to her outfit and looks. Her top hat is also seen on her pommel, for instance.

In girl form, she’s staggeringly heavy (about 1/2 a tonne) since her sword form is basically crafted from adamantine, which is already as heavy and dense as lead, as lustrous as silver, but also as strong and unflinching as steel in my setting’s interpretation. The girl form is vaguely incompetant at combat, even though she is heavy and basically invulnerable (being made of adamantine, and being an artifact tends to do that). Basically, she needs a wielder to do anything other than use cantrips to turn things pink.

And here’s her wallpaper:Don’t think I’ve used the patchwork quilt filter on a wallpaper… ever… but here we go, she somehow makes it look alright.

That’s about all for today. Stay tuned.

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The Obsidian Stalker

Another quick art post today. I did say in the prior Astaraye post that I should probably get around to drawing the other NPC from the D&D campaign, the Sorcerous Assassin, Sasha, didn’t I? Well, here she is:

Trained from birth to be an assassin among the Korpeshi Obsidian Stalkers, she’s was raised as a cold and efficient tool for killing and little else, then disposed of when she ‘failed’ her master. It was at this point the party found her, on the brink of death by forced dehydration in the snowfields of a plane of existance in Airoter, the Alterworld, after the party had fallen into a trap set by the Vampire, Arshes del Fafnir.

Because the party cleric saved her life, Sasha then swore to become her blade in a surprise blood covenent; as she is an existence that couldn’t contemplate a life without a master. In an out of body experience brought on by this covenent, our cleric then saw her god, Kinah, briefly, and plunged her hand into a lava spout to withdraw Sasha’s new bladeform…

First time I’ve done a pose like this, actually. When I first looked at the finished version, I did wonder if the legs ended up a little too short, but in retrospect it looks alright. True her legs are rather close flush to her body, but she’s an immensely athletic type so should be able to manage it. The blade design was interesting… its kinda of a cross between an assassin’s Baselard and a fencing Main Gauche, showing her new and old lifestyles in composite, I guess. (by and the by, her original obsidian weapon was a Kukri!)

Yeah, I don’t draw enough tanned and olive skinned characters, do I? She’s definately a nice change in that regard. (Korpeshi is the Jungle continent in Retoria, famous for the ruins of the joint elvish/dwarvish Golden City and also a large magic flux/low gravity area with tower-block sized insects).

Oh, and of course, I said that this should be wallpaper material when combined with Raye, so here’s that:

As always, click for full size.

On the anime front, I’ve definately dropped Arcana Famiglia, Tanken Driland, Campione and Muv Luv Alternative now. Most of them continued into mediocrity and I had to make some cuts; as I tend to like no more than 8 shows to follow a season if I can help it.

And that’s about it for today. Cya soon.

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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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The White Devil of Fafnir Returns

Yep, its time for a ressurection post; much like I did with Return of the Desirable Drakahn earlier in the year. This time, I’m recalling this old post from 2009, with a re-drawing of Zakura Fafnir, given my upgraded drawing skills. Without further ado, here she is:

Yadda, yadda, click to see full-sized.

Zakura is a well-loved NPC from my first 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons campaign (I’m now on the third such campaign, which is set 70 years afterwards). You can read of some the parties exploits in the ancient post this one is linked to at the top. After that and more, she ended up being the mother of a Player Character in the second campaign, and also an NPC there for some time, in her middle age (that one was 20 years after the first).

However, this picture is obviously her from the first campaign when she was 23 years old (much like the new redraw of Alicia was of her being 25 in the first campaign). Again, like Alicia’s new version, Zakura’s outfit underwent a metamorphosis to more closely match what I described her wearing at the time rather than being limited by what I felt I could draw. Her fairly generic off-white robe thing transmuted into a sort of corset and short skirt affair with long purple spats, allowing her to show off her ample (!) cleavage. This is, I should note, entirely due to her vastly overconfident personality and reputation as a beauty among beauties in the Alogian Chain. She did, after all, have 26 Charisma~ and in Dungeons and Dragons, 10 is considered average, so yeah… (as an aside, Alicia had 22 CHA)

Her cape is still wizardly with the high collar, but has been shortened to a half-length one held up with the aid of her pauldrons rather than being stitched to the rest of the outfit. This, combined with the corset/outfit and the more detailed armlets, gave her more chance to show off her Fzvir. As I noted in the prior post, Warlocks of all varieties in my setting gain a ‘Fzvir’ (pronounced Veer), which is a large tattoo along their left arm as an expression of their contract (usually with an angel of a certain deity~ Infernal Contracts with Saulm, Star with Kinah, Fey with Corticarte and Dark contracts with Dahlia). It seems to be a pseudo-living thing, which writhes, snake-like, along the skin, when a Warlock casts a spell.

In Zakura’s case, she is immensely strong due to having contract with three seperate angels [Wilheim, Drayke, Ansuz]. One of these angels was actually killed by the demi-goddess Iliya in the second campaign, and replaced with one called Kylar after the party visited the underworld.

The three angels of darkness are expressed on her Fzvir now, in any case, and Dahlia’s symbol (The Bloodied Black Butterfly) dominates her hand. And yes, the Fzvir is now on her left arm, as it actually should have been in the original (derp).

Oh, and she actually gained her runic hat which she equipped with the entire game. It was an awesome hat with writhing runes along the brim, and it really needed to be represented. So now it is.

I’ve also made a joint wallpaper of both Alicia and Zakura for desktops. Here:
Has a few marginal photoshop tweaks (mostly cleanup). Enjoy!

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As an aside, I’ve had a visual novel surge recently, having played through the Al Azif route of Demonbane (which was pretty epic), and also checking out the 50% patch of Fate/Hollow Ataraxia (also awesome~ but needs to be finished!!). It’s possible that I may considering doing a VN diary again of one of them (no guarantees, though).

And now for a random overview of the prior anime season:

I’m glad that Fate/Zero continued to very closely follow its novels, and it obviously took the cake for best show, though they did actually skip out on a few bits and bobs this time. Nothing crucial, I guess… the main loss was Lancelot’s backstory and his fight with Arthuria, which was overshadowed by the Kirei vs. Kiritsugu fight. However, the latter was awesome so I can just about forgive UFOtable for the cut (especially as they popped a little bit of the missing backstory in the epilogue to compensate~ still not all of it, but it helped). Now they need to go off and animate the Heavens Feel route of FSN, and then do Hollow Ataraxia. And if they have time, come back and re-do the Fate route and Tsukihime. They certainly have the skill!

Haiyore! Nyaruko-san sadly lost steam as it went along. It had a great start, full of great jokes, but degraded into a generic romantic comedy that took the piss out of its own (lack of) plot too much. This is unfortunate as it had alot of potential had they have had the guts to steer it away from just being “My harem of malign deities!”. It still continued to have its moments (Nearly everything up to episode 5, Nyaruko using the cliched body swap to her advantage, Kuuko in general being hilarious and very emotive) so it’s still worth the watch if you’ve got a spare hour or two. Also, Marasy played the OP on piano, cementing it’s awesomeness.

I’ve dubbed Hyouka the “Mundane Mystery” show, because that’s really what it is. Despite that, however, it takes these otherwise really boring things and turns them into fascinating problems, which is showing some great skill on the writers part. Although Chitanda likes to abuse her mystic eyes of compulsion curiosity, I just find that funny, so its okay, especially given her other antics (getting drunk on whiskey chocolates?).

The other surprise hit for me was Natsuiro Kiseki. It was very cliched in parts, but had dollops of WAFF to pile on and make you feel good about watching it. I didn’t even tag it in my preview post, but its worth a look.

Bizarrely, all of the ‘cautiously optimistic’ items from the April preview turned out to be busts for me. I didn’t get past episode 3 of Shining bread whatever. Acchi Kochi made me wait too long for most of its jokes. Zombie season two immediately fell flat on its face and… well, flatlined, still failing to match its early greatness from the first season.

Anything else of note? Not really. That’s actually about it.

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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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