Detarame Sketches 2012 Calendar

Well, here’s a funny idea! A Calendar for 2012 including all of the cool colour sketches I made over the course of 2011.

It also includes 3 sketches that I have never uploaded here (exclusive content!) and of course, they’re all at their full original size in glossy colour, rather than resized or shopped for wallpaper usage. Of course, this entire little thing is for my own usage, but if, for whatever reason, you’re still strapped for a 2012 calendar and would like my artwork adorning your wall, then this thing is available for public purchase below.

It is almost entirely populated by Anime and Game females. Check out the ‘Artworks’ category or ‘Sketches’ Tag to your right for some idea as to what this entails. There’s some fanservice, as always, so the calendar would probably be rated PG-13 for minor nudity. Or something. You have been warned.

By and the by, I make a “vast” £1 from each one, so much like Aniventure I’m not exactly making a song or trying to fleece you. Of course, I realise that at this time of year, calendars start to become cheaper for stock clearance in any case, but oh well, sadly there’s not alot I can do about that. For a 20% discount until the 3rd February: CHERUBUK305
This applies not only to my calendars, but also Aniventure, and indeed anything up to the value of £200 from Lulu.

To visit the purchase page, CLICK HERE.

To view a preview version (all 12 months); click the small “Preview” link available in the above purchase page on Lulu’s website, or alternatively you can click here to view a local pdf copy. The local version is BIG (17mb) so prepare for your net browser to be raped.

This above preview PDF is actually the final version; so theoretically, if you have access to an A3 colour laser printer, 140 GSM gloss paper, and ringbinding ability, you could make your own version. I’m not going to stop you; heck, if you have that kind of hardware, all the power to ya! But if you do and you like it, please leave a comment or something so I know its worth doing this type of thing in the future.

Anyway, I last made myself a calendar for 2008. It was a cool little thing I made in Photoshop and MS Publisher with some of my favourite images from moe.imouto (now oreno.imouto.org). Of course, it made my poor old inkjet die on me. Good times. Naturally, since then I’ve never bothered due to resources, and this is still the case; I’m reluctant to abuse my laser’s toners due their obscene replacement costs; so I suddenly thought, ‘hey, I already have a relationship with Lulu, so why not get them to print me something instead!?’. Its the ‘well duh…’ moment of the year, since they’ve always offered calendar services. Sometimes I can be a bit dense, lol.

Anyhow, cya in the new year. I might <SHOCKHORROR!> actually put up a preview this season; but given the work one of those takes, it might be reduced in size or something. No promises, of course.

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Fighting Fire with Fire

Seems awfully counterproductive, if you ask me.

And yes, SHOCK, Its been exactly two weeks since I last posted. I think I kind of had a burnout from the last humongous post about this upcoming anime season and shyed away from blogging for a little while. I haven’t even been checking up on the place until yesterday! For this I apologise. Call it a necessary break, if you will.

Anyway, first of all, I have another new sketch:

As always, click it for the full size one

Well, Ellen is also from Romancing SaGa 3. I thought Monica might be lonely by herself, LOL.

Anyways, Ellen usually makes it into my party since I absolutely adore having a decent user of the martial arts moves. The throws (especially Niagara Buster) do ludicrous amounts of damage against minions, though they sometimes fail against bosses (not really a surprise if the boss fills the screen and a 20 pixel tall character tries to throw them. Its most impressive when it actually works though!). And…I can’t bring myself to like Boston as an alternative. Its just kinda…odd…for a giant humanoid lobster to be doing martial arts. So more often than not, Ellen ends up staying. She is based upon this image:

I guess some liberties were taken in the conversion this time since I chopped off her sleeves and made the jeans into denim shorts with wooly bits. Her hair is also central rather than parting to her left side. But then, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, not alot of details are immediately inherent in a sprite upscale, which is why I like doing them.

Nevertheless, I guess she also looks a bit like a kung-fu Risa (from my own game, The Enemy Within)!

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I’ve also been spending these last couple of weeks starting to play the translated Fire Emblem 5 (Thracia 776).

Despite the fact that I’m a Fire Emblem affectionado, I’ve never actually got around to playing the 5th game, so I figured its about time. Interestingly enough, FE5 was (I believe) the very last game ever to be released on the SNES, coming out during the Playstation era as the N64 was in development.

And as people have said…its hard. VERY HARD.

Theres definately no contest between it and its predecessor, Geneology of the Holy War (which is in my opinion the greatest of all the FE games) in terms of difficulty. It even makes the Hard Mode Micaiah stages from FE10 go and cry in a corner.

I’ve been having a shocking time of it too, since I made the promise not to use more than 3 savestates in a chapter. (well, actually, I first thought to not use any. But that soon went out the window, since I’m not THAT hardcore!)

Even so, I suspect I’ve been having an easier time than some people because the RNG has been absolutely lovely to me for level ups. Not so nice concerning a certain squad of dragon knights with killer lances continually critting everyone, but we’ll forget about that for a moment. Leaf and Nanna have been more than blessed. Especially Nanna. She’s already nearing her caps at level 11, which is totally shocking. It almost makes me think Levin, not Fin, must be her father, such is her Speed! And Leaf is stronger than the big guys holding axes. Which is just silly. Though I guess in his case he has been holding the Noba scroll since we got it. I figured, it is technically his, after all (well, his or Altennas). Check out the stats  I screencapped:

I keep thinking I might have overused the Light Sword a little bit. But then, thats what Safy and her repair staff is for when we get to zero, right?

Jeez, Nanna, you’re on a rampage. She’s even exceeding her dad in most areas:

Well, except in Defence, Build and HP, anyway.

Of course, in an actual game of FE4, I usually pair Lachesis (Nanna’s mother) up with Azel (not Fin) since I like to use Delmudd and Nanna as mounted magical sword users with Pursuit and Charisma (and it also makes Nanna a disturbingly good healer too due to Fala blood). Of course, the Canon pairing is that Lachesis actually has her son, Delmud, with the mercenary Beowulf, then has her daughter Nanna, by Fin after the battle of Bahara, so we’re to assume that here is the case.

If you have no idea what I’m going on about, don’t worry about it. In brief, this game actually occurs between Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 of the previous game. Its not a prequel or sequel. More a midquel? Is that even a term? And in FE4, whom you pair and support with whom detemines what the children will be like, and you get to use said children in the second part of the game. Its multi-generational, which one of the things I love about it.

As for FE5, why is it so hard? Well, mainly because the enemy is relentless and has decent stats and equipment. There are very few mooks for your characters to gain XP from without a least a moderately difficult fight. More importantly, you don’t get given any money. None at all. If you want any dosh, you have to steal equipment from people and sell it or fight in the arena. For this reason (probably), this is the only FE with the Capture system. Basically, you can reduce your accuracy and power to deliver a non-fatal blow with your weapon. If you do so, and you have sufficient build to capture the foe, they pass out and are carried by your unit. You can then steal all of their equipment before letting them go like the merciful dude you are (LOL). Doing this is actually essential for getting some of the Gaiden chapters and is also basically a requirement to grab magical books since the shops don’t sell them. And yes, despite this, weapons still degrade at the usual rate. Talk about juggling resources!

Anyway, with that, I shall call it day. See you again soon.

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So I married an Axe Murdering Princess?

Uh, sure, yeah, lets run with that.

Truth to be told, I got a bit sad looking at my recent glorified sketch of Carlie, then whilst looking back at the old Carlie sketch, I came across the sketch of Princess Monica from the same time. I then decided that I needed to update our lovely princess of Lohanne with and grace her with an additional sketch to match our favourite half-elf cleric.

To re-explain, Monica is from Romancing SaGa 3, another one of those fine SNES RPGs and perhaps a distant relative of stuff like Oblivion, because it has a fairly free form approach. Do whatever quests you want, when you want them, or you can just go beating the snot out of things and exploring towns. There is a considerably more limited pool of these kind of quests, but even so, it stands the test of time. Whats more, your main character can be highly customised upon the game’s start. And theres a fine system of formations, the ability to have a party of 6, (5+1, actually, as your main character can either be part of the fighting team or stand aside and shout orders, which changes the battle system) and the ability to learn new attacks by mastering old ones in a vein similar to Tales of Symphonia.

Monica, by default, is set up to be Rapier wielding Scholar type princess character. And, if you recruit her as an extra, (or she’s forced upon you, if Julian is your main character) shes not that amazing, as Fat Robin is probably a better Rapier user. Though her Charisma is the highest by default, making her a good Moon Magic user, I guess.

Of course, by making her as a main, I customised her to be a high strength axe-weilding maniac. Something which, given the right stat layout, actually makes her a very brutal melee-fighter and pretty useful (as Black, the only other decent axe user, has to tag along in a terrible inferior form called Hermann for a while before getting an upgrade).

Hence, this sketch is based upon that version of Princess Monica. Check it out:

As always, click the above to see it full size.

She’s meant to be in a ‘about to swing’ type pose, which I think turned out fairly well. Her outfit has changed marginally since the last iteration (you can see the old version near the bottom of the Unsorted Page). The main additions being the open-back fingerless gloves (I thought they looked good during the draft stage), and her bike shorts for underwear. Well the latter is not strictly an addition (I hope!) …its just you couldn’t see her undies before, lol. As usual, her outfit is jammed pack full of trim and embellishments which I enjoyed adding, and it is fitting that she, being a princess, probably would find this to be part of a generic travelling outfit.

I was a little concerned that the head of axe turned out a little small. It looks a bit less meaty compared to the old one she used to have. But then, its probably more combat practical as a result, lol.

Anyway, in other more personal news, I’m shockingly amazed that my progress on the 5th edition of my Aniventure RPG system has progressed immensely well and is approaching full test level completion. Not to mention it now clocks in at around 150 pages. Not bad for six months of work on the side. Especially considering this version, unlike the older ones, is replete with my own original illustrations. I guess I should update the shockingly outdated page on the system, which is still talking about version 4.5!

There is now an entirely new dice system completely of my own devising called the Stacks System, which is perfectly suited to a slightly eccentric anime roleplaying setting, as it allows one to make multiple hit attacks, parry with handguns, dodge with bone cracking back flips, etc. far more easily than before.

Tell ya what: Here’s the Character Sheet if you’re interested. Not that you can do alot with it, I know! But, hey think of it as a teaser.

Or something. Anyway, thats all for now, but stay tuned.

EDIT: I updated the Aniventure page to reflect all the numerous changes. Phew…

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More artistic endevours

Hey guys.

I guess I haven’t put much up artistic-wise in last couple of weeks, so I’ll make up for it in this epic uber-post. Which, yeah, might rape your bandwidth for a second or two whilst it loads. I apologise in advance for the inconvienience.

First of all, you may not have noticed, but I updated the Unsorted/Miscellaneous page with some of my Desktop Wallpapers (Widescreen). I make these semi-frequently when I’m bored and feel the need to use photoshop in a randomly creative fashion. There’s four available on that page now, but I’ll post the latest here, which is Taiga from Toradora:

Click it to get the full size (1280 x 800), like anything in this post…

Yeah, that’s also my current desktop paper, since I’m likin’ Toradora at the moment.

Also, I did a couple more sketches, both of which are classic SNES game related.

First of all; its Princess Monica from Romancing SaGa 3:

Whom, yes, in one of my games, I set up to be uber strong and use axes. I found this to be pretty funny since her default combination is a Scholar who uses a Rapier. Romancing SaGa 3 is one of those interesting games you can play several times since it is technically open-ended with what you can do (similar to what I’d like to achieve in my own game, The Enemy Within); not to mention select a favourite party of characters and customise your starter. I’ve also (in my new game) had a Monica whom is a Kung-Fu fighter since I wanted to do a run-through that didn’t involve me using Ellen.

This Monica sketch was drawn from this amazingly small reference picture:

So yeah. I like doing sketches based on sprites since they give you absurd amounts of artistic licence to do whatever you like for the details. Which I did, in this case. I gave her lots of trim; she’s a noble and would have fine travelling clothes, I figure. And of course, my version is strong, so its normal for her to heft a heavy battleaxe over her shoulder one handed. Hehe.

Yeah, then we have a grown up version of Carlie-chan from Seiken Densetsu III:

Carlie-chan is awesome. She’s a half-elf, and is 15 in the game. Of course, in half-elf terms, this means she’s basically a little kid of about 9 in appearance. So I guess the above version is her at…26, maybe?

She’s an awesome healer in the game, with her basically insta-cast, multi-targeting healing light. And she has a couple of hilarious ultimate BA attacks. My favourite is the amusingly titled ‘HugeHuge’, which has her throwing her flail up into air, and having it fall back down again at about 10x the size for her to use. She does so (somehow) and causes a giant explosion.

Seiken Densetsu III has long been one of my favourite SNES games because of the fantastic class change system which gives each of the six potential main characters lots of choice for progression. Creating a good party with synergy with one another is pretty cool.

Though I guess, in some ways its pretty disturbing for Carlie-chan, since you can subvert this cute little girl to the powers of darkness and make her into a little girl necromancer or evil shaman (!). If you do so, of course, she gets the abilities to either breath demon fire/summon devils or raise the dead/curse people. Her light side versions are much more supportive, making her not only the premium healer, but also an amazing disher of saber buffs and beams of light.

This Carlie chan was again based upon a sprite. This one, in fact:

This is from my most recent SD3 game, which actually has me using light side Carlie for a change (making her into a Light Sage for the uber lasers). She has blonde hair and blue robes by default, by and the by, but the class changes impart pallette swaps on the characters. Her hair looks puffy in the games, but I just altered it to a kind of semi-wavy/curly for my sketch.

Yeah, I’ve got more anime to blog. There’s a new ep of Tytania I need to watch still too. And more RPG stuff for me to write. (sheesh, busy, busy)

I also noticed that quite a few people have been searching the blog for evaluations of the other routes of Fate/Stay Night. I didn’t realise there would be the demand, but since I’ve seen there evidently is, I’ll probably pop up an article on it soon. Gimme some time.

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