Some more character designs from Stinker & The Onion Princess, the book that never got past the sketch stage.

Here’s the lovely Onion Princess, pictured here dressed for Big Daddy’s barbecue party.  Big Daddy is hoping to get his son hitched.

She’s the heiress to an onion fortune.  Her dress is light green with dark green scallions extending from her waist to the hem.  The spiral decorations in her hair are ruby red/pale pink onion slices.  I think I drew her calves too skinny.

Here are her rivals—heiresses to lumber, cotton and rose fortunes:

The Lumber Lass is sporting a buzz-saw blade in her hair and her dress is made out of wooden sticks.

The Onion Princess shows up again in the story, at another big party.

More of the red onion and scallion motif.  The flowers in her hair are those light blue blossoms you see on garlic plants.

Some time ago, I got a fabulous manuscript to work on: Stinker and the Onion Princess.  Set in Texas, is was a retelling of the Grimm tale King Thrushbeard, but this time the proud and beautiful princess was replaced with a proud and handsome heir to an oil fortune.  The hapless king-suitor became a hapless daughter of an onion magnate.

This was to be the third in a trilogy of Texas stories by Kitty Griffin and Kathy Combs.  Alas, after the sketches were done the publisher deemed the project unmarketable and called a halt to production.

Here is my character design for Stinker.

This project was a blast to design.  Since every character is a Texan, they all wear cowboy boots, no matter what.  We decided to make the book really wide, and I filled the image areas with Western vistas and Spanish-Moroccan architecture.  I will try to scan some of the sketches for future posts.  I only have an 8.5 x 11″ Playskool scanner, so I’ll need to figure out how to piece them together.

A few posts ago I zeroed in on a book cover from the fifties showing Santa Claus smoking tobacco from a hookah.  Pretty unusual, right?  Nothing like what you’d see Santa doing in a kids’ book nowadays.  Well, not so long ago I illustrated A Soldiers’ Night Before Christmas by Trish Holland and Christine Ford (both military moms), in which an army base in the MidEast is paid a visit on Christmas eve.  Instead of Santa Claus, it’s grizzled old Sargent McClaus who swoops in on his flying jeep, accompanied by eight humvees and a red-nosed Blackhawk helicopter.

Clenched between the sargent’s teeth is a cigar!

The story calls for a cigar, so Sargent McClaus’ head can be wreathed in smoke just like Saint Nicholas.  He brings the troops duffel bags full of goodies: letters from home, photos, phone cards, and crayon drawings.  The story is set to (what else?) Clement C. Moore’s poem.  As for how the army base is decorated for the season, I got lots of inside info from Trish and Christine.

Spare a thought (and a prayer) for our gallant troops who will be far from home on Christmas.  God bless them.

A.T.M.M. 04: Retrophosis

All Terrain Mono-Mechanics <4^th in the series, x’mas 2009 version, by “2-Far Playthings” >

Height: ~2000mm

Invitation entry to X’mas tree design competition(Dec 20 – Jan 3) at Youth Square, Chai Wan, Hong Kong

Katanagatari (literally means “Sword Story”)

Release Date: 25 Jan ‘10

Adapted from: Light Novel (Published by Kodansha)

Original Creator: NisiOisin

Production Studio: WHITE FOX

Director: Keitaro Motonaga

Main Voice Actors:

• Yukari Tamura as Togame
• Yoshimasa Hosoya as Shichika Yasuri
• Mai Nakahara as Nanami Yasuri

Genres: Action, Romance, Historical

Synopsis: The legendary swordsmith Shikizaki Kiki made 1000 swords in his lifetime. The more swords a kingdom had, the greater success it would have in it’s battles. When the Shogun emerged victorious, he collected 988 of the swords… but those were just made for practice.

The final twelve swords were the pinnacle of Shikizaki’s career. Each of them had powers so extraordinary, one man could defeat small armies.

The Shogunate strategist, Togame, had been ordered to recover them. She first hired a ninja clan… but the swords being so great in worth, lead to the ninja clan’s defeat. Then, Togame hired a swordsman… but he selfishly kept the sword for himself.

Her last hope was Shichika, the seventh and last practitioner of the Kyotoryuu — The No Sword School. Shichika and his sister lived on an island cut off from civilization — they had no need for money. That school did not use swords — the twelve swords would be of no advantage to him.

So, why should he be helping her?

“Because you will fall in love with me.”

Official Site: Katanagatari

Teasers:

(also available on Official Site: http://www.katanagatari.com/special/)

My Thoughts: I find it very hard to say what I would expect from this show. NisiOisin’s first anime series, Bakemonogatari, was a huge success but what we need to keep in mind is that SHAFT produced it. For this anime, Katanagatari, WHITE FOX is producing it and I found their Tears to Tiara release rather poor.

I am also worried about Keitaro. His School Days anime was just over-exaggerated.

Katanagatari seems to have an interestingly new character design. I just hope that this design doesn’t hint at the anime being very childish.

Another problem: This anime airs one episode per month. This anime is 12 episodes long and it’ll take me at least four months to decide if the anime is worth it or not.

[Sources: Anime News Network & easternstandard]

[Image: Official Site]

McToots Turnaround, originally uploaded by johndjoy.

Character turnaround for Tub Tooter.

From Peter Spit A Seed At Sue, a painting in progress:

I’ve set the scene in Pittsburgh’s Market Square.  If you look closely you’ll see the location photos I shot.  I used them to help me design a setting that would be recognizable from a variety of different vantage points.  The pie-wielding mayor is a caricature of Mrs Dittman, the principal of Allen Road Elementary School while I attended.

Rhonda Libbey is a talented friend of mine—she’s pulled my carcass out of more than one scrape by helping me paint illustrations.  Please swing by her blog to see her lovely character sketches for the Doctor Ferretstein Project.

I’ve added a new category of links to this blog listing artists who work in character design.  Many of these artists overlap with those who do contemporary street art and stickers.  The Pictoplasma conferences in Berlin are probably the best place to find artists who create digital illustrations, animation, comics, skateboard designs, plushies and vinyl toys.   My favorite plushie and toy artists are Friends With You and Dalek, but check the links on the bottom right for more character design artists.

Plushie toys are difficult to describe, but Wikipedia provides this outline:

• A stuffed toy
• An enthusiast of stuffed toys, often of the furry fandom community
• A plushophile, a person who is attracted to stuffed animals

course blog here

I just wanted to post a link to my free, cut and fold,holiday download.
Nothing says” the holidays” like dinosaurs and bicycles. Festoon your tree, mantel, or rearview mirror with a Slackart cut and fold Dinosornament. Guaranteed to bring you and your loved ones at least fifteen minutes of crafty yuletide cheer.

You can download it from my website.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

So, this Monday we had our first pitch (still not actually sure if the final hand in is another pitch!).  I presented a new animatic, some layout, character design and backgrounds and overall it was a pretty good reception from everyone.  But I’m not sure what to think, because the projector wasn’t playing my animatic with the correct exposure, so no one could really see all of it.  I don’t like the character design particularly.  I’m humming and harring over whether to do it on Flash or not (especially since the film is now 4 MINUTES!)  The Owl turned out quite nice, though I prefer the hand drawn version to the one on flash.  One background turned out pretty nice but I hate doing backgrounds!  The script needs some editing at the end, but the overall tempo/build up is there.  It was a long but very enjoyable day in OD37- a whole 9 hours watching pitches!  But some of the work is looking amazing! I’m scrambling up the walls to keep up with some people, but I’m just not happy with some of the work I’ve done.  It’s just too drab, too… ordinary.

I don’t want it to look so conventionally boring!  It’s just like where I was for my animatic last week. Its like eating a spoonful of flour and just making dry pastey horrible stuff in your mouth!  So that’s what I’m doing at the moment, waiting for the paint to dry on some style experiments….  Fingers crossed! Here is some examples of the work so far, background created on Photoshop, layout on photoshop and by hand, characters drawn/coloured in flash. You can see the drawings look a lot nicer in the layout, where the form of the cat is more visible

:

a very generous 3D artist -not affiliated to me or mimushi in any way- did a 3D rendering of mimushi, which came out spectacular • it was a real surprise to me, since she wasn’t commisioned by me; she just did it out of inspiration i guess, and i can only say i feel flattered • please check some of her other renderings at her blog

dancing mimushis by 3D artist TrangSanu

mimushi silent match

ficticious samurai swords on mimushi

This adorable kid is a total ringer for Russell from Pixar’s UP. In real life, the character design for Russell was based on a doodle of a Pixar animator named Peter Sohn.
Thanks to Charles for the tip.

Here are some sketches from the last few days to keep you all entertained.

Somehow, Barry knew he would be blamed for this.

Bigface

Gustnmore

Strange Little Girl

Velgaard, the Third of Eight.

Almost every MUSH these days requires a background.  I can remember the days when that wasn’t the case–when you slapped on a description and a name, and as long as you didn’t break any of the rules expressly outlined in the newsfiles.  But due to the fact that great creativity and great stupidity often combine to make a dance of woe, the trend took on.  And indeed, it does prevent many problems.

But background writing is an art, especially when it comes to avoiding things that make admin eyes bleed.  It’s easy to avoid Mary-Sue in a description.  Avoid purple eyes, gorgeous breasts, winning smiles, bouncing blonde hair, waifish frames and head turning beauty.  Right?  And for the partner Stu, avoid looking like Captain America Meets Colgate Commercial.  But in truth, you can play someone with purple eyes and not be annoying, and you can play Captain Colgate without being annoying, if all other things are equal.  If something else is going on between your character’s ears besides invitations for the world to Love You.

Few people set out to write a normal background. I’m not sure why this is.  Do they fear that a normal background will be denied?  Unlikely.  So many people step out to try to be abnormal that a normal, reasonably happy life in a background comes across as a breath of fresh air, really.  Normal, of course, within the context of the world.  If magic is normal for the world than magic in a background is normal.  If magic is not normal in the world then magic in a background is a denied application, or at least a highly scrutinized one if magic is possible but very rare.  So they set out to be special, tragic, or unusual.

Sometimes people do this because they think a tragic or unusual background will lead to more RP.  They are, they think, filling it full of “hooks.”  But as discussed, unless you yourself plan to use those hooks to draw other characters into RP revolving around those hooks, this isn’t really going to get you RP.  The admin aren’t going to go WOW COOL BACKGROUND CAN’T WAIT TO RUN FOR YOU DUDE.  Unless you’ve managed to work your background into the existing story so well that they can’t help but integrate it, you’re screwed on that angle.  Some backgrounds don’t even have the hope of good RP going for them.  They’re filled with child abuse, rape, murder, famine, and folly and the overall “vibe” of the background is “hug me, for I am woe,” without ever a hint that you want to examine the deeper implications of all of this nastiness.

Sad to say, too, that good writing counts.  If you’re a lousy writer and you’re going on about murder and child abuse to people who don’t know you, you come across as disturbed.  People start to wonder if there’s some sort of serial killer applying to RP on their site.   If you aren’t naturally a very good writer that’s fine, but just be aware.  Ditto backgrounds that seem to have an unhealthy relish in all the miasma of pain and hate.   In reality, the first six tinyplots you’re in will likely be adventure based, meaning they’ll have enough pathos for any sane person’s lifetime.

The attitude behind the background really counts.  It comes through the writing.  You don’t realize it does, but it does.  If you’re one of those players who feels like he or she does not count unless his character is the best thing since sliced awesome, then we’ll know.  If you’re one of those players who wants to be cuddled, hugged, and told how wonderful he or she is, we’ll know.

In truth MUSHers often comprise a lot of cool, confident people, but we get our share of people whose real lives have never gone very well.  They try to gain the esteem they don’t have for themselves through their character.  Then things get BAD.  And after 15 years of MUSHing, I can spot this scenario a mile away.  It usually involves over-doing it.  You can be insanely talented and do it well–if you’re willing to acknowledge the negatives of it.  You can do almost anything well. The question is whether or not you have the skill to do it well, without pissing off the game.  (Hint: The skill lies in using that to foster OTHER PEOPLE’S FUN and not just yours. OPF.  It’s the key).  If you’re doing it for your own purposes, such as bolstering faltering self-esteem, it’s not going to work.  At all.

That’s not to say you can’t ever have these things.  Just be careful how you treat them.  You can also consider other things.  People are always murdered but never dying of cancer.  People always have their fortunes stolen by conniving family members (who murder someone) but almost never by the much more likely devastating lawsuit with poor asset protection strategy.    The demon that attacks and kills your family doesn’t always have to be sent by someone if these events are common (though you can do interesting things with the fact that your character decides, wrongly, that they were).  Not everyone who grows up poor dodges jail.  It takes a bit of work to go beyond the stereotypes, and often that’s all it is–Television stereotypes, and that comes through loud and clear.  Your past as a tortured lab experiment won’t help you get RP if all you do is sit in the OOC room anyway.  If you look likely to spill every angle of your angsty past at the first player you see, you don’t come across as genuine.  Do you air every dirty tragedy in your life when you first meet someone at the coffee shop?  I hope not.

Most lives are a mix of good and bad, and few are simply, “Life-was-great-until…”  Life is great for awhile, then it sucks for awhile. It’s okay for awhile, then it’s blah for awhile.  Life is varied.  You could have trouble with the IRS, which is enough stress to last anyone a lifetime, but far more people think it’s better to have trouble with that MUSH’s version of Cobra Commander.

That’s not to say your background can’t be interesting, or a good story, or a great read.  Just recognize that the Admin have forgotten about it five seconds after approving it. It’s a tool to help them understand that you understand what you’re doing on their game.  It’s a tool to help you understand who and what you are playing and what some of the motivations of your character may be.  All of the television tropes can make it in there and still be done well, but if you’re not confident of your ability to write them well, in a way that doesn’t scream Melodrama, then it might just be a good time to have arrived in the city to make a fresh start after your divorce instead of arriving in the city to enact revenge on the people that cut off your best friend’s head.

You see, because Mary Sue begins at the background, but RP happens at the moment of RP.  RP is as interesting or as boring as you make it.

I’ll make a confession. One of my characters has a nasty, dramatic background.  I’d like to think I wrote it well, but I did it for no other reason than that is how she appeared in my head, fully loaded with enough baggage to make anyone want to blow their own head out.  The three biggest character building scenes for her, the ones that have impacted her the most, were:

• An argument with her boyfriend about her putting her crusade over him
• An argument with one of her dearest friends over a choice another character had made, that made her realize that her own choices weren’t that different
• A long discussion about philosophy with a punk kid in a sandwich shop.

No guns, much as I like them, no tinyplot, much as I love them.  Three character-to-character interactions.  That’s taught me something, I think.

Another factor you need to consider is whether or not you’re willing to live with the consequences of that background. Admin can tell.  We can tell if it is a hug-me Sue tool or if it’s something you’re really exploring in the character.  My character panicked and committed what was, essentially, a vigilante murder outside of the bounds of the law.  It ruined her life, her career, her reputation.  She stayed out of jail, but at the price of putting her destiny in the hands of a shadowy organization.  I have made sure that every cop on the game knows it, too, to the point where another cop’s decision that her decision was not the wrong one meant that cop being painted with her same brush.  Not to mention the nightmares, the PTSD, the emotional distance, the issues, the inability to simply smile and “be nice” the way most MUSH chars are, which sometimes means less ability to just sit back and be social with just anyone who hits the grid.  She doesn’t like to talk about the story and when pressed hardly ever tells the whole story.  I’m not a perfect RPer or anything, it’s just that I have this example to share.  A background like this demands impact, and that impact sometimes requires negative ICC for your character.  If you aren’t willing to bring that ICC into play then, again, you need to be dealing with a new job in a new city after five years of unemployment and not the after effects of the cybernetic implant you received after your sixth alien abduction.

How long should a background be?  3-5 paragraphs. Ideally.  Some MU*s may like a lot more screen crunch, but for my part?  I don’t have the time to read a novel.  I want to make sure you’re not doing anything screwy.  I want to make sure you’re not being unthematic.  I want to understand what you’re going for.  I want to make sure your background isn’t stuffed with weird, disturbing porn (it has happened).  I want to get a sense of what you’re going for.  I want to make sure that you aren’t playing a trailer park kid who didn’t pass 12th grade only to put Ancient Greek at 50 on your character sheet.  After that?  I want to hit +approve and forget about you.

So what are the take-aways?

• Consider normal–problems you yourself have encountered in your daily life.  You can RP them better anyway because you understand the emotion behind them.
• Abnormal, dramatic, soap-opera or unusual aren’t bad–if you are a good writer, have good attitude behind them, aren’t Going Sue by contrasting these things against your utter moral and personal purity, and if you have other people’s fun at heart
• 3-5 Paragraphs is plenty there, Tolstoy
• Your RP happens at the point of RP, and if you get active you’ll have enough “unusual” in your life to satisfy the worst masochist, or at least you will if your game runs plots at all.
• Backgrounds should be a mix of good and bad, light and dark, happy and sad, and explain a mix of hints at the character’s motivations and skills.

Hopefully that helps you kick your next character off the ground!

Found one worth keeping.

Geats_Family, originally uploaded by johndjoy.

Character lineup of The Geats, a digital family with analog issues.

Velgaard, the Third of Eight.