(WIP) Art Post – Some Video Game Sketches

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Here’s a quick dump of some sketches I did of various random video game characters I just felt like drawing. None of these I actually have properly colored in yet, and that’s not even getting into the shading. As a result, I have no idea when any of these will actually be finished. But hey, some outlines are better than nothing.

First up, we have Squall from Final Fantasy VIII. I feel like I’m the only person on the Internet who cares that 8 is finally getting it’s remaster like the other early 3D Final Fantasies. So I decided to draw Squall to kind of celebrate that fact. I know the game can be pretty janky at times when it comes to the junction system and how tedious drawing and refining magic can be in the game, but I also love just how much freedom all of those systems can give you when you know how to use them properly. Plus, I always just found the setting of 8’s world to be super compelling because of just how contemporary to the modern day a lot of the areas and locations are. I also really loved the monster designs in the game and how old enemies would gain new abilities and behaviors as you progressed. It made the enemies all way more interesting as a result (though, giving all of the monsters collectible cards that you can play with in a kickass card game certainly didn’t hurt either…) Just a few reasons why this weird little game and not something like 7 or 10 is my favorite entry in the series.

Next up, we have Miriam from Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night which finally got released recently. I didn’t actually spend money on the game’s Kickstarter, but I was very interested in the game as soon as I heard it was being developed, because me and my brother are both big fans of the Metroidvania styled Castlevania games. And though we’ll probably never get another one of those again, a spiritual successor made by the same guy is a good enough replacement in my eyes. As of typing this post, I’ve only gotten to see my brother (as well as a certain “jabroni” streamer) play for a few hours, but from what I’ve seen, the game is meeting all of my expectations in terms of gameplay and the sheer variety of weapons and demon shard abilities you can use.  Plus aesthetic character customization, which is always a plus for me ( ‘speically when the character you’re customizing is a cute girl, and Miriam herself is quite the cutie… )

Finally, we have the Ironclad, the Silent, and the Defect, all 3 of the playable characters from Slay the Spire, which got it’s Switch port not too long ago, and as a result, I’ve been playing quite a bit of it. Though I’ve never really played too many card games (mostly just Hearthstone, The Pokemon TCG, and a tiny bit of Duelyst), I’ve always been fascinated  by them from a design perspective and frequently brainstormed ideas for my own card games in my spare time (one particular idea I have for one, I was able to come up with well over 1000 cards for, though it’s all just an Excel spreadsheet and as a result, probably wouldn’t be the most interesting thing to post). And I do have to say, Slay the Spire is a really good card game (slash dungeon crawling rouge-like deck builder). Though, the game does kick my ass frequently because I play too fast and as a result, don’t properly think my turns through. Would still definitely recommend however to anyone who owns a Switch (or a Steam account because it’s on there too) and just likes card games.

That’s everything from me for now. As I said earlier, no idea when I’ll get around to finishing these, but I will say probably don’t expect the finished versions of any of these before the next comic update. And with that, I’ll see you all next post.

Night Fox – Comic Post #157: Alex’s Weekend Alone Pg.4

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I’ve only really got one thing I want to bring up this week, and that’s the fact that I’ve got another WIP art dump of some pictures I sketched up over the weekend but haven’t actually started editing yet digitally. That will probably be up Friday at the usual time. But aside from that, that’s all from me this week, so until then, I’ll see you all next comic.

Art Post – Just A Dumb Smash Bros Meme…

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Rex began to wonder to himself whether having a first party Nintendo game that outsold his predecessor Shulk’s game, a game that Masahiro Sakurai apparently loved playing and tried to 100% complete, actually meant nothing in regards to becoming playable in Smash. Pyra, trying her best to console her Driver reassured him “Don’t worry Rex, I’m sure they won’t forget us by the time the next game comes out…” Waluigi, who had been denied far longer than the both of them, merely continued to work on his knot tying in silence…

Here’s just a dumb Super Smash Bros meme that I made a week ago mostly because I felt like I was the only person who kind of disagreed with all of the DLC choices for one reason or another. Now, if you frequent Know Your Memes, you might’ve actually already seen a version of this picture on there. That’s because I actually decided to post it there first purely on the basis that more people would actually see it. And just in case you, for some reason don’t believe the fact that I made the original image, here’s an earlier version with just the outlines. Considering since I posted it to Know Your Memes, it’s currently sitting at over 5,200 views, (far more than I will probably ever get on this blog) I think that was a good decision on my part purely from the stand point of wanting more people to see the dumb art I make. Now as to why I decided to wait until NOW to post this on my own personal site? Laziness…

The funny thing is, Rex and Pyra aren’t even my most wanted characters for Smash. That would be a three way tie between Llyod Irving (whose the most deserving), Yuri Lowell (whose the most popular), or Velvet Crowe (whose the most unique character-wise) purely on the basis that I want some Tales Of representation so that more people will actually give the series a try. No, the reason I focused on Rex and Pyra for this one is because I can’t think of many other first party Nintendo characters who had so many points in their favor for being playable get screwed over THIS HARD since Ridley didn’t get into Smash 4. Like, if his game came out too late for Ultimate’s base game, why the hell was he not the first in line for DLC? Joker, whose series has never had a mainline release on a Nintendo console (unless you count SMT games, which, let’s be honest with ourselves here, Joker is only here to rep Persona), his game was only released like 3 months prior to Xenoblade 2. Seriously, what makes Joker so special that he gets to be added despite Atlus seemingly going out of its way to NOT add his game to the Switch? This is why people get so frustrated with you Sakurai! Because you make so many weird and very questionable decision…!

Anyways, that’s enough dumb ranting from me. No idea when I’ll be posting my next picture. Probably not until after the next comic update. But with that, I’ll see you all next post.

Night Fox – Comic Post #157: Alex’s Weekend Alone Pg.3

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“Erh ner lordie lordie! Looks like Angle here is gunna do sum she mite regert! Let’s jus hope that she don’t act all two quikly der when it comes to usin’ dat there scythe now…” (No, I have no idea why I felt the need to type that abomination of the English language up… nor why I am keeping it in…)

You know, I feel like that Meldworld bit would’ve been a lot stronger if I just stuck it all on one page. You’d think with how many of these pieces of crap comics I churn out, I would have a vague understanding of just how many lines of script I can fit onto a single page. Well, I actually do. It’s about a page and a half using 12 point font in Microsoft Word. The problem is that I pretty much always ignore that little guideline and just keep writing on and on regardless. This is kinda why I procrastinate writing scripts: ‘cuz I’mma real stoopid at it. I’m so dang anal about having the dialogue all flow together in a certain way and pre-addressing little nitpicky details that can pop up when you’re trying to be concise, that it often ends up bloating my scripts… and makes things STOP being concise…

Anyways, not much else to really say this week, so until then, I’ll see you all next comic.

Art Post – The Absolute Mad Lad

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It was originally going to be a toss-up of me drawing either Uraraka or Tsuyu from My Hero Academia before I realized just how many girls I had been drawing lately. So to change things up a little and to prove I’m not some kind of a horrible sexist or something “awful” like that, I opted to draw Deku instead. Because I’m such a basic bitch that OF COURSE I would draw the main character for my first bit of fan art for the series.

I wanted to draw him like he’s ready to deck someone in the face as a way to practice getting better at action shots, because I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not so great at those… The pose looks just a little off in terms of invoking the right kind of “movement”, but I think the lightning kinda saves the sense of motion I was trying to go for. Actually pretty pleased with how the lightning turned out in general. I usually fuck up effects like that. I guess this is what happens when you’re drawing something that someone far better than you already drew and as such, you have a lot of really good reference to go off of.

You know, I bet if a commissioned a really good artist to draw one of my own characters, I would get so much better at drawing that character myself… Because I would have a much more skilled artist’s work to actually copy and learn from. That’s something I’ll have to consider for the future. Anyways, that’s enough musings from me. I’ll have something else to post later this week (that’s NOT the weekly comic update), so keep an eye out for it. So, until then, I’ll see you all next post.

 

Art Post – Some Like It “Thicc”

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Here’s the other Meldworld picture. This time I drew Stiletta again, but with thicker proportions than usual because I wanted to experiment with body types and also “Why the hell not give her some nice thick thighs you fucking degenerate you?”. Like I said on the Doc drawing, I took a similar shading approach with this one. The biggest key difference in approach that I did with this one, is that I also experimented with doing outlines of wildly varying degrees of thickness in comparison to my usual ones, which are pretty much always uniform, or only varying by like one or two pixels in terms of thickness. Doing that with a mouse… it uh… certainly took a while to do. So much so, that I actually got bored halfway through tracing the outlines of my original sketch and decided to just start working on that drawing of Doc from last week. My work ethic is very fucking weird in that regard… So… probably not going to do something like that again for a little while…

Anyways, I don’t really have much else to say about this drawing, and I don’t have any character redesigns to pointlessly bitch about, so I’m gonna end this post on the short side. That Deku drawing I mentioned a bit ago is also going to be posted tomorrow. It’s actually been ready to post for more than a week now, but I just decided to hold off on posting it because I’m fucking retarded or something. So stick around if you’re interested in seeing some more fanart from me. Or don’t. I can’t make you… But boy do I wish I could. But with that said, I’ll see you all next post.

Art Post – Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop… something…

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Here’s one of those Meldworld pictures I talked about earlier this week, this one being of Dr. Strangelove. Funny thing about me giving her that name: I never actually watched the movie itself. One of the only reasons I even know about it was because I had to do a quick presentation about its opening credits for a film editing class in community college. Not that any of that is relevant to this picture, but it’s just a fun little fact that I wanted to put out there.

Anyways, on to the actual picture itself. No real reason as to why I drew her again. Mostly just felt like it I guess. Anyways, for this picture, I tried doing some more simplistic shading again because I figured it worked out okay last time, why not do it again? I feel pretty good with how she turned out. I also finally realized I can apply very slight color gradients to the picture after it’s done to make the whole thing not look nearly as flat, and I think it really helped make Doc here look so much more vibrant in this picture than Alex and Kitsiyuna did in that drawing from back at the end of April. Also, not having a background that is all one solid color helps too. The other Meldworld drawing that I’ve got, I approached from a similar manner, so it’s gonna feel somewhat similar to this one. And if you’re upset by that sudden desire for consistency on my part… Sorry in advance I guess?

Now that I have talking about the drawing out of the way, I want to talk some more about E3. Not too much, but there is one thing that I just wanted to bring up with this post… it’s Tifa’s design for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I don’t like it. Her face, looks good. Pretty much perfect. Her boobs, just a little bit smaller than I wanted, but you know what, I can deal with that. My main problem though, is her fucking legs. They made them too skinny and gave her stupid black thigh high stockings that completely throw off the color balance of her entire outfit. She’s wearing too much black now, and I hate it. Also, what do people have against bare legs all of a sudden!? They did this shit with Mythra’s Spirit in Smash Bros by Photoshopping some pantyhose onto her official artwork, and now they’re doing it to Tifa! As someone who can appreciate a nice pair of legs, can we stop with this lie that adding stockings to a design that didn’t have them in the first place somehow “improves them”? Because it doesn’t. It makes them look off. “Oh, but I like the thigh highs, they just make her look sexier!” Shut up. No they don’t. You’re lying to yourself and everyone else. Just admit the fact that you’re more attracted to the socks than the girls themselves, you damn Sockfags.

(If it sounds like I’m being overly judgmental here, I’m not. This isn’t supposed to be an actual serious rant. I’m just doing it for the LOLz. Also, I want credit for coining the term Sockfag here…)

I think my biggest problem with the stockings on Tifa can be better illustrated by comparing her redesign to a recreation of her old design in the remake. They honestly make Tifa look like some kind of high schooler who shops out of Hot Topic (the fact that she apparently also has little skulls on her new pleated skirt reinforces this further to me). They basically made her look a lot younger and more immature, when I felt her character was never supposed to be like that. Also, not having the big red gloves I feel was a mistake as well, though I guess you could just chalk that up to the fact that her original gloves might still exist simply as a different weapon for her.

Basically, what I want to know is why they even had to change her design this much in the first place in comparison to the other characters. Even if it’s only by a tiny fraction, her old design was definitely better! There better be DLC for it Sqenix! Because if there isn’t… I’ll probably just complain a little bit more to myself and still play the game when it comes out regardless. Because here’s another fun fact for you guys: I never got past the 1st Disc on FF7! I didn’t even get around to playing 7 until like 2013. Just further proof that you guys probably shouldn’t be taking me too seriously…

But if FF8 ever got a remake like this, and they try to pull a similar kind of redesign… Ooooooh so help me… They’ll be even more impotent rage coming from me, you can bet your butts on that! (Final Fantasy 8 was actually my first Final Fantasy and because NOSTALGIA, it’s also my favorite. And yes, I did actually cheer when I saw it was finally getting a remaster like the other PS1 Final Fantasies did.) Anyways, that’s enough pointlessly ranting about slight tweaks to character designs. Next art post is going up on Monday, so until then, I’ll see you next post.

Night Fox? – Comic Post #157: Alex’s Weekend Alone Pg.2

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This first part here in that block quote is a small addendum that I’ve added to this post because I typed the rest of this up before Nintendo’s E3, and some things were brought up that I kinda want to talk about in this post:

Holy fucking shit GameFreak! YOU FUCKED UP!

No Pokemon outside of the Galar Pokedex are going to be transferable to Sword and Shield in ANY form!? Screw those people who like being able to transfer forward their whole collections gen to gen, am I right!? Fuck you, you LAZY pieces of shit! Nobody believes your bullshit excuses for why you’re completely arbitrarily not putting a good chunk of Pokemon into the game!

You’ll “try” to include as many of the fan favorites as you can? I guaran-FUCKING-tee you that means NONE of the PRECIOUS Kanto Pokemon will be cut because you gotta CONSTANTLY nostalgia bait those INSUFFERABLE Gen-Wunners, RIGHT!? There’s a reason Gen 5, what I consider to be the franchise’s PEAK, was a breath of fresh air for giving us a break from the same 151 mons we’ve been CONSTANTLY subjected to for the past 20 YEARS!

And just what exactly were your reasons for removing Pokemon from the game entirely? To improve the game balance and make the animations better…? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA BULLSHIT!!!! The game will be just as unbalanced as EVER and the animations will STILL look incredibly lazy and shitty. Stop insulting the intelligence of your fan base with such transparently retarded excuses! We all know the real reason you’re cutting Pokemon from the game: Because you all can’t be bothered to get off of your lazy asses and stop cutting corners! That’s the only reason you decided to do this! Did you not future proof all Pokemon models back in Gen 6 for a reason!?

At this point, you should just delay the game a couple of months to give yourself the time needed to get them all in. Or at least PROMISE us some fucking updates that will add the ability to transfer them to the game rather than saying this is how you’ll be doing things going forward. Because you’re going to lose a lot of fans if you don’t…

And I SWEAR TO CHRIST, you better introduce more 100 new mons this gen, because Gens 6 and 7 were utterly horrendous in that regard! I like being able to go through each game, making a team of Pokemon I’ve never used before. It’s impossible to do that though when you don’t actually add enough new Pokemon! And there better be some new cross-gen evolutions! Because some of those older mons really need it! That leak about Farfetch’d getting an evolution better not be so far-fetched if you know what I’m saying!

(Also, am I the only one who doesn’t give a shit about Banjo or ANYONE from fucking Dragon Quest making it into Smash!? When am I going to get some DLC characters that I actually want Sakurai? WHEN!?)

Okay, rant over…

And now for something completely different.

So this bit of a non-sequitur in the comic was brought about purely because I was bored and wanted to see how well I could write a scene for Meldworld (one of those other comic ideas I’ve had floating around). I didn’t want to abandon doing Night Fox or anything like that, so I tried to incorporate it into the main comic in a way that somewhat keeps in cannon, by giving it a cameo as a TV show (Just ignore the fact that these characters did show up in person inside Owen’s shop so they can somehow exist as both real people and fictional TV characters at the same time…)

I learned a bit from writing this little diversion. I learned that it’s really hard to write characters that are supposed to be stupid when you’re used to writing for characters who are supposed to be snarky assholes, especially for comedic purposes. Quirky’s dialogue here was definitely the hardest to come up with, purely because there are just so many different ways for an idiot to be an idiot. Quirky here is supposed to be that special breed of idiot who will fall flat on their face purely because they forgot how to stand for a couple of seconds, while also being able to get through any kind of bad situation through some blind luck and a little bit of surprisingly competent idiot savant-ness. You basically have to find the line between what the idiot can and cannot understand, then blur that line a lot as the plot demands. It involved a lot of rewriting dialogue on my part, but I eventually settled on Quirky being the kind of guy who doesn’t quite know what lips are, but knows that they’re necessary to play a trumpet. The whole exercise in general just gave me a newfound appreciation for dumb characters who are actually written well. It’s a lesson I think we can all learn…

That we should appreciate idiots more…!

Now, before I wrap things up here, I’ve got two more things I want to bring up. First, is an irrelevant fun fact that I just wanted to cover. The Brass Master’s design is supposed to be a hybrid of General Onox from Oracle of Seasons (which low-key might be one of my favorite Zelda games), Smough from Dark Souls (which is a game that I’ve never played), and these guys right here (because they just look so stupid and hilarious). Considering it’s a design for a completely pointless filler character, I certainly put more thought into it than I needed to… The second thing that I wanted to cover is more art! I’ve got a couple of drawings in the works that I still need to finish, plus two Meldworld related ones that are ready to post at any time. The first one is probably going up on Friday, and the other one I’ll shoot for Monday. I could just post them right now, but I try to avoid spamming posts all in one day (that Sonia quick sketch I did last week obviously being an exception). As for the other ones… well, you’ll see ’em when you see ’em.

Anyways, that’s all from me, so until then, I’ll see you next comic.

 

Art Post – Pokemon Sonia Quick Sketch (Finished Version)

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And here’s the final version, plus a version without the background right here. Considering I started this at about around 10 AM this morning my time, this took about 5 hours total to finish. Not a bad time if I do say so myself. Just goes to show how much work I can actually get done when I actual focus on trying to finish something and not just constantly procrastinate doing it. Though having someone else’s work to use as a reference for the shading does help quite a bit…

Anyways, this is going to be the start of me trying to make a conscious effort to actually start posting more art work outside of the comic, particularly of characters who AREN’T my own OCs. In addition to Sonia being done here, I also have a sketch of Deku from My Hero Academia I need to color and shade. I won’t be posting the step by step of that one if only because this picture was for a new character and as such, I wanted to get her out as quickly as I could. Again, you gotta jump on that new character band  wagon quickly…

As to who I’m going to draw after Deku… Really depends on what strikes my fancy at that point. So I can’t really say for sure right this second. At any rate, that’s enough rambling from me, so until then, I’ll see you all next post.

(WIP) Art Post – Pokemon Sonia Quick Sketch (Color)

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Lunch only took me like 6 minutes to eat, the longest of which was waiting 90 seconds for my breakfast burrito to microwave (yes I eat breakfast burritos for lunch and sometimes dinner too). Taking that into account, coloring only took about 40 minutes. Finally on to the shading, which who can really tell how long that will take? Anyways, I’ll see you next step which should be the last one…