Night Fox – Comic Post #181: A Vow To Be Cherished

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Even with a massive introverted home-body like me, this quarantine is finally starting to get to me. Turns out when most of your family members no longer have to leave the house to get their work done anymore, you end up having to spend a heck of a lot more time with them. So, the only time my introverted self can get some valuable alone time is pretty much when everyone else has already gone to bed, meaning in order for me to savor that alone time, I stay up really late and end up giving myself a super messed up sleep schedule as a result

Not to mention we keep running out of food because the times we’ve actually been grocery shopping, we only get like a little bit more than a week’s worth at most, when we really need to just buckle down and do a proper grocery run and get like a full month’s worth. As a result, the only things we have to really eat consistently on the regular is ramen and sandwiches. And I am sick and tired of both of them. I can only eat so much salt and carbs after all! Of course, every time I try to get someone to go with me, everyone just wants to procrastinate and is all like “Oh, we can just go to the store tomorrow or something” and then we never do. I’ve been half tempted to just go out by myself (which is something an introvert like me avoids doing like the plague, or Corona Virus in this case) and just buy food for me and me only. But with such a family oriented household as ours, I’d feel like a bit of an asshole just getting food for myself. Not to mention, I’d be a little bit paranoid that I’d accidentally come back and get everyone at home sick because I’m kind of careless when it comes to NOT spreading germs around.

Basically, everything has gotten so repetitive and tedious, and my family is slowly driving me crazy, that I can finally understand how all of the extroverts were feeling during the start of the quarantine. I suspect a lot of people at this point are starting to get just as stir-crazy as me, and makes me suspect a vast majority of people are just going to ignore most of the quarantine guidelines by the end of Spring. Here’s hoping that most of the statistics the media has been careless flouting about to get people to panic about this thing have been actually overinflated like the more skeptical of us have been suspecting. Anyways, I just needed to rant about that for a bit. Another drawing up on Friday again, so until then, I’ll just see you all next post.

 

Art Post – Miss Mirage

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And just like I said last week, here’s the colored in version of Miss Mirage. Despite having less intense and involved shading than Vic’s picture, she probably took me a lot longer to actually finish if only because I had a really hard time on deciding how her color scheme would work. Being that she fights using illusions of herself, I figured she should have a more “psychedelic” color scheme that would make it harder for people fighting her to focus on any individual illusion she makes. But I also didn’t want the damn picture to hurt your eyes to look at, so I settled for something that was somewhat vibrant but didn’t go into straight “clown vomit” territory. I guess you could say this version of her is with her “mirage level” set to low. That being said, this wasn’t the only version of her I decided to make.

Here, we have her “mirage level” just a little bit higher. And can I just say, trying to settle on a decent look for what her illusions would look like when she’s actively using them was freaking hard. My initial idea was a semi-transparent version of her that was all green. But then I told myself that was too simple and ended up spending close to 3 hours just screwing around in Photoshop trying to come up with a more complex look for her when she uses her illusions. I experimented a lot with different ways to make her more mirage-like, through things like excessive blurring and preset Photoshop filters, before quickly realizing that every method I was using just made the picture rather crap to look at. I also tried doing lots of different color schemes for the illusions that used lots of different colors all at once. Didn’t take long for me to realize the clown vomit look was STILL a bad idea to go with. So I settled on giving her a sort of rainbow shimmer to her previous look while also making her just a little bit more glowy. I’m not 100% satisfied with how she ended up, but after trying all sorts of ideas that were just plain bad, I just wanted SOME kind of visual representation of her actively using her powers. With that said, I’ve still got one final variant to go with this post.

And finally, we have her with her “mirage level” at 0. I actually got this version done first before I figured it was kind of too normal a costume for a master of illusions. So, once I actually rather quickly decided on her coloration here, I got to work on those other two versions. Even though I never read any of her comics (or any western comics in general), I did take some inspiration from the Carol Danvers version of Ms. Marvel when I designed Miss Mirage here, so in case you might’ve noticed a similarity, it WAS intentional on my part. As to why I based her design off a character I know next to nothing about… Well, I just felt that, that version of Carol’s design was just a good design that was also emblematic of an idealized, if a little generic, female superhero. Which was the kind of look I wanted Miss Mirage to encapsulate.

(And can I just say its a crying shame what Marvel has since done to Carol ever since they turned her into Captain Marvel, intentionally giving her that REALLY unflattering mannish build and butch lesbian haircut? Not to mention they apparently made her just the biggest, most unapologetic bitch EVER in the comics… Like it’s no wonder classic western comic books are dying when they pull crap like that with their characters. Because nobody wants to read about “heroes” who look and act like that. And don’t even get me started on characters like Snowflake and Safespace. Who OK’d those designs and names, SERIOUSLY…?)

Anyways, just like with Vic’s picture last week, I kind of don’t want to divulge too much information about Miss Mirage here as a character or her role in the story outside of what I already mentioned in the sketch dump. So with that, I’ll just leave things here, and until then. I’ll just see you all next post.

Night Fox – Comic Post #180: An Undying Fox Fire (All Pages)

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Sorry for no proper update again this week, but these multi-pagers can really throw my ability to keep consistent updates out of whack. Next couple of multi-pagers shouldn’t be as bad in that regard though, as I don’t exactly plan to rush through them with double updates for a while, which, though probably even WORSE for pacing, at the very least will give me some more breathing room to plan out future stuff. Anyways, another art update going up on Friday again, so until then, I’ll just see you all next post.

Art Post – Vic Vector

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And now for the one picture from that bunch of sketches I posted that I actually went with a different approach to the shading than with the others. Because Vic Vector here is supposed to be styled after traditional western comic superheroes, I tried my best to replicate the little stippling dot thing that comics do when it comes to their shading (something I also did for the colored picture of Miss Mirage that will be probably be next Friday’s post), in addition to using far darker shadows than I usually do for single character pictures like this. In all honesty, it wasn’t my original plan to do his shading like that, but doing him the usual way just didn’t look right in my head. So I tried upping the “shadow intensity” and he turned out a heck of a lot better in my eyes.

And from here, this would normally be the part where I discuss more character details for Vic Vector here than I did in the post with his initial sketch… But I kind of don’t really have much else I want to divulge here that I didn’t briefly bring up in that post. The “Vic Vector” story idea I have still has bits I’m fleshing out in my head after all. I do have some concrete things, particularly stuff that would affect his character trajectory, from just generic do-gooder to someone who is hopefully a lot more interesting, planned out in my head. And though these things would happen relatively early on in the story (think like episode 6 or 7 of a TV show in terms of pacing), it would be stuff I kind of don’t want to spoil just in case I actually end up doing something with this “would be” story idea later on down the line. Let’s just say that the somewhat unintentional Captain Falcon look he’s sporting here, is far from the first version of his hero costume that he uses. And that his hero name of Vic Vector is something that he actually changed from his initial alias of “The Wall Rider” for a specific reason.

God, it’s real awkward trying to talk all vague like that you know? It makes quick little 3 paragraph posts like this take close to an hour and a half for me to write as I agonize over everything I try to type in my head because I’m REAL ANAL about the words I put out there on the internet. It’s why I often procrastinate posting artwork. Because I can’t just type up what I want to say. It’s gotta be typed in just the right way… But, other than that, not much else I really want to add with this one. Not much else I can think TO ADD to this one… So until then, I’ll just see you all next post.

Night Fox – Comic Post #180: An Undying Fox Fire Pg.9 and 10

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Just like when I finished off the first part of this fight, there’s not going to be a proper comic update next week, just the compilation of this part. Turns out when you take a week off in the middle of doing double updates, you can really burn through your backlog. Suppose it didn’t help I stopped drawing two pages a week after I finished this part because I’d rather chill with Animal Crossing then maintain that work load… But hey, I’d rather the fights take half as long as they could have in exchange for more or less just skipping a single update.

Anyways, when I was first writing the ending to the fight, there were actually a couple of different ways I brainstormed ending it. My original idea was actually to have Derrick force the fight to end like he suggested he would’ve here and we would have gotten a far better showing of just what he can do with that sword. But I also liked the idea of Sabrina technically getting the final blow in, which would have made it even more complicated for Derrick to force a peaceful resolution to the fight. So I ended up going with this end where Kitsi pulls a Piccolo as she protects Sabrina from Baose, kind of forcing me to awkwardly force in Derrick’s “swordomancy” at then end.

Maybe if I felt like padding out the ending a little more, I could’ve had Baose stop in place when he saw Kitsiyuna staring down his hammer, but not just straight up yield then and there, giving Derrick a chance to properly establish what he can do in a fight by using the katana to completely divide up the parking lot and force the two parties apart. From there, Baose could then yield properly and still surrender like he does here. It’s little “what if I had done this?” scenarios like that, that make me so keen on going back and properly doing the start of the comic… Which, based off of how my current script writing has been going, it’s going to take a little longer than I anticipated getting to that natural stopping point I mentioned, where I would feel confident going back and redoing the start.

That’s pretty much going to be everything from me for this update. Another drawing going up Friday again if any of you care. But with that said, I’ll just see you all next post.

Art Post – Kitsi and Sabrina’s Summer Wear

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Here’s the colored version of Kitsi and Sabrina in their summer wear. I definitely feel this one turned out far better than last week’s picture (in no small part because I’m just far better at drawing adults than I am children). I think it helps that I was able to get away with making the colors a lot more vibrant and warmer cause you know… summer wear be like that and all.

One thing I will mention is I feel like I still need to practice getting just how muscular Kitsiyuna is supposed to be down. Just drawing her normally, I don’t get a lot of practice with that because her hair and boa cover up her upper arms and shoulders, while her boots cover most of her thighs. I think I mentioned something like this a while back where her design allows me a lot of leeway to “cheat” at drawing her physique, which can lead to situations like how she ends up here… She doesn’t look completely horrible and totally off, but she could still stand to look a whole heck of a lot better.

I’ll probably get better at getting her muscles down if I actually start using some reference pictures of real life athletic builds instead of just drawing her how I always do. That’s one tip I can give all of you aspiring artists out there: use reference photos to help you better conceptualize what you’re drawing. Your end results will usually end up looking so much better, and you’ll hopefully end up reinforcing a proper drawing method in your head for whatever you were trying to draw.

Anyways, not much else I really want to say with this one. Next colored picture is almost certainly going to go up next Friday as well, so keep an eye out if you care. But until then, I’ll just see you all next post.

 

Night Fox – Comic Post #180: An Undying Fox Fire Pg.7 and 8

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I’m gonna start this post off with a bit of a downer news wise. This past Saturday, we had to put down one of our dogs, Oliver. My brother and his husband adopted him close to like 6 years ago to keep their other dog company when they both had to work while they still lived in their own apartment. Something like 3 years ago, that was no longer feasible for them money wise, so they ended up moving in with me and my mom with both dogs in tow. Because his fur was already going white when they adopted him, we figured he was already pretty old, combined with the fact that he was more my brother’s dog so I wasn’t that attached to him, I wasn’t too broken up about it at first mostly because we could kind of see it coming.

That was until I had to help my mom dig a grave for him because they couldn’t afford to have him cremated, and my brother and his husband were too busy staying by Oliver as we had him euthanized. They recommended we dig a hole that was at least 4 feet deep, and we struggled just to get down to 3, so physically it was kind of tiring. And then we actually had to bury him. Something finally set in seeing his lifeless body being put in at the bottom of this hole we had barely managed to dig for him that made it finally feel sad in my head. I had only had to personally bury one other pet before this, which was a bearded dragon I used to have named Norbert. But he was much smaller obviously, and was already in a shoe box, so I didn’t have to physically see him as I buried him. I was able to handle digging the hole up till that point more or less just fine, but actually seeing his body made me feel completely weak in the legs. My body felt completely shaky despite me thinking I had been mentally prepared for his death. I couldn’t look directly at his body, so I just focused on the pile of dirt and clay we shoveled back in until his body had been completely covered.

We’ve lost many pets in the past, dogs included, but this being the first time I’ve had to help bury such a large one (Oliver we think was part German Shepard, so he was a decently sized dog), I think is going to stick with me. From what my mom has told me, I I’ve never really cried whenever a pet had died, which was still the case this time, but again, actually seeing his body in that hole, made it far more “real” to me in comparison to the passing of my other pets. And because its still fresh in my head (I’m typing this post up the day after), I kind of just wanted to talk about it here on this post…

It left me wondering, how exactly will I respond when the one who died is a close family member. Will I still get through it as easily as I have been up to this point…?

In more pleasant news, the new Animal Crossing has been pretty fun, and I think I’ve found a good routine balancing it and working on art work. I play around an hour when I wake up where I basically patrol my island for anything new that would’ve come in that day and talk to all of my villagers at least once (or in the case of Bianca, who is my favorite villager right now, pester her multiple times whenever I see her). When I get that done, I work on the comic for a bit, and when I feel like I need to take a break from drawing, I pop back in for another session where I think of some little mini projects I can do to spruce up my island. I’ll get back to work on the comic again, and then after I get more work done, I maybe check back in on my island one last time to see if there’s anything interesting I can do at night (like stripping the randomly generated islands of all of their trees and flowers to turn them into tarantulas farms, or spending over 2 hours and 100 things of bait to catch a damn stringfish before they go “out of season”). Rinse and repeat.

Given all of the stuff that has been going on, Animal Crossing really did come out at the perfect time, didn’t it? It’s just stimulating and engaging enough that its the perfect thing for me to play to build up my motivation to get things done during a period of time in the comic where I feel like I could easily fall into a rut if I didn’t have it. But it’s also not so stimulating and engaging that all I want to do is play it and neglect getting any comic work done. It’s also given my brother and his husband stuff to do during the whole quarantine thing where they’re both not really working, which I’m going to say is the case for a lot of people out there.

My only real gripe right now is Bunny Day being a 12 day long thing. The damn water eggs keep taking up the spawns for other fish and making it very difficult for me to find any snapping turtles. I REALLY want to get one as a pet, but I also need to find a second one to donate to the museum, but the damn eggs are making it so I can’t find a single one right now! Not to mention, ever since that damn rabbit Zipper showed up on my island, I’ve been fishing up far more garbage things like tires and boots than I used to… Now I don’t want to make any accusations or anything, but… THAT DAMN RABBIT IS INTENTIONALLY POLLUTING MY ISLAND’S WATERWAYS WITH HIS DAMN EGGS AND MULTIPLE CARS WORTH OF TIRES WHEN ALL I WANT TO DO IS CATCH SOME DANG TURTLES AND I WON’T STAND FOR IT DAMN YOU…!

But yeah… Animal Crossing is fun, and you should consider getting it if you’ve been suffering through quarantine like a s**t ton of other people out there… Just be careful you don’t let it end up consuming your life, because I hear that can happen to people. Take the game at a slow, day by day pace, and you’ll have a fun time. And with that shilling out of the way, another finished drawing going up Friday, so keep an eye out for it. That’s going to be all from me, so until then, I’ll just see you all next post.

 

Art Post – Back In 2nd Grade

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Of the drawings from last week I actually got colored in and shaded at this point, let’s start off with the one I’m the most “eh…” about. Not much I really want to mention with this one that I didn’t already mention with last week’s sketch, except for like a few minor details I feel slightly compelled to point out.

The book Alex is holding is the same spell book he uses in comic for his magic, which in addition to his interest into the Occult, is something he got from his grandfather at a young age. The uncomfortable look he has on his face I ended up giving him here is because he was far more timid and non-confrontational than his current iteration, and Kaz’s look is because he had some major disdain and distrust of Alex when they were younger, as was the case for most everyone Alex interacts with.

Compare that to Alexis who still more or less has the exact same personality and behavior she had at 8 now that she’s 16 in the comic. The biggest change for her is in all honesty her hair color. It’s actually the thing I spent the most time on with this picture, was deciding what hair color she had before it turned purple. You see, her hair color actually changed naturally over time as a side effect to her natural proficiency in magic (same reason Alex has red eyes and pale skin), a trait I decided to give her a while back to make her seem even more “special and miraculous” and intentional mary-sue like. So I had to give her a hair color when she was younger that wouldn’t feel like that big of a stretch that it would gradually change purple over time. It supposed to read as a light brown auburn color here, which she got as a mix of what is supposed to be her mother’s strawberry blonde hair, and what I recently decided was her father’s regular auburn hair (as I haven’t done a color picture of her father yet).

Given her family’s propensity towards red and blonde hair, I guess I’m pseudo establishing here that Alexis’s family is supposed to have Irish in it, and maybe a little bit of French. I actually have thought a little bit about what Alex’s intended family ancestry is supposed to be as well, and since I just brought up Alexis’s, why not do Alex’s here too? On his father’s side, he’s got some French as well, but more Italian. And on his mother’s, he is mostly Germanic. Though, because I just can’t seem to shake that weeb desire to cram in Japanese influence everywhere, I will say he does still have one Japanese ancestor as a hold over from earlier drafts where Alex was half-Japanese. That ancestor may or may not be actually important to the story at some point in the future… And as for Kaz’s ancestry… I’ve got no f***ing idea other than I guess just general European.

But, that’s pretty much everything I could think to bring up in this drawing. The next picture I colored is probably going to go up next Friday just because I feel like spacing these updates out. But anyways, that’s all from me,so until then, I’ll just see you all next post.

Night Fox – Comic Post #180: An Undying Fox Fire Pg.5 and 6

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When you’re doing an over the top anime inspired fight, it’s like you are almost required by law to add in one of those rapid-fire punch offs in there at some point… Also, Baose has eyes now. In my script for the comic, I didn’t write in anything about Kitsiyuna knocking his face plate off, but the damn thing made it so that you couldn’t see him emote like at all, and this was the point in the fight where Baose really starts to get unhinged. Plus I was just tired of drawing the damn thing. So, it’s going to be gone for the remainder of the fight even though I had no plans to do anything of the sort in the first place…

Anyways, because I wasn’t working on drawing any comics last week, instead choosing to focus on getting more scripts written (and playing the new Animal Crossing, which I’m sure is going to cause time management issues for me at some point in the future juggling playing it and actually doing comic work…), I actually got around to finish coloring some of those sketches I posted last Friday because not doing a comic actually left me with enough motivation to be able to do just regular art. The biggest hurdle for me actually finishing random pictures like those was always doing the shading. I could never figure out a consistent way to do it and it always caused me to procrastinate finishing pictures because I could never decide in my head how to actually do the shading. Considering I got a bunch of pictures shaded in all within a couple of days of each other, I was able to kind of reinforce a somewhat consistent method of shading into my head that will hopefully cut down on my desire to procrastinate on future drawings. I’ll post the first of these finished drawings on Friday, because that just seems to be the other day of the week I’m okay with posting stuff on. Hopefully you guys actually end up liking the shading style I’m going to end up sticking with… it’s not going to be the most “detailed” approach to shading I’ve experimented with in the past, but at least the colors will look all nice and vibrant.

Anyways, that’s pretty much everything from me for today, so until then, I’ll just see you all next post.