Kuchikami no Sake

Remember Aspergillus Oryzae? Something I started a while back and gone nowhere with…. well its getting a revival. As Kuchikami no Sake. Yet another random arse name. Mouth chewed sake… basically how they used to make it. Chew rice, spit it into tub, let it ferment. Fun stuff.

This is basically a link to the old stuff.

Changes! Main character is now… a miko. Yes a miko.

Shiori. A miko. As a character, she might actually be different…. in ways but not quite I guess. Outfit inspired by Artonelico and Kannagi.

She travels around and is generally polite, soft spoken and seemingly nice. If you piss her off, she shows it by… attacking you rather casually in her same polite soft spoken tone. In a way, that makes her incredibly evil. Super indifferent verbal assault. And it hits you in all the soft spots.

She still likes to drink I suppose. Rather unbecoming of a miko. Maybe her personality changes when drunk…

Generally a helpful person. Like Ginko of Mushishi or something. Like if she has nothing to lose by helping people, she might as well. Unless you’re a total prick and its helping you be more of an asshole or something.

All that aside… I should think more about it. Since she’s going around, meeting all kinds of mythical creatures and things, I wonder if I should link her to some goddess or mythical being. Either way she’s a bit weird for a miko, traveling. And not belonging to a shrine. She probably comes across and helps out at a bunch of shrines as she moves along.

Lastly… Group Picture!!
YUS GROUP PICTURE!!
A fox priest, hairy samurai, buff Oni, even hairier Hibagon, a Tsuchinoko, a Kuchisake Onna and a Kappa. And my design sketch bits of Shiori.

I guess I could at least elaborate about these guys. 300 words is a bit unbecoming of me.

Fox Priest! He’s a priest in the sort of way everybody follows what he says. So he essentially rules this town of his. Nobody knows he’s a fox spirit though. Miko miko comes in, and does some of her little investigating on him mainly because she’s bored and curious and finds out his true identity. But since he’s not actually doing anything malicious and is just… bored and wants to run a town…. she doesn’t really do anything about it. The whole premise is a big load of about nothing anyway.

Samurai guy! Due to lack of any real conflicts, he’s kinda jobless. So he decided to try fit into society but he looks too scary so he’s a bit stunted. He tried offering bodyguard services to travelers and stuff, but when he walks up to them, he’s mistaken for some criminal causing them to run off and spread bad rumours about him. So he’s kinda been living in the wild… so he’s a bit dirty. And if he’d just wash his face and cut his hair, he wouldn’t be looked so badly upon. Well one day he meets the miko who doesn’t run away for once and hires him as a bodyguard. Although in actuality she hired him so that she’d have somebody to talk to as she traveled from one place to another. She tells him to shave and wash his face if he doesn’t want to be treated like a criminal but he refuses to for some reason or another.

Hibagon! Harry monkey thing. She meets it in a forest and maybe finds some Hibagon village. No idea what else. Tsuchinoko… probably unchanged from previous incarnation. She tries fishing, and hooks this guy and they start smacktalking. And then get drunk. Oni will probably remain unchanged too.

Kuchisake Onna! A spirit of a woman who had a ‘Joker’ treatment. Just go wiki it.
Miko miko its requested to take care of this evil spirit. So by the folktale or whatever, when it asks AM I PRETTY? She goes, heh I’m much more beautiful! And it leads to some kinda bitchfight involving a metal fan meeting a knife. Evil woman gets subdued somehow. Should think about more details. Damn woman kinda deserved getting her mouth slit open anyway, for cheating on her husband and toying with the delicate hearts of men around the place!

A friggin Kappa. Well I haven’t really thought about shit here either. It was quite arbitrary when I decided to draw it in the corner. Evil ugly thing that eats children. Maybe its actually not such a bad creature in my rendition. No idea. I’ll get to it someday… I’m lacking focus right now.

Until next time I guess.

Crescencia Pt. II & Stuff

Crescencia General Concept Drawing
Just did a general concept drawing. Was going to change the design and tweak it, but it looks like I didn’t really. I made a few changes and got rid of them ultimately, so there probably won’t be any real changes to design anytime soon. Although I should really think of a better design for her Staves.

That said I started listening to Asriel. They make some pretty awesome music, which immediately make me think of Gothic and Victorian themes. Does that mean that listening to them will make me draw more Gothlolis? That remains to be seen. I need to get the romanizations/translations of their songs sometime, since its kinda hard to recognize songs without knowing their names. At any rate, I have another source of ‘fantasy’ music now, so I don’t have to overdose on Sound Horizon and get sick of them. Although I still can’t wait till their next concert DVD is out. Moira should be way awesome on stage.

~Crescencia of the Dual Staves~

Main character created, title still pending… but whatever.

Art
Crescencia Character Design
Crescencia Facial Expressions

Crescencia of the Dual Staves! Main character for a side scrolling shooter I suddenly came up with under the influence of many various factors!

Like a lot of my stuff, my main character comes before I build a world around them. Basically while I was uh… experimenting with drawing a Visual Kei Deviant Vampire Lord that plays the electric guitar and… things I’m not gonna elaborate upon any further, I ended up looking through Ludwig Kakumei(Revolution) which I read a while back. And then I remembered that I kinda wanted to draw/design a witch character, inspired by Dorothea, a character in that manga.

So under the influence of Kaori Yuuki, I had my fly with fluffy eyelashes and mascara and Crescencia was born. Quite fitting too, seeing as it is the month of Halloween.

Story and Character Outline
And so let me introduce you dear Crescencia. Age unknown, measurements disclosed. As you can see, she is a witch. She lives alone in her forest, in her witch house, with the various denizens of the forests for company. Like enchanted talking animals, fairies, ghosts and the such. And generally spends her day doing as she pleases- mainly mixing new potions, trying to make new spells, making stuff explode and stuff a witch would do.

When she needs something the forest cannot provide, she journeys to town and sells her various potions, and provides simple magical services for those who need it and makes some cash, and then goes and buys whatever she needs. That said, she’s always buying belts. And various leather products. And things with buckles. Her outfit isn’t just a crazy leather getup because it was at the whim of the creator(maybe it was, so sue me :<), she actually… loves wearing stuff like that. And collecting her dear buckled objects. Plus she loves doing her eyelashes and overdoing it on the eyeliner and mascara which leads poor Crescencia to be misunderstood all the time, as a freaky witch thats into BDSM. And she’s rather popular in town for all the wrong reasons.

Crescencia is actually a nice girl, rather cheerful and generally likes to help out. Even if she does have the occasional time where she can’t help but to mix something explosive in her pot because she wants to see some fireworks…. can’t blame her! As people, its a natural impulse to want to blow shit up.

And so how does the story start? One day she finds out that… her forest isn’t actually hers anymore. Or hers to begin with. It actually belongs to an old fart of a noble Archmage, and now he wants her evicted unless she pays a ridiculous rent! And said Archmage is very well capable of kicking her out and not caring, as he’s basically also the Lord of the Land. Or at least the immediate surrounding area of land.

Thus begins her adventure of not getting evicted. Be it through doing chores for the Archmage, searching for treasure and earning her keep through various means…. and perhaps ultimately owning her forest through legitimate means! And so she picks up the two staves her mother has left her and sets off!

Game Concept
As I mentioned, this is designed to be a side scrolling shooter game. Which means Crescencia’s bid to not getting evicted means going through many dangerous jobs which requires…. ANNIHILATING SHIT THROUGH MAGICAL FORCE!!

Her tools of trade are two staves. Her general purpose Staff, which by feeding her magical energy into, will convert it into projectiles of various kinds. While she is capable of calling forth spells by herself, its quicker to use use her Staff like some kinda magical machinegun, which will generally increase her combat potential. The 2nd staff double acts as a broom. Its her mode of transport, plus on the tip is a crystal that slowly generates magical energy, and also absorbs leftover background magical energy to increase its charge speed. When fully charged, it can unleash a massive magical attack.

Staff 1 – Attacks
Now for more detail, her general purpose staff basically constitutes her ‘attack’. Every scrolling shooter has a basic attack which can be improved/changed whatever, be it a machinegun or laser or bla bla. This staff however, can utilize the power of 3 elements, Fire, Ice and Lightning, allowing Crescencia on the fly versatility.
As can be kinda seen in the Character Artwork, the staff in her right hand(the one thats not a broom) has these triangular prism bits under the gemmed tip. On each side of those are 3 elemental runes. By rotating it, you can set a singular rune and thus set the element of the staff. Of course by rotating both, you can set two runes instead of one! Which means…. mix and match, giving Crescencia a total of 6 different attack types. Although I was thinking earlier in the game, she’ll be limited to only using one set of elemental runes, before she finds something or gets someone through some story plot I haven’t thought up of yet to activate the 2nd set of runes. The single runes will be limited to just Fire, Ice and Lightning with no combinations and are weaker. Or maybe she only starts with fire and has to collect all 6 runes manually. In addition, Crescencia can charge her attacks instead of just firing it off continuously.

And so here are her attack types:
Basic Three Elements
Fire/Fire + Fire : Simple forward firing fireballs. Decent rate of fire and damage. Can be charged to unleash a short ranged high damage explosive burst.
Lightning/Lightning + Lightning : Forward lightning bolts. High damage, instant hit but relatively low rate of fire. Can be charged to unleash a high powered bolt of lightning that attacks multiple targets in a chain(basically CHAIN LIGHTNING).
Ice/Ice + Ice : Low damage and decent rate of fire of ice shards. Ice shards take a while to speed up. Can be charged to unleash a giant icicle that strikes straight through anything it comes across, including enemy projectiles.
Combination Elements:
Fire + Lightning/Lightning + Fire/Plasma : The combination of the elements of fire and lightning allows the unleashing of intense energy attacks. Base attack is a low damage, but constant firing instant hit beam. Charged attack is a barrage of homing energy bolts that automatically seek out their targets.
Fire + Ice/Ice + Fire/Water: Fire and Ice = Melted Ice. Water. Base attack is a low damage, but high rate of fire and high spread barrage of water jets(spread shot). Charged attack is a forward firing high pressure water ball, which does massive damage to a single target.
Lightning + Ice/Ice + Lightning/Cloud : I was pretty stumped here. But well, clouds are like masses of tiny crystals of ice or really cold water way up in the sky. And they spit lightning. So that’s my bloody reasoning. And I’ll make this the trippy harder to use element.
Base Attack is is a low damage, low speed, very low rate of fire ice cold, static filled cloud. But it slows down the enemies it comes across and instead of disappearing on impact, it passes through and does damage as it passes through, and it slows down its targets meaning it gets to hurt its victims more. Switching to ice and firing ice projectiles increases the size of the cloud(effects stack up to some extent), while lightning attacks charge the cloud with electricity and causes it to do additional damage over time(effects do not stack).
Charge Attack throws out a thundercloud that inches forward slowly, striking nearby enemies with lightning. Has the same cold and damage over time effect as the regular cloud at increased potency, but cannot be upgraded with lightning and ice attacks like the regular cloud.

Staff Number 2, Bombs and Customizability
Now for her 2nd Staff, which is also her modes of transport, as its a broom as well. This lets her fly, and thus allows the game to be a side scrolling flight shooter. I’m going to break this bit into three parts.

The Head. Houses the crystal that charges up energy. This is basically the BOMB of the game, the powerful limited use annihilation attack. It is however, linked to the general purpose main staff in how it unleashes its energy. And thus, 6 different elemental bombs!

Fire: Causes a massive explosion to erupt from the center of the screen, basically annihilating everything on screen and clearing the screen of all enemy projectiles.

Lightning: Not a conventional bomb, it charges Crescencia with electricity for a decent period of time. This allows her to destroy most enemies on contact, improves her movement speed and lightning attack damage. Crescencia will also automatically ‘discharge’ bolts of lightning(automatic aimed attack) at nearby enemies. Note that enemy projectiles still hurt.
Basically turns Crescencia into a tesla coil that hurts on contact.

Ice: Mega Freeze. Freezes the entire current field, hence essentially ’stopping time’, allowing Crescencia to obliterate everything at her leisure. Of course its best used against bosses that are giving you too much of a hard time rather than using it to freeze small fry. Maybe the bomb can be more amusing by when it freezes flying small fry, they drop to their doom. And maybe projectiles freeze up and harmlessly drop to the ground too. This is probably bloody hell to code and do though if this ever gets made, so maybe it’ll just clear projectiles and freeze everything up.
I thought of having it not clear projectiles, but just freeze projectiles and have them move again when they thaw out, but that might make the bomb too useless. I mean after all, it doesn’t do damage. This would probably be good used in conjunction with the Cloud attacks, with everything frozen, you can set up a wall of clouds and power them up at your leisure to obliterate bosses.

Plasma: Mega Death Ray. Decent coverage forward firing beam of ultimate damage that persists for a small while. The main anti-boss attack. Of course its not very good if the boss consists of multiple parts, meaning you blow off a part of him and the damage is wasted. Its better to use the fire bomb for more damage dealt in such situations, or to use ice bomb to make your life easier. Also obliterates any enemy projectiles that come in contact of the beam.

Water: Water Barrier. Coats Crescencia in a ball of water. Absorbs a number of enemy projectiles before depleting. Lasts until its depleted. Also enhances water attack damage. While the barrier works on projectiles, it does not work on enemies themselves. (Wouldn’t this make her more susceptible to lightning damage? Well pure water actually doesn’t conduct, so lets just leave it at that)

Cloud: Storm. Causes a massive storm cloud to appear overhead and unleash a torrent of ice, slowing down all enemies in the area. Lightning also strikes at random targets. Storm lasts… long enough to be worth using I suppose.

And thats basically it for her 6 types of bomb attacks. You start the stage with no bomb energy, but it charges over time and charges extra by picking up certain enemy drops I suppose.

Now for the shaft. The shaft is a customizable part, something you buy and equip before stages. This allows you to tweak your speed at the cost of integrity… which is basically your health. Maybe this can also come with a variety of effects, like an enchanted shaft which erects a recharging barrier around Crescencia.

Now the tail, yet another customizable part. You can buy different tails and equip them, all of have different varying effects. The basic tail will allow Crescencia to dash and hence evade projectiles(basically temporal invulnerability and a sudden burst of speed).
Other different tails may enhance dash, or remove the dash for different properties. Stuff I’ve thought of would be:
Shooting Star: Crescencia can only dash forward but she destroys any enemies she comes in contact with for the dash.
Star Shower: Crescencia can no longer dash, but has a boost to speed and a constant mid-short range magical burst from her rear, allowing her to destroy enemies behind her.
Rocket Engines: By holding the dash button to activate it, this increases her movement speed, and releases damaging fumes at the opposite direction she’s moving in.

Familiar System!
The what now? Crescencia is not alone in her fight. As someone who was in a forest for much of her life, she has… forest friends! Well not only those, but she as a witch, you can get familiars and the like to aid her in battle! Basically Crescencia can ‘equip’ up to ## companions before a stage. Maybe some of make random snide comments in conversations too! The reasoning behind limiting the amount of familiars that can follow her at a time would be the strain on her magical power, since she has to supply her familiars with magical energy for them to fight. Maybe I’ll make it so different familiars use up different amounts of like, ‘familiarlial support energy’ or something. So like you can either go bring 5 shitty bats with you, or bring a pair of more powerful dragon welps or something.

They basically function almost like a Gradius Option. They follow you around and attack stuff, except these guys are way more unique and have their own behaviour, instead of just being a remote gun that fires when you fire. As for familiar concepts, I’ve kinda thought a while and came up with some examples.
Bat – Its a bat. Attacks with supersonic waves, a high speed projectile that damages all in its path. Attacks at random.
Cat Magician – Gradius Option Lawl. Fires what you fire, excluding bombs and charged attacks.
Ghost – A ghost. Spits a slow moving glob of ectoplasm which completely stops its target, but does no damage. Does not work on large enemies or bosses. Attacks when it sees a target.
Pumpkin Head – A floating pumpkin lantern. Spits fireballs straight forward when it sees a target.
Possessed Shuriken – Circles you and damages anything it hits.
Possessed Combat Knife – Automatically strikes at nearby enemies.

There’ll probably be other stuff, that maybe cast barriers, provide healing and other interesting things. Useful little buggers to augment your abilities, but you’re ultimately going to have to rely on yourself. Some will probably become available by just completing a stage, and others would probably need to have you destroy a certain hidden thing in some stages amongst other things.

And thats basically it for how the game, or how Crescencia would play as. As for settings and enemies, just imagine them as you would.

Stage Concepts?
I did come up with a concept for the first stage however, which is ‘Clean the Archmage’s Library’. After a amusing conversation with the Archmage, negotiating not getting evicted, refusing any sexual favours after being misunderstood as some BDSM maniac…. the agreement is that Crescencia has gotta clean out the Archmage’s Library to stay another month or few months. Seems like a pretty mundane task, but the library is huge with bookcases several storeys high, with many cobwebs and giant spiders in the way coupled with a variety of strange dungeon imps, evil bats and insane fireball spitting magic books.
There will probably be a variety of stages, like one where you gotta search a cave for some treasure to pay the rent with, more favours for the Archmage, mercenary work and the like.

I guess thats it for talking about this. For now, I’ll draw her a fair few more times and flesh out concepts I guess. Although its priority will be set lower when Type-A needs more of my expertise and when exams and assignments creep ever closer.

Type-A Post Convention Report

REPORT HERE
And so our first debut ended, selling 48 copies out of a hundred in a small convention of about 15000 attendees. Not bad for first timers. Wish I was there myself, but I’d probably be a spaztic and scare off potential customers or something.

Now with the weight of a deadline off our shoulders, I can redirect my efforts to what I originally joined the group for. Design the designless characters! With Altrouge designed, theres Ado Edem to crack, and he’s going to be a tough nut. I’ll probably do any urgently needed character lineart or something as well.

Our CG situation looks bleak though, our only CG-er being a busy guy. I’ll probably think about solutions to that after the end of my semester, where I got 3 months to fuck with.

On a side note:
MAGICAL CAREN!!!
Magical Caren from Fate/Tiger Colosseum Upper. Wish I had a PSP to play that. I could have done this better but eh, whatever. That costume is harder to draw than it looks. Until next time.

Type-A Pt III ROLL OUT!!!

Due to various circumstances that I can bitch all day about, its just a gameplay demo, with no demo story, no character CGs or anything. It felt like all the lineart I did was for nil, which makes me rather pissed. The only thing of mine that made it in was the two shitty arse sprites I did. At least its something. Not particularly blaming anyone or anything, its just that I didn’t see this coming. I was rather excited about getting my lineart published in the actual game for our first demo release and I just feel a bit disappointed.

Well all my lineart is included in the bonus gallery, so I guess its still kinda there. Ah whatever, I guess I’ll relax now on the matter and do my other stuff. Like my 15 year old battle princess. On her quest to retake her kingdom and stuff. Too bad I’m just so damn lethargic these days.

I guess thats it. Until next time.

Type-A Pt II -PANIC!!

With shit slowly coming together, main spriter still being AWOL and the day of reckoning creeping close and closer, its all one big PANIC. Well not really. My cut for the lineart is all done… which should conclude all needed lineart really.
Operator Girl Hisui
Shiki Tohno
Granted those weren’t exactly my first attempts. Botched a few times before arriving here.

Which would mean the only hole left to patch is in game sprites. Our projectile spriter rocked up with a bunch of material done, which is good. But what good are projectiles without the characters themselves? Unless I can somehow poke someone to hell and make them do it, it’ll probably fall to me eventually. I’ll probably start with Sion and see how that goes. Now to just get focus and laziness canceler and balance this with my University course and its stressful practicals.

TYPE-A

I reckon I should talk about this sometime.

Being a Type-Moon fan(I wonder why I am a fan sometimes though), I got involved in all kinds of shit and fan communities and other rubbish. Basically like two posts ago, where I posted Altrouge Brunestud for an unknown fan TM game….

That game is Type-A. A galactic crossover sidescrolling flight game(think Gradius), where you play as Akiha, grow big and battle on Aristoteles, the Ultimate Beings of the Solar System as we know it. And like most of the other T-M characters in a big battle fest shitstorm.

And a demo will be published in Sunshine Creation 41, some convention in Japan happening sometime in October. And it won’t be being published if we don’t finish the damn thing of course!

And hence with my stressing and doing what needs doing(and losing track of what actually needs doing, and going THIS NEEDS DOING, and then the boss is like ITS ALREADY DONE, and I’m like NO WAI LET ME CHECK OSHI ITS DONE), and some of the staff members going AWOL or saying things like I NEED A SCANNER and generally not showing up to the chatroom or forums where we discuss our shit and just passing messages through the boss. It feels working with such behind the curtains people… who haven’t actually produced anything usable to boot. I guess I just need to vent or something.

At any rate, I’ve kinda high geared a bunch of drawings, which seems to be confirmed usable and are on the way to the CG guy who will clean it up and colour it all up. We still have about a month to mop things up and hopefully it’ll get cleared. I’ll somehow do my best, even with my 20+ hours of university a week.

I guess I’ll tag on the fruits of my labour so far.
Sion Eltnam Atlasia
More Sion Eltnam Atlasia
And even more Sion Eltnam Atlasia
I’m getting used to drawing characters that aren’t my own design. Now for Hisui and Shiki! And possibly some spritework might be in order.

NINGYO SENTOU (DOLL WARS)

I’m currently sleep deprived and under the influence of the depressants of life. God damn thats emo sounding, enough about that shit.

At any rate, my twisted mind has yet come up with another strange concept. DOLL WARS. Actually thats just a placeholder of a name for now.

Here is some concept art.
Rough works 1
Rough works 2

So we go to a setting in our favourite Enid Blyton stories, TOYLAND. Except you set half the bloody place on fire and make half of them possessed by demons more like. So you get the goodie two shoes, the nice little toys with their beaming faces, cookies and tea parties. Then you get the evil bastards, tearing at their seams, stitched up and generally freaky ass looking with cleavers and shit.

Since we’re kinda looking back at Enid Blyton’s Toylands, we won’t be having any electronically powered toys. Its all unplugged stuff. Clockwork is as mechanical as it gets.

Back to the story, theres a war between the two sides. The good guys are led by some pacifist of a Fairy Queen doll, and the other side is just this unorganized mob that does as they please, with various sub leaders at each other’s necks.

Eventually many good toys are lost to the slaughter and flames. Despite so, the Fairy Queen, refuses to organize forces to fight back and sits there, being all peaceful and sipping her tea and generally being useless, and keeping all the forces around her. The survivors of the slaughter and flames, form a resistance group and take up arm. First to defend themselves, and then save others, and then take the fight to the enemy. And thus the Stuffed Animal Resistance Front is formed, led by Captain Stitches, a stuffed bunny thats 3 times the bunny of any bunny. Under his leadership, they manage to grow in numbers and forces(pilfering cotton from the wounds of their enemies to make more troops!). But with only stuffed animals and ragdolls, having being stitched together from many battle wounds and to quickly increase their numbers… theres only so much they can do.

Captain Stitches realizes they are in need of more serious firepower. What they need is a Doll, the pinnacle of toy craftsmanship, imbued with powerful magic and capable of much creation…. or destruction. But with no access to the Queen’s artificers, and the sacred materials and finally the Soul Gem, the very vessel that contains the soul required….  they would just have to make do with whatever they find.

After many raids, battles and pillages, combined with searching the more peaceful inner lands yet untouched by evil… they come up with an assortment of doll parts. And thus they manage to somehow create a doll of their own! However, the only soul gem they have was pieced together and refined from the remains of various soul gems. Including fragments from their foes. There is no guarantee what the result would be like. Despite so, Captain Stitches orders the completion of the doll, seeing how maintaining the status quo isn’t going to make things any better. And thus or protagonist and heroine, Eleanor of the Twilight, the doll of Dark Hope is born.

Due to her construction, she’s both good and evil and yet, neither at the same time. Her birth is celebrated, and is told the circumstances of her birth and the situation of the world. And thus she must master both the dark and light and decide on the path she takes, taking whoever will follow with her.

Being a Doll, her capabilities are far beyond her fluffy stitched together resistance friends. Capable of utilizing powerful magic, as well as being stronger and faster than most of her allies. At her command, would be various troops.

First up, we got your Bunny Troopers. With masks screwed into their faces, wielding cleavers and stitched together rather hastily… they are easy to make and repair. Small and weak individually but fast and powerful in numbers.

Then you got the Teddy Bears. Standing at least twice as tall as Eleanor, these lumbering cuddly things are incredibly strong and can take much punishment. And for as much punishment they can take, they can also deal it with the large metal claws grafted onto their paws.

Then you got your Ragdolls(despite not being animals, they are indeed stuffed). Humanoid stuffed dolls, while not as strong as Teddy Bears, are far more versatile and stronger than your bunny troopers. Capable of wielding an assortment of weapons and doing various jobs.

Then we get your canines and felines. Attack dogs, stuffed dogs with mouths full of sharp teeth, and equally sharp claws at the ready. General fast blitz attack unit. The felines are however, in the opposite role: Cat Magicians! Capable of using simple magic individually, but combined in groups are capable of using huge spells. General ranged support/artillery unit.

Up next are the Siege Piggy Banks! They have been modified to be able to snort giant coins out of their nostril slots. And thus they fire giant coins at their foes, smashing them behind a large disc of copper or nickel.

As for support, you get garden gnomes that act as their craftsmen and smiths. And magical spools of thread with their own needles, that go around stitching up wounds and reviving fallen allies.

Finally theres Captain Stitches. A stuffed bunny standing as tall as a Ragdoll. He wears an admiral’s jacket(which is of course… red) and has his special leader mask screwed onto his face. He wields Shark hand puppet called Cleopatra(based off my own shark handpuppet of the same name). With the puppet, he can bite and claw at his foes, and even fire teeth at them. And nothing is cooler than using a shark to rip the guts of your enemies out and all over the place! Easily as capable Eleanor in combat, only outmatched by the fact he lacks magic powers.

Now what exactly would this be? Probably some kinda strange concept for some hybrid genre of a game. Mix of action rpg and rts perhaps? And there’d be the freedom in the game to either be goodie two shoes, and nuke the evil and bring light back to the land with questionable ways. Or unite the evil hordes, and go against your creators and masters. Or instead, reset the land, destroy everything and become the new queen bitch of toyland.

Settings would include like some underground furnace, kept alight by doll parts, nice pretty forests with toadstools and dancing toys having their tea parties(possibly being set alight by the evil toys or the protagonist). You get your nice white castle for the Fairy Queen of Toys, and then you get the dark gothic castles with their buttresses and gargoyles and spires(no idea what I’m talking about anymore). And lava moats.

Basically typical fantasy settings. Filled with toys. With a few steampunk exceptions maybe, a clockwork city of clockwork toys, clockwork golems of mass destruction, amongst other things. Fun stuff. Which would mean Eleanor and the SARF will have more types of troops to use! And you can bet we’ll get evil toy clowns. Of much evil.

NOT QUITE DEAD YET

Here is my latest picture. Its not that I’ve been dormant all this while. I just haven’t been…. going on about my pet projects that much. Lets just say this is Altrouge Brunestud, a whimsical vampire princess. Not my own character, and you might have heard of her if you are quite acquainted with Type-Moon and the many insanities of Nasu Kinoko. I’m in a team making a fan game based off the Type-Moon universe, and I have dibs on designing Altrouge, a character thats only mentioned and has no real design. After many trials and tribulations, botched designs after one another, this should be as final as it gets. A whole wedding dress like look, which I expect to be entirely scarlet.

Maybe I’ll get to bringing Erika back from her long slumber sometime. Or introducing some new friends. Over and out!

The Papillon Brigade – A Battle Maid Chronicles Spinoff

Somehow I’ve decided that this spinoff will be about a squadron fighting for the freedom of their country. A huge war has broken out between the Imperial Suns and the Freedom States, with the nation of Fenrir is caught in between their struggle. As Fenrir occupies key strategic points and supply routes, both nations attack Fenrir. Freedom States do so in the name of ‘freeing people under tyrannic rule’. The Imperial Suns do it under the guise of ’showing the plebeians the road to glory’. Erika Rosenthal, in name would be the head of the 31st Wolf Squadron but actually leads the Papillon Brigade, a special elite force composed out of few but specialized and experienced and highly skilled members. And so they travel across their nation, disrupting enemy assaults from the core, infiltrating enemy lines, assassinating enemy commanders in their attempt to aid their nation in fighting a war on two fronts.

And so Erika would be the Brigade leader, wielding a Mauser C96, a Katzbalger and of course, those steel toed boots of hers that can kick skulls off necks. Her Mauser C96 might seem simple, but is actually a special experimental weapon that can be loaded with Anti-Tank bullets.

The Lord would just be called Di Achtung here I guess. He’s the brigade marksman and wields a Gewehr 43. He’s a total coward and a pansy, but as long as you keep enemies beyond arm’s reach, he’ll never miss.
Rival Butler would be… well whatever we call him in this, he’s a crazy brawler and still has his flaming fists. Might not seem like the biggest guy, but has immensely dense muscles and is capable of punching an IFV into oblivion.

The Poltergeist would end up having the code name Geist. With her face hidden under a gas mask and her frame hidden within a suit of body armour, she wields a flamethrower. The sight of her blowing flames into your face with her hair billowing out behind her is enough to command fear into most enemies. Her design would be a tribute to Jin-Roh’s Protect Gear. Her flamethrower can accept an additional canister of special fuel along with the regular fuel intake from her backpack to blow out a much more intense flame that can melt even tank armour. It overheats the flamethrower extremely quick however, and damages the user due to extreme heat radiating back.

The Butcher would actually be an Imperial Suns agent, sent to hunt the Papillon Brigade. But in the end, a plot is unveiled that the Imperial Suns plan to take out the Papillon Brigade with an airstrike along with him. Realizing the dishonourable ways of his home nation, he helps the Brigade escape and ultimately ends up joining them to stop the foolish war. Wields an oversized katana, capable of beheading entire squadrons and bisecting tanks.

The Lord’s Fiancee and her secret service agents would probably take the role as the Freedom States Special Forces or something. As for the Ancestral Ghost, I have yet to think of a role yet.

I’ll probably need new original villains that are exclusive to this spinoff though in the end.

While Battle Maid Chronicles is a single player crazy as hell slasher, akin to something like Megaman Zero, I’d compare the spinoff to something like Contra or Metal Slug. It’d be an up to 4 player side scrolling cooperative beat/shoot/hack em up. Each character will have a designated ranged, melee and special attack. They’d be able to jump and maneuver up and down a plane, so its not just plain flat like Contra or Metal Slug. Well, there’d be too little space for 4 players otherwise.