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.

WORLD DOMINATION CHRONICLES

Eri as a WW2 officer. Modeled the outfit after random arse pictures of anime girls in nazi officer uniforms, decided to remove the swastikas and replace them with butterflies. To avoid offending anyone I suppose. That and Eri’s original outfit has this butterfly motif going on anyway. I probably messed up her arms, legs and feet a bit, due to lack of practice. And probably other bits of anatomy that are iffy.

I also angled her eyes in a bit more, for a more piercing look. She was giving too much of a soft look as of late.

Aspergillus Oryzae (Temporary Name)

I’m taking a break from Battle Maid Chronicles. Cuz I like to take breaks from my creations and come back to them. I always think of new shit anyway, gotta put them down somewhere.

Upon seeing that name, you’re probably like…. what the fuck is that? Well its a type of mold or yeast or whatever that is used to convert starch to sugars, and is used in the brewing of sake and creation of miso and various other things and is supposedly Japan’s national microbe. What the fuck is a national microbe? Do other nations have national microbes too? At any rate it is currently a temporary name, one I picked because the heroine likes to drink sake.

Well that it is in this context, its a story about a trippy kimono wearing girl who hints to being a vulpine of some sort travelling in a trippy feudalistic acid rigged East Asian kinda world.

Not the best drawing but whatever, it needs to start somewhere.

Our heroine is Kumiho. She drinks sake all the time and never gets drunk and just travels this trippy world. Or maybe she’s actually perpetually drunk, hence the world is always so trippy, since its told in her perspective! Named after the Korean name for their 9 tailed fox.

Regarding her current design, I kinda wanted to make her a foxgirl at first. But with the appearance of Horo in Wolf and Spice and shit, I decided meh, lets be more original than just plop on ears and tail. So I gave her a Kitsune mask. Less apparent is the comb in her hair. It bears this bead thing, which is a glow in a dark pearl. Which will look like a kitsune-bi or foxfire at night. Maybe she’ll tie her hair up differently at night, so she can use its glow as a lantern. I decided to dress her up in a furisode kimono of sorts, which is a long sleeves kimono worn by single women during their coming of age ceremony at around 20 or something. Of course she will look younger than that. And her kimono is rather less embazzled with patterns than most furisodes. Well drawing kimono patterns is a pain! Lets keep it simple or something. I was gonna use some kinda pattern resembling the foxglove flower but it didn’t work out too well so I ended up with this. Whatever it is. Gave her long lashes and a beauty spot under her left eye for a more foxy look. Probably needs some facial work to minimize her resemblance to Erika Rosenthal.

Current ideas of her travels amount to -

Her meeting of a Tsuchinoko. Which is some eel/snake cryptid(an animal not proven to exist, the stuff of myths and folklore or the observations of a bunch of paranoids or attention wanters, examples include Loch Ness and Bigfoot). Which is supposedly 30 cm long or something and likes to drink sake. So Kumiho is probably fishing by a river or something and fishes this Tsuchinoko up who ends up scolding her. In the end, Kumiho somehow pulls some sake out of her long kimono sleeves and they have a drink while talking about some totally strange shit. The Tsuchinoko will probably talk about his origins and give his name, Orochi, and claim to be the descendant of Yamata-no-Orochi. Which is some 8 headed serpent, which was slain by Susanoo which is the Japanese god of seas and storms. I’m not gonna rave on about the whole story, go wiki it or something.

Then maybe at some point she’s lost in some forest and notices something is stalking her from a distance. And it turns out to be a Hibagon, some Japanese version of Bigfoot. And with its help, they make it out or something, I probably need to spice this up in some way. Maybe she joins in on some Hibagon party or something.

Then she’s staying at some inn in some town, when suddenly an Oni(Japanese ogre monster thing) attacks and terrorizes the town, and demands a virgin’s hand in marriage. Kumiho then steps in and deflects the Oni’s club with just her finger. Or a sheathed tanto. Well either way its an amazing act of deflecting a giant club. And somehow she ends up challenging the Oni to a drinking contest, where the Oni must never terrorize people again if she wins, but has to marry him if she loses. And the Oni of course scoffs at this tiny little girl challenging her to a drinking contest. But she wins. And the Oni is totally shocked, but is infatuated with her and hence ends up going on a journey to improve his drinking endurance so that he can challenge her again. He’ll probably appear again every now and then or something.

I’ll probably look up various East Asian folklore and attempt to stick them in. Maybe Ne-Zha will make an appearance. Or even Sun Wukong(Son Goku for the Japanese and Jap-o-philes, but I know my Monkey King as Sun Wukong). And there will probably be encounters with bandits, traveling merchants or herbalists, random arse ronin or talking horses amongst many things. I’ve thought of one where she ends up climbing a rainbow to ride some giant flying squid like creature that lives high up in the atmosphere and likes to congregate on rainbow tops. And she’ll probably end up having a trippy ride, talking to weird atmospheric creatures and end her ride on some mountain top, and have some drink with a wise man.

I’ll probably draw the current cast having a drink together or something. Kumiho, Orochi, the Hibagon and the Oni.

What the hell? Battle What Now?

NETHERWORLD!!
A Disgaea Themed picture with those characters. Cooked it up after talking about Disgaea 3 somewhere. Wish I had a PS3. Ancestral Ghost makes his debut in an image!

BUNNY!!!
Erika as a bunnygirl. I have no idea why I drew this, but whatever is done is done!