#Color Model Cels

[mudwerks]

Josie and the Pussycats Color Model Cels Original Art Group of 2 (Hanna-Barbera, c. 1970)

[acmeoop]

Production Art “Mickey And The Beanstalk” (1947)

[grishamanimationstudios102]

Fanmade color model cels of The Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon from BBC's Doctor WHO. Sketched on animation paper. Traced with Sharpie oil paint marker (extra fine point) and painted on reverse side with Apple Barrel acrylic paints.

Doctor WHO © BBC

The Doctor character design © @grishamanimationstudios102

[blakeinobi]

My model appeared on the Tumblr radar! I appreciate all the comments! It was interesting to hear that multiple people didn't realize it was a 3D model. I work a full-time job and modeling in Blender is one of my hobbies. Whenever I look back at my earliest models, I'm always shocked at my improvement. I look forward to seeing where I'll be at a year from now.

Multiple people asked how I was able to get my cel shader to look good. I've learned a lot from watching multiple videos and reading various blogs over the years. Here are a few things that I did for this model.

To start, here is how my shader graph looks like.

I have the Layer Weight plugged into the Color Ramp. This creates a soft outline around the model so that when objects of the same color overlap, it doesn't look flat. I've been experimenting with the options, but as of now, I like the way the B-Spline option looks.

Something else that I change is the shadow color on the color ramp. By default, it's set to black. This always felt dull to me, so I will usually change it to a magenta or purple. I also keep an Emission node ready so I can switch the model to all white. This mostly helps when modeling so I can see how the light will interact with the model in this style. Adjusting the settings of the light also improves the shadows.

Also, change the Color Management from Filmic to Standard. This ensures that the colors you're using to paint your model will look the same in the viewport. This option can be found at the bottom of the Render Properties.

Check out these resources for more useful tips. Also, the props are from a Synty pack. I picked them up years ago when they were on sale.

Anime Shading In Blender (INTRODUCTION) Lightning Boy Shader - Beginner Guide - Shading & Modeling Tips

Synty™ Store - 3D Assets for Games (Unity + Unreal) – Synty Store

[krembruleed]

alright, the other day i loosely implied that i would make a behind the scenes/tutorial type of thing. momma didn't raise no liar, so here goes nothing i guess!

step 1) rough sketch

honestly i skip this entirely if have a really concrete idea of what i want to do. sometimes compositions are just beamed into my brain from On High and a sketch is unnecessary.

step 2) 3d ref

this is where i refine the composition, lighting, camera angles, props, etc. i use DAZ studio for model posing and blender for almost everything else (props, horns, lighting, rendering).

here's a 10 minute video on how to pose models in DAZ if you're interested in doing something like this! it's not very hard! basic posing requires almost no technical know-how.

i've heard magicposer and virt-a-mate are also good for model posing, but i don't have any experience with either program.

after i'm done posing, i transfer the models to blender so i can work on props, environment, and lighting because doing it in DAZ is ass. you can see that i went overboard on the ref for the paladin i worked on last year by modelling armor.

step 3) lineart

at this stage i'm synthesizing my 3d models, reference images, and style choices into lines.

the 3d likeness of my models is poor because I don't have time for that shit, so this is where my humongous folder full of bg3 screenshots comes into play.

for example: looking at my screenshots, astarion's forehead tilts back towards the back of his skull, much more so than my reference model. his chin and jaw are sharper and longer, and the transition between his brow ridge and nose is almost a straight line. if i combine the information from my 3d model and astarion's face, i get something like this:

3d models aren't fleshy (ie, tummy rolls, wrinkles, muscle deformations, butt squish) unless one puts in A LOT of effort like absolute madman chris jones.

you guys know bernini, right? he has a couple great examples of this. see how hades' hands press in on persephone's leg?

this is what we want to add in the lineart because it's too much effort for 3d. laziness is king.

i guess i draw clothes at this stage too, but for some reason there aren't many in this image. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

step 4) base color

i have a little color picked palette that i use for everybody so i get their skintones right before i start messing with colored lighting. i'll use overlay and hard/soft light layers clipped to the base layer during the shading step later.

step 5) shading

if you thought we were done with the 3d part, guess again! i posterize my 3d reference so i can see the shapes of the shadows and highlights better. if i'm not feeling it, i can go back to 3d and change the lighting really easily.

could I make a cel shader for this? yes. am I going to? No. custom shaders are for people with intelligence and I am fresh out. posterization it is.

from there, i do a pretty standard cel shading deal that i usually blur and set to low opacity. (for this image i stuck to no blur because i had been looking at a lot of morebird's art and was really feeling the hard edges)

photoshop is what i use for final rendering because it has bangin tools. the brush customization alone make ps worth it, but i also particularly abuse puppet warp, noise generation, the camera raw filter, and layer styles.

step 6) background

i put the least effort possible into a background and then i blur it into oblivion so you can't fathom the depths of my ineptitude.

and then i have a finished image! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

[deepdreamnights]

Vidu and the Quest to Make More Toons

So, a ways back I talked about Minmax, but I've been trying out basically all the video generators looking for the tools I need, and low and behold this week I find out I've been accepted into the Vidu Artists program now, wherein I get credits and access to access their cooler features in in exchange for... talking about the tech and how I use it.

Well twist my arm. I shall endeavor to be objective and informative despite free stuff (a challenge my spirit needs practice withstanding if anyone else wishes to test me)

So let's talk Vidu.

(outside of being converted to gif, no animations in this post have been cut or edited)

Also, everyone say hi to Maureen the Lizard Queen, every hero needs an evil queen that really wants in his pteruges, and she's that for TyrannoMax.

Vidu's got a bit more oomph under the hood than MinMax (no shade to MinMax, they're brand new and very promising) and it's way too early to be picking winners when it comes to video.

Anyhow, basic features that are nice include the options to upload start and end frames, options for a 4 or 8 second duration (more about that later), and a cleanup/upscale. Credits line up more or less with seconds. 4 credits for a 4 second clip, 8 for an 8 second, and again at upscale. It's straightforward in a way a lot of services aren't.

Apetomic Pyle, done on the fast settings. (not to shabby still, and it gave him monkey legs which a lot of systems balk at)

If you're on the $30/mo tier, you can choose to do a double-cost "quality" over "speed" option. Thankfully, the artist program gets me access. Since there's not yet a seed option it's hard to do a direct comparison, but the quality is going to be a must if you're doing anything that looks like cel. Much cleaner, much smoother.

(4 and 8 second quality gens)

One of the nicest features is the character reference feature. Basically it's like Midjourney's --cref, but with a very strict adherence to character details.

The above images used reference shots of Maureen and Dr. Underfang, and it got the stripes on Underfang's tie right in basically every gen. That's a ridiculous level of character model adherence and, for my purposes, all but essential.

It did misinterpret Maureen's undertail coloration for a sort of fin or drape, but the shot I used was oddly cropped, and sometimes stuff like that happens with gen AI. Given my measuring stick for errors is the era of animation I'm emulating, whatever does slip through is only going to make it more authentic.

There is a limitation in that character-reference and text-only prompts default to 16:9 presently with no options to adjust, but some room to pan is always handy and most people are going to be outputting for phone and not outdated CRT televisions, so, it's understandable it'd be a lower priority feature for the devs.

Walk cycles! By Saint Eniac it's a miracle!

On the left we have one prompted with TyrannoMax's control art, and on the right we have one using that art as the starting frame (4 and 8 seconds, respectively).

Way More details under the fold.

Vidu likes a hefty prompt.

A lot of detail and evocative language helps, and older prompting tricks like mojo-jojoing important concepts are back. For the Max walk cycles above I used:

1986 vintage cel-shaded cartoon character walk cycle. The orange dinosaur-anthro wearing blue gladiator armor walks toward screen right, the camera tracks him, holding him in center-frame. He completes a full, brisk walk cycles from the side view. He walks boldly, back straight, head high, heroic. His tail sways behind him as he moves. The whole clip has the look and feel of vintage 1986 action adventure cel-animated cartoons. The animation quality is high, with flawless motion and anatomy. animated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha, studio Ghibli, don bluth. BluRay remaster. flat chroma-key green screen background

The potential for use with my Filmation-inspired technique is readily apparent. Both versions are on-model as much as any two shots in a 1980s action-figure shilling cartoon would be, some minor blurring to clean up in post but nothing serious. It should be pretty easy to extract the needed frames for looping and compositing.

Some Extra Points

There are the usual issues with hands, though more often than not it corrects my four-fingered anthros to having a human five-fingered hand. Buzby Spurlock animation was known for those kinds of inconsistencies, though. So an opening credits video is much less far off than it was at the last post.

It's also generally impressive how well it does with my dinosaur characters. Non-humanoid dinosaurs are difficult for most image generators, much less anthrosaurs in a vintage aesthetic. Vidu has yet to override the character art to give Underfang or Max the Jurassic Park style t-rex jaw, which is something both MJ and Dall-E 3 have trouble with.

Human characters like Kitty Concolor here, much more stable.

As always, clips are curated. I didn't choose my absolute best ones (gotta have something for the videos), and I'm working on a fun series of jank reels across all the generators.

[stage-of-sekai]

lesson O1: cel shading and how to achieve it.

Project SEKAI uses a unique shading method, which is a cross between rendering techniques and what is commonly referred to as "Cel Shading." Cel Shading was a term coined by animators before computer animation, who worked in "cels" or hand-drawn scenes. Because of the limitations of the time, the animators had to find a cheap and simple way to shade, resulting in the shading we see usually in modern animation.

Project SEKAI uses this style in combination with rendering tactics to create their iconic art style.

In this lesson, I'll be going over how Project SEKAI achieves that look by breaking down their Live2d models and card cutouts.

Cel Shading is the basis upon which everything in Project SEKAI is shaded. Commonly, this is seen in: Live2d models and card trims. Here are some examples.

In both examples, you can notice the more "simplistic" style of shading. Now, the real question is: "How is this done?"

To explain this, I'll be using the card trim on the right as an example.

Firstly, artists need to put base colors under their lineart. Base colors are the bare-bones, not shaded colors. This is to provide a guideline as to what areas need what colors. Below, you can see the same Nene card trim, but reduced to its base colors.

It is a bit sloppy, considering I made it myself, but the point is; there is still **some** shading blocked out where it's needed. For comparison, see below.

So, now the question is: "how do I even do Cel Shading from here? I've gotten my base colors down, now what?"

And, luckily, I can share that too! First, let's start by doing the most important thing, deciding where our light source will be.

In this card, it looks to be at the top right, coming down to shine on her.

The yellow is where I estimate the light would hit her. Now, we need to decide where our darkest areas are.

In this card, the darkest colors would be away from the light, meaning they would be to the left.

The red is where I estimate the darkest areas would be. The areas behind her arm would also be darker than the rest of the card, since they aren't being hit directly by the light.

This understanding of lighting will help me to place my shadows and highlights later!

After this, I'd suggest putting in a new layer on top of your base colors, and clip it.

Now, I would be sure to grab a reference. For this drawing, I will be referencing the original trim, as well as the full card. I will be using a reference window, but use whatever works for you!

Now, we can get started! First, I'm going to block out where the **lightest** areas would be. I will be loosely following the card trim as a reference. Using the places we previously determined would be hit by the light, I blocked them out with loose colors.

We know that these areas would be directly exposed to the light if it continued at the angle we previously determined. Now, as for the headband, I decided to block out a very light yellow color. This is because of something called ambient lighting. Ambient lighting is just when highlights have a similar color to their light source. This is seen a lot in photography, and sometimes, even in cards!

As you can see here, the light itself has a yellow tint, so the wall behind it will also appear yellow as a result.

We can also see it in Rui's newest card!

The light behind him is a reddish-pink, so that light bounces onto him, and makes the highlights appear that color. You can also see it on the railing and the building behind him!

Back to Nene, I then blocked out some of the darkest parts of her, based on our previous assumptions about the source of the light.

I shaded the areas of her dress according to how the bow was shaded. Since they were in almost the same place, we can use it as a guideline. We know that the dress isn't exposed to the light, since it is in front of the bow. As for the arms, we know the arm closest to her face would be fairly far from the light source, so I blocked out a shadow there as well.

Here, I adjusted some of the shadows, and I added some shadows to the dress. I blocked them all out in shapes, which I will go back and refine later.

I also added some shadows to the white fur on her dress. I paid specific attention to the edges of it in an attempt to make it seem "fluffier."

Here, I blocked out more shadows of her dress based on how the light would hit her. Now, we'll move on to the hair!

While it is messy, I wanted to ensure that the areas I placed shadows in would line up with my assumption of the light source. So, I toggled back and forth between the reference for the light source and the card itself to see where it fell. Now, with that, we are done blocking our our shading! I would suggest duplicating this layer to touch up everything to ensure you're satisfied with it.

The eyes will be a lesson by themselves, seeing as I didn't want to rush out two lessons in one and overwhelm people with so much information. This was a longer post than I anticipated anyhow.

If you have any questions, please feel free to shoot me a dm or an ask in the ask box! I hoped this helped at least a few people, and I will try to do weekly/bi-weekly lessons if I can!

If you found this helpful, please consider reblogging this post for more reach! I want to help as many people as I can!

[tomoleary]

Artist Uncredited Beatles Yellow Submarine Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and John Lennon Color Model Cel Animation Art (United Artists/King Features, 1968) Source

“An extremely rare original hand-painted color model cel focusing on the Beatles in their "everyday" outfits, with color instructions written in ink and china marker on the acetate. Note the special instructions for Ringo's many rings!”

[despazito]

Idk in my idyllic world the use of ai could improve animation workflow and catapult junior level artists into creative leads roles faster if there's less menial work to be done.

We could have artists still in charge of creative decisions and drawing vis dev while the computer assists with the most labour intensive steps of making shows or movies.

For simpler shows for instance it would be neat I think if you could run your storyboard through a script and have the machine import all relevant assets staged to the best of its abilities instead of manually having to drag props and rigs into your shot and scaling everything before you can even begin to animate (does that tech exist already? Probably).

Like nowadays we already have animation programs where you can set deformer limitations.

i could imagine a possible future where software includes or does subscription services to ai trained on work by artists who got paid to draw or animate template motions or anatomy references. something like generating smart bones could become an automated feature. i can maybe even foresee tech that can look at a character model or design sheet you've drawn and generate a rig for it. in all these scenarios you would have to correct stuff and tune things to your liking, but it gives a considerable head start to the work.

More dynamic shots could be made on smaller budgets if we gave ai props or backgrounds and said "give me this but rotated a little" instead of drawing the same damn chair from 10 angles as a prop artist, I refuse to believe anyone's passion in life is to make prop turnarounds or clean up inbetweens.

what if you had an ai that was trained on drawings of heads at every angle, animals in every angle, a slew of expressions and mouth shapes, then gave it a character ref drawn from a few angles and bam it makes the vtuber rig for you.

this still leaves space for original art and would still require a skilled creative to make something look it's best, that could be a gig. more animators could potentially begin their own smaller studios if cartoons are way easier to make. if anyone could potentially make their own movie in the future, charge people to do it right! no computer can replace a human knowledgeable in film or drawing to guide it in the right direction. without creative people at a production's core, i think the future of ai film is just a very, very, sophisticated version of goanimate than can also do art theft.

this could become the weird futuristic version of "i wrote this children's book can you illustrate it for me?" but instead your mom's friend wants to commission a show pilot they wrote a screenplay for.

When animation was drawn on cels we had entire painting departments whose job it was to paint each individual frame by literal numbers, and it was tedious!! Now we have the paint bucket tool for digital coloring, and software like Toonboom lets you color in one frame then generate the coloring for the proceeding frames. We still have a colour and painting department, it's just different work now. but now we also have people making full color cartoons from their basements because Flash was released for personal computers with said digital tech along with computer generated motion tweening for animation!!

Junior animator and junior bg painter or prop artist roles will probably face an overhaul where more work can be done with less people. But the utopian outcome would be these junior artists can sooner take up lead or supervisor positions where they get to execute their own ideas instead of someone else's. more shows or movies could be produced with less crew for less money, slashing costs when deciding what to greenlight or to take a risk on new talent. The problem is capitalism would make it suck because it only cares about exploiting workers for those cheapest costs possible and forego the necessary human crew required to make the difference between machine-assisted productions and pure ai generated slop

[klug]

do you recommend puzzle pop? i keep really wanting to play it but i do not want to get apple arcade just for that. but i dont know of any other way to get it... so i keep waffling back and forth. i guess im mostly wondering if you think its worth it, i know youve been posting about it but i blocked spoilers so idk what your thoughts are fully

Hi anon :) This is a very good question and gives me a chance to talk about the game

So for starters: You can technically get a free trial of Apple Arcade for a month and this is honestly enough time to just play through for the story modes. I think there are free Apple Arcade trials offered through Best Buy and stuff if you've already used a trial though. If you have an Apple device I feel like it's good to just go for it and try it out?

My short answer is: Yes if you want to play for story and collectibles! Especially if you're mostly interested in the Fever characters! But no if you are more focused on online multiplayer or the Madou characters. The suzuran group actually get a decent amount of content in this game, especially Ecolo in their main story.

I can't really say if I recommend it because everyone in the fandom has really different tastes honestly? Like, if you care mostly about the Madou Monogatari characters, I don't know if you'll like it because the story focus is heavy on Sig and Amitie…and it raises more questions than anything. So I'll just put a personal pros/cons list.

Pros:

The game looks really nice for an Apple Arcade game. Yeah the models are reused, but they use the expressions/motions to their full potential and the cel-shading is great. I also love the environment design. It also isn't live service so you can play it without an internet connection.

The main story, overall, is really good. There are a few standout side stories too IMO! My favorites are Feli, Witch's, Risukuma's, Ally's and Rafisol's.

So many collectibles. The Puyo Card feature, a customizable ID card you can unlock stuff for, is probably the most fun thing they've added to this game.

There's not a lot of new songs but the new ones are very good.

The inclusion of Nazo Puyo-style puzzles in story mode is a lot of fun, but they're skippable if you're bad at them.

Photo mode is fun. Basically you have a diorama where you can pose the characters however you want, but I haven't used it much.

Cons:

Yes the models and animations are reused, most other stuff in the game is new though!

The main story starts out really strong but does feel a bit anticlimactic in the last act. If you have already read the novel Sig's Secret you most likely won't get anything out of the story, which was the case for me. I've known a lot of people who haven't and cried at the ending though.

Some of the side stories for certain characters are really whatever to me but this is subjective.

The translation can be really weird in places -- I think Suketoudara's side story is where it was at its worst, but there are random errors scattered throughout the English translation...

The music selection is a bit weird to me. Like, Rafisol's theme isn't in the game but the Color Tower theme is? It's just a weird selection.

The challenge dungeons for unlockables can feel really tedious since you're not guaranteed to get characters' special items. If you have a grind mindset and really enjoy Puyo Puyo gameplay though, this is probably fine.

The online is terrible and nonexistent. This kind of renders the Puyo Card moot if you really care about showing it off.

You will need a controller for some of the harder stages. The touch controls are fine if you just want to get through the story, but you'll need a bluetooth controller for more precise inputs.

I basically do think it was well-constructed at the start, but most likely Yoshino (the writer) ran out of space or time for the last story in the game.

[mudwerks]

Thundarr the Barbarian Publicity/Color Model Cel Based on Alex Toth Design (Ruby-Spears, 1980)

This sharp hand-painted cel of the show's main stars Ooka the Mok, Thundarr, and Princess Ariel was based on drawings by the show's designer, comic book/animation legend Alex Toth (1928 - 2006).

[acmeoop]

Character Line Up Model Cel “TaleSpin” (1989)

[mushroom32x]

I was inspired to make the cel-shaded mod after seeing this screenshot in the summary menu of Door To Phantomile.

I wondered why some characters had a teensy bit of black outline. It's the shader Toony Colors Pro 2; almost every character actually uses it but the values are all turned down or completely off. I brought it back by editing the values of model's materials and shaders.

Thus, the result is what you see here!

[mister-e-muss]

Backlog Report. Another month has come and gone. Surprisingly, I only have one singular game to talk about this time around.

Harvestella

This game had the unfortunate start of being announced when the Switch was already being flooded with farming simulators, so a fair amount of people wrote it off by virtue of over saturation. Those that were more interested in it mostly looked forward to it as “Final Fantasy Meets Stardew Valley.” However that comparison is mostly because people don’t play RPGs or Farm Sims, so it’s really just the first example they can list off the top of their heads. I feel like “Rune Factory x NieR x Etrian Odyssey” is a much more accurate comparison.

I’ve played a fair amount of Rune Factory, but it’s never really been an obsession for me. I’m not too deeply motivated to keep farming and greeting villagers daily for their own sake. I prefer more meat and density to my games than wide sandboxes. To that end, Harvestella fit my tastes to a tee, as it places a much higher focus on narrative compared to RF. It has a very unique take on fantasy/sci-fi fusion, and doesn’t take too long to set up its mysteries and hooks. I’m a sucker for ‘Seemingly medieval world swerves hard into science fiction’ type of stories.

As for presentation, it’s absolutely gorgeous. The environments are varied, appropriately themed, and bursting with color and personality. (Except for the places where they don’t, but that’s no purpose.)

Here are a few screenshots to illustrate:

However, there is one problem with the presentation: No Voice Acted Dialogue. Not every game needs voice acting, mind you. It’s just as much a consideration as a capped frame rate, or a pixelated art style, or cel shading. Not every game will run at 120FPS at 2160p resolution, or use Star-studded industry legends in its cast. However Harvestella is odd in that the playable characters do have voice acting, but only in battles. It hampers the cutscenes a bit because the models rely on reusable animations a lot, and without any kind of snappy voices, cutscenes can feel stiff. There’s also the shock of taking a character into battle and Wow Brakka sounds exactly Nothing like what I was reading him. It’s just odd to me because more than enough games at least use a ‘character is [blank] emotion’ type of sound bytes as extra character-specific punctuation marks. They had enough budget to give all their characters battle lines, but couldn’t extend that to include an ‘AriaShockedGasp.mp4”?

The gameplay is a little bit basic. It’s not particularly innovative in its farm sim or job-changi action rpg halves, but it is very solid, with a sizable amount of customization and a satisfying loop of rewards. Hell, there were moments where I shunted story progress entirely just to do all the sidequests I could. The bosses in particular are some highlights to me, as the unique Break system makes each and every one of them a puzzle in how to maximize damage, and when to press your advantages.

In summary, Harvestella by no means reinvents the wheel. It does, however, provide a smooth and fun ride while it lasts. It has a demo on the eShop, I highly recommend you play that and see if it hooks you.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: the music kicks ass so hard.

[nfcomics]

The Band Concert RARE Color Model Cel Setup with Master Production Background (Walt Disney, 1935)

[jupiterswasphouse]

WASP REVIEW - WASP COLONY (IT TAKES TWO)

[Image ID: A screenshot of the robotic Wasp Queen from It Takes Two surrounded by dozens of Wasp Soldiers /End IDs.]

As decided by you guys in last week's poll, today, we're taking a look at It Takes Two! This seems like a fairly interesting one, as this is a rare instance of non-bee wasps actually being a fairly major part of the story! Now, admittedly, I do have my issues with the game given its message and the way they chose to get it across, but that's a story for another time, for now, let's start, as usual, with the look of these wasps!

Quick preface before I get started, though, a few screenshots were gathered from videos of the game so I apologize for the potential lack of quality here, but I got the best ones I could!

With that out of the way, my first impression of these guys, the Soldiers, is that they're very clearly based on yellowjackets, with the particular layout of their markings as well as their head and body shape. The limbs seem fairly accurate, with the correct number of them and generally correct coloration, if a little dark. The wings seem mostly right but, once again for this series, they don't seem to have hindwings, only forewings. Because I can't see any visible ocelli it makes me think that either they're not there or they're black (like in the Vespula germanica species shown below), but if anybody can look into the textures or models to confirm that for me then let me know! The abdominal markings aren't entirely right, compared to the species they're more than likely based on, but get the general look across. And the antennae are alright, although the yellow base of them is inaccurate.

[Image Source: Oregon State University | Image IDs: Two screenshots of the Wasp Soldiers in It Takes Two, one from behind and another in front, followed by an image of three different yellowjackets, Vespula atropilosa, Vespula pensylvanica, and Vespula germanica. /End IDs.]

Many of the defending wasps seem to be disproportionately male, except for the Mortar Wasp and possibly a few of the various Soldiers. This is highly inaccurate, as most members of a hive are, in fact, female, with these typically being the only ones to defend the hive, given it's exclusively the females that have stingers. Yet again, the wasps in this game don't seem to use their stingers much anyway, instead electing to use spears (a classic for Hymenopteran enemies), some form of pizza-cutter-like bladed weapon, and, as previously mentioned, mortars.

[Image IDs: A screenshot of the Mortar Wasp followed by a render of the Shield Wasp /End IDs.]

Speaking of those weapons, throughout the tree you traverse through this segment of the game, you encounter two specialized wasp bosses, the already mentioned Mortar Wasp as well as the Shield Wasp. Not a lot different between these guys and the standard Soldiers, which makes sense. Most of the differences are through their outfits, of which, I must say, their helmets cover their eyes a bit too much! I can hardly see the holes they see out of, with the vast majority of their eyes covered. They would have to rely almost entirely on smell and vibrations, given how much their visual image would be obscured, which wouldn't be impossible for an insect, but is notable nonetheless.

Perhaps even more notable is the young of these wasps, which are encountered further into the tree! Typically, the larvae of social wasps do not leave their nest cells and are incapable of any form of defense, but in this game, they're found actively crawling around, and, strangely, exploding into a green sludge as a form of defense! Self-destructive defenses aren't necessarily unheard of in Hymenopterans, but I'm thus far unaware of any social wasp larva that will actively charge into battle and blow up. Even one of the main characters, Cody, recognizes this, as he says "Since when do larvae explode?".

[Image IDs: Two screenshots of the Wasp Larvae from It Takes Two, the first one with the cells of their nest in the background /End IDs.]

Furthermore, these larvae seem mostly featureless, including a lack of legs, which is accurate, as wasps generally develop legs and other distinct features as they pupate into adulthood. One thing that isn't accurate, though, is their weirdly segmented and striped body. If anything, the stripes kind of remind me of some carpet beetles, although they're not really the same, with the darker parts being raised on carpet beetle larvae rather than the lighter parts on these guys. Also, they oddly seem to glow sometimes, which, luminescence isn't really found in wasps apart from some instances of fluorescent silk produced by paper wasps that glows under UV light, and even then, that glows green rather than yellow.

[Image Sources: Texas Insects, Drees, and Utah State, Colorado State, Whitney Cranshaw | Image IDs: A photo showing the developmental stages of yellowjacket species Vespula squamosa followed by some beige and brown carpet beetle larvae /End IDs.]

Something you may have also noticed in the screenshots above, is the cells that have been built directly onto a surface, which isn't exactly right, as social wasps that make celled nests like Vespids and Honey Bees, when they build inside a crevice such as a hole in the ground or inside a hollow tree, they generally create a similar structure to (or the same structure as) the one they would on the outside, only occasionally making cells directly onto a surface.

[Image Source: Hornet King | Image IDs: A photo of a sawed open tree that contains a layered structure built by European Hornets, followed by a screenshot of a small cluster of nest cells in game /End IDs.]

The cells seem to be oddly separated too, as if two cells next to each other don't share a wall, as opposed to being all apart of one structure as you can see in a celled nest like those of real yellowjackets.

[Image Source: Capital Naturalist | Image ID: A photo of a yellowjacket nest with some open cells, some capped with silk, and some with larvae visible inside /End IDs.]

Another thing about these is that there are a multitude of clusters in different spots across the inside of the nest, all appearing to belong to the same colony of wasps. This is inaccurate, as nests like this tend to just be a single structure all the way through. Although when you do make it to the end of the tree, there is more of a regular nest structure, which isn't entirely accurate to the real thing, but gets pretty close.

[Image Source: Ohio State University, Joe Boggs | Image IDs: Two screenshots of the big nest structure at the end of the tree, followed by the nest of a real colony of Baldfaced Hornets, which are actually a type of yellowjackets /End IDs.]

I'll get into what else you find at the end here in a moment, but first, I'd like to mention why exactly you're up here in the tree to begin with! Apparently, these wasps are at war with the squirrels, who also want to live in the trees, which, isn't necessarily inaccurate. I'd say that if real squirrels were trying to get inside the hole of a hollow tree that already contains yellowjackets, the yellowjackets would likely be, rightly, on the ready to attack the incoming invader, same for any humans suddenly finding themselves in doll bodies trying to get in the nest too. Of course, this is played up to a cartoonish extent, and you end up going in to rudely invade the wasps home yourselves in the name of helping the squirrels, as well as defeating the tyrannical traitor that has tricked the wasps into believing she is their queen.

As you saw at the beginning of this review, this traitor is inside of a giant wasp mech suit, hanging by a steel chain! This mech is impressive for being made by squirrels, but visually, I don't believe it would be enough to fool a wasp, especially given it hardly has any indicative markings/coloration. However, mayhaps it would be possible to trick them with the right mix of synthetic pheromones, which would take a lot of species specific study to get right, unless they somehow extracted the pheromones directly from their fallen enemies.

In any case, in the end, this robot ends up being taken down by our dear divorce court dolls and the supposed supreme Wasp Queen ends up being...

[Image ID: A screenshot of the Bumblebee in game /End ID.]

A highly inaccurate Bumblebee. Eyes are too small, too round, and mammalian in nature, head is too wide, mouthparts are too small, antennae shouldn't be curly, wings are too small (although this time they got the wing count right), abdomen is a bit too wide. There are just Layers of wrong to this design, although it generally gets some things right.

[Image Sources: DPIRD Agriculture and Food Division, and Flickr, scyrene | Image IDs: Two photos of two different black and yellow bumblebees /End IDs.]

After this all transpires and the faker is revealed, as well as her greed in hiding nectar to be kept all to herself (bonus points for recognizing that adult wasps eat nectar), the wasps turn on the bee, attempting to attack, before the nest is ultimately blown up in a blaze of glory. The Bumblebee, without having any power anymore, is left questioning what the point is if she can't be special, at which point our protagonists explain that she is special as a noble pollinator! The estimate of 90% of human cultivated crops being pollinated by bees stated by Cody is off by some amount, but is fairly close to the truth, and I do appreciate the sentiment, as bees are extremely important to the ecosystem.

In the same vein, I think it's important to mention the role that other, non-bee wasps play in the ecosystem, as they too are vital to the continued survival of the very nature we live amongst, from pollination, to natural pest control, to the cleanup of dead animals. Wasps do so much to keep our world in good shape, and yes, that includes the alleged bastards that are yellowjackets!

On that note, though, this colony is good on accuracy in some places, but makes some weird decisions and disappointingly falls short in others. It's sort of a 50/50 really, which leaves me with only one possible score.

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Overall: 5/10

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