#I have an EPIC armor design now!

[the-ninjago-historian]

I'm having SO DANG MANY ideas and plot points for my Ninjago AUs and Fanseasons right now!

SO

MANY

IDEAS.

And like no one to talk to about it right now...😭 Anyone want to hear me ramble about it? If I don't get this out of my system, I might explode.🤣 - ✒️🐉

[doppy-enjo]

"You're a good kid."

[wolfythewitch]

Sorry if you've already answered a similar question before, but I was wondering how you go about making your ancient Greek (and now Mesopotamian) designs? I want to draw Iliad/Odyssey fanart but I know next to nothing about ancient Greece (clothes, hair, features, even what year/era the epics are meant to take place in). Do you have any advice about researching that/what type of sources you use? I've found the process very overwhelming lol

For the Gilgamesh one it's super based on these kinds of carvings!

For the Iliad and odyssey ones it's a bit trickier since they don't have physical descriptors (but that makes it so you can get a little more creative there haha). Clothing and armor wise I base it on antiquity paintings and some recreations people have done of the clothes and armor (though. Tbh I barely draw them in armor because I just. I don't like drawing armor)

Iirc they're around the bronze age! And maybe look up Minoan/Mycenaean clothing? A friend also recommended looking up hittite and drenda armor

[rin-sith]

Finally, I am happy to present to you my ...

EPIC: THE MUSICAL | ACT I [Character Design project]

I have been working on these for a long time and I am very happy with how these turned out. I am a huge fan of visual character design and I simply needed to do a full lineup.

Act II will follow shortly (it is all done except for Ithaca Saga, which I will add as soon as it drops.) Please enjoy, and read below for some thoughts and background on some of my design choices!

TROY | CYCLOPS ft. Odysseus, Athena, Eurylochus, and Polites

With Odysseus, I really wanted to emphasize his free spirit in this era and mark him as Athena's warrior, so I gave him a special belt and some armbands that represent her (this was inspired by some of @mircsy's work). He also has heterochromia; his left eye is green, representing his cunning, wisdom, and spirit; his right eye is gray, representing his ruthlessness and warrior side.

I simply love Athena in purple/gold. Her mask is a symbol of her invulnerability and comes off only during "My Goodbye" when Odysseus tells her that she's alone. Her cape can also transform into wings, and her eyes are actually golden without the mask.

I had to give Eurylochus his large anime sword (it's just as heavy as it looks but he likes it that way because that means no one besides him is strong enough to wield it ... I imagine Eurylochus can bench press at least Odysseus' and Polites' weights combined. He and Polites are also wearing variants of Odysseus' armor, indicating that they belong to the same army.

Listen, I can vibe with Eurylochus' giant sword but I draw the line at Polites with glasses, sorry. He still gets the hairband, of course. He's also dressed more casually, and without a weapon, because of his pacifistic outlook. He's the physically weakest among the trio by far but also still an inch taller than Odysseus (it's fine, Odysseus is still like 5'10, his friends are just all so freaking tall...)

OCEAN ft. Aeolus, Poseidon, and Odysseus

Not gonna lie, I LOVED designing Aeolus' outfit. She's playful and mischievous and loves to hang out in the clouds all day; her outfit is probably made out of clouds let's be real. Also yes, her image on the windbag moves to make cheeky faces.

Poseidon I cannot imagine without tentacles anymore thanks to @gigizetz's "Ruthlessness", idk it just fits him so well. He definitely got all dressed up to go and sink Odysseus' fleet that day, he has a reputation, you know? And he just likes the shiny gold and accessories; the ocean is full of them so why wouldn't he?

Edit: I actually updated this design somewhat significantly; if you're interested in the current one, check here! He still has a tentacle/monster form, but it's not his only one.

Since breaking up with Athena, Odysseus lost her belt and armbands. He's still wearing her brooch because he couldn't bring himself to fully throw that away as well yet. Polites' hairband around his wrist reminds him of what he's fighting for and what to live by ... for now (Poseidon is about to ruin this man's whole career...)

CIRCE | UNDERWORLD ft. Circe, Hermes, and Tiresias

I wanted to give Circe the "witch" vibe while putting a Greek spin on it and I actually adore her design. She seems both immortally youthful (something I aim for with all my god designs) and motherly. There she was, gathering some herbs when a bunch of strangers crash onto her island ... Oh well, at least this man was a good man this time.

Hermes is kind of just Hermes. I wanted to keep him shaded, a bit impish, and definitely up to no good. He's wearing the contrasting colors on purpose, by the way. And yes, his hat can fly on its own ... But for it to do that he'd have to actually be willing to show his face which he seldom does unless he really trusts you.

Tiresias is a soul, so he has the same kind of ageless youth as all my gods (something that goes for souls of dead people too, since I like to think they get to appear at whatever age they want after death.) He's looking a bit regal since he's a prophet, so I imagine regarded highly, even in the Underworld. Instead of the blindfold, his hood covers his face, adorned with a symbolic eye to identify him and his skill.

***

Well, that's it for ACT I, friends, I hope you liked these! I will upload ACT II asap. Please comment and/or tell me your thoughts about my designs! And feel free to ask any questions you may have! I would love to talk more about these.

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Here is a list of all the games i played in 2024

Agon

One of my favorite games, gm'd it for a local con. It's basically the Odyssey, but told in a fast & furious fashion

Argyropée

French only, a optimistic renaissance fantasy game where i enjoy the universe, the worldbuilding decision, but the system could be better

City of Mist

A noir urban fantasy game, of misteries and myths, stories mixing with regular life.

Donjon & Cie

french only for now. Instead of playing the adventurers, instead your characters are the monsters of the Dungeon, in reality the biggest business in the land. Dongeons meet the office. Will be "translated" ( more of a 2nd edition) by the Merry Mushmen as Dungeon Inc.

Eureka investigative urban fantasy

What it says in the title. It's good, it's great, it's what i will use to run cthulhu modules in the future

Exquisite Biome

Occuped some long train rides this year. A solo game where you create little ( or big) creatures in the environment you made up.

Feathered adventures

It's ducktales without the branding. A diceless and possibly gmless game that plays like Scrooge McDuck comics

FIST

I think I traumatized my fellow players with my character. It's great

Knight an avalon rpg

A french game translated in english ( the books are coming). King Arthur in mecha armor fighting against horrors that threatens humanity in the 2030s. One of the most played because we're playing the epic (yes, epic, not campaign).

Lalaland of the dead

French only. Being in the right discords, sometimes, you can play with the authors themselves. A zombie apocalypse game that is also a musical. Sing for more dice.

Magie de minuit

French Only. A gmless tarot game of witches fighting darkness within and out.

Mausritter

Play as little mice, it's totally not terrifying.

Meanwhile in the subway

The game is not a book, it's a subway map

Mothership

The worst rolls possible at creation. Yet the character survived.

Naheulbeuk

French only. The ttrpg parody that is often played at the club when we just need a quick one shot, a silly session.

Nova

The sun exploded ( or did it ? some revelations of the designer on the bird app says it was eaten actually), so get your power suits out. My players managed to be the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

pasion de las pasiones

A demo session with the french translator. Now sitting nicely on a shelf.

Rune

Elden ring as a solo game

The Dark Eye

In germany they created this to avoid playing D&D. I am wary of games that ask me to successfully roll a d20 3 times for each roll. (yes you do roll 3d20 for most things)

The Thunder perfect mind

In development, a game created by Tanya Floaker during NaGaDemon that I playtested. A gmless game of gnostic gothic punk where you play as undeads.

Triangle agency

It's on most list of games of the year for a good reason. Also be careful when reading it or you will get too many demerits and lose access to the Frozen Yogurt Room.

Troika

Used to be my cursed game. The one I would propose but something always happened and couldn't play. Finally I have played it. (But the curse transfered...)

Vaesen

Occult mysteries based on Nordic mythology.

Wilderfeast

Monster hunter meets Dungeon Meshi. I love cooking monsters.

World Wide Wrestling

The new cursed game. Did a first session for a group ( for a mini campaign). That was in August and was supposed to last 1-2 months.............this was the only session

[theriu]

Was just reminded of one of my favorite weapons, the armor-piercing punch dagger, more properly named the Katar:

Pretty cool, right? So I decided to read up on the actual history a bit on Wikipedia. And that is how I just now found out that "some modern katar designs may include single-shot pistols built into either side of the weapon."

So of course I HAD to see if I could find pictures of THAT little variation, and

WHAT THE AWESOME STEAMPUNK KNIFE HISTORY SHENANIGANS, THIS IS

FREAKIN' EPIC!!!!!

As a steampunk nerd this is the best thing I have seen all year and I HAD to share it. Here's a great short video showing off a genuine example of this fancy version:

And my blog is strictly PG, but if you don't mind some light swearing, this video does a great, longer overview of the weapon, including a brief touch on the pistol-modified version!

Anyhoo, I don't geek out about weapons much, but this was a fun Today I Learned moment that I hope some of ya'll will enjoy it as well! =D

[asexxxualauthor]

So, my brain did not shut up at all last night, so I’m gonna go ahead and subject you to the horror I created instead of sleeping that is D&D-accurate(-ish) Ruby Rose

First things first—the caveats. What do I mean by accurate(-ish)? Well, in order to truly build Ruby to be the utter nightmare that she is, we need to accept a few…house rules.

Rule 1) All characters start with a bonus Feat. This is a carry-over from D&D2024, and is to help flesh out the character beyond their basic race and background feats.

Rule 2) All RWBY characters start with an Epic Boon. This is a stand-in for Semblances, as reading through them shows they really are just Semblances codified for D&D.

Rule 3) Weapons and Features can be adjusted for rule of cool. If something isn’t supposed to work that way by the rules as written, but it’s cool as hell, it’s now the rule.

Now, with those three little rules out of the way going forward, let’s talk about our lovely little Red Reaper~

First things first—if we’re going to make Ruby, we have to prioritize speed above all else, because speed is the name of the game with her. Because of this, we’re going to be a little cheaty and make her a Tabaxi—or at the very least, give her the Tabaxi’s Feline Agility so she can double her walking speed. Along with that, we’re going to give her the starting Feat of Mobile, so she gets a +10 to that speed, and then the Epic Boon of Speed, which gives her an additional +30.

Which means at Level 1, Ruby has a base Speed of 70ft, 140 with Feline Agility.

We can get faster, though, because that’s just the base stats—let’s talk about Classes now. After doing a bit of analyzing and planning, I came to the following build: Fighter (11), Monk (2), Rogue (2), Warlock (5). The way I argue this is Fighter/Rogue is Ruby’s base class during Beacon, before getting Warlock when she awakens her Silver Eyes, tapping into that Celestial Patron. She picks up some hand-to-hand training in Haven for Monk, some additional levels in Warlock as she learns to harness her Silver Eyes, and then everything else is Fighter.

So, now that I’ve said my piece, what does this do for Ruby? Well, by taking two levels in Monk, she can get Unarmored Movement, which adds another 10 feet to her speed. And with two in Rogue, she gets access to Cunning Action, which means she can take the Dash action as a Bonus Action on each of her turns. That means, with just those four levels, Ruby would have a base Speed of 80ft, Dash of 160ft, Double-Dash of 320ft, and FA Speed of 640ft. And if she could get her hands on some Boots of Speed? 1,280 feet traveled in only six seconds.

That’s 145 miles an hour.

Suffice to say we’ve got the speed-side of Ruby’s design down, so what’s the rest of this for? Well, the other half of her whole shtick—killing Monsters. As a Celestial Warlock, she’d have access to spells like Sacred Flame, Guiding Bolt, Daylight, and Eldritch Blast—Thunder Step, Misty Step, and Spider Climb for mobility—and Hold Person for Cinder in particular. She would also get Invocations, such as Armor of Shadows, letting her cast Mage Armor at will whenever, so a constant 13 + Dex, and Eldritch Smite, to really pump the damage into her attacks.

But with Warlock (5), you can get an extra nasty feature—and for this, we must remember Rule 3.

Because at Level 5 Warlock, and with the Pact of the Blade, you can get Thirsting Blade, which lets you attack twice, instead of once, on your attack action. Now, according to the rules as written, Extra Attack features do not stack on each other—to which I say bullshit. If the rules didn’t want me to break the game, they shouldn’t left the window open to begin with—and besides, it’s technically not Extra Attack, but something else. Ergo, it’s allowed, at least in this hypothetical bullshit Ruby D&D build world.

So, with Thirsting Blade, you get an Extra Attack. With Fighter (11), you get two Extra Attacks. That means a total of four possible attacks on the Attack action—eight if you pump an Action Surge into it. But that’s not all, because we also have Feats! With Great Weapon Master (and with a scythe that huge of course Ruby is a great weapon master), if you crit or kill on an attack, you can use your bonus action for another Extra Attack. And as Champion, that crit potential goes up from 5% to 10% every roll. So that’s a potential of five attacks a turn—nine if you’re very lucky—and with Polearm Master, you’re guaranteed it with the butt-end attack!

All this, from a girl moving faster than a car on the freeway, and able strike and dash off without provoking any opportunity attacks at all.

And so there we have her—Ruby Rose, Level 20 Huntress. I will admit to a bit of stat fibbing on my part, but only so much as bumping up stats—it felt wrong to me for her Intelligence to be lower than a +1 considering how gifted she is, and I put Wis at 13…because that’s what you need for Multiclassing into Monk. Also, while Scythes (Glaives) use Str for attack and damage, I did go ahead and override the features so they used her Dex instead…because, honestly—tell me that doesn’t look Dexy as shit!

…I did keep her Str at 16 as an extra argument for why she’s so Dexy with a heavy weapon if need be.

But that’s Ruby! Any questions?

[nerdasaurus1200]

At last, it’s Argonaut time!!

First off naturally, the stars of the show, Jason and Medea. I tried to give Jason a bit of a peacock color scheme to reflect Hera since he’s her champion. With really shiny and colorful armor both to reflect his prince status and also how much of a showboat he is and how he views himself as a heroic golden boy. Medea, I used mostly purple to reflect her magic and royal status, with just a dash of red to reflect how bloody her story is. And I gave her a cat because why not? I heard somewhere that cats are vaguely connected to Hecate so it felt fitting.

And of course, the Dioscuri Pollux and Castor. I tried hard to really lean into the young Spartan boy aspect while also making them close enough that you can’t really tell them apart from a distance. OSP on youtube inspired some of their physical features- with Pollux having lighter hair, blue eyes, and lightning marks to reflect his demigod status while Castor looks a little more human.

Next the other set of brothers- the Boreads, Zetes (left) and Calais (right), the Argo's eyes in the sky. They're the sons of the North Wind but for ambiguity's sake I made them look a bit like Aeolus. After a LOT of consideration and trial and error I tried to make their clothing a little warmer looking than the other Argonauts but still breezy. Something that would easily flow in the wind. I imagine them both as the Eugene Fitzherberts of the group. Super protective but also kinda vain at times

Next, Meleager and Caeneus! I imagine they both step in as leader of the Argonauts when Jason isn’t around. Meleager was fun but a little difficult cause I wanted him to look heroic but also simple. Caeneus was a such a blast as I was digging into his mythology to figure out his design. I tried to make him look a little androgynous but mostly masculine. You’ll notice I snuck the trans pride flag into his outfit.

And the three teenage stooges- Hercules, Atalanta, and Orpheus. They’re probably among the youngest of the Argonauts. Because I’m a disney girl at heart I made Hercules look very close to his disney counterpart. This new version Atalanta was fun cause I wanted her to look like she’s kind of at a level 1 compared to my first design for her. And since Orpheus is a musician and half Muse I tried to make his outfit really flashy, kinda like a circus performer.

Next up is Hippomenes and Eurydice! Now I couldn’t find any concrete source saying they were for sure on the Argo but somehow Hippomenes was there according to some source. And the idea of Eurydice being there too is just too wholesome not to include. Plus more women is never a bad thing.

For Hippomenes since in my headcanons he also grew up isolated into the woods like Atalanta, I wanted to parallel that by also dressing him in brown. I also made him a little bit of a beanpole cause I like to think he was kinda the “weakling/runt” of Chiron’s students.

Eurydice was super fun cause her being a nymph, I wanted to make her look really flowy and unique. To reflect her being a field nymph I put her in a really bright almost flower-like red. And turns out she’s Apollo’s daughter, so I made her a deer nymph since that’s one of his sacred animals.

And finally Autolycus and Laertes, Odysseus’s father and grandfather and the resident Dad Friends of the Argo. In the Epic fandom I tend to see a lot of people dress Odysseus and/or Telemachus in blue, so I thought it’d be fitting if Laertes is part of that pattern. With Autolycus being Hermes's son I put him in teal, as a nod to both the Ithacan royal family and his own divine lineage. Like Meleager I tried to make both look a little simple and humble, but a lot more weathered.

[iamnotshazam]

i saw the LotR films before ever reading the books and i love both. i turn now more to the books than the movies for enjoyment.

but i also feel like the three movies just. fucken. cracked it out of the park with some important things and i had NO idea how good i had it as a little nerd delving into the extended edition dvd extras. if i were a fan in the gritty-obsessed 90's hearing rumors of these movies, i would have expected at best stuff like: B-list acting that occasionally broke through with honest emotions. some skilled costuming and weaponry popping up in important scenes but mostly just knock-off viking opera aesthetic. homebrew DND imagery that made it painfully obvious by contrast which scenes they actually spent money on the set design and dressing.

and WETA and New Line and everyone on this!!! they did NOT accept lower standards cause it was fantasy! everyone else would have. This was genre filmmaking, this would have been perceived at the time as more like How the Grinch Stole Christmas than a Cecil B Demille-level epic movie. And the costuming department, composer, propsmaster and set designer all said "NO" and put their whole pussies behind it!

Jesus Christ the quality in those movies! Ian McKellan has undershirts like Gandalf the White might have! Bernard Hill has realistic quilted padding underlayers all made in the style a Rohirrim tailor and armorer would have made! Minas Tirith has a rat catcher because someone took a doodle and decided that would make sense in the lived reality of a massive city! Movie makers do not usually do this. It is NEVER about what isnt seen or necessary for the shot. You are judged professionally not by if you can cut corners in order to help production and still seem good, but by HOW MUCH.

I cannot blame anyone who worked on the Amazon series in the hands-on creative roles because the results are what they have been trained to do. Blame executives. Blame executives! Of course chainmail is going to be, i dunno, plastic or sewn into the edges of costumes if you dont have the money or time for real chain mail! And because it cannot be overstated how unusual the LotR trilogy filmmaking process must have been. It's like being given an average lower middle class family grocery budget and told to make a fancy Christmas dinner for 20 all by yourself with no help versus having a trained staff, a blank check, and Martha Stewart on retainer. That's not an exaggeration. That's the rhetorical gulf that someone (Valar BLESS them) in the bureaucracy had to wade across to convince execs to buy into the details. The Lord of the Rings movies are WEIRD.

And it shows. Bookfans bitch about the story changes, the balrog wings, the characterization differences. (Denethor was a reasonable person and even outsider Pippin could see he was very admirable to the people of Gondor, which made it sooooo much creepier when he suddenly snapped but i digress) but NEVER about the music. the filming locations. the set designs. the costumes. the props. the things that i really think count the most to help invest people in a different world!

No one ever complains about taking out the scene where Rohan is summoned to Gondor's aid with the Red Arrow, because yeah they could have made it work, they made the importance of other props like Andúril and, oh yeah, the One Ring very clear, but they had a better idea.

The beacons.

The beacons were not in the book.

Not in the same way, really, because while incredible to think about the narrative style was close third person, and you cannot follow beacons to rhapsodize about them when you're a tired hobbit getting saddle sore crossing national borders with a grumpy old wizard. Pippin sees the Beacons of Gondor at a distance when he's falling asleep and Gandalf tells him they're a mustering signal within Gondor. Which makes sense, really, they require some upkeep and would be awkward for two nations to negotiate how to handle - nevermind. That's it. That's all the beacons are in the text.

Someone adapting the script saw a moment that was ho-hum in the book but realized ! 💡⚡️That would look really great on camera! And it is now routinely listed as one of the most important cinematic moments of anything, ever.

There are so many things I still want to ask Peter Jackson, "Why???" but the original trilogy movies overall? Work. They work and they do more than work, they helped elevate an entire artform that I don't honestly know that much about and oh god i usually dont ramble about them like this im embarassed is this already acknowledged in tumblr tolkien circles? or are we just split into different little fandoms in order to keep the peace?

[thydungeongal]

I can't believe you'd just drop that Rolemaster has "very unique metaphysics" and leave it like that. Could you talk a bit more about it?

So okay. At the heart of Rolemaster there's the fact that it was made by a bunch of guys who thought D&D wasn't crunchy and "realistic" enough. These people also thought that D&D clearly didn't have enough stats. They were also obsessed with symmetry. Now that I've laid the foundations, let me go further in depth:

D&D was clearly unrealistic because it only had six stats. There needed to be more. The way they decided to go about this was to divide each of D&D's stats into two pairs of closely related stats. They first paired off Strength and Constitution, and then went to work: splitting Dexterity into Agility and Quickness, Intelligence into Empathy and Reason, Wisdom into Intuition and Memory, and Charisma into Presence and Self-Discipline.

Now, at this point in time it had already been established in D&D, that Intelligence was the stat related to Magic-User and Illusionist spells (which would later come to be known in D&D as Arcane magic) and Wisdom was the stat related to Cleric and Druid spells (which would later come to be known in D&D as Divine magic). Rolemaster implemented those types of magic, calling them Essence (the "Magic-User" type magic, the rawest form of magic in the fiction of Rolemaster, its governing stat being Empathy [a really weird name for a stat that actually is, like, how well you're in tune with the world?]) and Channeling (the "Cleric" type of magic, magic that flows from the divine, and magic closely related to life, its governing stat being Intuition).

At this point one of the designers probably went "Wait a minute this fucking sucks: why isn't there a third type of magic that is governed by the Presence stat?" After the dust settled following what must have been a pretty epic brawl between Coleman Charlton and Terry Amthor, Amthor was tasked with coming up with a realm of magic tied to the third stat pair. He came back with Mentalism, which is kind of like D&D psionics, but also not really.

So okay, Rolemaster has three different realms of magic, and not only are the mechanics of how their users gain their spells explained differently and their spell lists unique, they also come with unique sets of restrictions. The flow of Essence is disturbed by dead matter, including metal and leather. That is why Essence users need to go unarmored, wearing heavy robes at most. Channeling, being the magic of life, can't flow properly through metal, so Channeling users need to eschew metal armor (which became hilarious once they introduced the Paladin profession and needed to come up with a way for the knights in shining armor to still be able to cast Channeling spells). Mentalism, being mind magic, flows from the brain, so Mentalism users can't cover their heads.

There are some other interesting specifics: in the versions of the game where they've gone even deeper into distinguishing the three realms of magic by the actual gameplay mechanics Essence users have benefited the most from flamboyant gestures, 'cause the best way to throw fireballs is to do cool firebending motions; Channeling users have benefited from SHOUTING while casting their spells, because I guess the gods can hear you better that way; and Mentalism users have been unique in that their spells require no movements or words, just thoughts.

It's wild! And this is only scratching the surface of it, because there's also stuff like the very specific demon types in Rolemaster, evil spell lists being their own thing, hybrid spell users who combine two realms of magic, and Arcane magic which is like ancient proto-magic from which all the other three types of magic come from.

[monsterblogging]

Quotes from the Pacific Rim commentary re: Guillermo del Toro's aesthetic decisions

"You cannot do world creation without filling in with texture and detail."

...

"People think that world creation - movie, for example - is the big gestures. But it isn't. It's all this small details. Look at the markings. Look at the vehicles that open the doors. Look at the banners and the markings in the crawler that moves the robot. Everything is full of detail. We designed this."

....

"We going to what I call gothic tech, or goth tech. Which is to go right away into a world that is rusting, that is in decay, where you have the concrete is cheap, the paint is chipping off, the armors in the robots is dented, it's sort of pitted and they feel like knights, like these ancient knights, and we start accumulating, for example, atmosphere."

...

"I wanted the movie to be very romantic, but not romantic in the Harlequin novel sense or the romance novel sense of the word. I wanted it to be romantic in its epicness. You know, I wanted it to feel like an opera. I wanted it to feel dramatic. So instead of doing this in a well-lit street in New York I wanted this first fight to happen in an almost like, the middle of a romantic painting, like Caspar David Friedrich is a romantic painter I adore. And I wanted very much for it to happen in the rain in the middle of a tempest in an ocean where the waves are crashing into them. And the water throughout the movie becomes an incredibly complex expressive element."

...

"We're going to go from the biggest, the widest, to the little bug of a pilot crawling out of the helmet. Isolate Raleigh. You know, we isolate Raleigh. I'm telling the story: Look at the markings on his suit, the burn marks on his skin, those are going to become scars that he's going to carry for the rest of the movie. And I'm telling you this is when we started losing. This was the price for arrogance, this was the price for youth, and we're staining the white with red. I'm trying to build a character not just by the work of the actor, but by the storytelling with audiovisual elements."

...

"And look at this, Raleigh's all introduced in this one color, he'd golden, gold colors, and he's all coated in warm greens and earth tones and the light that is bathing him is always golden, and it's about that color coming together with Mako's dominant color, and Pentecost in this case, which is connected with Mako, which are blue."

...

"So this, we come to the scene where they meet for the first time. And I have color-coded this scene entirely in those two colors, in the blue and the ambers. You know, the bright ambers and the blue, the sort of cyan blue. And this is Mako meeting Raleigh, so the entire thing needs to be color-coded like that. And Mako's blue, because I'm making her origin to the kaiju, the kaiju blue, the blood of the kaiju - but also you will see in a few minutes a memory. A memory that is all color-coded in blue and splashes of red in her past as a child. And that blue has stained her hair. Even her hair has this strands of blue because she cannot get rid of that memory. She carries it in her."

...

"We color-coded, for example, the Chinese robot, we color-coded it red and gold and is patterned after medieval armor, and it needs to feel Chinese in essence, it needs to respond to martial arts movements; its musical theme is very strong."

...

"And here again we have now a robot, a Jaeger, that is designed, a mech that is designed to resemble a T-series Russian tank, color-coded like that, with like a cooling tower from a nuclear reactor on top."

...

"And we introduce Striker Eureka, the Australian Jaeger, which is designed a little bit like an all-terrain vehicle and color-coded with the outback camouflage colors and is the most masculine of the robots, of the Jaegers, of the mech, and is very much testosterone-driven."

...

"We talked about the color red; well, here it becomes very important. We have these characters fighting that is very very color-coded to be warm; we have a lot of reddish art direction here. We color-coded this arena in black and red. The stakes, the wood, the machines, the color of the light hitting the machines, the symbols on the wall, everything is permeated with red. Because again, I wanted red to symbolize sort of the heart. And Mako's going to find her heart and Raleigh's going to find his heart, or life, by connecting with Mako. We saw him bleeding - the last time we saw red with any importance other than the Chinese robot was when he was bleeding in the beach."

...

"And again, red coming in and linking these three characters; these three characters are the heart of the movie, you know. And blood for nobility and mortality is what makes us human. And Pentecost and Raleigh and Mako are the heart of the film."

...

"And now we start bringing, literally, bringing the crazy colors into the film. I wanted to color code this movie, bring it as close as possible to a living anime, or a living incarnation of a magazine that was very important for me growing up, which is Heavy Metal with Angus McKie, Richard Corben, Chris Foss, all these guys working with super primary colors, and I wanted to bring that saturation of colors to this, and for that I needed Hannibal Chau to meet Newt in Hong Kong."

...

"In shooting the film, we then came to the final moment and again, these three characters, Mako, Raleigh, and Pentecost, which have existed in a blue-amber world start to come to a red space, you know? This is the first time we used this red space properly in this film. Other than the Chinese robot, we were very careful with not coding anything in red. But now, at the end of the adventure, everybody's coming away. And at the end of the life, at the end of their life, that is Mako, Raleigh, everybody's gonna find this light is red. And now I can talk to you about the way I sort of organized the three fights for Raleigh. I wanted one fight with the kaiju to be the fight where he loses someone. He loses his brother in the beginning. That's where he bleeds red, you know? Then the second fight in Hong Kong is where he gains a partner. He loses a partner in the first fight, he gains a partner on the second fight. And in this final fight, he saves that partner. So, it's a full circle. I show him in the construction area in the beginning sitting in a sort of throne of concrete, if you remember, when he meets Pentecost; he made an incomplete circle. And here he completes that circle."

[bleue-flora]

Hi! I wanted to ask, from the characthers You have draw, what was the process in making their designs like with cpunz's? I'm really curious bc they all look really cool :D

Ooo yea I would love to talk about him and my design process. In fact, here is the 100 hours of me making Punz [post] reduced to 30 seconds (apologies for the part you can’t tell what I’m doing I like to work with no background a lot which defaults to black apparently.)

So as you can see, because I am not that good of an artist I use a lot of references mostly trying for real photos versus other people's art. I'll trace different elements from them and then change and alter, just so that I have a starting place, scale and general shape. I also use a shit ton of layers, laying different textures on top of each other as well as colors and such. As you can also tell I change my mind a lot but the foundation of the design was because it doesn’t feel right for these characters to be swinging around swords and fighting wars and such while just wearing hoodies. Like if this was a tv show that doesn’t really fit the vibe. Plus I made Dream look really epic [art] so for Punz I wanted to do the same thing so he can look like the bad ass necromancer mercenary he is with more of an assassin knight vibe than a comfy gamer lol.

[here's my art with removed purpled highlights so you can see some of the details better]

So just like with Dream, all of the elements of his skin are included in the drawing in one way or another, as well as Minecraft, skin and real life colors. His hoodie is now a white cloak, the stripes on the side of his hoodie are now stripes on the armor plate, his gold metal is now the gold pendant for his cloak and he is just wearing ripped black pants because that’s cool and I didn’t feel the need to change that :D 

One of biggest changes I made is background. I originally drew him much further away from the portal but the perspective wasn’t right so I ended up moving him to right in front of it with the portal magic like blowing his cape a bit.  I also was going to try and do the redstone lamps but I couldn't get it to look right and I realized it would make my highlighting process super annoying so I settled for some marble tiles.

Originally, I was going to make his metal one of the gold chains [right image] you see on medieval priests or the queen in GOT, but decided that was hard to show with the sword and took away the space I had to do armor details. Additionally, on his skin his hands and boots are also white, so I did white boots and was planning on him wearing white gloves [middle image], but I also wanted him to look really rich and liked the look of all the rings so decided against the gloves because it looked weird. (btw as you can tell from my recent art [art], I have improved on drawing hands quite a bit since this artwork :D). His skin shirt is also all white but I thought it’d look cool if his clothes where like white and blue gradients [middle image], not that you can really tell once all the shading happens lol. His is armor changed quite a bit too, because at some point I was going to make it kinda honeycombish [left image] (because Dream had a snake theme so I felt like Punz should have a theme too, hence bees) but that ended up being too busy and I didn’t like how that would be so complex versus Dream’s more simple looking armor. 

Like I wanted them to exist in the same world so even the way and colors I did the armor in the Dream drawing I did in this one. Because, that was the main reason I made him, so there could be a badass looking Punz to go with my badass looking Dream. :)... thinking about doing a badass looking Techno too but we'll see.

[puffyducks]

DCRC Week #23

Okay you guys today we're reading PKNA #19: ZERO ASS!!! no wait I mean ABSOLUTE ZERO!!! (The joke doesn't really work with the English title does it)

Wait the people in this comic are capable of making spacecrafts that go all the way to SATURN??? I mean yeah we went to Venus earlier but I just assumed Everett Ducklair had like his own special technology I didn't think NASA was just like. at Saturn. Okay.

Urk dreams of being an epic tribal warrior but now thanks to the power of capitalism he's forced to work a shitty 9-5 like the rest of us

racist people kill them Urk you have my permission

OKAY HOLD ON A FUCKING MINUTE I THOUGHT URK WAS ALREADY HUGE BUT WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT GUY ON THE RIGHT??? WHAT ARE THEY FEEDING PEOPLE IN DUCKBURG

You want to offer a WHAT???????

sorry guys I miss trip real bad

oh shit his misogyny kicked in. also hi Lyla loving the outfit she could kick my shit in if she wanted to tbh

ALSO HELLLOOO GORGEOUS this design fucks

Crying that literally all it took was for him to see one single woman to ruin his entire day

NOOOOO NOT AGAIN HOW MANY TIMES ARE THEY GONNA TAKE UNO AWAY

Me when fragile masculinity. But also umm it's not your fault Urk she's made of like giga-titanium from 2255 and can kill you in 137 different ways like how are you even supposed to compete really

SHOUTOUT TO WOMEN IN ARMOR GOTTA BE ONE OF MY FAVORITE GENDERS

He thinks he's so fucking cool I need to blow him up with dynamite

Urk come on man you literally walked into this

OH GOOD THIS SPACESHIP IS XERBIAN glad to see that, considering it seems that everyone on board met a terrible fate. Nobody tell Xadhoom about this ok

lol manlet

UNOOOOOO THAT'S MY FUCKING GOAT BABY 💯💯💯

"Artificial intelligences cannot go insane" lol ok tell that to Due

Shoutout to this unnamed warrior for being goated as hell and faking a loss against Urk cause she knew it would ruin his life and also probably send him down a path of inceldom cause who is he to lose to a GIRL?!?!?!?!

Also DAMN ok man way to kill the vibe. Actually you know what he should be friends with Xadhoom they BOTH can't go home!!! You know if it wasn't for the fact that Urk is scared of strong women...

Okay guys time for Burton La Valle again it is INCREDIBLY important that I read and review every single one of these comics cause if I don't who will? The answer is nobody because nobody cares. ANYWAYS.

YEEEEHAW PARDNER 🤠

KINDNESS! LAUGHTER! GENEROSITY! LOYALTY! AAAND MAGIC!!! TOGETHER THEY MAKE THE ELEMENTS OF HARMO-

OH NO RACISM

hube- OH MY GOD IT'S HUEY DUCK

Alright well in conclusion: The good news is that we found one of two Xerbian spaceships, the bad news is the everyone on board got fucking owned. But like surely we'll have luck with the other one haha right? Also Urk cured his misogyny. I think. Good for him.

[caracarahoney]

G.I. Joe: My Version #2, this time with everyone's favorite morally questionable ninja! I always thought the backstory from the live-action films was really interesting, so that's what I'm basing him off of. Since that means Zartan's gang is involved, my SS design takes inspiration from protective cyclist gear, which blends surprisingly well with the ninja armor styles of the series. He's also got a bit more of a punk-ish vibe to fit with his Dreadnoks origin. The face paint is to reference both Zartan’s mask(?) and Zander’s face paint, along with paralleling the cheek scar for backstory reasons. I also thought it might be fun to include music that fits the vibes of these redesigns, so here's SS's:

(Backstory + extra stuff below the cut! Also, if anyone has any asks or anything for this, by all means ask away! It helps me figure out how I want things to go.)

Storm Shadow was an arrogant child who used his position in the clan to make enemies rather than friends, so when his uncle was killed with Storm's weapons, no one argued that he was innocent of the crime. He had no choice but to flee for his life... right into the path of the shapeshifting assassin Zartan (who was also, suspiciously in the area on "business." You can guess what kind). Having a ninja seemed useful, so SS was swiftly drafted into the Dreadnoks, where he became a loyal, if difficult assassin; he sees the bikers and their leader as his true family now, and he takes on a younger-brother-ish role in the group. It wasn't the most responsible way to grow up and his maturity reflects that, but he's still a powerful fighter, and through Zartan's machinations, another clan of ninjas has recently adopted him as their leader. Unbeknownst to Zartan, however, he's also got a secret weapon of his own he's been hiding, something he picked up on a trip to Arashikage territory... Other things: - He has a bike of his own; teaching him to drive is one of the Dreadnoks' favorite memories with him. - He still has the dual katanas that can fuse, however, they are not Arashikage; they're from the Red clan. - He is genuinely liked by the bikers, who will usually call him "Slash" (he's not too fond of the nickname but doesn't care enough to complain). Zartan is the only one that really uses Storm Shadow. - He struggles with mixing ninja traditions with the biker aesthetics of the Dreadnoks, and will switch between outfits depending on who he's with. - Occasionally uses British curses, then gets embarrassed over it.

[achromant]

hello, I just followed for your orctober stuff and scrolled through some of your blog and wanted to ask, what is guild wars 2?

OOOH BOY HERE I GO! ahem.

Guild Wars 2 is a high fantasy MMO, similar to maybe Final Fantasy Online. Guid Wars as a series is about as old as World of Warcraft, but has a much smaller fanbase; mostly because the company behind it, ArenaNet, seems to be allergic to advertisements (it's gotten better since the last two expansions).

These days, the core game is free, with only the expansions costing money. Well, some expansions, as they just throw in older expacs for free now. Even if you start with a free account, you can technically buy an upgrade by just... using ingame currency, which is a WILD concept to me.

Most notable features of the game are probably the character customization, free dyeing of armor, and a few thousand unique armor and weapon skins. Players often joke that the true endgame of GW2 is fashion (and they are RIGHT goddamnit). All five playable races are so ridiculously detailed in lore and design, it's incredible. Sylvari for example are not plain elves, they are full on plant constructs that grow from fruits on the mother tree. Asura are not just gnomes/goblins, they are a highly educated society of geniuses that would openly strive for world domination if it werent for their inherent bureaucratic tendencies.

The mounts in GW2 are among the best you will find anywhere, so much that World of Warcraft just copied some for their Dragonflight expansion.

Guild Wars 2 has a medium sized active player base, smaller than WoW or FFXIV, but they are an amazing community. We have veteran players, including me, who routinely patrol the starter maps to offer advice and maybe some healing to newbies (supported by the ingame mentor system). You might receive random mail from players gifting some cake. There's festivals, community parties, role playing, fashion contests, races and minigames.

If you are a seasoned MMO player, GW2 offers raids and the smaller strike system, which is being constantly expanded. Extreme MMO experts might find the game a bit flat, but that's only superficial. For beginners, I'd say the story is beatifully written. You can explore the open world, meeting players along the way (every map holds around 50-80 player at a time). You can choose any class and complete any content, including endgame. Any class, any race, (almost) any playstyle is viable, and nothing about your build is permanent, you can adjust your whole build on the fly.

Aside from the obvious MMO parts, GW2 also has structured PvP (5 vs 5 players) and the so called World vs World, which is a large scale week-long epic battle of three teams of around 50 players on each side (which btw is not as draining on the CPU as you'd think)

If you plan on giving it a try, I'd be more than happy to give you a more detailed overview of the game. This little chaotic hellhole of an MMO is very dear to my heart <3

This is by the way for ANYONE reading this: If any of you want to try the game, hit me up. DM me here on tumblr, or on discord (@ achromant). Even if you already play the game and are still new or just lost - ask me anything you want. I have close to 18k ingame hours.

[not-she-which-burns-in-it]

Ok, my fixation on the Magnus Archives isn’t going away any time soon, and I don’t want to jump into Protocol yet because I’m not ready to say goodbye to Jon and Martin. And I don’t want resent some fabulous new characters just because they’re not my boys.

Instead, I played one of my favorite games. Turn on an album and use my theater brain to figure out how I would stage it. I had a 3 hour drive for an out of town gig, so I listened The Mechanisms all the way there and back.

Each album got 2 listens in a row, one for vibes and appreciation, and one to dissect and take notes.

I think I like The Bifrost Incident the best. The songs are so good. A train set would be totally reasonable to build. Utterly destroying it a little bit harder, but I was thinking of a large scale regional production (something like Papermill, ART, La Jolla) where automation/projection/special effects aren’t an issue - so we could explode a train.

The problem is that it’s a train … In Space!

Outer Space and Theater feels so deeply incompatible. Not that people haven’t tried, I’m just not sure I’ve ever seen someone do it successfully (sorry Jonathan Larson) But that’s fine. This is a reimagining, it doesn’t have to be an outer space train, it can just be a train traveling through the BiFrost.

Ok, then I started thinking of design, maybe more of a steampunk aesthetic to go with the train. But hey, wait a minute, a pantheon of gods, in a tragic story about a doomed train, singing a little jazzy-folky, cabaret tunes.

Oh. Fuck. We’ve just invented Hadestown. 

And every design and staging idea, I’ve been mulling over for the past hour drive vanishes in a puff of smoke. Nah, I can’t do a big intricate metal spiral staircase. That’s too fucking close to Hadestown.

It’s even got the narrator that pretends to be neutral, but is actually deeply emotionally invested in the story. And while I like Jonny’s vocals very very much it’s just mean, - for any performer - to allow the audience to draw a direct comparison to Andre DeShields.

So it’s with a heavy heart I put The Bifrost incident down and try the Snow White/Rose Red album Once Upon a Time (In Space). And unfortunately, I think we’ve hit market saturation of gritty warlike retellings of Grimm’s fairytales. I’m sure this absolutely fucking slapped in 2012, but in 2024 Disney’s Once Upon A Time has ruined the possibility for everyone. I tried so hard to imagine a design, but all I could see was either that or the new generation of Disney live action remix. Or even that one Huntsman movie with Kristen Stewart as Battle!Snow White.

I kind of love, weird, obscure shit, though, I could totally see this, finding a home in fringe circuit. Unfortunately, you need those institutional dollars if you want highly stylized, long wigs and battle armor and spaceships. It’s the intrepid black box theater troupe that gets a show that looks like this:

But with less tailoring.

So with a great sadness, I put Once Upon A Time In Space on the reject pile for my fantasy new musical development workshop.

The next time I have a long drive I’ll try out Ulysses Dies at Dawn but unfortunately, that would be a race against time since there are about four different odyssey themed musicals in development right now. One of which, epic, is getting a lot of traction online. And another will be coming to one of the LORT theaters I mentioned earlier. (Fucking call me back [Redacted] am I working on [redacted] or not UGH)

So, I’m about three years too late to win that game. [inset joke about Gatsby vs Gatbsy here].

All this is just fantasy of course, even if I did strike gold I would still need to convince actual-human Jonathan Sims to engage in a years long, time consuming, deeply frustrating development process, on the wrong continent. So for the absolutely microscopic overlap of my followers, who are both invested in The Magnus Archives/ The Mechanisms and also Musical Theater, I’m sorry to disappoint.

But it is nice to think about New Ideas tm for theater while making my yearly sacrifice to the gods of freelance employment and do another year of The Nutcracker. Oh well at least I’m not Christmas Caroling this year.