#wally manmoth

[deepdreamnights]

TyrannoMax and the Warriors of the Core, 1986, Buzby-Spurlock Animation

[therobotmonster]

TyrannoMax and the Warriors of the Core (and Foes)

Left to Right: Maureen the Lizard Queen, Wally Manmoth, BrontoSarah, TriceraBruce, Cousin Wrexy, TyrannoMax, DeinoSteve, PteroDarla, the ApeTomic Pyle, Mrs. Nautlius/Mrs. Nice, Dr. Myron Underfoot, Dr. Underfang, the Cold Shoulder.

I compiled my control art for the series mains and filled in some gaps. Each mark = one foot, Wrexy is about 3", the Cold Shoulder (in heels) is 6", TyrannoMax is a brow-ridge over 9", and BrontoSarah is 12".

One thing putting your characters in a line does for you is you figure out when two characters have the exact same colorscheme. So, long story short, after the pilot Darla gets a redesign and is both blue and dressed to flashdance.

Each design was manually edited from multiple nijijourney gens, which were themselves based on previous composites and sketches.

[deepdreamnights]

The Secret Origin of Wally ManMoth

Scans from TyrannoMax #26

Cocytus was one of the better-performing comic companies outside the big 2 in the 1970s before the whole company was bought out by Buzby-Spurlock Animation in the early 80s.

TyrannoMax was its biggest title, so almost everyone in the character stable teamed up with the Dinoids eventually.

Process under the fold.

TyrannMax is created via use of Dall-E 3 and Midjourney as pencilers, and me doing essentially everything else (writing, editing, inking, lettering, layout, etc.) DE is on most of the character art, MJ on backgrounds and select characters.

Each panel utilizes anywhere from one gen/prompt (for a handful of very simple head-shots) to around 20 for stuff like the DinoHydra action shot or the hero/villain showcase panels.

Once I know what I want for a page I lay out the rough dialog and panels, then start generating pics. Basic prompt format and a few examples:

, , , , comic panel by 1968, in the style of 1968

A portly 50 year old man, resembles Alan Hale Jr, jolly smile, wearing a tweed jacket, slacks, sandals, a fedora, sweatervest and a loosened ascot, full body character design, comic panel by Jack Kirby and Alex Toth 1968, in the style of 1968 Marvel comics

a mad scientist mid-transformation into a green anthro-tyrannosaurus, asymmetrical transformation, boils and growths, screaming/roaring, bald, portly, with round glasses. wearing a tattered lab coat, vest, slacks, tie. Comic panel by jack kirby and alex toth, 1968, in the style of vintage horror comics

Then I take the pics into PS, arrange and composite them, and then remove all the color. I don't tend to prompt for my final colors on characters and instead choose light tones I can easily extract. Why not just do B&W prompts? Style impact.

Then I start to re-ink over errors and details that don't match the mood I want, match line thicknesses over various elements, etc. Through this process I adjust dialog placement and panel arrangements, and do generally the things and editor and letterer would be up to.

Once I have the inks, flat colors, and the text on various layers, I do the weathering and compositing to simulate scans of a 1970s comic book. This is also where the deliberate flaws in coloring and print alignment are added for authenticity.

[deepdreamnights]

Wally Manmoth

Once Walbert W. Manheim, human friend of TyrannoMax, Wally sacrificed himself saving the lives of both TyrannoMax and Dr. Underfang. Unwilling to countenance owing a debt to the youth, Dr. Underfang used the geneincarnation process to tether the boy's spirit back to a cloned body, though one very unlike his original.

As a "Manmoth" Wally possesses superhuman strength, endurance and resistance to damage, as well almost complete immunity to cold temperatures and enhanced mammoth-senses.

Wally and DeinoSteve in the 1994 live action film.

Prompt and process under the fold.

Wally's lines were generated in Dall-E 3, with edits, digital inks, colors, and aging effects added in post.

A young man who resembles Seth Green, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, bell bottoms, and tennis shoes, with a feathered 70s haircut, standing in a sarcastic posture. The image is a full body shot on a white background, drawn in the style of a comic panel by Jack Kirby and John Buscema from 1968, as seen in the official handbook of the Marvel Universe.

A wooly mammoth-anthro, wearing a hawaiian shirt and bermuda shorts, standing on a city street, full body, straight to camera, comic panel by jack kirby and alex toth 1968, in the style of 1968 marvel comics

[deepdreamnights]

TyrannoMax

Real name: Tyrannodus Maximus (translation) Known Aliases: Ty Maxon, the Dinoman of Wisconsin, Shellbreaker Occupation: Champion of Core City, adventurer Identity: Public Legal status: Citizen of Core City. Legal resident of the United States with a criminal record (pardoned), escaped felon in Ultramerica. Species: Dinoid Tyrannosaurus Rex Place of Hatching: Core City Martial Status: Single, betrothed. Known Relatives: TyrannoLucian (father), MegaloDiana (mother), TyrannoMaxine (grandmother, deceased), TyrannoCass (brother), TyrannoJulia (sister), Lady StegoJune (fiance), DeinoSteve (blood brother), Tyler Wrex (second cousin). Known affiliations: Warriors of the Core (member, current), Sevenfold Guardians (member, reserve), Wally Manmoth (ally), Johannes Factotum (ally), WoMinotaur (ally), Dr. Underfang (nemesis), Department of Inhuman Affairs (contractor). Base of operations: Soapstone, Wisconsin, Core City in the Fossilized World. First appearance: Tyrannomax #1 (1975)

From the Coctus Catalog, it's TyrannoMax!

His power/ability box is under the fold.

Physical Strength: TyrannoMax’s strength is exceptional, even for a dinoid. He can lift (press) 10 tons with his arms or tail. Known Powers & Abilities: Like all diniods, TryannoMax’s muscles and bone tissues are more dense and durable than human analogues, resulting in vast strength and resistance to physical damage. His scales can deflect an armor-piercing .50 caliber machine gun fire at 30 feet. TyrannoMax’s bite force is sufficient to bend a 5” diameter titanium rod. His teeth and claws are both sharp and strong enough to rend metal, and he’s able to leap up to sixty feet forward or twenty feet straight up from a standing position. Like all dinoids, TyrannoMax possesses a high degree of psychic affinity, which he can access through his psychic roar. This unique psychic talent allows TyrannoMax to imbue his roars with psionic power. He can attune the pitch of his roar to deliver physical psychokinetic force, stun the minds of those in its path, or induce fear and panic in enemies. Known Weaknesses: Dinoid physiology is only partially warmblooded and is vulnerable to cold. Temperatures below 56 degrees Fahrenheiht reduce TyrannoMax’s speed, strength and concentration in direct proportion to his body temperature. If lowered to the freezing point gradually, he will involuntarily enter a state of hibernation. Rapid freezing is deadly to dinoids.

-

TyrannoMax's art was made in the same fashion as the Wally Manmoth comic, with his body being composited out of several Midjourney attempts and his head coming from Dall-E 3, since MJ's rexes are always too modern for the 70s throwback of Tmax.

From there the colors were removed entirely, and the new lineart touched up and then re-colored using the classic comic colors from the DC 1981 style guide. And then "vintaged" in the process.

[therobotmonster]

TryannoMax, Issue 25, October 1977

Cocytus Comics Group, Story by Barry McDermit, lines by Midge Joulet & Dale Ethree, Colors and Letters by H. Haddaway.

Issue #25. It's a quiet day so the Core team gets some R&R. TryannoMax hunts down Dr. Underfang for a long-overdue confrontation, DeinoSteve and PteroDarla finally have that date, and Wally Manmoth visits home. So when Ape-Tomic Pyle returns from the grave to exact his revenge, only TriceraBruce remains to stand in his way. One wounded dinoid against a living nuclear ape-pocalypse, with the populace of Wisconsin in the balance.

Running for an astounding 80 issues, TyrannoMax was the headline comic from Cocytus in the 1970s, and was the primary motivator behind Buzby-Spurlock buying out Cocytus in '83.

While the comic series is considered the root of the empire that would create the animated series and live action movie, the concept was first introduced in short story "Humanity, My Young Cousin" in the pulp-sci-fi magazine Stunning True-Life Tales of Science Fiction, a few years earlier.

May be posting interior pages soon.

Full details under the fold.

TyrannoMax is my AI dinosaur test kitchen, where I see how ideas work out before trying them on more serious projects.

Here, I've used Dall-E 3 through Bing and Midjourney to create comic assets, which I then de-color and rework into inks in a similar fashion to my AI-comic reworkings like Robots Ruined the Internet and Let's Gib About Ib, or any of my other fake comic covers. TriceraBruce and Ape-Tomic Pyle were generated with Dall-E 3, and the background was made in Midjourney.

This makes the basic inks, from there I correct anatomical problems, cleanup AI wonk, and generally re-ink where things are needed.

Once I have the "inks" its then a matter of doing the coloring and graphic design work the old fashioned way. I used my recreation of the 1981 DC comics palette for my colors, used post-processing to get the printed look, and there you go.

My prompt format for the characters is:

A -anthro wearing , long tail (if a dinosaur) , comic panel by 1968, in the style of 1960s Marvel comics

Because all weights are averaged a bit, to get a 1970s comic look, you have to prompt for late 60s, ortherwise it looks late 80s.

Background prompt was:

a distant city, a rocket launches from its center, flying toward the sky, comic illustration by jack kirby, inked lines, flat color, blue sky, green grass, orange rocket, from 1968

[deepdreamnights]

Overgrown Sci-Fi Locales/Backdrops

Some spares from a background element in The Secret Origin of Wally Manmoth. These were straight gens, little modding, so consider these free.

The image(s) above in this post were made using an autogenerated prompt and/or have not been modified/iterated extensively. As such, they do not meet the minimum expression threshold, and are in the public domain.

[deepdreamnights]

Failed Farrahs

Attempting to get that shot of Farrah Fyendlyne from The Secret Origin of Wally Manmoth was a process.

Have some dead ends.

Prompt: A smirking cat-anthro, wearing singlet, cape, witch hat, knee-boots, long gloves, cat face with 3rd eyes, standing in power pose, full body, she stands holding up a flaming broom like a scepter, wicked expression, comic panel by jack kirby and gil elvgren, 1977, in the style of 70s marvel, comic inks with flat color

[deepdreamnights]

Duchess Quasara Posters

Based on her appearances in "True Life Tales of Science Fiction", prior to the release of Knights of the Lost Star.

These were alternate takes that weren't used for the poster advertised in "The Secret Origin of Wally Manmoth"

Prompt: line art illustration of lynda carter as a space amazon, sci-fi roman armor, singlet, tall boots, reclining on the ground, pose, laying on her side, head propped up on one hand, smiling, in the style of vintage pin-ups, B&W comic book inks, full body, whiplash curves, smirk, jack kirby and gil elvgren, swirling patterns in background:: beautiful space-queen in singlet and boots laying on the ground, techno-crown, on her side, smiling, by akiman and john byrne, 1996

[therobotmonster]

Sure! and remember, you asked for it @readasaur

I have a lot under the #tyrannomax tag, but the sum up is that it's a unreality fauxstalgia concept that exists both as a story and a meta-story around its creation:

TyrannoMax and the Warriors of the Core was a comic by Cocytus Comics, originally released in the 1970s, appearing alongside such characters as Farrah Fyendlyne: Familiar of Faust, the Tomorrownauts, and Johannes Factotum: Professor of (Practically) Everything. (My Secret Origin of Wally ManMoth Comic is here)

TyrannoMax is a dinoid from "The Fossilized World of M'nar" which was created when the cosmic radiation burst that killed the dinosaurs (the KT impact wouldn't be commonly accepted until well after the series started) created a layer of "fossilized time" producing a pocket universe that resembles a hollow earth, accessible through portals hidden underground.

When Dr. Myron Underfoot discovers one of these portals, he brings art student Wally Manheim with him to take field illustrations, as traditional film is fogged by the portal transition, and to be a guinea pig.

The portal doesn't kill Wally, and he's found by TyrannoMax and his friends. Max is the champion of the Core City of Ib, their bravest and most heroic warrior, and just a generally helpful guy.

Underfoot winds up stealing one of the sun-crystals that keep the fossilized world stable, and when he tries to take it back through one of the portals to the surface it explodes, transforming him into the dinoid-like Dr. Underfang, and trapping Max and his friends on Earth, where they battle Dr. Underfang, his genicarnated creations, and a host of other foes.

(My favorite of which is Dr. Underfang's gal Friday, Mrs. Nice/Mrs. Nautlius, whose origin is summed up in this PSA that ran in Cocytus books through the late 70s.)

In the 80s, Cocytus hit hard times and was bought out by Buzby-Spurlock animation, producing the cartoon series that this figure was merch for. The series introduced Max's cousin l'l Wrexy and a host of new toy-based characters, and upped the tech level so you could get cool vehicle toys.

TyrannoMax Himself:

A Bio-Card of Comics Max is Here.

Max is the leader of his team, the 10,723rd reincarnation of his line, and a skilled fighter, strategist, and dancer. He's the physically strongest member of his team (narrowly edging out BrontoSarah) and never met a boulder he didn't want to throw.

His psychic dinoid ability is the ability to psionically augment his roar by focusing his courage to produce a force-shockwave, his righteous anger to stun or induce fear in enemies, and his hope to augment the strength of his friends. Like all dinoids he can use his psychic potential to rapidly learn other languages, but his overall psychic affinity is lower than most and highly specialized into his roar.

Like all dinoids, Max is vulnerable to cold (lore was established in the 70s)

His dinonite sword cuts through steel as if it were particle board, and can parry physical and energy attacks. His armor is made from dinonite and Hydrasaurus leather, augmenting his already formidable dinoid toughness.

Max is a relatively young champion and augments his lack of experience by relying on the expertise and knowledge of his comrades. He, BrontoSarah and TriceraBruce are best friends forming an Id (Sarah), Ego (Bruce), SuperEgo (Max) triumvirate. Bruce is intellectual and methodical, Sarah is passionate and wise, and Max is the balance between them.

The quick sum up of his personality is Adam West's Batman if he had Hercules' skill set and love of physicality and a more wry sense of humor.

He has a friendly rivalry with DeinoSteve, who respects Max's abilities but feels he's not decisive or 'solution oriented' enough for his role. Steve uses Max having saved his life during their first encounter as an excuse to hang around, but really he likes the companionship.

He is friends with PteroDarla, but not as close as with Sarah and Bruce, with a sort of chummy-work-colleagues kind of relationship.

Max considers Wally, Wally's little brother Bobby, and l'l Wrexy to be his younger brothers or adoptive children depending on how much managing they need.

Max considers stopping Dr. Underfang and his Genincarnates his responsibility, since Underfang got his powers from the Fossilized World and reverse engineered his own transformation to create the genicarnation process.

He has other rivals as well, in the form of TyrannoXam (an evil clone created, mostly, (its complicated) by the Unnatural Selector), CeratoGaius (Wrexy's dad, Max's brother-by-marriage, and a rich jerk who thinks he should be champion), and the DireLord of Lemurmalia (Max's counterpart from a realm of ice-age mammal people), all of whom seek to prove their superiority to a guy who would love to be their friend if they weren't being jerks.

And no discussion of Max's foes would be complete without Maureen the Lizard Queen.

Maureen has the ability to control reptiles and has general purpose hypnotic powers, making her the Lizard Queen. To her logic, the queen of lizards deserves only the best consort, the "Tyrant Lizard King," in the form of TyrannoMax.

She calls him "Darling" and "Sugarfangs" and other cutesy names. Max finds her attentions flummoxing.

Max and Steve are more resistant to her powers than most ("Ugh, you've got too much bird in you!") but she also doesn't use her power on Max outside of a combat/escape context cuz she's not quite that much of a creep. Her non-stalking related escapades usually involve attempts to establish her Queendom in some populated area or doing jobs for Dr. Underfang in exchange for the creation of reptilian genincarnate henchmen for her.

In the 90s there was a movie.

TyrannoMax 2" Action Figure In-Progress Sculpt

The hands cooperated for a chunk of sculpting today.

Toy Max is based largely on the cartoon design, but in keeping with the mid-to-late 80s, he's going to be a little more detailed. He's in my personal favorite, Battle-Beasts-inspired aesthetic.

[deepdreamnights]

Lets Talk Process

Some of of my longer-term followers will likely recognize the TyrannoMax cast. I'd been building a stock of faux-screenshots for a slideshow video, but Hailou/Minmax came along with a "sign up and you get unlimited use for 3 days" deal.

So the goal is now a fully animated opener.

The process starts with Midjourney, specifically Niji-journey, where I've trained my style code and found good style reference images and prompt formats to get a variety of OG animation styles. I'd been working on character reference prompts for the mains for awhile at this point.

For some, I used them in the environments I prompted them in, but I also separated each character from the background, using a combination of tools on Huggingface and good old fashioned photoshop.

Those of you into old fashioned animation can see where this is going.

Pre-computer everything was done with physical cels, clear celluloid sheets that each frame would be traced and then physically painted onto, before being overlaid on a background and photographed. (if you want your stuff to look vintage, one element is to add a subtle drop shadow to moving characters, to recreate the slight shadow of shooting lights that the clear sheets would cast onto the background)

Filmation used this to great effect by being very economical with their animation. If pencil work could be traced to use for multiple characters, it was. It was always the same couple of laughs, the same poses, the same rolls. They'd just haul out the old cels, use them again, and put them back in the file for the next one.

A similar trick helps us break the character consistency problem. The clear pngs I made above can be overlaid onto different background "painting" gens, combined with other characters, scaled and positioned for the any given scene.

Resulting a combo pic:

With just an image prompt, Hailuo tends to default to a dialog scene.

But you can use basic stage direction to prompt for more complex things. This works better with live action than cel-animation, most likely a dataset issue.

Which takes us to the final stage: all the manual work. cropping, rescaling time, fixing flubs by painting over them, whatever it takes. These have been shown unmoded, so as not to present an unrealistic take on the tech.

In the scene were DireLord and Wally Manmoth are walking together, DireLord's mouth glitched and was full of what appeared to be honeycomb cereal.

So for the gif, I manually repainted the interior of his mouth, rebuilt the teeth, and for a few frames recolored the muzzle.

And I make things harder on myself, a series mostly about humans wouldn't strain things nearly as much.

This is all early days stuff, but there's a potential for a workflow here, even with the tools as limited as they are. If you're the type who can rework old animation Space-Ghost Coast-to-Coast style, it wouldn't be hard to clip the mouths to re-animate with lip-synch, or to use key-colors to make ready-to-assemble assets.

And then... you're basically where Filmation was in 1983. If you can make those limited assets sing, you can build some story.

As to limitations...

I'm yet to produce a convincing or even passable fight sequence. While all this looks very pretty the system is still very much in its infancy and has difficulty with spiraling out of control when confronted with something complex or confusing.

I wanted to have TyrannoMax throw a boulder but the results have been, surreal...

So it's not the push-button thing, it always takes effort and curation and editing, but there's potential.

TyrannoMax and the Warriors of the Core, 1986, Buzby-Spurlock Animation

[therobotmonster]

Funny you mention that, I'm currently doing Wally Manmoth's "visit home" story as a framing device for an origin flashback, as he explains to his mom why he's now a mammoth.

Here's some in-progress flats.

But if you want to do fan art/fic and the like, you are very welcome to!

TryannoMax, Issue 25, October 1977

Cocytus Comics Group, Story by Barry McDermit, lines by Midge Joulet & Dale Ethree, Colors and Letters by H. Haddaway.

Issue #25. It's a quiet day so the Core team gets some R&R. TryannoMax hunts down Dr. Underfang for a long-overdue confrontation, DeinoSteve and PteroDarla finally have that date, and Wally Manmoth visits home. So when Ape-Tomic Pyle returns from the grave to exact his revenge, only TriceraBruce remains to stand in his way. One wounded dinoid against a living nuclear ape-pocalypse, with the populace of Wisconsin in the balance.

Running for an astounding 80 issues, TyrannoMax was the headline comic from Cocytus in the 1970s, and was the primary motivator behind Buzby-Spurlock buying out Cocytus in '83.

While the comic series is considered the root of the empire that would create the animated series and live action movie, the concept was first introduced in short story "Humanity, My Young Cousin" in the pulp-sci-fi magazine Stunning True-Life Tales of Science Fiction, a few years earlier.

May be posting interior pages soon.

Full details under the fold.

TyrannoMax is my AI dinosaur test kitchen, where I see how ideas work out before trying them on more serious projects.

Here, I've used Dall-E 3 through Bing and Midjourney to create comic assets, which I then de-color and rework into inks in a similar fashion to my AI-comic reworkings like Robots Ruined the Internet and Let's Gib About Ib, or any of my other fake comic covers. TriceraBruce and Ape-Tomic Pyle were generated with Dall-E 3, and the background was made in Midjourney.

This makes the basic inks, from there I correct anatomical problems, cleanup AI wonk, and generally re-ink where things are needed.

Once I have the "inks" its then a matter of doing the coloring and graphic design work the old fashioned way. I used my recreation of the 1981 DC comics palette for my colors, used post-processing to get the printed look, and there you go.

My prompt format for the characters is:

A -anthro wearing , long tail (if a dinosaur) , comic panel by 1968, in the style of 1960s Marvel comics

Because all weights are averaged a bit, to get a 1970s comic look, you have to prompt for late 60s, ortherwise it looks late 80s.

Background prompt was:

a distant city, a rocket launches from its center, flying toward the sky, comic illustration by jack kirby, inked lines, flat color, blue sky, green grass, orange rocket, from 1968