'Tis the Season for sketches

Outside of my time getting ready for fall semester and doing research for KAS and my own kaijuverse, alongside AT's and old requests, I have recently been going a little more than nuts with sketching out kaiju ideas and size comparisons.

I have spent many a long night typing out a timeline for DH. Seeing as how my 'verse spans thousands of years and covers major events in history in a new and unique way, I find the more and more I fill in, the more I can. Just when I think 'I have all that I need' I find a new animal source and think 'snap! I didn't think of that.' Thus, the list is ongoing. I am eliminating old I ideas at the same time, though, so it pays off. Most of what I've been doing lately are side monsters that pay little more importance than an homage. That, and I've filled in a few classic archetypes I didn't have before. Suffice to say, filling in millions of years worth of events is hard.

But, I believe I am approximately halfway done with the thing, to be positive.

In the meantime, I have been sketching out many of my designs over the past couple of days. Unlike many of my sketches, these have been on computer paper. And you know what THAT means. . . 

In order to get a feel for the scope and timeframe of my 'verse, I will be uploading sketches of the many creatures and people, at times just to show a difference in designs and sizes, but also to ask for some help in some of my more troublesome designs.

To give a preview, one is a praying mantis, which I have more than eleven different mantis species saved as concepts. That's the big one, the others will mostly be for opinion gathering.

My digital art will be taking a slight dip over the next few weeks, though there is a big reason involving photoshop, which I have acquired and need to learn how to use. I'll get the ATs and requests and the rest of the DH files done on Corel like I've been using, but I feel its time to move up in the world to a program I can use with greater effect. 

Now what does that mean for you bloggers? Well, in order to actually establish a niche on Blogger, I have decided to upload these sketches on here as well as on my DA. If you haven't commented up to this point, for whatever reason, I'll be needing help and opinions, so please consider what I have to show you all.


Signing off for now. 

Building Monsters, the basics

(note: After consideration, I decided to not send out the Think-tank to anyone, and would rather simply continue with what I am doing in revealing to you all little by little. I pray you understand.)

Over the past few days I have been intensively enjoying a piece of my 'teenagerdom', the nintendo strategy game series Fire Emblem, namely the gamecube classic Path of Radiance and the subsequent Wii sequel Radiant Dawn. I see, very easily, why I enjoyed them so much, the storyline is pretty classical, nothing too new, but the strategic elements, the different styles of speech depending on region, some of the more interesting characters, and so forth, it all works well to the way I think. 

When I beat Path of Radiance recently, the epilogue mostly has the main character talking to each of the various people that he interacted with and fought alongside. It wasn't much to see overall, but I noticed something interesting, just how alike many of the characters are. Some of the guys, such as one archer and one beast man in the form of a raven, had near exact personalities. I thought 'how can they get away with that? Won't everyone notice and be all like, 'that's cheap' and such?' But I realized they had their differences, different motivations, and whatnot, and I've owned the game for 5 years and I still don't care about the fact that they're alike. 

Now you may be asking where I'm going with this, but after a sort of writer's epiphany I had, I realized something. Dark Hours, my kaiju universe (or kaijuverse to the ones on my blog unaware of the lingo) was built with, unintentionally, the same formula as the Fire Emblem games. Depending on the time period, the faces change but the roles don't, I still have:

A. A main character, going about doing his business. As Fire Emblem has shown me, this isn't always heroic world saving business.

B. New faces at every turn. One of my favorite aspects of Fire Emblem is the 'recruitment' feature, where your army grows frequently, usually from people on the enemy's side or from random interlopers that stumble upon the scene. In my verse, namely Ragido's time to shine, that is EXACTLY what I did without thinking. There's always a new monster he 'brands' under his service wherever he goes, much like most FE stages.

C. Enemies, big and small: Not much need to explain that one, most 'verses have it.

And many, many more. Best part is, I had no idea I was doing it. 

This also helped me realize I can have two monsters of similar archetypes in the same 'verse without it looking crowded, it really just all depends on role and placement.


If anyone feels they wish to build a monster universe, it doesn't take terribly much work as one might think, depending on how much originality you wish to implement. I've seen many cases and approaches, some doing a bang up job without much any drawings, and some going into such insane detail it was enough to make your head spin.


For those new to monster universes (this mostly goes to my blog readers, my DA friends are the experts on this topic.) there are a few things to expect, both from established, movie/tv monster universes and fan made ones. I researched across the board for these, so don't be surprised if you're featured, friends. 


1. A main monster

This type could have a entry completely devoted to itself. The main monster of a 'verse is really as varied as the tastes of the people making them. Even in the movies, which are the prototypical 'verses, you can have heroic saviors of mankind like Gamera, anti-heroic 'do my own thang' types like Godzilla, and so forth. In the fan 'verses, the variety is sheer insanity there are so many. 

They cover forms and personalities innumerable, from giant antimatter ravens to undead grim reaper snakes to alien mutations to random creatures of happenstance. Their roles are just as varied, from ancient god like guardians to mutations of mankind's doing to beings from space. I technically don't have a 'main monster' that is constantly at the forefront at all times, but I have some that fit many of these categories. There's Ragido, a crocodile warrior that is a fragment of a greater whole once broken, in search of himself while still trying to do his job in the first place despite lack of power and memory. There's Unum, a techno organic scorpion that fights for mankind, born of man's cleverness and lots of innovative technology. Lona, a skinwalker that tries to win a war he doesn't know how to, and Paul Gregory, a human caught up in a lot of different struggles while in need of solving his own.

I'll go into more details on building a main monster in a future entry.


2. A 'big baddie.' Everyone loves a good villain, and typically these can be found in any 'verse. They take different forms, such as King Ghidorah the three headed golden space dragon, to the Legion queen in Gamera 2, and even more obscure, Bagan, a mutated Chinese dragon found only in a Super Nintendo Godzilla game. Usually they pose a threat to the entire world. In 'verses of fan making, they differ greatly, from giant eagles from ancient civilizations to zombie giants spawned of the main monster's dna. I use the dragon motif myself, in the form of the ancient destroyer Megidda, and another even more powerful than that that I won't reveal just yet. Big baddies usually take entire swarms of monsters to bring down, the classic case being the immortalized Godzilla film Destroy all monsters, where almost all the monsters in the Toho line up gang up on King Ghidorah and beat him into the ground with little resistance. 


3. A supporting cast. There are a million ways to go with this, but since I'm short on time I'll simply go into a little detail and cover it later. As a friend of mine once said, 'main characters are great, but its the supporting cast that separates the good from the great.' As in any tale, a story with good, memorable side characters is the one we remember the most fondly, and this applies here in this genre as well. They can be tough and gruff, humorous, benevolent, good or bad, but they need to be memorable. In my case, I have pretty widespread supporting cast, meant to cover all aspects of where a brawl might be, another Fire Emblem homage I didn't realize I had.  This aspect is where the true measure of your creativity will be.

A helpful tip to leave you with is that a good, no, great monster universe has a fair share of human interaction in it. This isn't easy, the creatures are often too big to really interact with small humans, but trust me, there are ways. One friend of mine makes it where the creatures have human avatars so to speak, people they bond with and give a small measure of their power too, that communicate and do battle alongside them in a manner not far from Digimon sometimes  Another simply has humans as researchers and/or mad scientists that give reports. Typically this is needed no matter what your monsters do. I myself have it all over the board, from monster chasers to mecha pilots to entrepreneurs in the monster making business. 

I will go into more detail in future posts about the individual kaiju archetypes, but right now I have work to go do, so until next time, blog and DA readers. 

I am Back

Though that's pretty obvious, I would think.  

This past week I have spent my nerdy time in the mountains of North Carolina with both sets of my grandparents, and let me say, I had an excellent time. There was a lot of fun to be had, lots of odd experiences, and, most relevantly, a lot of new ideas.

A week ago this fine Tuesday of a today, I drove myself and my 13 year old brother up to the mountains, about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Charlotte where I live. It wasn't terribly eventful, my brother and I mostly just talked about up and coming movies, truth be told, something about Megan Fox and Transformers 3 if I recall.  

Arrival was interesting, I got to see my two young adopted cousins when we got there. (My uncle adopted two girls from China years ago, named them Kylie and Lacie. They both talk with staunch mountain accents, (which is taking your typical southern accent and slurring your 'er's' and drawling out in different places. Watch Andy Griffith, Don Knotts' voice should tell you plenty.    ) which makes for some rather odd image-sound contrast. They are more than 10 years younger than I _{(the oldest, Kylie, is 7 at my last count)} and thus, I intimidate them a bit. I have to force smiles and I have big, ringed eyes, so I can see why, but my brother is quite simply the object of their affection. Saves me the trouble of enduring their jeering and teasing, at least.  

We humored them by going out and playing mini-golf, I came in second place because my brother got a hole in one when I got a hole in. . . three. Yeeeeaaaaahhh, let's just say three and not, say, nine. . .

I always enjoyed mini-golf as a kid, so it was pretty nostalgic. The course had a jungle theme going, complete with large plastic megafauna, fish ponds, and a volcano hole, one of the many mini-golf novelties. That was day one, in a nutshell, unless you count me watching some of the extended bonus features of Peter Jackson's Kong until my brother got a little sick/bored and we switched to Pirates of the Caribean. Day 1, done.


I decided the next day to get some drawing/typing done. My grandparents, or Mamaw and Papaw as we say in the mountains   decided we would go to the rather interesting Grandfather mountain, a sort of nature preserve/national landmark. I figured I'd just take my sketchbook along and do what I could, but I figured out quickly that I wouldn't have the time. I got to see some very neat stuff, Golden Eagles, River Otters, three black bears with a knack for entertainment. In the past, up until a couple of months ago, that is, the bears would be fed by the guests as a novelty, and so the bears would all line up at the enclosure's edge and 'perform' little cute tricks for treats. The tricks, they still happened, a little, but otherwise it was nice to see bears acting more like bears and not circus bears like the other guests seemed to think they were. There were three of them, and they were very different inside and out. One was the entertainer, who still had it in his head the people would feed him if he did something. He even, at one point, grabbed a stick in his paw and put it under his bulk, giving the illusion that the stick was holding him up. The people loved that. Another was lazy, napping off to the side in a small corner, being rather surprised at how loud the people who discovered his spot. Another was, well, a lot like me. He wasn't black, per se, more of a dark brown, much like the controversy that is my curly mane. He would look at the people to humor them from time to time, but when he was done with them, he was DONE, often simply walking off away from a good vantage point. I applauded him for still having some pride. Yeah, I think I was the only non-payroll person in the park that respected the animals for what they were, and not what they seemed.

Another neat feature of the place was the gemstone and other curio's collection. These included:

-A copy of a wood carving found on the mountainside, which said, in somewhat poor english, that Daniel Boone, the famous American frontiersman, had killed a bear at that spot. Pretty cool, really.

-The largest amethyst stone in the country, maybe the continent. Impressive, to say the least.

-A tree tumor, carved out and turned into an art piece. Neat, but did I mention that 4 full grown men could stand in it? Yeah, thought not.

-Insect collections. Scorpions, walking sticks, and all the related awesomeness.

I spent some money in the gift shop, mainly souvineers for my girlfriend that missed the trip. She loved them, which is good. We then, the four of us, climbed across the swinging bridge. 5280 feet above sea level, the highest swinging bridge in North America. It was neat, had a nice view. My brother took some dental wax and threw it off the edge. A dentist just rolled over in his grave. I'm not terrible with heights, at least not solid heights, so the cliffs didn't bother me until I got to the ledge itself. We then got food at a steakhouse and headed home, another fun day closing with my brother playing, and subsequently losing, at Medal of Honor in the basement.

   Animals were the name of the game this past week, it seems, for we went to the Asheville nature center, an official zoo of small stature. I hadn't been there in several years, so it was a neat bit of nostalgia. I got to see:

-Great horned owls, always one of my favorite parts of a zoo. They  were sleeping, which gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

-A pair of sleeping bobcats less than two feet from my face, with glass in between of course. I have good luck with nocturnal species, it seems.

-A coyote with no fear sniffing at us from the fence. I have long been aware of Coyotes being gutsy things, but it was nice seeing it in person.

-Red wolves. They are almost extinct in the wild, and this zoo is one of the handful that is rebreeding them. They look like the gray's of literature fame, only lankier and with longer legs, with rust colored of fur. The pups have the BIGGEST ears, its adorable, simply adorable.

-A signed poster of the Crocodile Hunter. He had been there some time before his death, so it was neat seeing a tangible part of his legacy. RIP Steve-O, you are dearly missed by the world.

-In the gift shop, a pair of boxer shorts with the words 'nice cheeks' on them alongside a picture of a squirrel.


After that, we went to the mall. I looked about, found some good deals, mainly in a Gamestop. I found two games of note, one being a Wii exclusive RPG called Arc Rise Fantasia. It is really well done visually, colorful and not quite your typical anime style of design. One complaint, though, is that the voice syncing just sucks. . . the voices fit, the timing matches the lip movements, but it sounds way too awkward in English to keep me from laughing at times. Other than that I am very impressed.

The other game was one I had been looking for, one that I've intensively enjoyed playing, Rampage Total Destruction. Why did I not get this game before? Why???!?

After that, we went to my other set of grandparents, who live a few minutes away in a small mountain home. Its much quieter there, but after the constant sight-seeing it was pretty nice.

Napping, Wii-ing, and eating were the names of the games for a couple of days. We then went to visit my girlfriend, we watched Osmosis jones, which I picked out. I forgot how much fun that movie was.   Also, we watched Alice in Wonderland, Edward Scissorhands, School of Rock, and Hellboy II, all of which did their job of entertaining. We swam a bit, and the general fun, but we had to head back and enjoy the next couple of days in the mountains again.

The days after that were not as eventful, but still fun in their own right, and we arrived back in town this morning. My parents had just returned from a trip to Brazil, which they loved, so we all had some stories to tell.


Now, while on my own this week, I spent a lot of time drawing, and getting Dark Hours synthesized. I opened a document in Word, title: Dark Hours Thinktank, which is now over 15 pages long. I have almost every kaiju I want to do synthesized and put together, a good portion of them sized up and armed properly with role, placement, and activities. A lot of the human work is done too. Also, I am getting the timeline for the 'verse's entirety resolved, though I'm still getting the details of the era of creation resolved.

I worked on Art trades, and managed to secure a net connection long enough to answer a few comments and post my Shark week celebration pic.

Now, I have told you all of the week as well as my drowsy self can, so enjoy the read, and expect some uploads over the next couple of days.

If anyone wants to see the thinktank displayed, I can get it together and posted, or in an email if you note me the address, I don't mind.

Now, I am also posting this entire description on my DA page, which can be found here http://crimson-vagrant.deviantart.com/


(sorry, no pictures, my folks took the camera with them to Brazil. And sorry for any typos or grammar mistakes, I'm tired.)