Carja

Ranma 1/2 – Ukyou Kuonji

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Jul 162014
 

Heyhey! It’s Wednesday and the week is half over. Just breezes by when I’m on a three-day workweek schedule. It’s already time for a mash-up but first:

Ranma 1/2 is an anime that is aimed at an older audience. The mash-ups featured here are 100% safe for children of all ages, but parental discretion is advised before viewing the anime or reading the manga with children.

That’s the last time I have to put up that warning as this is the last week of the Ranma theme!

Ukyou is yet another of Ranma’s would-be fiancés although she at least can argue that she has a legitimate claim. Back when Ranma was a little boy he used to spar with “Ucchan” every morning. If he won (and he always did) he’d win an okonomiyaki (think a Japanese style pizza creation) breakfast. Ukyou’s father offered Ranma’s father his okonomiyaki cart as a dowry if he agreed to Ranma and Ukyou becoming betrothed to one another. Genma ran off with the cart and left Ukyou behind. Years later, Ukyou returns to find justice by defeating Ranma but ends up falling in love with him. Ranma calls her “the cute fiancé”.

Here we have Deema as Ukyou in regular and anime-style face. I said in my Shampoo post that as I was drawing this piece I thought that Sass would have been better for Ukyou. That’s because of the costume. Sass has more human proportions with longer limbs than the other characters. Shampoo’s costume didn’t really need those longer limbs to look right but it turns out Ukyou’s does. I had to cheat a little with the proportions to make things look right.

UkyouJ-Ukyou

So that’s it for Ranma 1/2. Next week is a new theme! See you next Wednesday to find out what’s coming next!

 

Librairie Premiere Issue

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Jul 142014
 

Hey all! I don’t have a lot to talk about this week. I’m just going to talk about my visit to Quebec City this past Friday.

I lived in Quebec City for two years while I was attending Champlain College, St. Lawrence Campus. It was my first time living away from home and overall I had a good time there. There were three places in particular that I liked going to back then, Librairie Premiere Issue, Librairie Donjon and Hobbies Kirouac. This is where I spent the money I couldn’t really afford to spend on comic books, roleplaying games and gaming supplements. The latter has closed its doors since those days but I found out last year that the other two are still in business.

On Friday my mom and I had a little bit of time to kill before the scheduled appointment we were in town for so we stopped by one of these locations, Librairie Premiere Issue. It had been twenty years since I set foot in that place and man it was like nothing had changed. The steps leading down into the store. The staircase leading to the second floor. The shelves lined with comics. It was all exactly as I remembered it.

I spoke briefly to the owner while I was there, introducing myself and explaining to him how I used to go there back when I was in CEGEP. It’s funny but I probably spoke to him longer in that brief conversation than I ever did in the two years of me going there in those days.

One thing that was different from what I remembered was the variety. Back in the day, Premiere Issue sold more than just comic books. There were games and novels and what-have-you. I guess with the arrival of l’Imaginaire as a pop-culture haven store in the same city, the owner of Premiere Issue decided to fall back on what he knew best, comic books. There were some figures and busts to buy, but on the whole it was almost exclusively comics this time around.

I couldn’t drop by Premiere Issue without dropping a little coin, so I picked up a Robin Hood comic trade paperback and two volumes of Mice Templar. I chose them as the type of books I wouldn’t typically find on the shelves of other comic book stores.

We nearly got lost on our way back to the car after our visit (my mom and I have terrible senses of direction) and ended up arriving late for our appointment, but everything worked out fine. Afterwards, I visited l’Imaginaire, which is your typical modern collectibles and gaming store. It wasn’t as special though since I’d been there relatively recently with Frank. For me this trip was all about Premiere Issue. It’s unlikely that I’ll ever drop in again; Zone 51 is much closer for all my comic book needs…but it sure was sweet to travel back in time for a half hour or so. If ever you’re in Old Quebec, take the time to drop by and see the comic book store of yesteryear!

Flashback Friday – Romulan Zoë

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Jul 112014
 

It’s Friday folks! I’m going to Quebec City today. But before that can happen we have to start our Friday right with a flashback!

When I drew the first Star Trek mash-ups back in 2012, I thought it’d be nice to feature the uniforms from each of the different time periods we see in the various Trek shows and movies. When I got to Barnaby and Zoë, I’d run out of uniforms. I didn’t want to do the variants of the Next Generation uniforms as appear in Deep Space Nine and Voyager. I therefore chose to do a Romulan uniform for Zoë and a Klingon uniform for Barnaby. I wasn’t keen on redoing the Romulan uniform but it turned out alright. I’m not crazy about the colour. This is one of those pieces where it may be worth clicking to enlarge just to see the detailing on the belt and buckles.

Zoe-Romulan

Here’s the comparison to the original piece. I prefer the metallic sheen on the original piece actually. The stills from the show I used for the new piece showed that the actual uniforms were made of cloth, not metal like the design sketch I used to base myself on for the original.

Trek-Zoe-TaN

That’s all for this week! Next week will feature an Avenger! But which one? You’ll find out Friday!

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