Holey Moley! Is It 2015? Why Wasn’t I Told?

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Jan 052015
 

Happy New Year to all friends of Age of Animus past, present and future! I hope 2015 is finding you well. A special greeting to my friends Fab and Lyne who welcomed their brand new baby boy, Owen, over the holidays, the best present a family can receive.

My holiday vacations came to an end today so it was back to the office. It was an easier return than I feared, but still harder than I would have liked. There was a kerfuffle over emails that went on way too long, but otherwise it was a quiet day.

I spent most of my last weekend off working on the mock card backs for the G.I.Fur mash-ups, complete with file card write-ups for each character. The file cards were fun to write. With a finite amount of space, I had to be as succinct as possible (normally I like to ramble). I posted them all to the Age of Animus Facebook page instead of directly on the site for reasons.

As I mentioned in Friday’s flashback post, I drew the last of the scheduled flashbacks, which should go live on January 23rd. The feature I’ve chosen to replace the flashbacks will begin on January 30th. It’s a new strip featuring the Pickle Patch Bandits. It occurs to me that I could be drawing the long-awaited FnF-AoA crossover but I was inspired by recent events for this new Bandit story so I want to go with it while the idea is still fresh. Perhaps the crossover can be the next new feature.

Still no Skylanders news this week. I haven’t been able to get my hands on the new Light and Dark Skylanders or the Magic Trap Master so I haven’t played. I got new games for Christmas to occupy my time anyway (Lego Marvel Superheroes, Lego Batman 3, Captain Toad’s Treasure Tracker and Batman Arkham Origins for those wondering).

When I get to the video game talk, I know it’s time to wrap things up so, this I believe concludes my first blog post of 2015. There will be others (51 to be exact). Check in every Monday to see what choice bits I have to share. Remember that new strips go up every Tuesday and Thursday. Also, Wednesday is Mash-up day and Friday is for flashbacks (until January 23rd) so there’s new content every weekday. Every now and then something will pop up on the weekends as well. Five minutes a day (depending on how fast you read) is all it takes to keep up with all things Animus. Maybe leave a word to show you’ve been by.  I love to read non-spam comments! Okay, the plugs are done and so am I. Have a good seven and we’ll do it all again next Monday! Carja V.

Last Blog of 2014

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Dec 302014
 

So it’s Tuesday and I didn’t post a blog yesterday. It was on my to-do list and then all of a sudden, it wasn’t. Weird huh? Well I didn’t want the last blog of 2014 to pass by without actually blogging so…BLOG.

I had a wonderful Christmas with my family, followed by a wonderful party with my friends on the 27th. I was spoiled again this year. I have a lot of cool new video games to play. How fortunate that I scheduled a vacation for myself so I can actually play them. Right now I’m in the middle of Lego Marvel Superheroes. There seems to be a LOT to do in that game. It will probably take me some time to get through it all.

I’ve given up trying to time the new Pickle Patch Bandits feature to come out on a certain date as that date was fluid and now has already passed. It will simply begin when the flashbacks end in a few weeks. It’s inspired by a wonderful event in the lives of my friends. You’ll find out more when it starts.

2014 was a good year for the site. Some of the mash-ups I posted drew some outside attention. The Teen Titans and League of Legends themes were shared on Facebook and Twitter respectively which undoubtedly drew some extra eyeballs to the site. Thanks to those of you who shared! Here’s to the site growing even more in 2015!

That’s really all I have to say this week. It’s not much, but like I said, I just wanted to squeeze this post in there. Have a great week everybody!

Christmas Already?

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Dec 222014
 

Good time period folks! Welcome back to the blog.

So Christmas is this week! There won’t be a Crismus storyline this year. Technically, in the strip it’s still the week after last New Year’s. The events depicted currently are a giant flashback. Don’t worry though! There will still be new material appearing every weekday this week and next.

I finally saw Frozen this weekend. I broke down and bought the Blu-Ray. The day after buying it, I found out that the Movie Network will be airing Frozen on Christmas day. Oh well! I don’t regret buying the movie. It’s really good. The musical sequence for Let It Go is spectacular.  I have a better understanding of why the kids are still crazy for it a year later.

In Skylanders news, they unveiled the new Light and Dark Trap Masters and they look REALLY cool. I especially like the Light ones. The first for each element is scheduled for release this week in the States, and I’m hoping they’ll follow here in Canada.

I guess that’s it for this week really. I’ve still got a little last minute Christmas shopping to do tonight. So Merry Christmas to those of you what celebrate it and a great week to those of you what don’t. Peace and hugs!Ch

Anatomy of a Mash-up

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Dec 152014
 

A while back I shared how I go about drawing mash-ups. For funsies, today I‘ve decided to share the process for last week’s League of Legends mash-up. You can click on any picture to enlarge it.

First, of course, is deciding who’ll play who. In this case, I decided that Nektara would be dressing up as Ashe. This was my first choice and it survived the revision I made after completing the Red Rich – Xin Zhao mash-up.

Finding good reference pictures is always critical. Ideally, I’ll find a full-body picture in a pose I want to draw. In Ashe’s case,  I had to use two different reference pics to supplement one another.

AsheRefPic1       AsheRefPic2

Next comes the sketching. I always start with the general shape of my character’s head large enough to fill the screen. In Nektara’s case, that’s a simple oval. I add her facial features to match the pose in the reference pic and then start sketching the outlines of the costume, whether it be hairstyle or a helmet. I then work my way down with a rough body in the pose I need and then adding all the costume elements.

01AsheSketch1

When a character is holding something in front of him or herself, I use a different layer for the object being held, simply so I could fiddle with the object without having to erase parts of the character. Once I’m satisfied with the object, I’ll add a layer between the two and painted in white beneath the object  so that the parts of the costume beneath will not be visible without actually affecting either layer. I like it when I’m inking I only see the sketch lines I need.  I work this way so if I decide to retouch the top layer later I won’t have to redo any bits of the bottom layer that I would have to otherwise erase.

02AsheSketch2    03AsheSketch3     04AsheSketch4

In this case, I had already finished a complete sketch before I decided that I didn’t like it and wanted to start over. Here’s the original sketch.

OriginalAsheSketch

Next comes inking. When I started doing mash-ups with sketches I would ink by simply tracing over the lines bit by bit. The problem is my hand is unsteady that the linework was… shaky. Now I go for broader strokes of the pen which gives me more fluid lines. I’ll use several layers and switch between them when the lines intersect. That way if I go over (and I often do) I can erase the extraneous bits without affecting any other lines. When there are a lot of little lines, I’ll sometimes stick to the same layer and just try to be more careful when I have to erase. Generally, the more intricate the costume, the more layers I’ll need. I think the smallest number of ink layers I’ve needed recently is four. For Nektara as Ashe, I used five.

AsheInk1   AsheInk2   AsheInk3      AsheInk4   AsheInk5

When inking is done, I’ll hide the sketch layers to be left with just the finished inks.

AsheInkSketch   AsheInkFinal

After coming comes colouring. To colour, I add a layer between the sketch and the ink layers and just colour within the lines as I would with a pencil. As I go I’ll find places where I wasn’t clean in erasing overextended lines and need to do little touch ups to the ink layers. I have to keep reminding myself to go back to the colour layer before continuing to colour. Sometimes I’ll forget and have to undo several steps, which can be frustrating. Fortunately, I usually notice before I reach the buffer limit for actions I can undo.

AsheInkColour

Finally, comes what I call shading. For inking and colouring, I always use a marker brush because they leave solid opaque lines. For shading, I’ll use a different brush (MyPaid calls it a Modeling brush) that’s more subtle. There’s a lot of palette switching involved as I  to try to blend the colours to give the desired lighting effects. I most enjoy shading leather (belts and pouches) and metal (weapons and buckles). Clothing is trickier as I try to create the illusion of subtle folds in the fabric, with varying degrees of success. Of late, I’ve started to use more than one layer for shading. Because the brushes I use are wider, there’s more chance for overrun. If I use two layers,  it’s easier to erase the overrun of one colour without affecting the shading I’ve done on the bordering colour. This is the first time I used three layers.

AsheShade1   AsheShade2   AsheShade3

Sometimes, there are glowing effects required. These will require their own layers, one beneath the colour layer to serve as a base and a second on top of the ink layers to better sell the effect. There were no glowing effects required this time.

And there you have it. A finished mash-up.

 Nektara---Ashe

Christmas (Shopping) Time Is Here

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Dec 082014
 

Greetings and good Monday to you all. What’s going on today?

Every year Fantasy Flight Games has a big sale near the end of November and every year I take a peek at the deals. Inevitably I end up buying a few games since the savings are rather substantial and I love board games. If I get an $80 game for $10 (which I did), even if I end up only playing it once (we’ll see), it’s worth it. The only problem with ordering from Fantasy Flight Games is that they like to use UPS to ship things. I’m not a big UPS fan simply because I normally can’t be home for their deliveries and getting to their office in Trois-Rivières is inconvenient without a car. I thought I’d checked off the USPS option, but it was actually UPS so a trip to TR was required (one missing “S” makes a big difference). I flexed out early on Friday (as I usually do anyways) and we drove up. The problem was that I didn’t read the tag properly which said that pick-ups are from 4:30 to 6:45 only. It wasn’t even 2:00 yet an we’d hoped to get home before dark. Well, we had some Christmas shopping to do anyway so we went on with that and ended up getting home an hour and a half later than planned. All in all, not too bad. Most of my Christmas shopping is now done and I have six new games. Nice!

I’ve been really dragging my feet when it comes to drawing lately. It used to be that I’d get all my drawing done over the weekend. Now I’m lucky if I get both mash-ups done. I still have the shading to do on one of the mash-ups I drew this weekend.

I think I’ve figured out what’s going to be the new Friday feature when the flashbacks are done. I don’t want to jinx things so I can’t go into detail for now on what it will be, only that it’ll feature the Pickle Patch Bandits.  I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I never would have guessed that I’d end up using the Bandits as often as I am. Funny how things work.

In Skylanders news, I found Fist Bump and Series 3 Pop Fizz at EB Games and the 8 Trap Pack (with the special re-skin of Broccoli Guy. EB Games also had the deluxe trap case, but I’d spent enough already so I’ll wait and see if Santa gets it for me before going back for it. I only played a little Trap Team on Sunday as I was feeling rather sleepy and needed a nap on Sunday afternoon. I found and trapped Chompy, who was the last of the available villains on my list. The remaining villains will have to wait for the release of the last two adventure sets. Have I ever mentioned how fiendishly clever Toys For Bob are? We’re always left waiting for more.

Well that does it for this week’s blog. Thanks for reading and have a great week everybody!(

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