Master Juggler

...And in this entry, we shall travel back and and forth(but mostly back) through the sporadic mess that is my oeuvre, as we attempt to distil genius and bottle inspiration.  Okay, well maybe it's not as dramatic as that, but this entry does focus largely on updates of older works and ideas that I've had for a while. This may come as a shock to some, but over the years, I have come up with a multitude of ideas and concepts that have sparked my imagination that I simply have not had time to work on (be it due to to a lack of motivation or an actual lack of time), which has inevitably led to a mass of my properties left neglected and unnurtured (which I'm shocked to find is widely not recognised as a real word!).

Oh, Daikan... Will your will the hardships and perils of your quest ever be told?  This, as the date suggests, is a fairly old image, being done in '09, although the concept was thought up as early as '07.  The basic idea of this story revolves around a spiky-haired protagonist (don't they all?) known as the Daikan, who single-handedly challenges an empire of  monsters known as the Sheyde. That's it.  A lot of these ideas may not sound that complicated or even that original but frankly I've long given up on trying to create a completely original story.  That feat has proven, in this day and age, to be quite literally impossible, as well as superfluous when you consider that the highest grossing film of all time is basically cookie-cutter copy of the most common tropes and story structures ever known.  Even Harry Potter is incredibly derivative in it's nature! No. What matters is the execution of the idea you have, the dimensions and believability of the worlds you create(which sadly, still doesn't apply to Avatar).

I dug up the Daikan property in the efforts of honing those aforementioned qualities in my storytelling and illustration. But my head is a fickle one and I've only recently gotten around to developing the world of the Daikan, this being the first step:

Character consistency aside, I think this series of sketches I did begin to capture the spirit and attitude of the world I'm trying to create.  The script for a Daikan one-shot has already been written.  It's only seven pages long and there's very little dialogue (there's roughly a page dedicated to exposition. The rest is all action) but I've packed in as much mystery and intrigue as I could into it.  Oh. Yeah. There's a bit of a "mystery" element to the narrative (did I mention?).  Not a "whodunit" type-deal or anything, but rather a mystery in the behaviour of the characters.

Speaking of characters...

If you'll recall, I proposed the idea of pitting some of my favourite characters from my "Four-A-Day" phase against in each other in a hypothetical universe.  That day has finally come(well, in reality it came a few months ago, but...)!  Remember Night Owl? Or Red Mist? (Probably not, since I didn't actually mention the name Red Mist in the entry I debuted the character)  Well, I do remember, fortunately, and I decided that they'd go toe-to-toe on one Midsummer Night.  Yeah, I know. The moon's a bit of a compositional copout, but Night Owl is a ninja, goddammit! And what kind of a ninja doesn't prance about accompanied by a full moon?! That's just...!

And SPEAKING OF "Four-A-Day" phase...

Here's the last picture I did from that era. Not in the finality sense. Just chronologically. Although, After I finished this I thought I might never go back there again, due to (as I've mentioned so many times before) how much my style has changed! Look at those legs! This is a character I really liked, which is why I proceeded(in spite of the bogus anatomy), but I think if I do do another one from back then, it probably wouldn't be without an update.

So that about wraps it up for today.  Next entry, we'll be getting back to the FuZioN U and it's infinite glory!  My swing has never been so full (think about that for a minute)!