Tag: Happy New Year

High-flying Harpies

Harpies are nasty creatures especially in mythology. The mythological name translates to “that which snatches” and it holds true for these Harpies. Yet another type of nasty creature from Tartarus mythologically, the Dream Angel Harpies make excellent warriors for Nyxus.

harpie

Luckily for Dream Angel, the Harpies don’t often show up to cause trouble. More often, they’re away doing some other task for their wicked mistress simply because they won’t attack Dream Angel or any of the female heroes. Much like their mythical counterparts, they prefer men. Of course, that depends on the legends you find on them. In some versions, they torture victims they snatch on the way to Tartarus, in other versions, they snatch men to mate with then kill them.

The Harpies Dream Angel has to deal with still snatch men, but instead of big, broad wings, they’re much more streamlined in flight. This makes them fast, dangerous and difficult to follow. Even Akasha with her very fast flight speed can only keep up a short time unless she follows from a full dive from several thousand feet up. Dream Angel has good flight speed, but she can’t keep up at all.

These Harpies were inspired by the ones from the She-Ra movie, The Secret of the Sword. Near the end of the movie, He-Man and She-Ra encounter Hunga, the leader of the Harpies, who’s captured Queen Angella. The idea intrigued me, so I started researching the mythology and found several different designs based on the mythology.

One of note is from the Disney movie Fantasia during the Night on Bald Mountain sequence near the end. Another is from the Xena: Warrior Princess series. Although I didn’t really mix up the designs from these too much – I really stuck closer to the Disney design – I did mix up elements of mythology and even at times, personality when there was one to take note of.

Eventually, I settled on the dark violet coloration and thought they’d be opponents most effective at night when they’re especially difficult to see. On top of that, like a cat, they can see in the dark, but they cannot talk.

What do you think? Are Harpies interesting characters? These creatures make their comic book debut in Dream Angel #22. It’s highly recommended you get the books that came before so the story makes sense! You’ll find collection books available in the shop so it’s easy to catch up fast! Also available in the shop is the Harpie plush action figure.

Happy New Year 2017!

Happy New Year! May the new year be far better than the old. 2016 has been brutal, hasn’t it? Goals include learning more advanced techniques for 3D art and possibly using the new skills to make variant covers for the released books. Although the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” is quite true, clearly people do anyway. So, makes sense to start designing variant covers that look more attractive than the current ones.

Of course it makes sense to continue learning. There’s no reason to ever stop as there will always be new things to learn. This looks to be a light year for comic book releases, if there are any. Why? Well, there’s a wedding to prepare for, which will keep things quite busy for quite a while.

Rendering full books is quite time consuming and while wedding preparations are going on, more difficult to get done. There might be one or two new books this year, but they’re going to be much slower in production. This could be a good thing as it’ll force more attention to be paid to each panel of the page. Finding time to setup and render scenes is likely to be difficult.

While the new year looks to be a happy one, there’s a number of challenges that will definitely be presenting themselves along the way. The challenge of planning a wedding, successfully moving across the country and yes, even the challenge of learning new skills along the way. Yet the hope is that this year will be happy despite the challenges.

So, Happy New Year 2017! Make it merry and bright!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Granted, this site’s still not quite 100%, but it’s about 98% complete. Only 2 pages (that I know of) are missing content, but all the pages have something on them at least!

That said, are you ready for Dream Angel #21? Yep! I’m going to be preparing the Comic Life file today and possibly starting rendering. Techwarrior #3 might soon be joining it in production. The script is still waiting for approval. Perhaps soon to follow might be Hillbilly Hoot #1. That one’s still in the early planning stages, but it’s a new year, so anything’s possible.

How’d I end the year? Playing happily in DAZ Studio and making some very impressive renders. Wanna see? Keep in mind these characters aren’t mine. They belong to my good friend Winston Jordan and his series, Dragon Trio.

Let’s start with the test animation with the new dynamic outfit. Keep in mind it’s only 1 second long.

[Spider_Video_Player id=”1″]

I was having so much fun after that, I thought I’d have some more, so I added a set and lights. I wanted to do a longer animation with the set and lights, but it was taking too long to render unfortunately, so I stopped it and did some still image renders instead with the poses I’d picked out for the animation.

dtbro1sceneI was really just playing around at first. We’d been discussing the fact that the guys don’t have sleeves and the original outfit I’d put on the characters was… fussy about removing the sleeves. Fortunately, I have a spare outfit installed that’s dynamic. What’s dynamic? That’s simple: realistic cloth simulation. It means that when the cloth is animated, it moves in a natural and realistic way.

dtbro1scene1I found myself enjoying the character and after setting up the outfit to suit the character (adding a special dragon to the back, to be specific) I started playing. Adding in the scene and lights just set him off perfectly.

dtbro1scene2I couldn’t resist enjoying myself and the poses I’ve got work beautifully to suit the character. dtbro1scene3 The renders kept improving on one another, I just had to do the other two brothers of the Trio for one last render of 2015:dtbrossceneBearing in mind that Midora (who’s in the shop already as a plush figure) is already a part of the Dream Angel series with her appearance in Dream Angel #10, it’ll be exciting to see if the three brothers make an appearance. midora600Isn’t she just stunning? Easy to imagine her going at it with the guys, but it’ll be fun to see what she does in the Dream Angel Universe. Looking forward to new books? I know I am!