Anime Box Set

Part two of this mini anime adventure – this time, a Twitch panel show, making acquaintance with a curious quartet in the process.

Firstly, we have Kagetane Hiruko from Black Bullet acting as YouTube ambassador. As one might expect, given the smiley face and sharp attire, he’s a villain – the boss, in fact. He is a soulless mastermind, acting entirely without remorse and getting a twisted kick from ruining the lives of others. Nice guy.

Amaimon, from Blue Exorcist, who looks like me, apparently. Pff. I’m not nearly so smiley. Saying this, I took some liberties and cheered him up somewhat – I thought this rather cute glance might bring a persuasive pull to the donation field! It would seem that Amaimon is, as the name would suggest, a demonic force to be reckoned with, since he has the title ‘Earth King’ bestowed upon him. He has a warped sense of humour, and doesn’t react kindly to his fun being ruined. His host is, in fact, over a thousand years old. Yes, I’m beginning to see a resemblance now.

Representing Discord, we have Rentaro, a protagonist of Black Bullet. Juggling high school and a role in Civil Security, Rentaro is a loving boy who endeavours to treat everyone as equals. Rentaro is an intelligent, agile and resilient fighter, such that even the most fearsome hoodlum underestimates him at their own peril. Oh, and he has a gun if all else fails.

Finally, we have Ken Kaneki, the main protagonist of the Tokyo Ghoul series. Formerly a gifted student living a relatively normal life, things changed dramatically for Ken when his manipulative hellcat of a girlfriend turned him into the one-eyed ghoul you see here, using elaborate surgical magic. Well, we’ve all been there.

Once the drawings were complete, it was simply a case of bundling them into the specified dimensions of Twitch panels (320x320px). I ran with colour coding almost straight away, and tried to design around that. Here are a few developments that didn’t quite meet the grade for Mr Sekioz, along with some others which I felt worked moderately well in isolation, but not so well transferred to stablemates.

These were completed today, hopefully the finals will be live on Twitch soon.

Transformers

It’s been a while since I dipped my toes into the alien anime scene, with Astro Boy now almost two years old, but it’s returned with a vengeance of late, thanks to certain Frenchmen. We begin with these twin terrors. Though disparate in derivation, they are brought together by one powerful affinity. If you thought Sonic the Hedgehog turning yellow was impressive, well, take a look at these chaps.

Firstly, from Naruto, is the titular hero of a series which has appeared in various incarnations since the late nineties. It appears that his particular ability comes courtesy of his ninja father – whilst fighting a monstrous nine-tailed demon fox, Kurama, his father somehow managed to instill the beast into his son’s body so that only he can use it. This was not without consequence; it was in fact a sacrificial act, leaving Naruto orphaned and something of a pariah in the world of Konoha, for they know what lurks within. In a bid to follow his father’s footsteps and gain the respect of his fellows, Naruto strives to become a ninja himself, while also learning to taking control of his inner demon.

I was initially compelled to try a ‘split personality’ angle, but I soon found that rather difficult given the extreme disparity in scale, and besides, people have done similar elsewhere, and much better than I could. With that, I moved to a simpler concept of our hero standing as guardian before his beastly companion.

The murky orange overlay seemed to add to it, and that progression lead to the final, with some texture thrown in, just because, really.

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I thought I would carry this over for Gnar, our next subject. Part of the League of Legends series, he is a prehistoric creature whose cute, delicate exterior masks a very different reality. Quite the temper, fury and rage is at the heart of Gnar’s combat – he thrives on it. One most definitely shouldn’t wish to incur his wrath, for Mega Gnar is ever waiting to be unleashed, turning this curious little critter into a gargantuan monster until the blaze dissipates.

Following on from Naruto, once the characters were drawn it was a case of trying out some different effects based on the colours of creature and beast:

And experimenting with custom typography, though I ultimately decided against that. It’s a relief to have them done and dusted now, since they’ve been in the works for a while, coming to life almost immediately after the Twenty-Six Spins challenge (I promise to stop linking to that now). I’ve been slapping effects on here, there and everywhere for a while, and not to a tremendous benefit.

There we have it – for now, anyway. I know who Naruto and Gnar are, now. There may be more of this ilk to come.

Astro Boys

In a change to the usual – never a bad thing – I was asked by un ami to create a drawing based on the titular character of the Astro Boy manga series, specifically the 2003 incarnation. The series has been around since 1951, with the first TV adaptations coming just over a decade later. Their visual direction embodied the anime aesthetic, and indeed Astro Boy is considered the first of that style to enjoy global success.

The series is set in the now not-so-distant universe of 2043, where robots and humans coexist. Astro himself is an android, equipped with immense powers and unmatched intelligence. Devotedly modelled by Dr. Tenma after his late son, he was initially shut down during development, after the doctor noted the ill treatment superceded robots received, drawing parallels to his initial loss. When Tenma later disappears, Astro is discovered by another professor, who revives him and attempts to gift him a normal robotic existence. Beside a no-nonsense career fighting off rogue robots and humans, Astro must also try to find out the truth about his elusive father. Compelling stuff.

Naturally, it was the aforementioned arsenal of powers that formed the basis of the drawing. Astro packs a cannon in one arm, a super-powerful beam in the other, and soars into the sky with the help of rocket booster boots. All that impressive stuff, but can he put some trousers on…?

The character drawing itself was a fairly simple vector process, completed in Illustrator and then taken into Photoshop for shading and then experimentation of backgrounds. Some were geared to a more simple end, others a more in-depth attempt at reflecting the universe. In fact, the second piece you see above makes nifty reuse of a skyline created for a redux of the legendary Blockbusters title sequence, one of my first ventures into animation. An interesting result came of it, but I think the understated variations come off far better.

This process meant that what was a single drawing mutated into several! Photoshop’s often-ominous filters came in very handy here, with cutout effects and motion blurs giving a suitable backdrop for the art direction – I particularly like the results seen below.

The impact of Astro’s artillery also prompted some fun with lighting, too, giving some pleasing variety across the developments. I don’t think my Astros can quite tangle with the beauty of his anime counterpart, but nevertheless they came out better than expected.

Having not done a vector character since Sonic’s Grounder back in April, this was a welcome revisit. As always, it was heartening to do it for someone else, and to respond to a completely new world. ‘Twas a good few days!