SomethingTober 31 - Happy Halloween!

 

Alright, it’s a holiday, I'm not feeling that great this morning, and I still have to work a closing shift tonight. As a reward for actually accomplishing this whole challenge, I’m giving myself a break today and keeping it simple. Happy Halloween folks!

And that’s a wrap! Finally, I can do something else with my time! Maybe more art. Maybe not. I want to do something writing related next month, so some form of NaNoWriMo, though I still don’t know what it’ll be. I do intend to keep drawing more regularly, though we’ll see how that pans out. At the very least, I hope that if I set the stylus down for a bit, it’s not going to be another eight months before I pick it up again. 

I had a whole post-mortem written up for this project, but honestly, it ain’t that serious. Suffice to say drawing a complete picture every day had it’s ups and downs. Some days I enjoyed it and I genuinely really like some of the pictures I made. Other days were hectic and quite confronting with my limitations. Ultimately, I feel accomplished to have actually managed it, and it was good practice. So, I’m glad I took the plunge and was able to stay committed!

 See you next post!

SomethingTober #30 - Bobbi, Miner and Crafter Extraordinaire!

 

Bobbi, Miner and Crafter Extraordinaire! (self-proclaimed) was my Minecraft Avatar I've been using for almost as long as I've been playing Minecraft. In a sudden fit of whimsy, one of my capricious goddess characters decided to bring Bobbi to life in a custom Minecraft World, where she was tasked with a multi-part quest to eventually break free from her digital existence! You can read the beginnings of her adventure in the first three books I made of Digital Dragons, which you can read here on this website!

The comic was another interesting exercise in trying to do literally something to get my creative productivity in gear, but as explained throughout the issues various afterwards, I struggled to keep it going once the muse bailed on me and the creative mania wore off. It was also one of those personal projects that had zero wide appeal, which was fine, but it did mean only a handful of people were going to read it at all, much less have an appreciation for what I was doing in it. For example, maybe three people on the whole planet would actually catch that the chapter page graphic was a reference to the banners I make for my bases in the game.

Anyway, I can't take full credit for things with Digital Dragons, as one could consider it partly a fan-work, given it utilizes Minecraft by Mojang Studio as its basis. In this very image, aside from the blocky environment of the base game, Bobbi is wielding equipment from a couple mods: the Terra Shatterer and Terra Truncator from Botania by Vazkii, and the Arcanist's Hat from Ars Nouveau by baileyholl2. The title graphic I was able to make using a Minecraft Title Generator plugin by Ewan Howell for the website Blockbench. And of course, most importantly, the design of Bobbi herself comes from a custom Minecraft skin, Cute Dragon Hoodie 3 by Mpuglover1011.

SomethingTober #29 - Petalmorph

Somewhat inspired by manga and anime where people disintegrate into shards and petals upon death, or they can do so at will as a sort of elemental form. It's a cool visual effect, and I think it came out better than I had hoped. Maybe this whole "daily practice" thing is paying off! Of course, the idea of drawing every single petal individually was daunting, but then I remembered that you can do amazing things with digital art, like precision-lassoing, copy-pasting, and flipping layers around. Truly we live in an age of miracles.

SomethingTober #28 - Born To Dream, Chosen To Fight

 

I was just gunna do a sleeping fox, then it became a three-tailed sleeping fox, and then suddenly there were critters pestering him to go save the forest from a monster, and goddamn, can't a guy just sleep in for once?

Not much to say about the subject matter in specific, but generally I suppose I tend to compensate for my lack of technical skill by just trying to make the imagery "interesting" in some way. Either I'll add wackier elements to what could otherwise have been a mundane scene, or I try to do something that implies some kind of story. In this case it's both, I guess. The fox is hitting the snooze button on the call to adventure. I mean, I would too if I had to fight a giant six-eyed whatever-the-fuck-that-thing-is in the background. Unless that's not even what they're bugging him about, and the monster on the horizon is just a local spirit-god going for a nightly stroll, like you do. Maybe these animals are just bored and trying to rope the fox into a LARP. Where'd they even get that tiny cape and crown in the forest anyway, huh?

Compromising on vision is also something I do a lot. Originally, I was going to try and make it seem like the moon was being possessed and was heading hungrily towards Earth, and the fox is being all, "Oh, the world's ending in ten minutes? Well, gimme five more to sleep, and I'll do something about it." But I couldn't get the Moon to look good while still making it clear it was the Moon. Not at the skill level yet to properly translate my visions to the page/screen, and I don't have all day to work on it. This'll do, though, I think the giant creature design is also cool.

SomethingTober #27 - Random Doodles 3

 

Work beat it out of me even harder today, when I'm already working on 90 minutes of sleep from last night. At least I was able to do today's Something during my break. Ballpoint pen on paper towel. No energy at all now that I'm home, so fuck it, this will have to do.

SomethingTober #26 - Weird Whispers

 

A frazzled fortune-teller's hand is guided by a spectral counsel... what fate awaits those whose iconics adorn the cards?

Another quick one today, but I tried to make something somewhat interesting beyond just a sketch. The symbols on the cards belong to various characters of mine from various settings (but mostly superheroes from the Power Universe). From left to right, they are: Hot-Head, Rayman, the Amazing Animal, Bobbi: Miner and Crafter Extraordinaire, Victory Transformer, and Cevin.

I'm actually kind of surprised, thinking back, to find I didn't do that many symbols or icons for my characters, despite the sheer number of superheroes in my oeuvre. I really had to stretch my brain to get this many, and Bobbi's symbol doesn't even really belong there, but I genuinely ran out of other emblems I could remember after the other five.

SomethingTober #25 - Random Doodles 2

 

Work really took it out of me today, so this is all I have energy for. Next few days are almost certainly going to be as bad or worse.

SomethingTober #24 - Satyress

 

Alright, I can't paint for shit. Still, much moreso than with pencil or pens, digital painting versus analogue painting is starkly different. Particularly in blending colors as you go, I'm sure there's some brushes or tricks to doing it more effectively in digital, but I don't know them yet. It might be interesting to try out physical painting again sometime, if I get the chance. I just don't want to deal with the mess or cost of supplies right now, and don't really have any good place to do it at home right now anyway.

As to the subject matter, this is technically one of the avatar forms of one of my goddess characters, but I feel like I didn't really get there with the painting style, so whatever, here's a mythical demihuman! Monster women aren't my cup of tea as such, but there's something bad-ass and fun about a woman with horns. }:3

SomethingTober #23 - Flamewalker

 

Peter Velaju is the Flamewalker, member of the Velaju Pyromancer Family. Unfortunately, his magic potential is so weak that he is the only one in his family who is unable to generate or control flames. Instead, he has only unlocked the powers of Pyrocommunication (able to see and hear from one open flame to the next) and Pyroportation (teleporting from one open flame to the next). To make up for this deficiency, he has dedicated himself to the study of mystic archeology, occult knowledge, and history, as well as trained in martial arts. He also wields the Staff of the Salamander, a family heirloom that helps focus his latent pyrokinetic potential to create and throw small flames. (Normally it is used to train young pyromancers in focusing their energies to properly project fire until they can do it on their own, but in Peter's case, it acts as a catalyst force his magic to spark a fire.)

Peter is part of what I call my Tournament Adventures Universe, a collection of various worlds and characters that I made for numerous Character Creation Tournaments on some forums. All these characters I just eventually piled into one galaxy-spanning setting that developed a sort of loose canon simply through me expanding on certain character backstories and turning some characters mentioned in said backstories into their own fully profiled entrants. Peter is a great example, as initially he was just by himself, but for one tournament, I decided to create and enter the entire Velaju Family.

Peter was also going to be one of three playable characters in another RPG Maker Game that unfortunately never got past the early build. I think I first created him for a non-Tournament related forum RPG, actually, but that whole thing fell through for me, hence my migrating him to the Tournaments. He's a fun idea for an adventure character, but I've yet to actually find a project to use him in since the Tournies.

SomethingTober #22 - Jester Gone Wild

Goin' a bit risque with this one, but why not? Pretty much no one looks at this blog anyway, and it's hardly the most NSFW image I've drawn before.

No idea who this character is, just another random design. Was going to color it, but decided to do more hatching with it instead. Also tried drawing some translucent genie-pants for her, but I just couldn't get the look right, and decided to leave them off. Also had to rework the undersketch a few times to improve the posing.

Clowns and jesters aren't really an aesthetic I go for, but you always stumble into them across various media, and I guess I do like the jester hat. I guess this young lady is doing part of a sexy circus act? Is she magical, or are those just props she's wielding? Stay tuned to never find out!

SomethingTober #21 - For Them

 

Cosmic Horror has some appeal to me as a matter of lore, and its capacity for facilitating cool monsters into stories. I have a couple such things across some of my works, but it hasn't been something I've really dug into directly that much.

I'm not quite sure what's going on in this image. First glance may imply the woman has sacrificed someone for her God, but is this actually the case? Perhaps she was supposed to be the sacrifice, and she managed to turn the tables on her captors and free herself, only to be confronted by the God before she can escape. Perhaps she was attempting to stop something horrific from happening, and summoned this eldritch creature for assistance. Maybe all this is simply a twisted vision she is seeing in her nightmares, the Creature before her representing death or some other schism, pulling away someone she cared about, the knife implying that it was her own actions who drove them away.

SomethingTober #20 - Mogie

 

I've talked about Mogie a few times before, but I'll recap his "lore" here anyway.

Mogie is among the small handful of characters of particular significance to me, serving for years as a sort of mascot and signature doodle, and all-around quick-and-fun sketch subject. His simplistic design has a universal appeal and is easy to draw in a variety of situations and "costumes" for fun. As such, he has a storied history throughout my earlier creative oeuvre. He is essentially my Mickey Mouse or Mario, but without the baggage and restrictions that come along with being a profitable company brand. :V

Mogie originally hails from the Krazy Komix Universe, where he started as one of my comic strip characters, teamed up with Arrowhead. Together, they would travel around the world, seeing the sights, and getting wrapped up in various and sundry shenanigans. Eventually, using a Homemade Teleporter, Mogie would expand his travels to other dimensions and go on more thrilling adventures through the AEP Multiverse (mostly running into superheroes from the Power Universe). However, he would eventually travel into worlds beyond, making cameos and playing roles in other storylines independent from my old canons.

Mogie is a Living Toon, but more than that, he is essentially an Incarnation of Good, and possesses a sort of Protagonist Aura that sees him capable of overcoming almost any challenge. Like any good mascot character who is still actually beholden to the stories he appears in, his powers and abilities may vary as circumstances may dictate. He is, however, generally an indomitable force for good, even if he can't actually solve every problem himself. Where he is not able to fix things, he is able to empower others to assist them in their own efforts.

Generally, he possesses the Power of Simulacra, which allows him to replicate the abilities of other characters. This is mostly in reference to when I would doodle him as Mogified versions of other characters (such as a Justice League Mogie or Super Saiyan Mogie).

He is also an Awakened Dreamer and Dream Warrior, actively participating in the Dream Wars, and working directly under the Dreammaster at times.

Officially, during the Multiversal War, Mogie was ascended to Cosmic Guardian status, making his cosmic aspect on par with the mightiest of Creator Gods in the whole of my works. However, this aspect of him does not directly interfere with universes except under the most dire of circumstances, and thus, most of his appearances see him as a "mortal" traveling through the various universes of my works.

SomethingTober #19 - Yoshi

 

After a long work shift, I came home feeling like crap, so I'm doing another quick one today. This is Yoshi, from the Power Universe, and a member of that setting's Japanese superhero team. Unfortunately, I don't remember what the team was called, though I can recall a couple of the other members. I think they might have been called J-6? I created the team when I had had extremely little exposure to anime, and had no idea Power Rangers was from Japan, so I did not take any inspiration from either sentai, henshin, or shonen aesthetics or tropes.

Yoshi was a Living Cartoon, and as such was a self-sustaining lifeform (no need for food, water, or air, very little need for rest). He has a Living Scribble aesthetic, hence he is supposed to be drawn in a messy style. He had limited shape-altering properties, mostly some elasticity, as well as the ability to flatten himself into a nearly 2-Dimensional shape to slip through seams in barriers or form blades. He could regenerate quickly if "torn", but I vaguely recall he might have been weak to fire and water.

Despite being a Living Cartoon, he was not from the Krazy Komix Universe, although that would have made sense. I think, like his teammates, he was imbued with his powers through mad science experiments. He was a normal Power Universe civilian transformed into his current state. If I were to retroactively fill in the gaps, he might have been genetically spliced with a Krazy Komix Toon entity, and it sort of halfway worked, hence why his form is a messy scribble, and his elasticity is more limited, but more directly controllable.

SomethingTober #18 - Super Casual

A superheroine halfway stripped out of her civilian outfit to reveal the costume underneath, apparently finding out the problem was taken care of. Or she's taking a breather after a mission before going  fully incognito. Or maybe she forgot her superhero pants and has to make due with a pair of jeans. Imagine what you will.

I have no idea who this is, I just improvised. Generic Superheroine from Generic Superhero World Number Whatever. Despite my thousands of characters, I still like to draw new stuff.

SomethingTober #17 - Hatching Practice 2

 

More hatching attempts. I doubt it's an improvement, but I guess I have a slightly better sense of what I'm supposed to be doing, even if my hand-eye isn't really trained up for it yet.

The image is of Runan, my wandering penguin spirit-swordsman adventurer, who seeks the answers to his worlds ancient riddles. When he finds them, he ends up encountering and being knighted by a Dimension Witch, gaining space-warping and interdimensional travel powers as well. Like many of my wandering heroes, I didn't write nearly as much as I intended to with him, mostly because you read one story of his, and you've basically seen the formula already. But I do have at least one said story to check out here.

Side note, and not to jinx myself, I think the daily habit might be starting to take affect. Despite a long day of work, the impulse to draw hit me as soon as I came home, and I knew I couldn't do anything else until I got my drawing done. I fully expect that when I put the pen down at the end of the month, circumstances shall conspire to end up with me not picking up the pen again for a year, but who knows, maybe by the end of this month, drawing as a daily task will actually set in finally. Or not. We'll just have to see, won't we? I do plan on doing another challenge next month, but I don't know if it's going to be for writing or drawing yet.

SomethingTober #16 - MothFlip

 

Moth and Sir Phillip "Flip" McGriddeon are the eponymous playable characters of my first RPG Maker Game, MothFlip! Slapped together in about three or four days, it was my first attempt at some custom sprite art as well. Most of the game's assets are out of the box from RPG Maker VX Ace, though. You can see the little bit of sprite work for the game in this old post and you can check out the game in this old post.

The story of the game is that Moth is a Drifter (bounty hunter/odd jobs worker), flying through space between gigs, when he gets sucked through a wormhole and dumped onto an alien planet. There, he discovers the world has been conquered by the notorious sorcerer-warlord, the Necromaster. The only survivor of the villain's conquest is Flip, a former Rocket Knight (space police) who had chased the sorcerer to this world, only for the both to be stranded on it.

Naturally, the Necromaster wants off the planet, and he sends his minions to raid parts from Moth's flying saucer. Moth and Flip join forces to both get back the vital parts to repair the ship, and bring the Necromaster to justice. Moth powers up his moves by obtaining new guns along with his ship parts, while Flip possesses Ice and Fire Magic that can be upgraded into Thunder Magic.

It was a fun little experiment, and I had fully intended to keep making more games and even started a couple new builds, but the classic RPG format proved somewhat stifling, as it was a genre I was well tired of at the time already. Lacking any kind of coding skills, RPG Maker was the one system at the time I felt I could actually use.

I did eventually return to RPG Maker as new editions came out, but not much really came of them. The only projects I finished were a couple erotica-themed games (which didn't even have any actual erotic visuals, so what was even the point?). The less said about those, the better.

Anyway, neither Moth nor Flip ended up appearing anywhere else, but hey, one completed project is way better than most of my random character ideas end up getting!

SomethingTober #15 - Random Doodles

 

Couldn't think of anything specific I wanted to do today, so here's just a sampler of random sketches, using different brush types for CSP. Little but of hatching practice, too. Most of these are on-the-spot doods, though the toony guy on the right is Stretcho from Krazy Komix. The little flag beneath him is the design I use for my banners in Minecraft.

Boy, I'll tell you one thing that sucks, is getting back into art in your middle age, sitting hunched over a tablet for a few hours to do a drawing takes its toll. I felt like crap for a few hours after finishing yesterday's painting, and I was starting to feel the strain of it today. Definitely advise taking breaks to move your body around some if you're doing a long, involved piece.

And screw it, here's an extra one from later today. Went back to the old Wacom Intuos for this one, and boy, it is definitely rough to use. I actually tried using my much larger XP-Pen as a "screenless" tablet, by mirroring the screen on another monitor, and drawing while looking at the secondary monitor. But for as cramped as the Intuos feels, the XP felt too large to draw that way, using the different posture, so I went back to the smaller screenless tablet just because it was easier on my arms. Definitely not going to be switching back.

SomethingTober #14 - Woman Reading

 

Like I said, I'd like to learn painting as well, at least to some degree. I might have an extremely slightly better grasp on it then hatching, but I still don't know what I'm doing, really. It's one thing to watch and listen to all the advice on YouTube, but of course, the body still needs to train the intuition, the movement, the hand-eye coordination, etc. Obviously, right? Good thing I had a day off today, because this took me way longer than most of my entries thus far.

No character this time, and I didn't want to mar the image with a stylish title for once, but this'll follow my theme of "Woman + Animal", I guess. :V

She's reading on an eink ereader, a technology which I've become a little obsessed with recently. Great for not just books, but comics as well! I tried actually doodling a little manga page on the panel, but I didn't like the result, and I was already spending a ton of time on the whole image, so I copped out and just did scribble text. Oh well! I should try doing a comic page for one of these, actually, if I have another day with enough time.

SomethingTober #13 - Roxxy

 

Roxxy is one of two main characters from a "practice comic" I had planned to do in college, called Suburban Knights. Two junior-level magician-swordsmen who lived out in the suburbs would go around battling small-time monsters and magic crooks. It never got past a handful of sketches, and was only one of several "practice comic" ideas I'd come up with as a way to practice drawing, and maybe finally get back into the swing of making comics.

This, of course, didn't happen. College was when I ended up quitting drawing altogether, not counting the extremely rare instance I would doodle something. To be fair, I don't imagine this would have been a particularly interesting comic anyway, as it would have ended up a fairly boring, rote monster-of-the-week comic. Still, Roxxy's design was always kinda fun, an early attempt to try and come up with some basic toon style I could work with.

SomethingTober #12 - Hatching Practice 1

 

I initially intended SomethingTober to be a showcase of old characters and creatures of mine, but I find myself being rather fed up with how limited my style tends to be. There is still a TON of work I need to do on all manner of art practices. Right now, I sort of have managed to achieve some kind of simplistic Toon style with a flat-shading technique that I guess works for what it is, but is not where I want my art to be. If I was trying to crank out pages of a web comic, I suppose the style is good enough for that. But I don't want to be stuck with it.

Color theory, shading via hatching, proper inking, body poses, shading via color, painting, better anatomy, better character design, proper hair, proper clothing folds, etc., all of it needs work. I curse myself for not grinding out the practice all these years, and curse myself again for not being able to put in the work in the present. Too old, too tired, too scatterbrained, too flakey, too not able to wrangle myself into practicing every day like I should. And so, I'm stalled out at square one for a lot of things that I should be way further along with, even in the few years since I started doing digital art in earnest.

Well, it's the struggle I have to deal with, for internal and external reasons. I don't know if I'm making any progress with it, but it's a reason I'm forcing myself to do SomethingTober, even as I get more disillusioned the longer it goes on. At this point, it's both to see if I can force the habit of daily practice to stick, and to see if I'm even capable of achieving such a goal.

Anyway, the character above is intended to be Harol from my Strange Shades idea, but I wanted to focus on the shading over the color gimmick. This sketch started as hatching practice, and then pretty much devolved into scribbles. I know it looks like shit, but that's my point. It's a style I'd like to learn to do, and I'm still at the beginnings of it.

On a tech note, I drew this (and #10) on a new Samsung Galaxy Tab S8, which has replaced my iPad. Couldn't stand using the iPad or Apple Pencil, but I still wanted something to draw on the go. While  my XP-Pen 13 Pro has been my go-to for most of my art, and I find it the most comfortable of my devices to work on, I do sometimes find the XP doesn't have quite the responsiveness to quick-strokes or quick-loops as I'd like. The Samsung (and the iPad) is definitely better in that regard; hatching is definitely easier on it. While the screen is smaller, I should really do more work on it, if only to justify the investment. Not sure if I'll eventually upgrade the XP-Pen to something else within the next year, regardless.

SomethingTober #11 - Sound Spider

 

Sounds Spiders are a mystically enhanced species of spider from the Monster World era of the fantasy realm of Larreth. The spiders live in large colonies, where they work together with even greater precision and synchronization than ants and bees, leading some to suspect they are a true hive mind. They are not, however, but instead are "quasi-sapient", having some higher awareness and reasoning compared to most other spiders. No individual spider is particularly intelligent, however, they have developed a method efficient intercommunication within their colonies, allowing the group as a whole to gather and process information quickly and efficiently, and synchronize their efforts beyond their limited intellect.

Sound Spiders can rival the size of the largest Earth spiders, up to a foot wide leg span, with fairly heavy body. They can generate silk, but do not bother to do so accept to generate sheet-like webs for their hive dens. Despite their build, they also have great jumping ability.

Sound Spiders get their name from their ability to generate and perceive a far wider range of sonic frequencies than humans. The hairs all over their bodies are actually very thin, hollow spines that can stridulate with incredible complexity. Most hive communication uses ultra sonics that most animals can't hear. They can otherwise create a wide variety of sound effects and mimicry, from copying full voices to creating disorienting surround-sound stereo effects and false audio signals.

However, their most potent and dangerous ability is the power to poison people with a particular sound that triggers a targets body to produce toxic chemicals, effectively causing a person's own blood and tissues to temporarily poison themselves. The mechanics of this were never explained in universe, but if I were to go back and do some revising, I would say the spiders are actually utilizing some form of Song Magic to cast status ailment type spells, and poison is just the one they favor.

Sound Spiders first appeared in my first big fantasy adventure, the Ghost for a Step-Sister series, which was about two kids being sent to the Monster World to battle various monsters. This was back in the 80s, before the term "isekai" was well known in the west, and before I was ever familiar with anime. The whole idea of kids getting sent to fantasy worlds was a staple of western media for some time as well, and I was inspired by things like kids adventure books and movies like the Never-Ending Story. The Sounds Spiders that appeared in the story were actually under the control and guardianship of a native Monster World kid (who was a human, despite there not being humans around, in hindsight possibly implying he had come to the Monster World from Earth when he was very young). Daniel was something of a wild boy/druid, and the Spiders both protected him and relied on his help. He also carried with him antidotes for the Sonic Venom, which he was immune to.

SomethingTober #10 - Sarah Boo

 

Sarah Boo is from the Krazy Komix Universe, a member of the Spook Friends, one of several attempted comic strips I made as a kid. Even back when I was single-digits old, I was trying to stretch myself across different genres and formats, and yes, that included doing comics inspired by newspaper strips and the family friendly kids shows I had been watching around that general time period.

Sarah Boo and her brother Billy Boo were a pair of generic cartoon ghosts. I think the rest of the Spook Friends consisted of a talking tarantula, a skeleton, a talking jack-o-lantern, maybe a witch, and at least one more creature I can't remember. I just remember there were at least seven characters in the cast.

After twenty-five years warming the bench, Sarah actually reappeared in The Final Story of Salvador Roberts.

Anyway, once again, Krazy Komix comes in clutch when I just do not have it in me to do a drawing, but I'm still really trying to stick with the challenge. Even with a day off today, I'm still lagged over from work. Could also be getting burned out on this challenge already, which is about par for course with my brain. Hopefully I can get more back into the swing as the month goes on.

SomethingTober #09 - Herr Fuego

 

Herr Fuego is a fire elemental from the Krazy Komix Universe. A cheeky trickster, he gets up to shenanigans, but ultimately is a benevolent spirit. His name is German and Spanish for "Mister Fire." Not much else to say.

This was a very annoying and energy-sapping day, so this is all I could muster for today. Still ended up redrawing him twice.

SomethingTober #08 - Blue Daisy

Very little time today, so had to do this quick.

Blue Daisy is the name I just came up with for this random character I once thought of, and I might have done one rough scribble for before. Ostensibly, she's one of my many adventurer characters who was probably supposed to be part of some fantasy world party. In hindsight, I like the idea of her being a Flower Knight, similar to the woman in this image. I have no idea what a Flower Knight is yet, but I'm sure I'll come up with some lore for them down the road. May even make an art theme of it! :V

I don't really know much about Daisy other than she's seven feet tall, is a supreme swordsman with superhuman strength, and wields an ōdachi. If she is a flower knight, than obviously the daisy would be her flower theme. The flowers in the background are a sakura blossom, though, (from a design brush in Clip Studio); I didn't have time to find a daisy brush. Maybe later!

SomethingTober #07 - Thunderstar

Thunderstar is a member of Natural Forces, one of my later superhero universes. For a minute there, I was thinking I would just stick with characters of mine from the 80s and 90s, but I felt like doing this instead, so nevermind, I guess! Thunderstar was made in the late 2000s, when I was trying to design yet another supers universe. She is interesting to draw because of the gimmick of her costume, being that the lightning design is constantly shifting over the material, so its supposed to be inconsistent from drawing to drawing. Even better, I recently found a cool lightning glow brush for Clip Studio Paint that works perfectly for the design! Actually, the idea for the costume came a few years earlier, but I didn't have a character for it, until I decided to give it to Thunderstar.

Thunderstar is one of the Civen, a techno-organic alien race that is a member of the United Galactic Empire. She pretends to have crash-landed on Earth, and joins up with a superhero team while she adapts to life on an unfamiliar world. In truth, she is a spy for the UGE, sent to assess the situation on Earth. The Natural Forces Universe is one of the more roughshod supers settings, with an interdimensional apocalypse wrecking much of the planet, leaving the ruins to be ruled by godlike Dragons and Supernals. Humanity is only able to survive in the few relatively undamaged regions, including the protected and newly terraformed continent of Antarctica. Thunderstar was sent to assess the situation on Earth and see if the planet needed to be eliminated for the safety of the galaxy.

Eventually, her secret is revealed, and this leads to Natural Forces having a space-adventures arc, where they travel to different worlds in the UGE. I, of course, had no idea what these adventures were supposed to be, but their absence would prompt the formation of Cavalry back on Earth while they were away.

As a Civen, Thunderstar has a superhuman intellect bolstered by multiple consciousness tracks, operating at superhuman thought speed. Her body is a liquid metal/synth-protein that can regenerate from damage and has limited shape-altering abilities, and is sustained entirely by energy absorption. Superhuman speed (can dodge bullets) and enhanced strength (can lift about five tons), with durability to match (not quite bullet-proof, but resistant). And the ability to technopathically interface with advanced technology. Naturally, as a super genius, she has extensive capability as a roboticist and gadgeteer. On top of all that, she has been grafted with a Civen Electric Organ Unit, which grants her powerful electrokinesis and magnetokinesis, and has an implanted Anti-Gravity Unit which allows her to fly. Overall, Thunderstar is pretty stacked, powerswise, but this was fairly on par with the Natural Forces superhumans trending towards more robust and versatile powersets than I'd done with the Power Universe.

SomethingTober #06 - Darkflesh

Darkflesh was my edgy 90's psycho-slasher villain from the Power Universe.  He claims his boots and gloves are red because they are stained with the blood of his victims, even though realistically, they wouldn't be such a bright red if this was the case. 

Darkflesh was unfortunately blessed with the Immortality Effect, which meant he could not die, would regenerate from injury at insane speeds (chop off his head, a new one bursts up from the stump a few seconds later), and was largely immune to more esoteric super powers like psionics, chi, and magic. Somehow, this did not regenerate his left hand, however, which was replaced with a robotic one that had two-foot long retractable blades that were stored in his forearm. He was also armed with a laser pistol and a diamond-laced sword for his other hand. Who exactly armed him with such equipment, I have no idea, but likely he just stole it from somebody and forced someone to graft the hand on.

Darkflesh was nominally a rogue of the Fabulous Five, as a conflict with them led to him being dunked in a chemical bath that supposedly triggered his Immortal Effect (similar to how Spy Guy and Dr. Mathworths obtained it) while leaving him with the appearance of half-rotten corpse (also similar to Spy Guy). This pushed his insanity even further, and led to him taking on the Darkflesh persona.

Despite this, Darkflesh knew the Fab 5 were way out of his league, so he continued his crimes in cities only protected by street level heroes and two-main pairs, like Proman and Sniper. Funnily enough, Darkflesh was also the leader of the first iteration of the Ferocious Five, but as a pack of impulsive psychopaths, the group was fairly easily trounced by various heroes, even the two-man teams of street level champions whom he decided to tackle since the Fabulous Five were way out their league. Soon, the group faded into obscurity, with only Darkflesh himself continuing to be a noteworthy menace. Afterwards, the supervillains Dreadnaught and Dr. Mathworths would form their own much more effective and powerful Ferocious Five, and they completely eclipsed Darkflesh's version. (In actuality, this might have been a bit of a soft retcon, as a couple members of the original team were among the many rip-offs that got dumped out of the setting when I decided to do that.)

In hindsight, I can see resemblances to characters such as Deathstroke and Deadpool from DC and Marvel comics, but I made him up before I even saw those characters. He was actually much more inspired by the likes of Marvel's Carnage. and had much of the same attitude of just being an absolute nutcase who liked to murder people for the thrill of it.

SomethingTober #05 - Speedmongers

Speedmonger is the codename of two different characters, each from a different setting.

Jessica is the Speedmonger of the Power Universe. Initially, I had her as the junior member of a different team that didn't end up seeing any use, so I migrated her over to being one of the later members of the New Force. In particular, she was a friend and eventual romantic interest of New Force member Shockwave, helping him out as a crimefighter in their city, then taking his slot on the team while he recovered from serious injuries. She stayed on after he rejoined.

Benjamin is the Speedmonger of the S.T.A.R. Corps Universe, and was the first to have the name. (I reused the name for Jessica since they were in different settings, so there wouldn't be any overlap.) Benjamin was a founding member of his team, but never really fit the leadership role, despite being the one to really push his friends to make the team in the first place. Interestingly enough, he is actually a dimensional counterpart to Hot-Head of the New Force. This is because both of them were blatantly based on myself at different points in time. The two Bens would actually meet in the S.T.A.R. Corps/New Force crossover story.

As their names would imply, both Speedmongers have superhuman speed as their primary power. Both can reach at least Mach-3, with reflexes to match. As a supplementary power, they have enhanced durability and stamina to match the physical demands of their speed.

Jessica also is armed with armor-plates on her forearms that allow her to deflect bullets, as well as builds up static energy as she runs, charging the gauntlets to allow her electric shock bursts she can use on contact.

Benjamin would eventually get a power upgrade that would let him do brief bursts of faster-than-light speed, after which he started calling himself Warpspeed. He was also an Awakened Dreamer (ability to fully lucid dream, and enter the dreams of others), and thus had contact with the Dreammaster and the greater Dream Wars canon.

SomethingTober #04 - Arrowhead

 

Arrowhead is one of my Krazy Komix characters, and sidekick to my old iconic doodle-character Mogie. He originally was a somewhat stiff and proper character, but decided to undergo a change into a prototypical 90s "cool guy" look and chilled out attitude. He pretty much fell to the wayside, as Mogie became my main doodle mascot. Canonically, Mogie went on a bunch of dimension-hopping adventures that Arrowhead missed out on, until the two would later reunite, and Arrowhead would tag along on some of those adventures.

Still, Arrowhead probably had his own stuff going on, as the Krazy Komix Universe is packed with wacky stuff to get involved in as it is! Like Mogie, Arrowhead eventually gains the Power of Simulacra, which lets him replicate the thematic appearance and powers of other characters he meets, though his gift isn't as strong as Mogie's.

Otherwise, there's not much else to say about him. Didn't have a lot of energy or time today, so I'm settling for this quick doodle dude. Guess this breaks the Power Universe streak earlier than I expected!

SomethingTober #03 - Brick Man

Brickman was one of many, many second-stringer heroes running around the Power Universe. Although he did appear in at least one comic I drew, I didn't really develop him at all beyond said appearance. A member of the short-lived hero team the Justice Force, he was that groups' primary muscle. Despite his jacked appearance, however, he was on the lower end of the strong guy rating in the setting, which is to say he was impressive compared to the average hero, but most heroes with "super strength" as their primary ability punched well above his weight class.

Aside from strength, though, he had the ability to telekinetically control bricks. Yes, bricks, specifically, the kind used to build buildings, but not any other kind of earth or rock. I have no idea what the reason for this limitation was, but all things considered, he could control quite a large mass of it at once, and so even against much physically stronger foes, he was capable of battering them down with a tidal wave of bricks. Like most any elemental, telekinetic control of any substance lends quite a bit of utility, enabling him to quickly build temporary structures held together through his power, collapse structures made from bricks, fly by riding a brick slab, create defensive walls, etc.

I don't recall an origin for him, but he was very likely one of the many escaped Company mutants, and I think prior to that, he had some military background. If I were to reboot this character today, I'd make him an all-around geokinetic who simply favored using brick-shaped chunks of earth or stone to work with as a personal quirk.

SomethingTober #02 - Perfecto Mexico

SomethingTober continues with another Power Universe hero: Perfecto Mexico, leader of The Three Team!

Alright, look, I was like 9 or 10 years old when I made him up. There were a lot of rando-as-shit characters in my old supers universe. In hindsight, he probably seems like he'd be a good fit for Krazy Komix, but he wasn't actually a silly character in the comics. In fact, he was one of the most powerful heroes of the Power Universe, noted as being the 4th strongest hero on the planet!

Perfecto Mexico's "gimmick" was that he had an amazing six, count 'em, six super powers! Superhuman strength, elasticity, size-alteration, electrokinesis, flight, and... I think force fields? Or was it invisibility? I know he was also super tough to go along with his strength, but I think that was just a given. Anyway, he was pretty extra, especially for one of my early Power Universe characters. His teammates, Fly Solider and Jaguar, were the second and third strongest heroes, behind Fabulous Five member Brawn, and as such, they battled against some of the biggest, baddest villains in the setting. Even though most Power Universe teams had no problem combining heroes of wildly varying power levels, from street level to continent wreckers, the Three Team as a unit just fought on another level.

Unfortunately, they didn't last in continuity. To my shame, at that particular age, I thought nothing of making "rip-offs" of other people's characters, be they established in official publications, or from the sketch books of friends. While not all my oldest characters were rip-offs, a fair chunk of them had very blatant "inspirations", and the Three Team consisted of character designs I stole from another friend during one summer where we were drawing together. In my tepid defense, I was a dumb kid, and I just drew whatever I felt compelled to draw, and I thought his designs were cool, so I drew them myself as well. Later, I tweaked them a bit, and drew them in a comic as my own versions of the characters. I later found out he was pretty annoyed by that.

A few years later, I grew a guilty conscience over it. It was one thing to make my own analogues of Ice-Man or Spider-Man or Dracula, but I came to resent how many of my oldest characters were just obvious knock-offs, and I felt particularly bad about ripping off friends of mine. This led to an attempted "soft reboot" of the Power Universe, in which I vented all such characters from continuity due to a big Crisis Event or one of the big wars, or something, leaving only the non-rip-off heroes left. I'd like to say I never ripped anything off so blatantly again, but, well, there's still plenty of post-reset heroes you could probably trace some obvious influences from. Still, I have managed to not rip-off any character ideas from friends since!

Now I just call them "homages"! :V

I did have an idea to quasi-revive the character in another setting with a completely different look as "Captain Mexico" or "Aztlan" but that was one of many series that never got past the notes stage.

SomethingTober 2023 #01 - Spellcaster

 

I decided, in keeping with the tradition of thing-a-day-in-a-given-month, I'd join in the fun of [Insert Theme]-tober by drawing and/or writing literally something every day in October! I call it SomethingTober, and we'll see if I can actually stick with it!

I might turn this into a showcase of old character ideas of mine, but we'll just have to see. Depending on schedule, interest, and energy levels, I'm not going to worry overmuch about what I make, so much as that I make. As is often the case for a lot of people who do these challenges, a lot of these are probably going to be rush jobs and quick sketches.

Anyway, this is Spellcaster, a magic-themed superhero of mine from the Power Universe. She appeared in a couple short stories of mine, not the least of which playing a brief, but very helpful role in The Final Story of Salvador Roberts. Spellcaster was a very powerful mage who actually had connections across several worlds in the AEP Multiverse. She was born in the high-fantasy world of Larreth (hence her magical powers), got bounced over to the Power Universe for a bit where she became a superhero. She then ended up in the Nexus Universe, a modern setting with more background fantasy elements, where she became one of the extremely few openly active superhumans. There, she met a man named Ballad, started a relationship with him, only to get bounced off to another universe once again. She briefly ends up in the Krazy Komix Universe long enough to give birth to a son, only to finally land once more in the Power Universe, where she stays until the Multiversal War lets her reconnect to the many lost worlds.

Incidentally, the son she gave birth to was Hot-Head, and they never realized their familial connection until the Multiversal War happened.

Powers-wise, Spellcaster is an all-around mage of great power and versatility. She is certainly the most powerful magic-user of all the Earth-bound Power Universe superheroes, worthy to be called Sorceress Supreme of Earth. Due to her extensive experience battling supervillains and demons across the AEP Multiverse, she has also grown to rival some of the strongest sorcerers of Larreth, and can hold her own mystically against even archdemons and archangels. While a solo operator for most of her hero career, she did eventually join the superteam EuroStrike.