Rahkshi Fashion

I've finally finished. After nearly two months of on and off work, I've finished both my Rahkshi fashion panels.

My original intent didn't quite look like this in my mind. It all started out as a simple day dream of what if Pearllight dressed up as a Rahkshi to keep the creatures calm while she was around them. This lead to the interesting concept of Rahkshi themed fashion. The original concept in my mind started out as a helmet idea for humans, with a costume made of mostly cloth and the accessory being the elemental staff of each creature. After that inspiration, I set out to make two fashion panels based off of the six main Rahkshi; as I worked though the idea itself decided to go its own way, and instead of fabric costumes with Rahkshi helmets, I ended up drawing full blown Rahkshi armor for women. It's still fashion in a sense, but it seems the idea became more then that too; it ended up becoming both fashion, and the concept of what Rahkshi might look like if they were human, and female.

I'll give details of inspiration on the suits further down, but first a few things about the panels. The first
panel contains all the brightly colored Rahkshi; being fear, poison, and disintegration. Since I was warming up to sketching on the first panel, the positions aren't as interesting as the second, which to me is a shame because I love the bright colors. Turahk was the first to be drawn, which is why the costume looks different from the rest of them. I was sort of working with the concept still, so the shoes and armor ended up with a slightly different style; but once I made Lerahk I settled with a more stable design.
    
The second panel contains the earth tone Rahkshi; being fragmentation, anger, and absorption. Notice the drawings became a little more expressive in positions, and the models became meatier and more hardy compared to the first panel. I started gaining a better feel for sketching after I finished drawing Guurahk; and gained the right idea of what the second panel would be like. My main intention was to make Panrahk a hardy, well built model that consisted weight to it. Reason being is because I researched the different Rahkshi as I drew, and Panrahk is said to be extremely heavy, so I made the model appear hardy, and settled with that look for the last two.
 
  A little note on color placement in the panels; I purposely split the colors so they were in appealing order. With the first panel, I put Lerahk in the middle so that the green would split up the contrast of red and blue. If Turahk and Guurahk were side by side, they would have clashed, and Lerahk would look out of place on the edge, so I put green in the middle to help pull it all together. Same goes for the second panel; I purposely placed Kurahk in the middle, being that anger is the lightest and the other two are in dark shades. So I put Panrahk and Vorahk on either side of Kurahk, to balance out the light/dark contrast. Another thing I did as a specialty for the middle panels was give the models hair. Lerahk having black pigtails, and Kurahk having flowing hair that goes all over, expressing her anger.
  
 Each character has a face and body language that helps slightly express each element. Fear has a face that expresses evil pleasure in frightening beings, poison smirks as she clouds the ground with toxin, disintegration half smiles with a face that implies she'll destroy you for fun like she's destroying the rock in her hand that crumbles to the ground as dust, fragmentation has a softer face that's more concentrated as she cracks the earth beneath her feet with an expression that says *come and get me*; anger has a scowling face and hair that floats in her rage, her fingers tensing into an open hand fist like she wants to tear your heart out, and absorption has a face of smugness from being pleased with the new Toa energy she holds in her hand.

 The costumes are based off both the set versions, and the movie versions of Rahkshi. The set versions were used as reference for the classic helmet design and the added element staffs. The suits themselves though were inspired by the movie versions; being that their structures were more organic in base, made designing easier when it came to applying the concept to a human. A large majority of the Rahkshi fashion panels were inspired and based off the images below.

     

The final inspiration for my Rahkshi fashion was this cyberpunk costume with its astounding LED computer chip spine. The spine to the costume reminded me of Rahkshi the very minute I saw it. And this costume shows that it would be very possible to pull off Rahkshi fashion for cos-play if you can afford it. It's truly an illuminating idea, in more then one sense... ^_^ The cos-player herself has a DA, and here's link to her page http://melell.deviantart.com/ for more great photos.

Hope you enjoyed the process explanation and art. Happy imagining. ^.~

Specialty for St. Patrick's Day

 

Hello everybody! Being that it's St. Patrick's Day, I wanted to share an image that I absolutely love, created by the artists known as Disturbulator on Deviant Art. His image "Toa Nuva Heritage" is by all means what I would consider the most playful and festive image I could think of for today's holiday.

Before I get right into details about my personal likes on this picture, here's a link to Disturbulator's page for more great art.  http://disturbulator.deviantart.com/ ^_^

For starters, if this image were made into a greeting card for today's holiday, I would buy one. The thing I love most about this picture is the way emotion has been captured. Lewa's expression and body language says it all, to the point where I can just hear him joyfully tree speaking about the drinks. When a picture says everything without saying a word, you know you've done it right.

I also love the simplicity of the picture, and added Nuva symbol. The composition itself with the Irish pub-like lettering, in my opinion, would make a perfect poster for hanging in an Irish pub if those actually existed in the Bionicle universe. I can also see this being used as the billboard sign outside a Bionicle pub.^.^

Now for a little fun! Every time I look at this picture, all I can hear is a song done by The High Kings called,"Whiskey in the Jar" window for this peppy tune right below. Hope you guys have a great Sunday, And cheers to Disturbulator for his comical art piece! ^_^

Nidhiki Golf

Hey everybody, check this out; my newest art piece for a small contest on my DA, to make a picture of the classic dark hunters Nidhiki and Krekka having a friendly game of golf.

The details were given in a journal entry from the group I'm part of called, TheOrderofMataNui. For record purposes, here's the link to that journal entry. http://my.deviantart.com/art/Quick-dA-Points-Freebie-2-353351179  Being that I was the first to enter, I won first place. :D The contest holder was very pleased with the picture, his comment, "This is amazing! Much better than expected. I love it! ^_^". He was also starting to feel like no one was going to join the contests, since he started it at the beginning of the month, and no one seemed to care, until I finally dropped my link below the journal entry. And even more fun news is that I received the bonus points for adding Turaga Dume into the picture in a fun way; so instead of nine points, I got 12. ^.^

I was thinking about adding some text bubble to this picture, but decided to leave them out and just write what I could hear the characters saying in description. As I quoted on my DA below this picture:  (As I made this image I could just hear these two talking, where Krekka says, "Ehhh, you sure ya doin it right..?" and Nihiki says, "Of course I'm sure! Now shut up and let me put...")

Details: The picture is hand drawn, inked; and colored with colored pencils, marker, and jell pen. The only color that didn't show up after scanning is the light blue I used on the sky... oh well.

Gresh and Marine

 Happy Valentines Day everybody! These two pictures are strictly from my old role play series, Life of Lewa. Back in the Frona Cupid post I gave some history on her origin, and mentioned about the specialty Valentines Day episodes; those very episodes included much more than Frona Cupid and her insanity, and these photos are another peek at what followed after.

In the late evening after all had been fixed and Frona was back in her normal mind, we pan over to a simple love scene. The character to the left is Marine, I'll speak more about her at a later time. In these scenes Gresh and Marine are sharing a simple, sweet moment, holding hands and hugging. The two were naturally attracted to each other, and they let people believe it was just another pixie problem; a mischievous way of hiding their embarrassment. Reflecting back on this scene, I do believe Gresh made an engagement announcement, the tale was played so long ago it's hard for me to remember how it went exactly. But he engaged Marine, which is why she's hugging him tenderly below.

These pictures in my opinion make a great set of Valentines cards. I just wanted to share them with you, even though I do plan to use them again if I ever rewrite the series for Life of Lewa, and include pictures amongst the writing.

A few details on how I did these scenes. I used my Fairytopia Barbie set and placed it outside in the right lighting, then posed the characters and took some pictures. 

Frona Cupid

 Valentines day is just around the corner; coming up next Thursday to be precise. I've waited a year just to get these up, and now here they are! Two pictures of Frona cupid out of the 16 picture collection from 2010.

I went for two different styles, one where she's wearing a pink skirt (above), and the other where she's wearing all red (below). I also made the addition where her double blade harp could be used as a set of wings.

The collection of photos is rather comical, made to be like trade able Valentine's Day cards. Someday I plan to make a set of trading cards out of the 16 pictures, make them look even better by adjusting the lighting, possibly adding a border, and flaring them up to fit that dazzled Valentine's Day card look. For now though, they will stay comical photos.

The theme I was going for in these photos, with the sparkly pink curtain backdrop, and silky pink flooring, was sort of a music stage. I wanted it to look like Frona was all dressed up for Valentines day, and was invited to sing at an evening Valentines day party. That's why I made it look like she was standing on a silky pink, carpet covered stage, with sparkly pink curtains in the background.

Now for some history behind these pictures, and the Frona cupid design.

Back in 2010 the long lasting Bionicle fan fiction, Life of Lewa, an inspiration ignited by a friend of mine; contained many odd episodes which could be rather twisted and mind glitching, in the sense that you wouldn't expect the sort of stuff we played to be thrown in with Bionicle. During the month of February, we decided to have a little fun by playing a few Valentines themed episodes; it's during these episodes I invented Frona Cupid. Now you may remember Frona being mentioned in previous posts; "Travels of Frona" for instance, a small graphic novel revolving around her, shows you that she's clearly an ice type. So you may be wondering why she suddenly became Frona Cupid, a white, gold, and red figure; and that's where the Valentine's day episodes from LoL comes in. During these episodes, a love pixie from an alternate fairytale universe makes her way into their world, causing mischief by powdering people with her love dust, a sparkly pink powder which has the same affect as Cupid's arrows if inhaled. This fairy caused trouble all over the land, but things got personal for the Toa Nuva when this love pixie shot Frona. Frona was on the beach at the time, and when she inhaled the powder it affected her differently; it changed her armor, and it made her as bold and crazy as the pixie that shot her, (thankfully the dust wears off after a few days). Frona became a slight threat to the personal lives of Lewa and Tahu while she was in cupid mode, and here's why; when Frona was hit she fell in love with the first being she saw, that poor soul being Lewa. She wanted him instantly, but he refused, telling her he was engaged to the beautiful Venimbus. In her jealousy, Frona shot Venimbus with a reverse beam from her scope. A reverse beam is an ability Frona  possesses, which can cause any mind to reverse back to an earlier state of their life, making them believe it's still the time line they were living in so long ago. This was bad for Lewa, because Venimbus believed the air types and jungle types were still at war, and that Lewa was her enemy. Lewa sought to cure her, and succeeds, but that is part of another tale. 

     Now as for Tahu, he was affected in a personal way because he got shot by the love pixie, and the first being he saw was a crazy Frona Cupid. That riled up Gali, and Gali asked Lewa to help. Lewa found an antidote that stops the affects of love dust, and he shot Tahu in the rear with a miniature arrow that was tipped with the stuff. Tahu was very angry, but soon woke up to realize how much trouble this pixie was causing. The rest of the tale won't be crammed into this history, but now you get where Frona Cupid came from.

When Frona woke up from her insanity, she came to like the color scheme she was wearing, and embraced it as a joke, dressing up as Frona Cupid during Valentines day, and performing for parties on the occasion.

For all 16 photos to this collection of Frona Cupid cards, please visit my Flickr set here  http://www.flickr.com/photos/76669336@N04/sets/72157629407741113/ ^_~

Snow Ball Agori

 Before this month is over, being that it's the last day of January, I wanted to share an old art piece I did of a snow Agori and Pearllight getting ready to throw a snowball at him.

I made this picture as an experiment, where I was trying out acrylic paints on scrapbook paper for the first time. I started with an outfit concept, and drew out Pearllight with that in mind. Then I felt she needed to be looking at something, so I filled the blank spot with an Agori.

I do believe I did a picture similar to this once, with the idea of a snow ball fight in mind, I just can't remember where I put it. The proportions are on the squished side, but this is an old picture after all, and I've gotten better at structure since then. I still like it for the cute aspect behind it; Pearllight getting ready to throw a snow ball at a shielded Agori who's smiling, knowing he's not going to get hit. He was also showing off his new shield to Pearllight, who decides to put it to the test.

For a little more silliness, here's a little day dream story behind the picture.

("Hey Pearllight!" shouts a perky ice Agori, "Check this out, it's my new shield. Pretty coll huh?" Pearllight looks over and smiles, nodding her head. Pearllight was playing in the snow, and scooped a big glob of it up with her mittens. While the Agori was paying attention to the igloo Pearllight built, Pearllight took the opportunity to have a little fun. She titters and hides behind a mound of snow she calls her fort, and when the ice Agori turns around, he suddenly feels a whack on his shield, and noticed a blob of snow sticking to the front. Pearllight snickers from behind the mound, and the Agori smiles; "I get it, you little stinker." Pearllight pokes her head out from behind the mound and says, "Just thought I'd put your new shield to the test." The Agori snickers and shakes his head, holding up his shield again and says, "Well then, lets have a second round." Pearllight grins, "Second round coming up!" The Agori didn't realize how many snowballs Pearllight had made in that short amount of time, and found himself in a heavy ambush. By the end his shield survived above the snow, but what could be seen of the Agori was a foot and twitching hand. Pearllight didn't realize how fast she was at throwing, and came over to yank the poor Agori out of the snow. He looked up dazed, and Pearllight started brushing him off, then invited him to the igloo for a nice warm cup of hot chocolate before the evening was over.)

This is the image before I increased the blue, figured it needed to be less yellow in tint, but this one still has a pleasant aged feel.

Travels of Frona, book 1

 Travels of Frona, a two part graphic novel, will take you on an icy adventure through unknown lands.

The above image is the front cover for book one. I assembled each panel of this two part graphic novel in a way that will allow me to print out miniature version of this comic, which will be assembled by using a simple accordion fold and glue. I will do this for both books, and will share a video on how they're made at a later time. On the right side of the front cover is the inner cover, which is the introduction for book one.

This graphic Novel is my first try at making a full blown 2 part comic, composed of old winter photography. When I first took the photographs of my Bionicle doing stuff in the snow, I sort of had a story in mind, but really didn't know what it was. For many years I left these pictures in their folder, never feeling confident in making them into something more. But now, as of this year, I decided it was time to tell a tale that's been hidden for so long in all these images; and thus, Travels of Frona was born.

I split the comic into two parts, feeling it would be too large to throw all of it your way at once. I will be clear on something though; I invented this comic not as a perfect piece of literature slapped onto imagery, but as an art piece made to display all the images in a chronological order, helping to tell the tale behind each one. The story itself is highly simplistic... in fact, I just sort of winged it when it came to dialogue and text that explains a few things here and there through the book. In other words, this comic is made to display the imagery, and the story behind them is just an extra bit slapped on. 

Book two is still being made, text and speech bubbles are yet to be added. For now, please enjoy the following panels of book one. ^_^

                                Front inner page                                                          Back cover

 Panel 1

 Panel 2

 Panel 3

   Panel 4

 Panel 5

 Panel 6

 Panel 7

Panel 8

                              Inner back page                                                     Inner back cover