neogandw

[neogandw]

So a bit of behind the scenes about Lantern Man : if things had gone differently, he would have been in Series 2 rather than Fae Woman.

Basically toward the end of designing my second full set of RMs, I hit a point where the seven I had were all good and solid in a weakness chain, but of course, there was one final gap. I needed someone that would be weak to my then unnamed steampunk RM, and in turn would be strong against Abyss Man. The first thing that came to mind was some sort of light. One of my friends gave me the idea of something candle or lantern based, which I leaned toward the idea of a lantern. Light against the darkness of Abyss, that made easy sense... but then there was the other connection to consider.

I tried looking up whether or not steam could obscure light. Maybe dubbing the steampunk RM as Steam Man, giving him a steam bomb attack? However, I quickly found out steam does NOT really do much to block light, it's not as dense as, say, fog. So making that connection seemed... iffy at best. Plus, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I also had Coolant Spray and Soap Splash in this particular weapon set. Steam Bomb thus felt like it would just mean having essentially a third watery type weapon in one set.

This led me to more thinking of going in a "metal" direction, and thus, Gear Man was more solidified in his role. But... would metal gears going against lanterns really make sense? Sure, fast moving metal gears being thrown at a glass lantern could break it, but... that seemed like kind of a weak connection. This was when my friend Kit gave me the idea of something fairy based. In some legends and lore, fairies are weakened by steel, and then on the other side, you have the idea of fairy magic purifying curses. These connections felt much more solid, and thus, I put the lantern idea aside, and created Fae Woman. And thus, Series 2 was done....

But my mind refused to abandon the lantern idea. And so I find myself messing about with a new set of RMs. Which I already have two more ideas beyond Lantern Man cooking. Send help.

[neogandw]

RMN-017 - Lantern Man

Welp, I'm back on my creative bent, and finally got around to nailing down a design for one of the (currently) three further RM designs I've had rattling around in my head. So with that, meet Lantern Man!

Lantern Man was commissioned by a startup mining company to provide reliable lightning for workers deep in the mines.  Due to low funds, he’s a bit of a “budget” design, his light coming from oil and flame rather than more conventional electricity.  Though he was a bit bare bones, the miners loved having him around, gifting him with accessories like his hat, belt, and a fake mustache and beard, giving him more visual presence and almost making him a mascot for the mines.  Though the company eventually closed down, he still stays on site, running tours.  He gets a bit lonely, sometimes talking to himself, but stays in high spirits, welcoming all visitors, be they kids on a field trip or former workers coming to check on him.

Lantern Man’s weapon is the Burst Lantern.  A glass orb containing flame is lobbed forward in an arc.  Upon hitting a target or surface, the orb shatters, releasing a spreading shower of flames.

[neogandw]

A commission for Oscartangoo over on bluesky depicting original characters going to a cosplay con.

Work took 5 hours, thank you for your support!

...I'd be more thorough with the tags, but uh, I'm trying to avoid the con artists and such, you know the deal by now.

[neogandw]

Rally is a silly little car lady.

She needs her sippy juice.

Beep beep.

(Apologies for the spam, I'm basically just doing a few bonus drawings while I work on comms).

[neogandw]

I needed something quick and easy to take my mind off things, so...

Someone stole her hat.

That darn sombrero bandijoe strikes again!

[neogandw]

I was in a call and needed something to do.

Not even that great of a walk cycle really, I'd likely re-do it for a costume.

I just had fun while the others were on a DK64 rando.

[neogandw]

I've had Rally for less than a day, but she's welcomed all the same.

[neogandw]

So in the discord server I'm in, I help people out in their creative work.

Someone named itsybitsycherry was struggling with a character called Eurobeat Woman, so I offered to do as I had done previously for her and do my take on Eurobeat to see if she liked it.

So I got to work and put on some music (specifically, Rare Hero 2 from Ridge Racer) and got to work.

I may have gone too hard by making her look so unique and by giving her a basis on Pac Racing Club (RR4) that while itsy was floored and delighted, Eurobeat remained as is, but we're keeping her as her own entity. Rally Woman (I named her that due to Rare Hero 2 having a riff of a song from New Rally X).

I'm basically given permission to do whatever with Rally Woman here since she's my handywork almost entirely (barring the basis off eurobeat). So uh... Welcome No. 12.5? (Magical is 11, Killer is 12).

I did not plan for Rally here at all, so I'll figure her out later.

[neogandw]

Posting a lot of pictures about Ignite, because she's been featured in the latest good level video.

A Robot Master made by a family that lives paycheck by paycheck on the regular over in the rural mountainous areas of China.

With her "father" gone to earn a living off in the more urbanized areas of the country, Ignite lives with her surprisingly tech-savy (and more than a little sassy) "grandma" over in a little village where they work their pyrotechnics works for the festivals of the village whenever the New Lunar Year comes around, otherwise they work odd-jobs throught the year fixing whatever little machinery there is on the place or doing whatever needs doing.

Ignite herself is made with the primary function of handling the pyrotechnics of their family owned business as well as showcasing their beautiful fiery might by being able to fire them around constantly through the bamboo-shaped cannons mounted on her arms and the "cherry" bombs bundled on the back of her helmet. Made to be strong to handle the physical activity that her grandma could not do on her own.

Though eventually, Ignite would gain a bit of an ego and a love for the martial arts and physical combat (mostly through watching it on movies and tv, which she imitates) and started taking on jobs in security and bouncer across the bars on town, earning herself a reputation for her fists and her physical prowess.

She fashions herself a hero to the village (and has driven bandits more than once) and desires to one day save people at a larger scale. While brash, egocentric and rude, she's loved by the village for her selfless heroics and her peppy hype-driven attitude, making her popular with the children (for whom she loves to put up a fiery show).

Money runs short though, and if she wants to provide for her grandma (and eventually pay off the fee for Robot Master registry), she needed to try her luck out of the village. Ending up in Fortuna -CasinoMan's floating theme park vacation resort- to try her luck at getting a job (or at least gamble whatever little she had left).

As luck would have it, a particularly bad incident occured and bandits tried to raid the place trying to earn fast loot, to which Ignite easily dispatched.

Impressed by her skills, Casino wound up hiring Ignite as a bodyguard and now holds a steady job at Fortuna, safeguarding the VIPs that Casino deems worth protecting (such as a certain daughter of a rich CEO and her friend in the music business).

[neogandw]

I made them small, because Magical needs friends.

Transparent, if you want them for something (also has the base I made to make these).

[neogandw]

I'm curious. Do you know of or participate in art fight? It's a website where every July they do an event that's about drawing other artists characters.

I have been thinking about it but I can't really say I would be able to commit to it due to my job being a commission artist.

Not only does it mean I'm busy most of the time, but also, I kind of need to be practical by not giving away too much to other people who could ask for a comm.

But that's the pragmatic part of my brain saying that, the emotional part would be all for it. I even tend to make freebies for other people whenever I feel like it and have done things pro-bono for communities I'm in.

I dunno, I feel like I would like to collab at some point, but it's one of those that I need to know who I'm working with.

[neogandw]

How would Magical Woman's weapon work for Mega Man? Like it'd have different charge levels for the different effects?

In megaman gameplay, I have no idea. I never really gave much though as to what special weapons actually do or what they entail in terms of a game sense since I have no ambition to make a fangame.

Casino straight up doesn't have a weapon, Idol, Ignite and Ghosty have the vague ideas of one, the rest are nebulous.

You can probably infer SOMETHING based on their skills (and I could invite others to try), but I myself don't have much to say on special weapons.

What I can say is that due to how it works she's on the camp of "I wouldn't do combat if I can help it" alongside Silk. Though not out of an opposition to fighting (she does want to be an actual hero like her in-show self, compared to Silk being a pacifist) but more of a "I'm not confident in my powers to do so".

Her paint affects emotion rather than carry any specific property (Ex.: fire FEELS like it burns rather than it actually burning) so in actuality she isn't so much magic-type as she is closer to psychic (which is why she defaults to Psi, though she does believe in magical power and calls them spells), her other abilities geared to manipulate the paint, rather than actually fight.

In practice, there is no difference, you can throw fire at a foe and they would eventually subside, but if the foe can plow through it, she can't do much about it.

Its part of the duology between the sisters: Magical represents the digital art (something intangible, related to software) and the power of coloring (which can strongly shift the meaning of a drawing depending on how its done) compared to how Toon is traditional art (done in a physical format and tangible) and outlining (using black to create a solid readable shape).

Toon is the fighter, she can throw stars, anvils, cartoon-based gags or summon animals (hence Boom Bun and Manny Meow) and throw them at people. Magical could likely augment her drawings (or possibly buff others) if the sisters were to agree on it.

Black Mage, White Mage.

[neogandw]

Why is Magical Woman actually just me (online)

The rapidly changing interests, the anxiety bordering on self depreciation, and the freaking lore dumps about things nobody cares about, I love her (/plat)

Also I like how Duo is referenced as literally robot god lmao

I mentioned this in an earlier post, but given how she came to be (an example in managing a lot of lore cleverly) I loved to just put a lot of things into her on the basis of making her as earnest and adorable as a fangirl who would talk about her favorite show all day.

She is such a good concept that I could not bring myself to scrap her, it was fun to give her life at long last.

Adding the element of anxiety was also like, something I was worried about coming off too strongly, but I'm glad people responded to it well. She'll have her friends in due time.

As for Duo being refered to as a robot god... its kind of the closest equivalent the classic series has, really (at least a benevolent one, leaving aside Sunstar).

A big, unexplained entity from on high who is concerned with good and evil, capable of purging evil from people and making it a physical thing to contain and destroy? That just sounds like close-enough to a divine entity, so much so that the Battle Network universe amps it up something fierce into being a borderline Shin Megami Tensei/Persona final boss, complete with the sequence of "clap your hands if you believe" to help MegaMan.EXE beat the misguided divine entity hellbent in judging us as evil.

So its fun to sub in Duo for exclamation of divine, such as "OH THANK DUO" or "I swear by the mighty Duo in the sky...!", I'm sure he himself wouldn't play it up though.

[neogandw]

I swear if this works.

I'm specifically testing if I can upload these through the mobile app, because the website has been giving me a lot of shit lately.

Hence why I have been linking stuff through mastodon uploads rather than native ones.

Edit: YOU SON OF A GUN WHY DO YOU WORK THROUGH THE MOBILE APP AND NOT THE WEBSITE AAAAAAAAA

[neogandw]

Don't mind me, checking if I can upload through the phone app.

Just using older sketch drawings.

[neogandw]

Some more organized thoughts on Turner, written down this morning due to getting woken up way earlier than I would have liked by my uncle's dog having a fit over nothing.

[neogandw]

So lets actually go over Magical here, so bear with me because there's a lot.

Magical's concept has been around for a really long time, so much so that I actively have been including her and referencing her on the side of other drawings I've published (but she was edited out until I got to have a chance to present her).

Back in April Fools day, I decided to participate in the tomfoolery for once by making a quick sketch of Toon Woman as an anime girl. Truthfully this was actually me experimenting to see how far I can get away with the concept with a jokey setting.

Toon's anime look wound up feeding back into Magical.

So I've had assets related to Magical for a LOOOOOOONG time, I just had them stored since I decided to play off the fact that she's about lore by presenting her through a story: I wanted her to debut on The Orange Experiment (which is ABOUT playing around with characters in a story-writting excersice).

And because I knew people would ask what Magical looks like as a cartoon...

And now some extras.

I made this one for funsies one evening, in between my experimenting with art programs.

Oh by the way, the panel that references Persona 3 Reload wasn't my first attempt at it, I wasn't happy with the original one, so I wound up saving it as an extra and did it from scrap.

The original:

The Re-do:

So that's about it, really, its just that Magical has been on wait mode for a long time that I had a lot to show for her all at once. So I hope you enjoy this cutie.

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I Do comms and stuff, you can see info here. Woot.