still friday, and I should have put a dope in there. even with peter the phoenik bird fulfilling a dope-like role I think that would help me feel better about it. it would mean one more dope that is there and not here.
I keep forgetting i put that dumb texas belt buckle there. I feel reassured whenever somebody acknowledges it. There is a tendency for fan-art to be very reverent and homagey without having anything to say beyond “hey! a popular thing exists! and I have tied myself to it!” The Texas isn’t making a point at all but it is distracting enough to keep the piece from drowning in self-indulgence. I indulge myself to include Texas belts but most people don’t konw that.
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Friday now! The picture is “finished” enough to post on websites where I cannot replace the image but I still think I have better avoid looking at it since there is definitely stuff still wrong with it. There will always be stuff wrong with it but I have dealt with all the wrong stuff that is at my level and within the range of what I can tolerate without taking a prolonged break from it, but I already put off dealing with the sketch for several years and I most certainly do not want to be putting this away until 2024 and having nothing at all to show for whatever the heap I was doing the past four weeks.
I cannot help thinking that the real value was forcing myself to learn a faster way of changing layers and controlling transparency because ultimately this doesn’t look a whole lot better than the awkward garbage I was doing 10 years ago. Individual bits are more skillfully done but the whole looks like an inorganic mess. Spending weeks making pictures like this will not get me closer to out of the hole! It was not supposed to take weeks or have hole-rank-improvement as a goal, but anything that does take that long needs to pay off in some way that a product this irregular cannot. However the RELATIVE payoff of not working on it any further should be fairly pleasant.
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I forgot to put out the trash for wednesday but I did poke away at this picture some more. It still needs help but less help than it previously needed.
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not really complete but the areas in massive trouble are by now largely localized to the lower right corner and I can fiddle with that some more and probably update this before anyone apart from me is realistically likely to see it.
It is based on a scene in the video game “Shining Force II: Ancient Ceiling” with an attempt at analyzing and adhering to the concept art far in excess of my organic capabilities or what anybody else would notice or care about.
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pindohodo sez:
There’s sure a lot going on here! That towering Texan Talos is looking mighty nice, the metal shine & armour detailing look great, and better than he’s ever deserved, that’s for sure :”) The picture already looks outstanding as it is, but I’ll be curious to see what the completed version adds to the scene!
Frimpinheap sez:
I was frustrated with the low resolution image i had been using as a reference, so sought and eventually found a higher quality version, and realized that the armor had additional designs on it I was not previously aware of, and so tried to work something like that into what I already was doing.
The text on this page referred to a somewhat less developed version from last night and it looks better now than then! Beyond this I will “simply” try and clear up more vagueness, like the blue-gloved centaur person roundabout the center of the image, and it is unlikely anything else I do will be apparent.
pindohodo sez:
Ah yes, Mae! I noticed she was taking cover in the background, alongside a bored Kazen. They’re probably the smartest ones out the whole group, just hanging back and letting the rest of the squad (or shall we say “Force”) handle that big metal nabob. But honestly, I don’t believe wizards and archers were all that useful in this particular battle anyway :p
Frimpinheap sez:
Mae is the lance-wielding centaur from the first Shining Force! Get it right or pay the price!
The May here is supposed to also be receiving a shock, so I can make that more obvious. Kazin is jealous that he never learns any spells with bolt 2’s targeting range, even while a sorcerer.
Supposedly in the Japan version any character can hurt Taros after it is struck with the Achilles sword once, similar to Woldol in Shining Force cd. However there is speculation that may have been a bug which was fixed for the us release because there are also other bugs which were fixed, such as Jaro never being controllable. Plus other bugs that weren’t fixed, such as Kiwi’s fire breath, and at least one that was introduced, the search command disappearing in battle so that the life ring and valkyrie spear can never be collected. Also Jaro again, with his name showing up as “Jar” at first since somewhere somebody typed a 0 instead of an O and the game interpreted it as an empty space. Supposedly.
pindohodo sez:
I will pay the price, but I will not count the cost! But other than both mine and the game’s misspelling of names (even though honestly, “Jaro” is only a marginally better name than “Jar”), I think it’s funny how much simpler were these old 8 & 16 bit games compared to modern games, and yet they still ended up with all sorts of bugs, glitches, and goof-ups. Which is too bad, because a life ring and a valkyrie spear sound like they would’ve been pretty nice things to have!
Frimpinheap sez:
I believe the further back in time you go, the fewer resources there were to assist in code-making and code-checking. One of the programmers on Final Fantasy 2 actually encrypted his code which prevented a bug that he introduced from being fixed. Which isn’t the same thing but presumably there are also more ways to keep somebody from doing that now also.
The life ring recovers 5 hit points every turn! By the end everything hits for about 40 or more so it might not make much difference. And Apparently valkyrie spear is on the low-end of knight weapons you can get with mithril, but I am so uninclined to use finite resources in video games I never bothered with that! I also think forcing players to gamble with those resources is lame, but judging by the faqs it is only Slade swords that it really jerks you around with keeping from you. There are actually THREE swords that only Slade can use and that you can only get from the mithril dork, but you have an overwhelming chance of not getting any of them.
A cruel game sometimes!
Purplespace sez:
I am glad the Phoenix bird is there to be a smug bird.