- Joined
- Feb 10, 2003
- Posts
- 7,174
I've been pretty lazy about making art lately, but I finally churned out some stuff:
Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) are small crafts that are freely exchanged between individuals, around the world, usually via snail mail, as an exercise to interact with other artists and experience/collect samples of their work. Basically, you "claim" the most recent participant before you, select one of their listed themes as the subject matter for the card that you'll subsequently make for them, and then post your own preferences for an ATC, so that the next person who comes along can do the same for you. Here are a couple of ATCs I made for two different women (one from North Carolina, the other from Texas):
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Rocking-Horse-Fly
The Rocking-Horse-Fly is one of the many strange creatures that Alice encounters during her adventures in Wonderland. The buzzing filly's design amounts to a simple, but highly-effective, pun on the names and physiology of a child's rocking-horse toy and a horsefly insect. The diminutive beast first appeared in the pages of Lewis Carroll's (the well-known pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) 1871 Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, but my figure is based on the cartoon version seen in Disney's 1951 Alice in Wonderland animated film, which, while not strictly accurate to the printed source material, is still my favorite rendition of the story and characters. For example, in the case of the Rocking-Horse-Fly, it easily flits through the air on its wings in said movie, but, in the book, its method of getting about is described as swinging from branch-to-branch, which would seem to imply that the creature wasn't capable of achieving flight at all (although, when it comes to Wonderland, it's probably best not to make assumptions about that or anything else). Interestingly, Carroll's tome also informs us that the animal's diet consists of nothing but sawdust and sap and that the Rocking-Horse-Fly itself is made entirely out of wood (as my figure is mostly paper and cardboard, which both come from trees, at least I'm in the ballpark as far as that little tidbit of the fiction is concerned).
Below is a screenshot, from said movie, of Alice being startled by the bizarre insect/horse hybrid:
And this is the original black and white illustration (by John Tenniel) of the Rocking-Horse-Fly from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. I find it interesting that the artist chose to incorporate dice shapes, and their pip marks, into the horse's body. I believe real horses can be spotted, but, otherwise, I'm not sure what the connection could be between dice, horses, and flies. Gambling maybe?
Construction process:
*****
Great Beak
Carnivorous flightless birds, with tremendously large and powerful beaks, that can be encountered in various Dragon Quest titles. Great Beaks, and their palette-swapped cousins, debuted in Enix's 1988 Dragon Quest III: And Thus Into Legend . . . Nintendo Family Computer (Famicom) roleplaying video game (RPG), which was subsequently translated and released in North America (on March 12, 1992) as Dragon Warrior III for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).
Today, Square-Enix publishes Dragon Quest games with the franchise's proper title, but, years ago, Simulation Publications/TSR had a tabletop RPG product on the shelves, also named DragonQuest, so, Enix wasn't able to release their games using that combination of words in the North American market, due to the resulting trademark conflict, hence the usage of the slightly different title of Dragon Warrior (isn't corporate litigation fun?)
Despite its moniker, this creature really isn't all that great (although, like any monster worth its salt, it will do its best to convince you otherwise). Physically, it's the weakest of the three feathered fiends that share Dragon Quest III's bipedal bird sprite, and the Great Beak exhibits no special abilities whatsoever, nor does it know any magic spells. Which is not to say that they aren't dangerous to battle, particularly for less experienced adventurers, but, in the context of Dragon Quest III's entire bestiary, they're more pigeon than eagle.
Above is the official Great Beak illustration, drawn by Akira Toriyama (of Dragon Ball fame). While the programmers changed the colors of the creature in the game, I opted to paint mine to match Toriyama's, as I feel that the original artist's work is the definitive source material.
These are digitally recolored mockups (done with the GIMP art program), made to match the NES sprites, to show what my Great Beak figurine might have looked like had I gone that route. In retrospect, I think I would have enjoyed the Avenger Beak color arrangement more than this one. However, given my incredibly indecisive nature, if I had done so, I'd probably be writing right now that I wish that I had made my Avenger Beak as a white Great Beak instead--yes, I'm impossible to please like that. And it's at times like this that I can also see the benefits of making a mold, as that would have allowed me to make multiple casts of the creature, so that I could have one of each possible "flavor". Who doesn't want an army of big-beaked, rainbow-hued, flightless birds?
Construction process:
Nonsense:
Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) are small crafts that are freely exchanged between individuals, around the world, usually via snail mail, as an exercise to interact with other artists and experience/collect samples of their work. Basically, you "claim" the most recent participant before you, select one of their listed themes as the subject matter for the card that you'll subsequently make for them, and then post your own preferences for an ATC, so that the next person who comes along can do the same for you. Here are a couple of ATCs I made for two different women (one from North Carolina, the other from Texas):
******
Rocking-Horse-Fly
The Rocking-Horse-Fly is one of the many strange creatures that Alice encounters during her adventures in Wonderland. The buzzing filly's design amounts to a simple, but highly-effective, pun on the names and physiology of a child's rocking-horse toy and a horsefly insect. The diminutive beast first appeared in the pages of Lewis Carroll's (the well-known pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) 1871 Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, but my figure is based on the cartoon version seen in Disney's 1951 Alice in Wonderland animated film, which, while not strictly accurate to the printed source material, is still my favorite rendition of the story and characters. For example, in the case of the Rocking-Horse-Fly, it easily flits through the air on its wings in said movie, but, in the book, its method of getting about is described as swinging from branch-to-branch, which would seem to imply that the creature wasn't capable of achieving flight at all (although, when it comes to Wonderland, it's probably best not to make assumptions about that or anything else). Interestingly, Carroll's tome also informs us that the animal's diet consists of nothing but sawdust and sap and that the Rocking-Horse-Fly itself is made entirely out of wood (as my figure is mostly paper and cardboard, which both come from trees, at least I'm in the ballpark as far as that little tidbit of the fiction is concerned).
Below is a screenshot, from said movie, of Alice being startled by the bizarre insect/horse hybrid:
And this is the original black and white illustration (by John Tenniel) of the Rocking-Horse-Fly from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. I find it interesting that the artist chose to incorporate dice shapes, and their pip marks, into the horse's body. I believe real horses can be spotted, but, otherwise, I'm not sure what the connection could be between dice, horses, and flies. Gambling maybe?
Construction process:
*****
Great Beak
Carnivorous flightless birds, with tremendously large and powerful beaks, that can be encountered in various Dragon Quest titles. Great Beaks, and their palette-swapped cousins, debuted in Enix's 1988 Dragon Quest III: And Thus Into Legend . . . Nintendo Family Computer (Famicom) roleplaying video game (RPG), which was subsequently translated and released in North America (on March 12, 1992) as Dragon Warrior III for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).
Today, Square-Enix publishes Dragon Quest games with the franchise's proper title, but, years ago, Simulation Publications/TSR had a tabletop RPG product on the shelves, also named DragonQuest, so, Enix wasn't able to release their games using that combination of words in the North American market, due to the resulting trademark conflict, hence the usage of the slightly different title of Dragon Warrior (isn't corporate litigation fun?)
Despite its moniker, this creature really isn't all that great (although, like any monster worth its salt, it will do its best to convince you otherwise). Physically, it's the weakest of the three feathered fiends that share Dragon Quest III's bipedal bird sprite, and the Great Beak exhibits no special abilities whatsoever, nor does it know any magic spells. Which is not to say that they aren't dangerous to battle, particularly for less experienced adventurers, but, in the context of Dragon Quest III's entire bestiary, they're more pigeon than eagle.
Above is the official Great Beak illustration, drawn by Akira Toriyama (of Dragon Ball fame). While the programmers changed the colors of the creature in the game, I opted to paint mine to match Toriyama's, as I feel that the original artist's work is the definitive source material.
These are digitally recolored mockups (done with the GIMP art program), made to match the NES sprites, to show what my Great Beak figurine might have looked like had I gone that route. In retrospect, I think I would have enjoyed the Avenger Beak color arrangement more than this one. However, given my incredibly indecisive nature, if I had done so, I'd probably be writing right now that I wish that I had made my Avenger Beak as a white Great Beak instead--yes, I'm impossible to please like that. And it's at times like this that I can also see the benefits of making a mold, as that would have allowed me to make multiple casts of the creature, so that I could have one of each possible "flavor". Who doesn't want an army of big-beaked, rainbow-hued, flightless birds?
Construction process:
Nonsense:
