#tailii

[csleko]

What if Comic Shorts...but Star Wars?

Random idea I had a little while ago to redesign Comic Shorts characters as if they were from the Star Wars universe. I started with Tailii, and eventually made the rest in Hero Forge, so that's what's going on in this post.

Tailii Raisa, human female. Throughout her career as a "treasure hunter" she has built up quite a collection of curiosities such as a Nightsister sword, a beskar pauldron, a restored antique blaster, pieces of Phase I Clone Trooper armor (painted to match her look), and a "lucky vest" she stole from an auction (the seller dubiously claimed it originally belonged to a famous smuggler).

Zanshlou, Mirialan male. Raised on exciting stories of bounty hunter adventures, Zan entered the profession at a young age hoping to find an epic story of his own to some day tell. Unfortunately, though he is competent, the ever growing number of bounty hunters in the galaxy is making it quite challenging to stand out.

---

I originally had Zan as another human, but I figured he needed a little something to be more Star Wars-y and not just "kinda cyberpunky version of his original design." Mirialans (usually) have greenish skin, dark hair and face tattoos, so I thought that'd be perfect for Zan who's trying to build his brand as a mysterious ninja.

York, Duros male. An experimental treatment for the rare skin condition that robbed him of his species' typical blue/green pigmentation has left him with significant memory loss. After assassinating the head of the medical company responsible, York went on to become a prolific hitman preferring to take jobs targeting shady corporate officers who believe their wealth makes them untouchable. He is all too happy to prove them wrong.

---

York and Buddy were a challenge. In our canon universe, they're the same type of creature. (That being a faceless pale humanoid with large black eyes.) There's not really an equivalent in the Star Wars universe, so I had to get really creative here. I ended up making York a Duros since they *kind of* have the look I wanted to go for, but their coloration is in the blue to green range, so I decided he could just have a skin condition that makes it white. My main concern is he comes off as too Cad Bane-like with his signature hat and being the same species, but whatever. Everything's a ripoff of something.

"Buddy," Umbaran male. The creature known to the group only as "Buddy" is an oddity among oddities. Unbeknownst to his companions (and even himself), rather than being simply "Force sensitive" he is actually Force *hypersensitive* to the point where his mind is completely overrun by a seemingly infinite number of voices constantly feeding him conflicting interpretations of the "will of the Force." While able to speak and understand Basic, the majority of his speech comes out as unintelligible gibberish, though during brief moments of near lucidity he does express a consistent delusion of being a Jedi Knight. Zan has given him a "lightsaber" (a metal pipe painted blue) to hopefully shut him up for a while.

Buddy wears a helmet of unknown make that seems to keep him in a constant state of audiovisual overload in an attempt to drown out the voices. Whether it actually works or not is impossible to tell, but he refuses to remove it under any circumstance. L3-K0 was only able to determine Buddy's species through a genetic scan.

---

If there's not at least one character in a mysterious face-concealing helmet, are you even making Star Wars content? Buddy's backstory was actually surprisingly easy to adapt to this setting. Just instead of "weird multiverse energy broke his mind and made him immortal" it's "The Force broke his mind and made him immortal." (And yeah, there wasn't really a good place up there to throw that detail in, but Buddy is basically immortal.)

I had a couple of ideas to explain the helmet, and it's actually the reason I decided to make him Umbaran. They're pale, extremely sensitive to sunlight, and also tend to be psychic, so I thought maybe he wears the helmet to protect himself from the sun and it helps keep him from constantly the minds of everyone around him since he's a lot more psychic than the average Umbaran.

L3-K0, A.K.A. "Leko," droid. A prototype tactical analysis droid, L3-K0 gained sentience when his developers were unable to find a way to memory-wipe him without also resetting his analytical effectiveness. Reasoning that the best way to improve the droid's capabilities was to allow it to accumulate experience without limits, Leko convinced his creators to allow him to freely travel the galaxy with the goal of simply learning all there is to learn about it.

Throughout his travels, Leko met and recruited several interesting individuals to form a sort of mercenary team and perform various jobs across the galaxy.

-------

So there you have it! If you want the HF links to any of these for whatever reason, here they are:

Tailii

Zan

York

Buddy

Leko

#hero forge #3d model #star wars #comic shorts #leko #zanshlou #tailii #york #buddy #mirialan #duros #umbaran #droid #sci fi #bounty hunter #jedi

[sprite-o-verse]

Episode 40

#sprite-o-verse #spriteoverse #spaceship #robot #leko #tailii #york #sci-fi #b-08

[robphoto71]

comme partout, l’abandon des sites mène à la disparition de ceux-ci dans le paysage de tailiis et buissons.

#saint denis de vaux

[csleko]

So I beat Elden Ring again. With Tailii as a dual-wielding DEX build.

Went for the Frenzied Flame ending because while I like the game more than Dark Souls, it's still full of a lot of that same obnoxiousness, and burning the whole world to the ground seemed like the perfect revenge for it.

Know what's REALLY annoying, though? Getting awesome looking armor, but it has a negative effect. In this case, the Hero Forgery I've made here doesn't fully reflect the loadout I actually beat the final boss with because each piece of the Rotten Duelist set increases your goddamn aggro! The only time I noticed this going on was when RADAGON WOULD *NOT* LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE.

As soon as I switched to any other less cool looking leg armor, he chilled out enough that I was able to get through the fight with more than 2 flasks left.

And I had to switch to the Godskin Peeler for the black fire attack because Elden Beast has WAY TOO GODDAMN MUCH HP FOR HOW MUCH OF A PAIN IN THE ASS HE IS TO STAY CLOSE ENOUGH TO HIT. (Did manage to beat Maliketh without summoning help this time, so there's that, I guess.)

Don't mind me, Marika. Just T-posing on your petrified corpse before I set your entire world on fire and watch it burn.

#hero forge #elden ring #tailii raisa #frenzied flame #fromsoft

[csleko]

Hero Forge: My "Souls-Borne" Characters so far...

I've cleared Bloodborne enough times to get platinum, and still enjoy going back to it every once in a while. It's undeniably my favorite of all Fromsoft's titles (that I've played, but I don't think DS3 or Sekiro are likely to usurp it when/if I get around to them.)

Anyway, I had a seriously rough go of it trying to get through Dark Souls 1, starting two attempts that ended in rage quits extremely early on. First try didn't even make it TO Undead Berg because I got lost right at the start and got eaten by endlessly regenerating skeletons, second try I managed to actually beat the first Taurus Demon, and don't remember exactly what I got stuck on and inevitably rage quit again, but it happened.

It was only my THIRD attempted playthrough- after getting hooked on Bloodborne and making use of the same strategies- that I was able not only to actually see the rest of the game (which I had up to that point theorized didn't even exist and any known details were just part of an elaborate inside joke among people pretending to have made it that far), but actually beat it.

And finally overcoming such an infamously difficult game was cause for some kind of celebration, so I immortalized the Chosen Undead I took from the Undead Asylum to the Kiln of the First Flame...as a Hero Forge figure trying my best to match the loadout I had when I defeated Gwyn. The Gargoyle Tail Axe carried me through the ENTIRE game after I got it.

THEN. I did what any sane person who hated every step of Dark Souls would do after finally beating it...I played Dark Souls 2. Again. After my two rage-quits of 1, I thought maybe 2 would be better and fix at least SOME of the things I hated about 1...

NOT SO. ONCE AGAIN I went the "wrong way" and got obliterated by a bunch of giant knights that, given my "I literally just got out of the tutorial area" level, each qualified as a boss fight by themselves even though they were just normal-ass enemies.

ATTEMPT #2 WOULD BE DIFFERENT, THOUGH. I beat Bloodborne AND Dark Souls 1, after all. It would be painful, no doubt, but possible. And no, it was decidedly NOT better than 1. I discovered entirely new things to hate about it in ADDITION to the returning obnoxiousness from 1.

But I slogged through, raged at the bad parts, acknowledged a few good parts, and EVENTUALLY the Bearer of the Curse became Queen of Drangleic by taking the throne (in contrast to to how I ended the previous game by *not* doing that.) Another Hero Forgery was in order! This one was a bit tougher just because of how much unique armor and gear there was. The life-stealing Butcher's Knife became my favorite after favoring various axes up to the point where I got it.

With that, my Dark Souls journey is done until 3 goes on a decent sale, but I did get Elden Ring, and that's actually been a ton of fun! Not "dethrone Bloodborne" fun, but it can comfortably take 2nd place in my rankings.

At the time of posting this, I haven't actually beaten it yet, but I am AT the final boss, and it's a massive Fromsoft-level pain in the ass. I'm sure I can do it, and I'm on track for the "marry the pretty moon witch lady" ending once I do, so I jumped the gun a bit and made...

I spent far longer than I care to admit trying to make something look like Ghiza's Wheel, AKA the Whirligig Saw, AKA the Pizza Cutter, but I just couldn't get anything to work for the blades.

NOW. If you've read this far, you're probably wondering something like, "Wait, you said Bloodborne was your favorite, so why didn't you make one of these for that game?" I didn't make a "Bloodborne Neiri" because my original Bloodborne character, and the one I first beat the game with was actually Tailii. I didn't make Neiri as a character until I realized that NG+2 Laurence was just too much for Tailii to handle. So I started a new character, played through the whole game again, and was able to take out Laurence and the Orphan of Kos, and get its weapon drop for the platinum.

Only after that did I decide to give the other Souls games another chance, and start making the different versions of Neiri in Hero Forge. For the sake of completion, I made Bloodborne Neiri after finishing the Elden Ring version.

And here she is. Because of how BB's armor system works, I actually frequently change outfits throughout the game, so neither Tailii nor Neiri ever had a consistent look, so I went with the Knight's Set purely for fashionable reasons.

Wow. This post ended up being a lot more text heavy than I planned.

If you want HF links to any of these, here:

Bloodborne

Dark Souls

Dark Souls 2

Elden Ring

#hero forge #dnd #miniatures #soulsborne #dark souls #elden ring #bloodborne #fromsoft

[csleko]

"Hey, look! It's me!"

Because not ALL my OCs can be perfectly recreated with Hero Forge. I've had the idea to try turning my Leko model into a miniature for a while, and it seemed like a good time to give it a go.

Pull in the model, scale to mini size, pose it, add base, delete the rig, re-mesh to combine individual pieces into a single solid model, crank up the detail, hope my computer doesn't crash while regenerating a couple million polygons, decimate polycount to reduce eventual file size without compromising detail, export STL.

Worked without a hitch, except I had scaled Leko down to be about the size of my halfling miniature, and it was immediately clear to me that would have caused structural issues regarding his extremely thin arms and legs. So I scaled him up closer to a regular human size and hoped that would keep the small parts from being too fragile when I printed it.

Oh, I also had to remake his head because the original model is actually hollow, which I had completely forgotten about until the re-mesh completely broke it.

It looked to be printing perfectly fine, but I was still nervous about those limbs. They're thinner than the light supports I use on minis! Hopefully my flexible resin mixture will keep him bendy, and not breaky. Getting those supports off is going to need surgical precision.

WELL, CRAP! Surprisingly, though, the failure point was actually his ankles. After those broke I gave up on trying to save it and just ripped the rest of the supports out without care, which is actually when the arm and leg snapped off.

Luckily, I had the foresight to put an extra on the plate in case of just such a catastrophic failure. I was a lot more careful with this one.

Success! After a few minutes in the curing bucket, his fragile looking limbs are actually quite bendy, and not as brittle as I worried they'd be. I'm not going to put the mini to any harsh durability tests, but he stands up to some reasonably forceful poking, so my fears of Leko being obliterated by an errant dice throw are *somewhat* lessened.

Now that the anxiety part is over, we can get to the fun part. Let's paint this little guy!

I thought the dark metallic base might let me get away with not having to manually paint the more detailed darker pieces (upper limbs, waist, neck, palms,) but it's a little too shiny and not quite as dark I would like. Not that I'm going to complain about having to do more manual painting. Like I said, this is the fun part. It's just that getting good results from laziness is also fun when it works out.

I don't know why, maybe it's just me, but I think most of my painted minis look absolutely horrendous in closeup pictures, even though they look pretty good to my own actual eyes. Like the silver parts in this final paint job look really spotty and messy in the picture, but they're honestly not! It's like my phone camera has some "make painted minis look extra crappy" setting that I can't figure out how to turn off or something. I dunno. I've been looking at getting a decent camera for future video making purposes, so maybe it'll be able to take decent closeups.

ANYWAY, Leko's OC gang is all painted up and ready to kick some multiversal butt!

Leko: "My scans indicate that these creatures have a durable exoskeleton, and some sort of corrosive retaliatory defense mechanism. I would highly advise ranged attacks."

If for whatever reason you want to try printing your own tabletop mini Leko, the STL will be available on my PATREON, and nowhere else! It'll only cost you a single American dollar! Besides the occasional exclusive downloadable stuff like this mini, sometimes you can find higher resolution, non-watermarked, or even alternate versions of stuff I've posted elsewhere!

#3d model #3d printing #miniature #tabletop #dnd #leko #robot #sci fi #blender #tailii #eldon cramberry #neiri #tailii raisa #eldon #halfling #cosm #multiverse #oc #original character

[csleko]

So yeah. I’m a frickin’ genius.

Between the eyes looking in various directions, and indicating expressions, I was looking at mapping about 30 different sprites per character. 

OR...

I could draw the sprites without eyes, make a separate mesh for each eye that I can change as needed, and only have to map about 7 different sprites per character.

As an added advantage, I can do the glow for Leko’s eyes and not have to make  entire separate sheets for when they change color. Also I could do that thing where the characters are in the dark and only their eyes show up. 

#spriteoverse #sprite-o-verse #blender #3d model #3d #3d render #tailii #pixel art #sprites

[csleko]

SO I HAD A THOUGHT...

That since I was thinking about doing more Sprite-O-Verse backgrounds with Blender instead of trying to chop things together in Photoshop...

And since alpha mapping is so much more straightforward...

And since I have a decent handle on UV mapping now...

I could theoretically do just about the entire comic in Blender except for the speech bubbles and other text.

Pro:

Characters fit into the scene better because they’re actually physically there and are being lit by the same light setup and effects.

Scaling and rotating the characters would be much cleaner and less harsh on the pixels.

I can compose more interesting shots and angles with the 3D camera and environment instead of having everyone just flat and shot straight on.

Con:

I would have to make ALL the backgrounds in Blender, both new scenes and ones I’ve already used before.

Mapping all the character sprite sheets will be time consuming and tedious, but only needs to be done once. They’re a single polygon apiece, so hardly resource intensive.

Certain effects I like to do with Photoshop might be more difficult or even impossible if I make the panels like this.

I did promise when I rebooted the series that I wouldn’t make any more major stylistic changes, and this would be pretty much a complete overhaul.

#sprite-o-verse #3d render #3d model #leko #zanshlou #tailii #pixel art #sprites

[sprite-o-verse]

Episode 39

#sprite-o-verse #spriteoverse #spaceship #ninja #robot #leko #tailii #york #sammy #sci-fi

[csleko]

Gotta keep up with my creative crap. Here’s another @incorrectocquotations thing. Picking the characters for this one was fun. It could’ve worked for a few different pairs. It was almost Zan/Tailii, Tailii/York, or Zan/Leko before I decided on Tailii/Leko.

#incorrect quotes #comic shorts #tailii #leko #robot

[sprite-o-verse]

Episode 38

#sprite-o-verse #spriteoverse #spaceship #ninja #robot #leko #zanshlou #tailii #york #sammy #sci-fi

[csleko]

This might be my new favorite one of these. I need to have York and Tailii work together more often. Something something @incorrectocquotations

#comic shorts #Tailii #York #incorrect quotes #murder

[csleko]

Who would win? A ninja, a robot, a thief, and a gangster? Or one shadowy boi? I might be addicted to @incorrectocquotations

#incorrect quotes #comic shorts #zanshlou #shadowy figure #leko #Tailii #York #battle

[csleko]

T-T-T-TRIPLE DRAW of @incorrectocquotations bits!

I got bored waiting on myself to redraw the ones I said I was gonna do, so I went through my likes and just did a few.

I guess these three kind of make a story if you think 4th-dimensionally enough.

THEY’RE SUPER SKETCHY AND I COULDN’T DRAW A DECENT CAR IF YOU LITERALLY HAD A GUN TO MY HEAD.

#incorrect quotes #comic shorts #leko #zanshlou #tailii #york #suit guy #heist #gangster #jail #crime #car #ninja #robot #thief

[csleko]

Been a while since I’ve done a bit from @incorrectocquotations, so...surprise.

#comic shorts #incorrect quotes #Tailii #behemoth

[csleko]

One of my concerns with switching to Blender for Sprite-O-Verse was the potential difficulty in pulling off some of the effects I like to do in Photoshop.

Turns out the answer is...just keep doing them in Photoshop and put them into Blender the same way I do the sprites. I just need to be more careful about the glow radius going off the edge of the image. You can definitely spot the bit where it cuts off. All I need to do is just dial it back a bit, though.

I added a little color adjustment and glow in Blender, and put an orange point light in the center of the mess of geometry.This whole test scene came out to a whopping, mind boggling, inconceivable...30 tris.

#spriteoverse #sprite-o-verse #blender #3d model #explosion #3d render #tailii #pixel art #sprites