[comic] Gabriel, pg.6 [02-08-'10]

[WhiteFox]

Well, I decided to actually put together profiles for all my characters. The only person in the comic who hasn't been profiled is Prof. Maltorius. Most of this is nothing new, but fleshes out stuff that's been mentioned or referred to in the comic.

As a challenge (and in the grand tradition of artists ripping off, plagiarizing, and stealing from imitating people they respect), I've created four secret profiles. Two of these are not linked anywhere, but can be inferred by reading the comic strip. Two of them are of characters that have yet to be named in the comic strip, but are linked from the other profiles.

There are no major spoilers here (except for one, but it'll cause more curiosity then spoiling), and most of these characters are going to show up in the strip in the next half dozen pages, or so, so I don't mind any discussion of the contents. Bonus points to whoever can find all of them, good hunting.

In the future, I'll be adding character art to all of these.

Theonor
Jade
Felicia/Feliciano/Felix
Wynk and Re

(I just noticed... half the profiles are easter eggs. That'll change soon enough.)
[Edit] Crap. Ré's name gets messed up. I'll have to sort that out. Also, I added the archive page for DSOF #18

[edit] Cleaned up numerous formatting and spelling errors. Also, to clarify, two of the hidden profiles are of characters that have been named in the comic. To find them, you'll have to type their names into the url. All files are in the same directory, and all the suffixes are .html. If anyone finds any of the profiles, feel free to link them here, if only for bragging rights. They're not going to be secret for too long.

[WhiteFox]

I run RP's IRL, I really like to get into characters and plots and factions. I do the characters voices, facial expression, and get right down into the relationships between people.

I never use bigger or more monsters to threaten the characters, I find... more subtle methods. One of my players has this beautiful "Oh, my god, I just realized how screwed we are" look that I usually try to get at least once a story. (You can see the smoke coming out of his ears. It's great)

Well, my GURPS Space campaign has been scrubbed before I got to the "Best Part." I liked this one so much, I decided to make up a short story about it.

The Player characters include:

James Knight, Retired Space Marine
Joseph Hastings, Captain of the mining ship* Amberstone (Which the party is cruising around the galaxy in)
Prometheus, and ex-soldier turned scientist (His artificial intelligence, Icarus, was played by me.)

(To set the setting: Prometheus, and the party in general, have been trying to stay under the radar, schlepping around the galaxy on Joseph's mining ship. Tired of not knowing what's going on, they've extended a parley to two other NPC's. These two NPCs have tried to kill each other and the party so far, but one has an inhuman obsession with The Law, and the other considers himself the icon of a military officer. Both are lethal, but strictly adheres to the rules, so everyone should be safe. This major plot event was going to be covered on OUR NEXT GAME SESSION before I had to close the game.)

There's a lot of NPC's names, and alias' for all of em, but I tried to keep it comprehensible.



The party was a small one, just the three of them, but that was part of the agreement.

Henry Altair, (currently running under the alias of Prometheus) went through the final checklist for his battlesuit. Icarus, check the neurolinks again, would you?

There was a pause, only milliseconds, as the AI processed the request. All the uplinks to your cerebral jack look clean. The battlesuit's connections are fine, and the grav' systems all check out. I can run a weapons check now, if you think we'll need it.

Yes, thank you. I don't trust Marcus that well. He hadn't asked Icarus to check the anti-gravity systems on the suit, but Icarus was more then an automated query/response bundle of algorithms.

So much more.

James Knight shifted his shoulders, eliciting a soft whine from his battlesuits servos. "I really don't like this, Pro'." he said from the cockpit of the landing shuttle.

"We need to know what's going on, and I don't see any other way about it." Prometheus said. "If what we know about Marcus and Juno are right, they'll follow military procedure. Especially a parley."

James grunted. "I really don't like this."

"We've got Joseph in the Amberstone keeping an eye on us from orbit. If Freya or Sword move, we'll bug out. Besides, Baron South Ecliptic wont let anything get out of order in his back yard."
"Sword of Gabriel and the Freya are cruisers." James  Amberstone is an ore sledge, even with the gravity drive engines she's not going to be out running them. And I don't know if Baron Novikov will risk an interstellar incident when he could turn a blind eye to everything."

Shana Ryuzanov, their third member of the party and the baron's representative on this trip, remained silent on the matter.


"Then I guess we'll try out Alistair's missiles."

James shuddered. "Those things scare me." He said. "Landing in five."

Final check, Icarus. Prometheus thought.

Everything's on-line.



Landing was routine, but despite the, eight foot tall, ton and a half of powered armor, Prometheus felt underdressed.

Marcus' already here, and Juno is landing.

A hundred yards off and a bit to the right, stood a three meter tall hunched behemoth, sheathed in bulbous dark blue armor. The equivalent of a walking tank, it housed a plethora of heavy caliber weapons that one only had access to if they were a Major in the SLH Space navy.

Which Marcus "Carnelian" Berkley was.

Housed on the monstrous back were two marine orbital drop pods, both of which were loaded. "I guess we know who Marcus brought with him." James Knight said. The conditions of the Parley specified two people for each of the three parties: given the size of Marcus' armor, this hardly seemed fair.

On his right, about a hundred yards off, Juno "Jasper" Candor was landing. As a Stellar Marshal, he was licensed to carry much heavier gear then Prometheus ever was. Standing three meters tall and making planetfall without a shuttle was another three meter tall walking war machine. Standing upright and clad in boxy, highly reflective armor, Juno's mech bristled with missile racks, arm mounted cannons and beam, and an over the shoulder Gatling gun longer then Prometheus was tall.

Prometheus definitely felt underdressed.

The three of them emerged from the shuttle, and walked out to close the triangle.

Icarus spoke. I'm receiving a comm linkup.

Patch us all in, and rout the conversation up to Jackal on the Amberstone. Prometheus thought back.

Done.

Marcus spoke first. "Receiving you, Obsidian. What are you here to talk about?"

"The Asgard. What's it for?" Prometheus said.

Marcus's voice was pure gravel over the comm. "The militarys always developing new weapons, new ships. Hardly an exception."

"Hardly." Juno cut in his voice was strained, tired, and edged with iron. It never seemed otherwise. "It's got over four thousand deck guns, that's twenty times the armament of the League Navies largest dreadnaught. Never mind the hundred fighters it carries, it has bays for sixteen cruisers."

"Icarus can't even figure out what the damn thing is for. It isn't practical for any conceivable military scenario, let alone cost efficient."

A fourth voice cut in."Then someone is lacking imagination."

It's coming from one of Marcus' pods.

Juno and Prometheus both looked over as one of the drop pods mounted on Marcus' walking tank hissed, blasted a gout of "steam" and fell to the ground. It bucked open, and another figure in a standard SLHN marine battlesuit stepped forward.

"No need to be guarded here, is there?" The battlesuits helmet unfolded, and shifted back to reveal the speakers face. The optic systems on Prometheus' battlesuit brought it up close and personal.

I'm picking up a AI. Icarus said. Titan, with Marcus, and Nosada, with Juno have been talking with me so far, but this one is being tight lipped. Prometheus didn't need Icarus to tell him: the new figure eyes said enough. Solid black with intermittent white hash marks, iconic of anyone with a wetware AI.

A whine of servos, and the chestplate of Marcus's walking tank unfolded like a flower. He sat with his legs tucked beneath him, and a harness supporting his forward posture. A picture-in-picture view sprang up, bringing his face, eyes solid red, into view.

Juno hesitated, but after a tense moment of silence the knights chestpiece jerked forward, then the entire left side of the mech shifted and folded backward. Juno, face lined with fatigue, sat leaning back in his cockpit. His eyes, red as well, were sleepless, but determined and focused.

Prometheus's folowed suit. He rarely took his suit off, but he was in fellow company. His eyes were dead black.

"Richter" He said.

"Introductions are in order." The newcomer said. "My name is Richter, my AI answers to Smythe. Known to some as 'Snowflake Obsidian'."

James swore softly. "What's he doing here?" He said.

"The Asgard is my brainchild." Richter responded. "I should be able to speak for her. And, by the way, it has a hundred and fourty fighters. For the record."

"Why build it?" Said Prometheus. "Sapphire thought it was a joke when she saw it. Allistair thought you'd be conquering alien star systems. What are you doing with it?"

"I'm not the one doing 'it'." Richter said.

"Stop playing games." Prometheus said back.

Richter started pacing. "We're going to have to go back a bit." he said.

"Artificial intelligence has always had it's limitations. Nothing could match a humans ingenuity, it's creativity and intuition. Even still, understanding body language and facial expressions has allways been beyond computers. For that matter, no robot has ever managed to walk as well as a human, with our incredible understanding of balance, momentum, and our bodies weight.

The Arclight project sought a way to overcome this. Artificial Intelligences, installed in human brains. No cybernetics, no computer surgically implanted. A direct writing to the gray matter, wetware. AIs capable of accessing a humans cerebral cortex, and more. Able to read faces, able to think instead of simply processing. You've seen the results, the leaps of technology we've all been developing. The powered armor Juno and Marcus use have Juno's weapons and Amethyst's weaponry, and Malachite is studying planetary terraforming. That used to be utter fiction. I'm sure the fact that your ore sledge in orbit doesn't seem to leave an Ion trail is significant."

James cut in over a private line. "Does he know about the gravitic drives on the Amberstone"

"As long as he doesn't know about the gravitic drives on our suits." responded Prometheus.

Richter continued regardless. "The project we were all a part of was... only a partial success. Nosada drives Juno to sleeplessness with his obsession for the executing the law. Bantam, with Allistair, is positively autistic. Matheson and Fenrex are like split personalities, only one in control of their body at a time. I'm not even sure if they're really aware of each other. I'm sure Malachite, Sapphire, and Ruby all have their quirks."

"Psalter interferes with Lorna's automated functions, her breathing and heart will arrest at times." Prometheus said. "Shelby's dead, he took a bullet in the head when he escaped the project. Match learned to take over the motor functions of their body."

"Not talking about Sapphire, are you?" Richter said. "No matter." He started pacing back the way he came. "I suppose it's no surprise that the test subjects started trying to escape. No wonder they're still in hiding now. But I'm getting distracted.

"Technology is a fickle thing. It sends things into upheaval. Gunpowder. Sailing ships. Atomic bombs. Hyperspace drives. All of these things threw the civilization of humanity into complete upheaval. As our innovations will do again. The order that the Stellar League of Humanity will be completely upended.

"And I will be there. In the Asgard. I will forge a new order with it.

"So, I meant it when I said I wasn't the one doing anything. I don't have to do anything but wait for the inevitabilities of your actions. Yours, Alistairs, Mathesons, Jamania... dozens others you haven't even met yet... all of you. I just pick up the pieces. You may reject the future, but you won't be able to convince everyone in the project to follow suit. You wont be able to even find everyone in the project, let alone convince them not to use the skills you've been given."

Prometheus felt his stomach drop. All this time he'd been evading capture, lying low, he hadn't even considered something of this scale. Too many of the projects' subjects were developing their technologies out of self defence or scientific pursuit, how easily they'd neglected the world around them. Richter was insane. He had to be.

But he was right.

Juno closed up the chestplate on his mech. "This meeting is over." He said, and the thrusters on the back of his suit spun up.

James grabbed Promethus by the arm. "We need to go. Now." Prometheus nodded, closed up his helmet, and turned to go.

"Are you sure?" Richter said. "There's room for all of you on the Asgard."

Promethus didn't listen, and continued to the shuttle. Once on board, James peeled his helmet back.

"Richter said all of you had a flaw. Something wrong with you." James said without preamble. "What's wrong with you and Icarus?"

Prometheus was silent for a moment. "There's nothing wrong with us. We don't have a flaw."

What does that mean, Henry?

I don't know, Icarus.


From here, the party had several options, but three major 'factions' stood out:
1. Hook up with the governmental agencies (IE: Baron South Ecliptic, and an unmentioned Baron Moonwall, who just happened to be Captain Hastings patron.) and attempt an orderly introduction of the technology they were developing.
2. Gather up as many of the Wetware AI recipients and form a resistance to the Asgard.
3. Heck, go with Richter and rule the known Galaxy.

There's a whole 'nother story behind how the Wetware AI's were developed in the first place, and what their purpose was. I might actually type that one up.

BTW: When I said I never needed bigger or more monsters, That doesn't actually include the Asgard. the players never would have had to fight it, and it was meant, really, to stir up their curiosity. A plot hook, so to speak. All the Wetware AI recipients had special skills, and Richters was starship design and engineering. (Alistair, Juno, and Marcus specialized in Weapons technology, Armor technology, and military tatics/strategy, and cooked up their battlesuits together. Until they all started trying to kill each other, Marcus joined up with Richter and the League Navy, Juno became an officer of the law and has been hunting Marcus ever since, and Alistair went into hiding. But that's another story.)

I don't do much writing, so comments and critiques appreciated.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Nice.

Not only twisting their perceptions of the world around them and what they're doing in it, you're also setting them up for some inter-team paranoia.

Or inter-self, in Henry's case...

Well twisted.

[WhiteFox]

Nice.

Not only twisting their perceptions of the world around them and what they're doing in it, you're also setting them up for some inter-team paranoia.

Or inter-self, in Henry's case...

Well twisted.

Actually, I don't like fomenting paranoia. I find it only slows a game down while players dance circles around each other and what are supposed to be allied NPCs.

I mean, they've got so much more to worry about...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I mean, they've got so much more to worry about...

... ok, now I'm even more paranoid. ;-]

[WhiteFox]

llearch: No, really. I try not to scare my players. I'm very open about exactly how screwed they all are, and they know it.


(EDIT: Proportions tutorial removed. Some of the images have to be retouched.)

[Jairus]

Well, I may not draw in what anyone would call a realistic style, but this is actually extremely helpful even for the basic stuff I do. Thanks for posting this!

[King Of Hearts]

This is a big help to me...

I always have the trouble on where to put the wist.

[Lysander]

Yeah, this is really nice, thanks. I've always notices a few things off in my drawings and hopefully this will change that. When I get my next picture finished I'll link the result.   

[WhiteFox]

This is a big help to me...

I always have the trouble on where to put the wist.

The wrist is level with the inseam, and the hand goes down almost half the thigh.

I believe we evolved arms to be long enough to protect our manly bits.

[WhiteFox]

And now, the male version.

Most of the steps for these are the same, except for the hourglass in step three. Male torsos are built like bricks. Extending a line straight down from the armpit rather then an hourglass.

This doesn't really hold true for a view from the back, but I'll be doing rear views later.

(Warning: The guy is nude. Mild NSFW)

The five step process. note the change in step three.

Final images, without guides
The final image, with guides ghosted for readability.

There are one or two things to note about the male frame when adding the final line work.
-Note how the muscles around the waist bulge and indent. This is essential for realism.
-there is a double crease between the pectoral and deltoid (chest and shoulder) muscles that shows up when the arm is prone. This changes when the arm is lifted up.
-Also note that the muscles on the back affect the width of the upper torso. This will be covered further when I do the rear views.
-The jaw is much more squared off then the female face.
-Guys muscles are much more defined then girls. This isn't sexist: the layers of a female humans skin have differences in the layers that obscure and smooth over a lot of the creases.

Anyway. Once again, if those who know better could correct any mistakes, please do.
If this helps your work, I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

[Edit] It's kind of silly warning someone that images are NSFW as they are looking at them. Changed the images to links.

[WhiteFox]

Anatomy pics!

Before I do the write up for these, I'd appreciate it if I could get some feed back from any other artists that might know something about anatomy. (That and I'm too tired to do the writeup, but I'm really excited about these)

Illustration of the muscles. The legs aren't entirely accurate, but I don't have very good refrence for them.
http://www.northernelectric.ca/~whitefox/site/projects/tutorial/fem_muscle.jpg
And surface illustration showing the effect of the muscles on the surface of the skin.
http://www.northernelectric.ca/~whitefox/site/projects/tutorial/fem_surface.jpg

I gotta do more drawings that aren't cell shaded. These were fun to do.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

That first image is busted.

[WhiteFox]

That first image is busted.

*twitch*

(speaking clamp-jawed) It is fixed.

[Jack McSlay]

not bad. I think some parts look masculine - such as the neck and the arm musculature. I get the impression the head is too small too

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I like watching you work, Fox.

It's always interesting, even if I don't have a lot I can say about it at the time.

[WhiteFox]

I like watching you work, Fox.

It's always interesting, even if I don't have a lot I can say about it at the time.

Wow... that's very generous of you. Thanks.

Jack: Hm. I'm going to have to tone some of that down then.

[Suwako]

I like the tutorials, the mention about the females appearing somewhat, yeah what Jack sai, oh well *shrugs*

I just wanted to note that the topic title has not changed at the time and still shows only female anatomy, while male is the most current.

[WhiteFox]

Well, first I posted the male and female proportions tutorials, and these are the female *anatomy* reference images. So, the title is up to date.

[rt]

Just quickly cause I failed to hit post last time and closed the wrong browser while typing this out:

In your 5 part 'by the head' style proportion pictures indicating the legs and top are the same proportions may be helpful. (Or it looks close to this by my eye). Mabey with ghost heads in legs ? Or red leg bar duplcated in the torso+head area?

I really like how you did the shoulder, elbow, wrist locations. Other guides say it, but show it not nearly as clearly or nicely.

Get 10 other opinions first, but mabey nudge the elbow down a touch towards the bellybutton, cause the forarms look abit short.

[WhiteFox]

I did mention that the line for the feet is equal to the height of the four circles, but not very clearly. I should reword that.

And, actually, putting in some circles in green would be a good idea.

As for the forearm... everything I've been able to tell about the elbow is that it is exactly halfway between the wrist and the center of the shoulder.

It might be the muscles look off, or I miscalculated the overal length of the arm. I can tell you the elbow is level with the narrowest point of the waist. Thanks for pointing that out.

[WhiteFox]

In my defence, I argue this constitutes a request.

And so, The result.

Not bad for 30 mins work.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

*snicker*

[Lysander]

Ohh... By a box, that's gotta suck. Or would that perhaps make it better?   

[Ren Gaulen]

In my defence, I argue this constitutes a request.

And so, The result.

Not bad for 30 mins work.

! DO NOT WANT!!! (I laughed hard - once I realized who was being "waped" and why.)

*snicker*

You.. MONSTER!!

Ohh... By a box, that's gotta suck. Or would that perhaps make it better?   

You'll never know until you try it yourself...

[WhiteFox]

(EDIT: Anatomy reference removed.)

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

The deltoid link is busted - no .jpg on the end.
The brachials link is busted, no .jpg, and the brachials back link is totally missing the filename. brachb.jpg doesn't exist on the server, either.
calf.jpg is missing from the server, as well.

Other than that, the images are all interesting.

[WhiteFox]

*Sigh* links fixed. You'd think I'd have learned this lesson by now.

[GabrielsThoughts]

anatomy is boring.  ka-slice ahh skeleton that's the ticket

[WhiteFox]

*Sigh* I am so glad to get these off my desk. Sorry the coloring is rough, but my head was near exploding.

DSOF19/DSOF20: New Arrivals [Edit] Screwed up the link to 20. Gah.

15 bonus points if you can guess what their names are.

By the way: Ntpxl's name is in fact a magical rune that is unpronounceable. Yes, it is a Warp-Aci.

A long while back, someone popped the question as to what someone could do with 'cubi shape-shifting powers. This immediatly popped into my head. Designing the outfit took me about four months of work, and about six revisions total. The knot on her outfit is one continuous line, and at no point does the line cross over or under twice in a row. (I can draw this character three inches tall, by the way, without reducing the detail on knot. But now I'm bragging) Incidentally, my rudimentary skills with a pen have butchered most the lines on the design, especially the longer curves, but I'm working on it.

Anyway... feedback appreciated. I'm still mad at my inking skills.