Been Awhile

First post in a long time. Well, on the right is a little piece I'm working on called "The Z Team." Actually, that's a lot of projects, isn't it? I still sketch characters from "DiNoir" from time to time, I'm working on a comic for the blog right now, and I'm playing with the idea of giving all my major comic characters super alter-egos. None of them really have names yet, aside from Dan (the Penetrator, of course) and Luke (Ashfall). Luke's superpower is the ability to burst into flame, like the Human Torch, except Luke can't fly. Marcus is an "urban ninja" with delusions of granduer and a flask in his pocket. Erik is going to be a sort of motorcycle-riding vigilante of the night. Now I'll have to learn how to draw motorcycles, or at least his motorcycle. And then there's Nelson, the flying chimpanzee. Can can fly. I mean, whoa.

Not sure if this band of heroes gets together or if they all work separately. I'd also like to do a Metal Gear Solid parody with all these characters playing key roles. As we all know, Marcus would be Snake and Erik would play Ocelot. I suppose Luke could be Psycho Mantis and Dan could play Raven (totally kidding). Rebecca could play Meryl AND Sniper Wolf. Of course, an actual comic-book style webcomic is far in the future, but it's on my mind.

So that's where things stand right now. I'm all moved in, and the new condo is cleaned up. No more cable TV, but that's okay because House and Top Model are on basic. And really, why else would one watch TV? Actually, Girls Next Door is on E!, so I'm totally going to be missing that, but it will eventually come out on DVD where there are no commercials so I'm fine with that. That reminds me, season two of that show hits Best Buy on Tuesday...

I've Been Busy

I apologize for the lack of updates, but this entire last week has been spent getting ready to move to a new condo that my wife and I bought. The whole house consists of boxes right now, and all my art supplies and dinosaur references are in them, so I'm at a loss for posting supplies.

I offer this humble picture of Kasumi and Hitomi from Dead or Alive as a peace offering. I have no idea who the artist is or where the picture's from, because one of my GameInformer friends sent it to me. I'm not a fan of Hitomi's J.Lo-esque ass, but Kasumi is awfully cute. Hopefully I'll be back to my normal posting schedule within the week. Everything gets moved over on Tuesday, and I assume that our stuff will have been organized by Thursday. I actually do have a comic for all of you--a rejected Great Strides fundraiser one--but I have yet to finalize it (seeing as it's in a box).

Part Deux Returns!

Thought I'd let you folks know that, starting today, I'll be posting various sketches, scribbles, and ideas at www.whenpigsfly-partdeux.blogspot.com. Check it out, kiddies!

DINO RIDERS!

More than any other kind of toy, the Dino Riders probably cemented my interest in paleontology from an early age. You can learn all about them at www.dinoriders.com, and I urge you to go, because these are some awesome toys, man. If they didn't cost upwards of $32 (individually) on eBay, I'd buy them all right now. Dino Riders was a sad little cartoon where humans and wierd hammer-headed aliens are at war, and they use dinosaurs as their mounts. These dinosaurs are equipped with every variety of laser weapon and shielding. Beneath the admittedly awesome armor and poorly-articulated human/alien figures, the dinosaurs themselves were amazingly well crafted and accurate for the time. A few, like Edmontonia, Struthiomimus, and Deinonychus were probably the best replicas of their day. There was even a Plecerias! The larger, motorized dinosaurs, like Tyrannosaurus and Brontosaurus, had tails that dragged along the ground, but were otherwise cool.

There were four released sets, the first of which being the largest. The third set was quite small, but featured a very interesting relic of paleontology history: a Pachyrhinosaurus with an enormous nasal horn core (below) . The fourth set featured four ice age mammals, all of which were forgettable and, compared to the earlier dinosaurs, not that accurate. Most of the dinosaurs had interesting joints or motorized action to some degree. Pressing a button on the Pteranodon's back flapped its wings, and moving the Monoclonius' tail left to right would also move the head. I think the Deinonychus had a button that, when pressed, made the legs kick, which was awesome.

The Dino Rider toys were a mid-80's line that died along with the television series, which served more or less as an advertisement for the toys. The Smithsonian Institute actually re-released several of the toys under their name in 1990. Then, in 1993, the sculpts found a 3rd life for the Cadillacs & Dinosaurs toy series. Aside from a new paint job, the few dinosaurs that made it all the way from Dino Riders to Cadillacs & Dinosaurs were exactly the same as their older counterparts (and featured new accessories). I wish that the Dino Rider toys were still available for normal purchase (eBay doesn't count), as they have a cherished place in my memory and, like I say, probably cemented paleontology in my brain.

The Penetrator: A Hero Swells Within

Now continues a legendary saga that began here, continued here, and had a slight misstep here. After that last horrible comic (my first attempt at using my Wacom), I tried taking a break from "When Pigs Fly" to work on another type of comic, a noir-inspired dinosaur one, to be exact, although that sort of fell through when I realized that it was really hard to draw. Since then I have gotten numerous requests to continue the Penetrator's origin story, so here's another chapter in that valiant saga. Here, our hero discovers a new use of his radioactive member: a sort of criminal divining rod. I actually came up with Dan's catchphrase ("crime gets the shaft") after buying Godzilla Raids Again and Mothra vs. Godzilla from him at the local Fred Meyer, where he works. In fact, I envisioned him at his place of employment for this strip--in the electronics department, wearing his work threads. The only things missing are his glasses and his nametag. But dammit, superheroes where contacts.

I actually have the next two chapters in this series planned out in my head. Whether they'll show up in successive weeks cannot yet be forseen. I noticed, when looking back on the previous entries in this series, that Dan, like Erik, has benefited from the weeks away. His character model is much more defined as well.

My man Marcus finally got around to updating his blog and in it reviews Crash Bandicoot 2 by apparent threat of forced kaiju viewing. His belated complaints regarding Godzilla Raids Again are entirely unfounded--it's a fantastic rubber-suit monster movie. The problem, perhaps, stemmed from the fact that we chose to watch the Americanized version of the film (know here as Gigantis: The Fire Monster). While I haven't seen the original Japanese treatment (I fully intent to), I could tell that Gigantis was heavily edited. Warner Brothers was good enough to replace Godzilla's trademark roar with that of Anguiras, and of course, Godzilla is called "Gigantis." Only a few Godzilla movies remain outside of my grasp: Godzilla vs. The Astro-Monster, Ghidorah: the Three-Headed Monster, Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, Godzilla 1985, and Godzilla vs. Biolantte.

Foiled Again!

Blogger asked me to create a Google account today, so I figured that this blog may be doomed, as it was in the past. However, it let me sign in with my Hotmail account, so perhaps all is not lost. On the upside, doing so somehow gave me access once again to When Pigs Fly: Part Deux, so I may end up renaming that blog and figuring out bonus content for it, perhaps a "scribbles and sketches" kind of thing. I've also heavily edited my site links. You can find everything now from video game news to awesome webcomics to the blogs of my colleagues. I urge you to check them all out when you've got a spare minute.

As for today's picture, that's me in last October's Halloween costume. For some reason I hadn't posted it yet, but I'm Pyramid Head, of Silent Hill fame. I intend to remake the costume for next year, but better.

Silent Hill: Sell Your Soul

So, you all know that I like Silent Hill. Heck, let's say that I love it. Now, it's not the kind of game that I necessarily enjoy playing, not because it's got a bad interface or crappy graphics. Neither is actually the case (SH4's item system could use an overhaul, though). In fact, I can't play any Silent Hill game for any significant amount of time because, frankly, these games are scary as sh*t. Also, when I was but a lad, I was heavily into trading card games. I blame my mom, who, thanks to some kind of Consumer Reports "best gifts" guide back in the 90's, bought my brother and I the short-lived Alien vs. Predator card game. I was unaware at the time that you could actually increase your card count via booster packs, so the Marines always lost, because their deck sucked. Anyway, it wasn't long because the Pokemon craze sucked me in. Not so much the Game Boy games (I only played the first two) but the trading card game. I joined the Pokemon League, earned two badges (before the craze switched to Yu-Gi-Crap), and spent ever spare cent I had on booster packs. At the height of my enthusiasm, I had acquired well over one thousand individual cards, only a few of which ended up in the actual play deck. I also bought the Game Boy Color game of the trading card game, and I actually still play it today. It's a really fun game.

However, TCG's are nerd crack, and I realized that maybe I should spend less money on this "fad" and spend more time drawing dinosaurs. Also, the game's format changed after Neo 4 and, in my opinion, looked and played like crap. Be that as it may, I kept one of each card I had collected and stuck 'em all in a giant binder. These days, I'll still leaf through comic shop boxes of individual cards, looking for singles from that era which I lack. Just recently, I had a brief obsession with Sabertooth's UFS card game, but that really didn't last too long. UFS is a much more complex card game that really has a lot of, you know, rules. I'll still play it with Nelson, but we make some slight exceptions to the rules from time to time (only playable by Tira? But we don't have Tira. Everyone can use it!).


So what have we learned? I have a weakness for Silent Hill and a weakness for trading card games. I also found this awesome site where you can create your own posters, calendars, photo frames, and...oh yeah...trading cards! So I put the two ideas together one day and created something like forty-five cards, with images pulled from Google. The card game is pretty simple. One player uses monsters (they play as Alessa) and the other uses heroes (they play as Dahlia). Kind of like the AVP game, there are Location cards which are used to create an in-game map. Some Locations have unique properties. Monsters and heroes both have all sorts of stats relating to attacking, moving on the map, and avoiding opponent's attacks. Every hero and every monster has unique properties. For example, Harry Mason over there gains +20 to all stats (agility, strength, and defense) while engaging two specific monsters. And if he's killed in a Nightmarish Location, all the creatures in that area are instantly destroyed and the Location in which fell becomes Pure (Real).



The cards have gone through several changes. There were things I initially liked (like that icon in the upper right) that I later found overwhelmed any kind of simplicity I was going for. Keeping track of stats during a turn became a chore in itself. Adding elemental effects, I felt, would be pushing it. So anyway, I'm not sure what the "goal" of a game would be. Controlling the map would be nice, but certain Location cards are either Pure or Nightmarish by default, so at the beginning of a round, at least 51% of the map will be either/or, so that doesn't work. I've also thought about extinguishing all the heroes or monsters to win, but that seems like it would take forever given any particular deck's construction (60 cards). Clearly, there are still things to work out, but I like the idea! To help players during their attacks, movements, etc., there are all sorts of Event cards which add effects to certain cards or actions.



While the Pure/Nightmarish Location theme is specific to the Silent Hill series in general, I'm not entirely sure what purpose it would serve in this card game. Because it is such an important part of the series, I definately want to incorporate it in some meaningful way in the card game. Controlling the map alone doesn't seem like enough. It's telling, however, that in the games, monsters only appear in nightmare areas. Just like in Jacob's Ladder (which provided the inspiration for the original Silent Hill), the character passes between the pure and nightmare realms without necessarily knowing they have done so. Perhaps in this card game, heroes only encounter monsters in Nightmarish areas. A lot has to be worked out, really. For example, a character's Agility rating effects whether an opponent's attack actually hits or not (this is all accomplished with a d6 die). Afterward, a character's Defense rating determines the final damage done. Great, right? Well, should those be separate numbers on the card, or should Agility=Defense?


And what about the Attack rating? Does that only apply to melee attacks? In this card game, heroes will usually be equipped with Weapon cards (Handgun, Shotgun, Mace, etc.), so should they even GET Attack ratings? Monsters won't be able to use weapons (except Monkey Men), so they'll usually be attacking with melee attacks. This leaves heroes with ranged weapons at a huge advantage ("ranged" weapons, under the current scheme, can be used from one Location away from the enemy's location). Maybe I'll make it so that heroes MUST be equipped with weapons in order to deal damage, but that monsters can always attack. Yeah, I like that. There's a definate advantage/disadvantage there.

So, in the writing of this admittedly quite long blog, I have actually decided on ONE aspect of the game that I really like. Now that's progress. Tell me what you think, readers, and if you have any ideas for how the game should flow or how cards can be used, please suggest them. Next Friday, I'll be in Homer for the weekend. Otherwise, I'd tell you my idea for a kickass Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops card game!!!!

The Art Show in my Mind

Some of you may know that our friend Scott (Coherentlighthouse) recently put on a paleoart show in his hometown of Palmer, Alaska. The man puts on a good, rousing, educational show, and I found myself inspired by it. While I don't plan on going insane and sculpting some elaborate gatorboard biplane that nobody seems to appreciate,* nor are my photoshop skills yet to the task of masterminding an incredibly detailed, lifelike portrait of a Tyrannosaurus rex, I will try, God willing, to come up with my own art show, and perhaps use my ties to a specific coffee shop in downtown Anchorage to display it at. One can only hope, anyway.

*This is actually a tremendous shame, because Scott's gatorboard Microraptor gui is by all means a masterwork. It's awesome because it shows better than any 2D drawing could muster, exactly what it would mean for this dinobird to be a biplane. It's educational and something nobody's ever seen before...and yet his most popular piece--and I'm not kidding here--is his Andy Warhol-esque Tarbosaurus, something that he spent basically no time on at all. But if you ever find yourself driving toward Wasilla or Palmer, I urge you all to make a quick stop at the Vegabond Blues Cafe, or, if you don't want to sit without radio frequencies for an hour on the road, just go to coherentlighthouse.com and get smacked upside the head with photos of his awesome pieces.

Anyway, thusly inspired, I had to decide on a theme. Something people would remember. I didn't want to do dinosaurs people had seen before. No Stegosaurus or Triceratops. Heck, even Cryolophosaurus was too plain for me. I narrowed it down to three categories: 1) Wierd Dinosaurs; 2) Things That Aren't Really Dinosaurs (Dimetrodon, Pteranodon, Effigia); and 3) Speculative Evolution (what would dinosaurs look like if the meteor hadn't hit?). After much internal debate and some outside opinion-gathering, I decided on the first category. But now the tough part: deciding on the wierd dinosaurs that would populate my art show.

I wanted to do one representative of each major dinosaur group. You know, one carnosaur, one maniraptor, one sauropod, one ankylosaur, etc. What follows is a list of the candidates for each grouping, the reason they were nominated, and the winner (in bold). If anyone can think of other freaky dinosaurs in a category, please let me know in your comments.

Hadrosaurs (generally boring--not wierd)
Olorotitan (hatchet-shaped crest)
Ouranosaurus (okay, it's an iguanadont, so sue me, but it's got a sailback)
Tsintaosaurus (unicorn horn)
Parasaurolophus (tube crest)

Lower-Tier Ornithopods (and you thought hadrosaurs were boring)
Tenantosaurus (long-tailed quadropedal hypsilophodont)
Orcytodromeus (wins by default--it's a burrower)

Sauropods (most groups kept it conservative, but there were some freaks among them!)
Amargasaurus (double row of spines on the neck)
Augustinia (plates along the dorsal vertebrae)
Bonitasaura (may have had a beak)
Nigersaurus ("lawnmower" mouth)
Antetonitrus (primitive member of the group that retained mobile thumbs)
Brachytrachelopan (incredible short neck--looked like a stegosaur without plates)

Pachycephalosaurs (Differed only in the shapes of their domes, essentially)
Dracorex (a domeless dome-head)
Stygimoloch (big ol' spines surround the dome)
Tylocephale (incredibly tall dome)

Ceratopsians (awesome and diverse in skull detail)
Pachyrhinosaurus (a horned dinosaur that lacked any horns)
Pentaceratops (the largest skull of any terrestrial animal)
Einiosaurus (a forward-sloping nasal horn)
Albertoceratops (brand-spanking new primitive centrosaurine with brow horns)
"Octoceratops" (so far unnamed relative of Zuniceratops with eight horns)

Akylosaurs (so very hard to draw)
Sauropelta (big spines on the neck)
Minmi (plate embedded in the skin on both the back and belly)
Gastonia (generalized polacanthid, but it's known from a complete skeleton)
"Yingshanosaurus" (Chinese stegosaur with huge scapular spines)

Lower-Tier Theropods
Cryolophosaurus (seashell-textured crest)
Monolophosaurus (head-spanning nasal crest)
Carnotaurus (my favorite dinosaur--bull horns and barely-there arms)
Dilophosaurus (we've all seen him)

Maniraptors
Shuuvia (tiny bird-like theropod with stumpy, one-clawed arms)
Oviraptor (beaked, crested, nesting theropod)
Nothronychus (I love therizinosaurs, and this guy might make it in anyway)
Microraptor (darn you, Elyard! I guess the sketch is already done)

Tell me what you think, dear readers, and wish me luck! Now comes the hard part: actually drawing the things!