Leko's Art N' Crap

He/Him. Art and stupid crap. Probably mostly stupid crap. For reblogs and memes and such, see Leko-Likes-Stuff.tumblr.com

[csleko]

Tailii (Clone Wars Model)

Well. I guess this is just my current hyperfixation. Work on literally anything but the actual writing.

Anyway. Learned a lot from trying to perfect that Clone Wars style Leko The Human model I posted a while ago. I actually kept working on it and managed to get a much better looking result. (You can see that final version on my Cara page if you're curious.)

Figured since "Star Wars Tailii" is currently consuming the totality of my creative energy, I might as well give the Clone Wars style another shot and make a character model for this version of her.

I have literally never retopologized a model before. It is tedious and a pain in the ass, but damn if it didn't get me some clean face geometry and make it a lot easier to get the sharper details. I didn't even have to separate the eyebrows for this one.

Tried a different approach for making clothes here. Since most CW models tend to have roughly form-fitting outfits, I thought I'd do the shrinkwrap method instead of trying to get cloth simulation to work for me. It was SO much faster, but now I am TERRIFIED of trying to rig this model. There's just no way the clothes are going to deform properly.

Also I finally had to pick a specific blaster for Tailii. I established that it's an Old Republic antique that Kroi restored and gave to her, but hadn't put much more thought into it beyond that, and was a bit worried there might not be a lot of canon designs to pick from. Somehow I completely forgot there's a whole-ass MMO literally called and set in The Old Republic, so there's a HUGE menu of old looking blasters.

I went with the R-300017 Aikion, and made that model in like 15 minutes. Honestly surprised how good it turned out.

Might make Zan next. Might get my ass in gear and actually continue writing the damn fic. Who knows? I sure as kriff don't!

[csleko]

Garrla

So...alien faces are kind of hard to draw. I couldn't figure out why her eyes kept looking wrong until I finally realized it was because I was placing them too high up. Where they would be on a human face.

Anyway, yeah. This is Garrla. I mentioned her before. Big Dowutin lady and proof that Tailii doesn't exclusively hang out with green people.

Also the reason I worked out canon heights for everyone even though it will almost certainly never come up. (I do really want to draw a scene I wrote about in my lore notes where she catches kid Zan sneaking into her shop, though, so the size difference might be relevant for that.)

Speaking of her shop, I started out with a basic blocking mockup like I did for Kroi's apartment, but kind of just kept adding things and tweaking textures until it was a full render.

With this I'm pretty much done visually designing characters for this project. I may or may not do one more for Tailii's mother, Araia, and I have some vague ideas, but she's been the least developed in my mind as far as appearance goes. Maybe I'll solidify that for completion sake.

[csleko]

The thrilling 2-part conclusion of Tailii's quest for an adorable shoulder companion.

Grogu and the Anzellans were the highlight of the Mando movie, and I am not taking arguments at this time.

[csleko]

"THE FATE OF THE GALAXY HINGES ON ME HAVING AN ADORABLE SHOULDER PET!"

By the moons, I traded Hondo for this...

[csleko]

Dragon's Shadow (Alpha-52 Starfighter)

Pretty sure they don't even let you be a bounty hunter if you don't have a really cool ship, so we're ship shopping again for Zan.

If you recognize this model, it can only mean you've played Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith because that is the ONLY time in all Star Wars history (Legends or Canon) it has ever appeared, and it never shows up or even gets MENTIONED again.

Whenever I read a Star Wars book, this was always the ship I pictured in my head whenever Mara Jade's ship appeared. The game was my introduction to the character, and this is the ship she uses the whole game, so to my mind that was always HER ship.

So any iffiness I had about giving someone a ship that was already too iconic went out the window when I looked it up. I personally associate the model exclusively with Mara, but in the Legends timeline she goes through like 5 different personal ships and NONE of them were this cool fighter with the angled wings that apparently vanished from the face of the galaxy as soon as Mara got back from saving Kyle on Dromund Kaas.

WHICH MEANS I CAN DO WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT WITH IT.

A green (of course) Incom Alpha-52 Starfighter. Tailii and Garrla helped Zan modify the ship to prioritize speed and stealth. The weapons, shields, and hyperdrive are under-powered to allow maximum thrust from the engines, and unparalleled maneuverability. All excess equipment was stripped out, and the lower storage compartments have been converted to makeshift brigs for holding bounties Zan is bringing in alive. Because of the minimal electronics, Zan can still fly the ship (albeit very slowly) with power set as low as five percent and remain effectively invisible to all but the most sensitive scanners. "They'll never see me coming...unless someone looks out the window..."

You don't need shields if nobody can hit you, and you don't need powerful guns if they can't get away.

Hard to judge the scale of the original design without installing the game and playing up to the first level you actually see the ship. There's one cutscene taking place inside it, and it definitely looks big enough to at least walk around in. Since I'm already doing whatever the hell I want with the design, I've made it a little bigger. A bit more believable that Zan could be flying around in it and capturing bad guys.

This honestly might be my favorite ship model I've ever made.

[csleko]

Mirialan Zan

When I started getting seriously into developing this story centered on Tailii, I hadn't really planned on bringing the other "Star Wars-ified" Comic Shorts OCs into it. I figured at best they might get a passing reference or quick cameo, but it wouldn't turn into a "quirky adventure crew" story.

But in writing out the lore outline and timeline of Tailii's backstory, it did occur to me that I'd sort of neglected to give her any friends her own age, and that resulted in a fairly lonely childhood in particular.

So Zan gets upgraded from "remember that guy?" to "they were childhood friends who still stay in contact and sometimes help each other out on jobs when they happen to be in the same neighborhood." Not a main character, but potentially a frequent recurring one.

Hanging out with Zan also does help Tailii's development of sneaking/thievery skills come a little less out of nowhere. I kind of left a pretty big gap in the timeline and handwaved a lot of that as "she just got good over a few years", so going on pretend "missions" with a friend who's seriously committed to becoming the next bounty hunting legend makes it a bit more believable.

I've written a fair bit of background for Zan, and realized I might have accidentally basically made him Midoriya, but with famous bounty hunters instead of superheroes, and Embo in particular instead of All Might.

[csleko]

Meet the OCs.

Well, you already met Tailii a while ago if you've been following me for any length of time, but Kroi's a new face!

When I made the original "Star Wars Tailii" design in Hero Forge, I added some more details to the various lore bits, and never actually posted that picture anywhere. It specified that Tailii's blaster was a restored antique, and that it was a gift from "a friend for whom Tailii has done numerous jobs."

That mysterious friend is now a character. He is a green Devaronian. When Tailii finds shiny things she doesn't want to keep for herself, she brings them to Kroi and he converts them into credits. Or...rather...he sends word out through his contacts and hopes somebody calls back looking to buy whatever it is she's brought by today. Sometimes he gets word about a specific shiny thing, and sends Tailii out to go get it.

Tailii doesn't know about his past as a pirate, but also can't figure out why he so desperately avoids talking about it. He's never been particularly cagey about the shadier sides of his business and the nature of his contact network, so it's strange that he won't outright tell her the details of his obviously criminal history.

(And yes, he did send her to the ruins of his gang's old base just on a hunch that there might still be at least a few valuables stashed away there after all these years. He passed it off as an anonymous tip to avoid giving away his personal connection to the place.)

Some of these backstory details are just random things I threw in for world-building funsies, some of them will be important plot points, and some of them I want to make into plot points because it would be really funny.

In the previous post about this project, I mentioned I'd created *3* new OCs so far, not counting Tailii. "Where are they?" You're probably wondering. Well, I sort of developed the other two for a different point in the timeline than the one being explored in the main story, so if I want to actually use them, I'll have to write either a flashback chapter, or one where Tailii goes back home to visit them.

One of them is Tailii's mother, Araia (who I finally had to give a name after referring to her as "Tailii's mother" throughout the entire lore document.) Araia has her own whole backstory that also touches on what happened to Tailii's father, and why they came to live on the quiet world of Sulon when Tailii was an infant. (It's Tailii's homeworld because she grew up there, but it isn't where she was born.)

The other is admittedly less developed, but potentially a lot more fun, and makes me really want to do a flashback or something. Her name is Garrla, and she's a giant Dowutin lady who runs a spaceport on Sulon, and was basically Tailii's "cool aunt" throughout her childhood.

Anyway AO3 account finally got approved or whatever it is they do to make you wait to make one, so I'll probably touch up the few pages I've got so far, figure out something to use as a title for the project, and start actually posting it soon.

[csleko]

The Rusty Magpie (YT-1000 Freighter)

So remember that thing where I made the Comic Shorts characters but like Star Wars-ified?

Well, I kind of caught a world-building bug lately, and may have sort of started turning those couple of sentences of random lore I wrote about "Star Wars Tailii" into a full blown fanfiction centered around her. I've basically written a whole Wiki page worth of backstory and created 3 completely new OCs (so far) to be part of her story (and have to stop myself from writing spinoff stories about all of THEM because they were also a lot of fun to develop.)

Anyway. More on that in future posts. This one is about Tailii's ship, The Rusty Magpie.

Obviously she needs a way to get around the galaxy, and a way to haul around all the shiny things she picks up along the way. So a freighter, probably. Can't pick something that's already iconic, so the YT-2400 and 1300 aren't even in the running.

Went ship shopping on Wookieepedia, where they helpfully list all of the YT series freighters by number.

The YT-1930 looks really cool, and I was this close to picking it. It was between the 1930 and the 1000, and it was the lore details that made me go with the 1000. Apparently the 1930 had a limited production run, and is therefore quite rare and expensive. Probably not in the budget for a treasure hunter living job-to-job.

The 1000 is regarded as terribly outdated by the post Clone Wars era, and therefore extremely cheap as far as ships go. (20K used? You got a deal!)

It was already an antique when Tailii got it, but she takes good care of it. She refers to it by masculine pronouns, and often affectionately calls it "old man."

Also the name I picked is a VERY subtle reference that I strongly doubt anybody is going to put together, so I'll give you a hint: I picked Sulon for Tailii's home world for a very specific reason.

[antimatteratorgame]

Yet more graphical stuff!

Remember when I said I wanted to try to do a screen shaking effect for when the shutter closes, but I wasn't sure I would be able to make it work? Well, it turns out those concerns were totally unfounded.

I bound it to a key so I could test it while working on it, and I'm honestly debating whether or not to actually remove that, or just leave it in for funsies. Silly little easter egg that serves no purpose.

Oh yeah, I also did the little dust puff I talked about before. Knew that would be easy. And it was. Interestingly, I think this is the first actual dust/smoke/explosion effect I've ever made. Effects like that are always so far down on the list of priorities, and I've never actually made enough progress on any project to get that far.

So yeah. That's kind of a weird milestone. I got far enough into development that I actually got to make the effects.

[csleko]

Still making a game over here. All the major technical issues are ironed out, so it's full speed ahead on spiffing up those graphics, animations and effects. I can make the screen shake around now.

[csleko]

SO THERE'S A NEW TOMODACHI LIFE

"i'm gonna make some weird shit."

Okay, not THAT weird. But I do LOVE the improved Mii maker. Leko is actually Leko now, and not just some weird little dude in a blue hat! Also the new romance settings mean I can make him canonically aro/ace, and he won't have to worry about anyone barging in on his declaration of love and STEALING HIS GIRL. YORK.

I played the absolute crap out of the original, and didn't really want to just do all the same characters I had on my island last time. Obviously, the OCs can all come back. So we'll have Leko, Tailii, Zanshlou and York. Maybe Buddy. But we also have some new OC friends like @zanshlou's Carmina, and my emo elf Neiri.

Oh. Uh...glad to see everyone's getting along.

I'll just...leave you guys to it then...

Returning non-OCs include Samus Aran and Fluttershy so far. Debating whether to bring over more of the ponies, but I don't want to overdo it. I had Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Applejack and Rarity on my original island.

The new level of freedom for customizing damn near everything is...honestly overwhelming. Too much potential. Too many ideas. Where do I even start!?

In NEW non-OCs joining us, we have Obi-Wan Kenobi and Abe the Mudokon from Oddworld! Extremely happy with how Obi-Wan turned out. Abe was a bit of a challenge, and I wish there was a better option for his ponytail, but having "public farter" as a quirk option makes up for it just fine. I had no idea that was something I could unlock when I first made the Abe Mii, but immediately knew he'd be the first (and probably only) one to get it.

And he instantly starts putting it to use.

Of course the legendary space bounty hunter and the Jedi Master would immediately become friends with the weird alien.

All that being said, we all know the REAL fun of Tomodachi Life is putting all kinds of weird and ridiculous words and phrases into the Miis' vocabulary lists and catching them talking about the most random and absurd things with zero context. So here's some of that.

Obi-Wan. Bro. You've said ONE complete sentence to her, and it was asking her out. She turned you down and you immediately went off to sulk about it. Your entire relationship lasted like TWO MINUTES! When in those two minutes did you have time to give her anything!?

The gang's all here!

You WILL be hearing more about them in the future. The story of Samus and Mina's relationship needs a whole post to itself.

[csleko]

Grace Rocky save polygons!

Done. We will now return to our regularly scheduled random art and stupid crap.

[csleko]

I guess this is my life now.

[csleko]

Grace Rocky save pixels!

Everyone really seemed to like that stupid meme that took me all of 5 minutes to make, so is this the part where I make something real based on the same subject and watch it get completely ignored?

[csleko]

OKAY TIME TO MUTE THAT ONE

JESUS CHRIST GUYS

[csleko]

I like the rock.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

US Book ban on LGBTQIA books

The Nationwide Book Ban Bill Moves to the House: How to Take Action Now

The nationwide book ban bill, HR 7661, has progressed out of committee and into the House. Here's what you need to know to take action.

At least hit the shiny repost button if you're going to do nothing else. This should not stand.

Stop the bill dead in its tracks. LGBTQIA people have a right to be represented in books.

[csleko]

Heard we were shitting on NIVIDIA.

Not that I need an excuse, but always happy to take the opportunity. Been an AMD guy since the first high-end graphics card I ever bought (a GeForce something-or-other) literally burned out on me. We're talking full-on hardware failure with actual scorches on the circuit board.

So yeah. I was hating on NVIDIA long before all the AI bullshit. And then they go and start slapping shitty AI filters on games. Fuck ALL the way off and then some.

Nobody's talking to you. Just render the graphics, graphics renderer.