this is what im doing instead of working on my seminar paper for uni, but i can’t help it. i love this angsty brat and his loyal human puppy… sword just too much! someone give them a hug please
Hey! Guess who’s out of the hospital and back on their bullshit? I decided today I’d make a new header for my blog. This almost immediately turned into me making a logo for my Kamen Rider OC, Kamen Rider Chaleon. So here’s that.
Here’s the logo I came up with. It, like every other Chaleon-related thing, is inspired by Kid Chameleon on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. In this case, it’s more or less a recreation of the logo used on the game’s North American box art, as seen here:
As you can see, it’s the same font, same gradient, same… pretty much everything, really, except the words. Is it lazy? Maybe a bit, but why fix what isn’t broken? I did mess around with the kerning (i.e. the spacing between letters) and the size, placement, height, and width of the words to give it some originality but that’s about it. Massive thank you and shoutout to the SEGA fansite Act Select for their uploads of the Kid Chameleon font as well as several other SEGA fonts I considered using. You can find their website here, and the specific font I used here.
If you’re wondering why the quality is so different between the words “Kamen Rider” and “Chaleon”, I did this entire thing on my phone with the preview image on Act Select that shows the upper and lowercase letters in the font (plus numbers and some other characters). Would it have been easier to just download the font and screenshot the words “Kamen Rider” and “Chaleon” typed out and edit them that way? Oh, absolutely. But I feel like it wouldn’t have turned out the same, and I’m proud of how it did turn out so… yeah.
Anyway, you know the drill. Comments, questions, suggestions, etc. are welcome as always. Have a good day.
And here it is! The last of Chaleon's forms to be based on a form from Kid Chameleon: Chaleon Laserflip!
Chaleon Laserflip is the last of Chaleon's three (or four, depending on whether you count his base form) forms capable of flight. This form specifically is capable of manipulating gravity and magnetic fields.
By pointing the palm of his hand in one of six directions (up, down, left, right, forward, or backward) and pressing the top button on the Chaleon Driver, Chaleon Laserflip can activate his first ability, Gravity Flip, for 10DP. This changes the direction in which gravity affects Chaleon Laserflip, matching whichever direction his palm is facing when the ability is activated. The change in gravity remains in effect until Chaleon changes forms, activates this ability again, or disengages his transformation.
For 25DP, Chaleon Laserflip can activate his Magnetic Control Gauntlets, allowing him to attract and repel magnetic objects. When activated, this ability changes the green on Chaleon Laserflip's lower arms to red and blue, as pictured below.
Chaleon Laserflip's final attack is the Singularity Kick, usable for 50DP. Performing an aerial kick, Chaleon Laserflip creates an incredibly powerful gravitational field at the point where he makes contact with the enemy, effectively condensing them into an infinitesimally small point.
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As I've stated many a time before, I kind of put myself in a bit of a dilemma in regard to this guy's existence. See, when designing Vortex and Mirage, Chaleon's two other flying forms, I intended for them to be based on Cyclone and Eyeclops from Kid Chameleon, as well as different types of flight-related professions. Fighter pilot for Vortex and astronaut for Mirage. However, something I didn't realize until I was almost finished with Mirage's post was his similarity to another Kid Chameleon form, Skycutter.
I don't remember my immediate reaction to this realization, but sometime between finishing Mirage's post and now, I'm pretty sure I accidentally gaslit myself into thinking I'd accidentally designed Mirage after Eyeclops and Skycutter. Once I started thinking this, my whole plans for Chaleon just kinda fell apart. How could I have done this? Chaleon is supposed to have 11 forms! One base form, one form for each of the nine helmets, and a final form! I can't just be like "oh well guess i'll break convention for this one form that doesn't really warrant being special in that way! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"
Fortunately, however, I did realize my mistake, literally the morning of the day I'm writing this, and after a quick think, I was able to come up with a form that's unique enough to be its own thing and still fits in with the flight-based form thing I wanted to do for the last three helmets.
His name, Laserflip, is the name of a skateboard trick. According to Wikipedia, it's "A heelflip with a 360 degree frontside shove-it." I'm not entirely sure what a lot of those words mean, but I'm sure it looks cool and is very impressive.
I was actually originally going to name him Chaleon Verte (a portmanteau of "Vert", another skateboard trick, and "verde", because he's green) and I'd actually already saved both the HM3 design and his image to my computer and started writing this post, before realizing "hey actually that name kinda sucks" and deciding to come up with something better. Before that, he was very briefly going to be "Chaleon Vertex", but then I remembered "Chaleon Vortex" was already a thing, so that idea got canned pretty quickly.
Why all the skateboard references? Because, as you may have been able to guess, that's basically Skycutter's whole thing.
Okay, technically it's a hoverboard, sure. But what is a hoverboard but a skateboard without wheels? Checkmate. 😎
No, but seriously. In Kid Chameleon, Skycutter's main power is being able to change gravity, so I figured I'd give Laserflip that ability, as well as magnetism, since magnetism and gravity are closely related. Also because I wanted an excuse to do magnet powers better than Ultimate Revice. I think I did pretty good in that regard, too, considering I straight up forgot Ultimate Revice had magnet powers until I was designing this guy.
So, with all nine Kid Chameleon helmets now having their own corresponding Chaleon forms, plus one extra for the player character as a base form, what now? Well, we're not entirely done with Chaleon just yet. Every good Rider needs a final form, and I've got a pretty good grasp on what I want to do with Chaleon's. I'm still not 100% certain on all the specifics, but we'll get there when we get there. I may post more enemy/boss designs between now and whenever I finish the final form, but for right now, I think I'm done working on Chaleon for the day. You know the drill by now, comments, questions, concerns, etc. are welcome and appreciated. DMs and asks are open if you want to chat. I'll see you later.
Chimpanzer is a cybernetically-enhanced gorilla man built for one thing: destruction. A single punch from Chimpanzer has enough force to demolish an 8-inch thick slab of concrete. He has a missile turret on his back. The missiles are incendiary and therefore banned by the Geneva Convention. I don't fuckin' know, man. It's a cyborg gorilla with a missile launcher. What do you want me to say?
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Okay, gonna do this one quick. Chimpanzer. Portmanteau of chimpanzee and Panzer, a kind of tank (i think). Based on the Tank enemy from Kid Chameleon, which looks like this:
They're called "Tank Kong" in the Japanese version and Kid Chameleon Wiki describes them as robot ape heads on treads. HeroMachine3, the thing I use to make all of these things, doesn't have any tank tread legs, so I used two robot arms with wheel shoulders for each leg. I used some slight trickery with masking to only show the wheel part of the inner wheels on either leg. I didn't intend to keep the handlebar things on his legs but I think they add some good detail so they're staying. I did have to mess around with the placement of the wheels because the first time I put them on, they were flipped and it kept screwing with my brain, so I had to fix them.
So yeah, that's Chimpanzer. Lemme know what you think. Thanks. :)
Man, I am on a roll with these. Here's one of the big bads of Kamen Rider Chaleon, Terracutter.
Terracutter is the initial force behind the monster invasion being fought against by Kamen Rider Chaleon. Terracutter's body is primarily composed of dirt and rock, though his right arm and parts of his head and torso are made of obsidian and steel fused at the molecular level. The many sharp blades protruding from his body are a durable iron alloy, able to resist the wear and tear of combat. Should they still somehow be damaged, Terracutter is able to absorb metals from the ground beneath him to repair them.
Now that the obligatory lore bits are out of the way, let's talk inspiration. Unlike what I did for Chaleon's various forms (take a form from Kid Chameleon and adapt its design and abilities into a Chaleon form), this guy is a completely original design. That's not to say he isn't at least partially based on something from Kid Chameleon. Meet Terracutter's inspiration, Shishkaboss:
Yeah, for some reason, all four bosses in the game are some variation of this guy:
So needless to say, I had to get creative with Terracutter's design, since I didn't just want to make four Gandhi-looking dudes and call it a day. Instead, I took the name Shishkaboss, the level immediately before the boss fight (Stormwalk Mountain), and the theme of the level you fight him in (Island), and came up with a design that I think blends all of these bits of information pretty darn well. Shishkaboss is an obvious portmanteau of "shishkabob" and "boss", and "shishkabob" can mean to stab or skewer, so I gave him a ton of things with which to stab, gave him legs made of stone and dirt to incorporate the mountain and island bits, and added the black bits to give him a partially technological look, since all of Chaleon's enemies are supposed to have escaped from a video game.
Lastly, the name Terracutter is a portmanteau of Terra (meaning earth) and cutter (meaning cutter), as well as a pun on "terracotta", a type of earthen pottery. I was originally gonna name him something like "Lacoreate" (lacerate + ore) or "Precipierce" (precipice + pierce) but thesaurus.com listed "terra-cotta" as a synonym for earth, the name Terracutter popped into my head, and I knew immediately it was too good to pass on using.
That's it for this guy. I'm not sure yet what my next post'll be but I hope you enjoy this one. Thank you and goodnight.
Ayy, check it out! Actual villains! These guys are the Dragons, the most common members of the currently unnamed main villain's army. As you can see, they come in three variants: green, blue, and red. Green Dragons are the weakest, reds are the strongest. There are flying variants of all three called Wyverns that I had designs for but they looked kinda shit so I'll be posting those later, after I make them look less awful.
The designs for these guys are pretty basic but I think they do a decent job being a footsoldier-type enemy. Real quick, here's the inspiration for these guys, the Dragon enemy from Kid Chameleon:
The thing about each variant being more or less powerful than the others is pretty much lifted straight from the source material with a few slight alterations, namely that the Chaleon enemies don't die in one, two, or three hits.
Anyway, that's about it for these guys. Not much to say beyond there's a lot of them, the colors denote their strength, and there are flying versions. Til next time.
Kamen Rider Chaleon - Base Form (Flight-Enabled Ver.)
Yooo! It's ya boi! Man, it has been a while since the last real Chaleon post, huh? What was the last one? Vortex? Mirage? Eh, whatever. We're not here to talk about those guys. No, we're here to talk about this guy:
This guy being Kamen Rider Chaleon, specifically a version of his Base Form that's been equipped for aerial combat. Due to a sudden and unexplained shortage of Diamonds, the small gemstones that give Chaleon power for his attacks (and in one case, power for the form itself), nearly all of Chaleon's forms are rendered basically useless, and his enemies become much more difficult (or in some cases straight up impossible) to defeat. To remedy this, the still-as-of-yet-unnamed organization assisting Chaleon's user develops a sort of optional "add-on" for Chaleon that transforms Chaleon's bike (that I still need to design and name) into a set of wings and arm-mounted blasters, enabling him to fight without the need for Diamond Power to fuel his attacks.
Since this "form" is an extension of his Base Form, it retains the same DP Attacks, which I don't believe I've actually listed, so I'll do that here:
10DP - Diamond Flash
Channeling the energy contained within the collected Diamonds, Chaleon emits a bright flash of light, which stuns, disorients, and confuses any enemies nearby.
25DP - Chaleon Punch
Chaleon's fist is imbued with Diamond Power, causing a devastating shockwave to tear through whatever it comes into contact with.
50DP - Chaleon Kick
Similar to the Chaleon Punch, only this time the energy is channeled into the dominant leg of Chaleon's user as opposed to their fist, and instead of causing a shockwave, the increased amount of energy is released in an explosive burst. If the button on Chaleon's Driver is held down when activating this attack, it uses all of Chaleon's stored DP, strengthening the attack by up to 200%.
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Now then, let's talk about the form that inspired this guy. Now, I know what you're probably going to say. "Isn't this just Chaleon's base form with wings and guns? Didn't you say in your first Chaleon post ever that the character Chaleon Base Form is based on is just some dude in jeans, a biker jacket, and shades?" And while, yes, I did say all of that, and all of that is true, this design does actually have its roots in a form from Kid Chameleon, that being Micromax.
To someone not familiar with Kid Chameleon or its main character, this may just look like a vaguely humanoid character with a fly head and wings, and while that would be correct, it's also not quite the full picture. For a better grasp on what exactly I mean, here's a picture of the main character, again from Kid Chameleon, as he appears on the box art of the Japanese version of the game:
Okay, that explains the base form's appearance, but what of our fly friend? Well, in the opening cutscene of Kid Chameleon, available to watch here, the Kid (that's the main character's name btw) tosses his jacket aside before transforming into one of his various forms, and to my knowledge we never see him with it again. Now, what, pray tell, does he look like without his jacket? This:
If you've forgotten, here's what Micromax looks like in-game:
That's pretty much the same guy. All they did was make him smaller, give him wings, and a fly head. This is all to say, I had no idea how to adapt this guy into a Chaleon form, which come to think of it seems to be a running theme with these last few forms. (long tangent ahead; feel free to skip) But even in the original game, this guy is barely even a form. Sure, he's tiny and can wall-climb, but he's slow, has no way to attack, and if you're unfortunate enough to lose this powerup in a normally inaccessible space (i.e., a 1x1 crawlspace), you just straight up die. Oh, and the worst part? The wings on his back are just for show. He can't even fly. The Kid Chameleon WIki, where I've been getting all my info, says he's so versatile you can theoretically pick up his helmet (the transformation items in-game) in Stairway to Oblivion (i.e., in the first half of the game) and use Micromax until the end of the game (a game which, in case you forgot/weren't aware, has over 100 levels), but why would you want to? For the mobility? Disregarding the slowness of the form for a moment, both Cyclone and Skycutter can fly, Juggernaut can climb walls, and literally every other helmet has some sort of offensive capabilities. Okay, technically, Micromax does have two attacks, but you need at least 20 diamonds for the cheapest one, and you better be damn good at Snake to get any use out of it.
Personal gripes with a game that came out before I was even born aside, I wasn't really sure how to take a form that's barely any different from the base form's inspiration and make it different, so... I didn't. Hey, if the source material gets to be lazy for a form, so do I.
So with that out of the way, I gotta admit something. I have no idea what to do for the next form. Like... less of an idea than usual. See, there are nine helmets in Kid Chameleon, so theoretically that comes out to nine forms, plus one for the base form, plus the final form that I'm intentionally being as vague about as possible. Eleven Chaleon forms in total, or at least that was the plan.
See, without even realizing it, I accidentally combined two of the helmets into one form, those being Eyeclops and Skycutter, who were inadvertently combined into Chaleon Mirage. Eyeclops can reveal hidden blocks, and Skycutter can fly. Chaleon Mirage does both. It's not even "oh he just has some similarities to one or the other". No, he just straight up has both their defining features, that's all. So, with that in mind, I'm kinda stumped on what to do.
On one hand, it feels kinda... idk, cheaty? to just be like "ok here's the first seven helmets, each correlating to one of seven forms, and here's the last two helmets shoved into one dude", but on the other hand, I feel like the powers complement each other well, and neither really feels substantial enough to stand on its own. Like... if Mirage couldn't see invisible stuff, what would make him stand out? Oh, he can fly? Cool, so can Vortex. So can his Base Form. He's bulky and has great defense? Okay, so does Kniron. So does Splax, technically.
I do really want to design Chaleon's final form, since the idea I had for it near the start of this whole project is so good that it's been the primary driving force that's kept me from hitting burnout while working on all the other forms. I told myself that once I'd finished making forms for all nine helmets, I'd design the final form, but now that I've inadvertently come out one form shorter than expected, it feels almost wrong to just be like "on to the final form!" but I don't know what else to do. Let me know what you think, I guess, because I'm genuinely stumped here.
Aside from that, you know the drill. Comments, questions, suggestions, etc. are welcomed and encouraged. DMs and asks are open if you'd prefer to chat that way. I've got another character design I want to post about today that's related to my other major project, Infernocross, and after that, if my brain is still cooperating, I might write up another Neat Websites post. Lemme know your thoughts on this guy and, if you don't mind, my little Chaleon form issue, and most importantly, be kind to yourself. :)
