At the risk of rekindling old fandoms and screaming fangirls/boys, my reply is this:
Took me a while to dig up these pictures, but luckily, I had them saved from way back when, and so I slapped them all in here. These are screenshot images taken from the second beta launch, before they gave him the mane of messed up monkey hair he has now.
While I am under no circumstances into guys, I still feel Moose looks the part a lot better with this combo, though his voice fits his face better now.
[A Lonely Branch in Agartha]
You see before you a group of six lore pieces that look to be clustered in a hexagon pattern. It seems suspicious, since they're NEVER this close together. But...lore is lore. So you approach the one closest to you, reaching out for it, ready to collect them in clockwise order.
The droning in your brain picks up, and you brace yourself to hear what the Buzzing has to say...
> LISTEN TO THE LORE
[Somewhere Bright]
The rapid flash of visions through your mind makes you reel. Where were you? WHEN were you?
As you regain sense of your surroundings, you feel the rising urge to tell everyone you know about what you saw.
> SHARPEN THE DREAM
We are Melycinya, we are TSW, and we are all of us the Buzzing.
I promised art on my art blog, right? Here you go! This was the submission I made for the #IAMTSW hand-crafted contest, which I actually wound up winning! :D I was (and still am!) super-duper stoked, and it’s really given me the confidence boost I needed to continue developing my sculpting. ^^
It’s based off the Filth Guardian (a mob from The Secret World mmo) and was made with Premo! sculpey.
The Devil's Due has been really awed by the ingenuity, creativity, and skill demonstrated in the handcrafted round, and we think that there might not have been enough winners. So we would like to offer some completely unofficial prizes to an additional 8 folks.
Wow this is SUPER kind of the Devil’s Due. They went through and chose 8 additional winners. I saw some Tumblr folks there even though I don’t know their Tumblr usernames but maybe you guys can help spread the word!
So, here’s the entry I did for the Handcrafted round of the #IAMTSW contest! I didn’t get to finish it up as much as I’d have liked, but I am pretty satisfied with it. I LOVE the attention to detail and references this game makes, so I tried to embody that here. Everything is something! Nothing was completely fabricated. See what all you can spot! Under the readmore, you’ll find a stupidly long list of all the references, plus some behind-the-scenes type tidbits.
Before that, though, two other things! First, this is a sort-of continuation of a series of video edits I’ve done, called Misadventures of Mr. Montag (all flashbacks from his point of view, and a big hint at most of what I referenced). Also, here’s a transparent png of the Fancom logo I made, if you would like to use it on your own works (just don’t be a jerk with it). :D Click here to get to my photobucket, where you can download the full ridiculous 2450x2450 resolution.
Cover:
Re-Animator (poster), for the basic layout and pose. Because Jeffrey Combs is Herbert West and Montag.
Hannibal (promo image), because I didn't want to exactly copy the desk arrangement of the poster, and this made for a good "pinning down an ornery familiar head" arm position. And I like Hannibal.
Resolution just so happens to be the same as the Issue 1 cover I have saved.
The familiar has a glowy anima-ball in its mouth, akin to the anima charges you gather in The Breakfast Cult.
The box on the desk is the W.A.N.D Anima Manipulator from the same mission.
The disk on the desk is the portable shield generator, as used in Carter Unleashed.
The desk itself, and the chair, are in the headmaster's office.
The jars are found in Innsmouth (among other places)--one has a brain-looking thing, and the other has those funky octo-hand-looking things. I didn't have room for the one with the ammonite-things.
The tube he's holding is a smaller, thinner version of the empty beakers that can also be found in Innsmouth.
"Fancom" logo traced and tweaked from a hi-res Funcom logo I found on google.
You can't see it 'cause it's dark and I didn't make the shadows opaque enough, but instead of doing the drop-shadows on the text all the same direction they usually are on Issue covers, I changed the angles so it's like the shadows are being affected by the anima-filled beaker.
"Misadventures with Mr. Montag" is highly alliterative, as the Buzzing is prone to doing. (And W is like an upside-down M, so we can pretend it's 100% alliteration. )
21 is the number of points on the yellow sun symbol of God for the Yazidi. You'll recall the Yazidi were important in To Sir, With Love. It's also conveniently under the guesstimated number of Issues that are planned.
October 18, 1985 was the release date for the first Re-Animator movie, thus the month and year release date.
My condensed Futura font is too thin, even while bold, to match what's used on the Issue covers. *shakefist* I had to tweak size and kerning to get it close. (Also had to tweak the #, they may have used a different Impact that I have. SHRUGS ABOUT FONTS.)
Comic page 1:
The resolution is the same as the Issue 9 comic pages I have saved.
...HAHA JOKE'S ON ME I cropped out or covered the bookshelf, you can't see where I hecked up. They're totally in the room you find these NPCs in, though, except the door is closed because perspective is hard.
Carter's beginning and ending thoughts are a quote from The Rec Center Cannot Hold. (Now I just gotta figure out how to get a shop class project flashback for Usher and I'll have the whole set!)
Things go sepia because Montag's memories, and memories involving Montag, automatically gain a sepia tint. Research has yet to reveal a distinct cause for this phenomenon.
Not only is the difference between "current" and "memory" noted in the black-and-white vs. sepia tones inside the panels, but Carter's thought box has a light gradient hinting the fading in and back out, AND the borders of the panels change. Current is clear and solid, while memory is fuzzier and textured.
Carter's labcoat has the Innsmouth symbol on the chest, and closes the same as the one available for male characters in Pangaea, because the Thaumaturge one is backwards compared to the RL references I found. 8|
The background behind Carter is the chalkboards and wall from the Summoning Room. (Same with the floor. Why is it wood? We had tile in our lab rooms. )
The table the familiar is on is similar to the tables found in the Summoning Room, except longer because they're too short to fit a body.
Used the masculine familiar model, due to listed body parts.
The criminal mentioned is Larry Checkon from Something Wicked.
The magic-using student is from entry 10 of the Innsmouth lore, and entry 7 of LoMS. (So, yes, time shenanigans. Shhh.)
The flesh golem bits are from either the one fought in Carter Unleashed, and/or the one in Rec Center.
Carter is holding the same anima-filled tube that Montag has on the cover, though it is less visible on this page.
Comic page 2:
HEAL-Y ANIMA HEXAGONS CHECK IT. These were gonna be yellow and things were gonna be all cool and glowy but time happened. They are where the anima in the tube is, generally. Because symbolism.
It's easier to see on this page that Carter is also wearing protective blue gloves, because corpses are gross. She'd have eye protection, too, but clear things are hard to draw and they'd have caused too much clutter.
Okay, so, I fabricated the pillow and sheet. Probably. We don't get to go inside the dorms so there wasn't anything to work with there.
I used the same window that is found near these NPCs, though, because I have no reason to believe they'd be styled differently.
Except for the curtains. Curtains are what is mentioned by Carter in her Spooky Story, whereas the ones by Montag have blinds.
That tree is totally a tree that Montag's looking at (because it was in my reference screenshot).
WHO COULD THAT BE, PRUNING THE TREE? IT IS A MYSTERY. This school hasn't had a groundkeeper since 1806!
That's totally the wall around Innsmouth outside the window, too.
The graffiti on the wall is the Crowley one--"CHANGE IN CONFORMITY WITH WILL." Because we're doing magic here, making familiars more than what they were. It was gonna have the blue-red gradient to make it more recognizable because I did not feel like zooming in far enough to write it out all the way. But, again, time happened.
Dialogue:
While the visuals were taken from the first Re-Animator movie, as it is the most iconic, the dialogue was influenced by the second movie, Bride of Re-Animator. It has to do with parts, so it works better with cobbled-together familiars. Here are the dialogue chunks I mulched and regurgitated into something that sounds a bit more like Montag (not quite in the order they are found in the movie):
But they're all equal now. Nothing but cast-off remnants of a meaningless existance.
She was special. Just. Dead. Tissue. But in our hands, it's the clay of life.
Pure potentiality. The primordial ooze from which all life originates.
Dan. You can't turn back now. This...this is the key to creating life. Parts. Re-animated parts.
Exactly, and what are people, Dan, over and above a collection of living parts? We can create new life.
Blasphemy? Before what? God? A God repulsed by the miserable humanity He created in His own image? I will not be shackled by the failures of your God. The only blasphemy is to wallow in insignificance. I have taken refuse of your God's failures and I have triumphed. There! THERE is my creation!
So I was inspired to make a PVP montage entry (even if it’s now general combat entry) about my love of PVP hats...
While I would have loved to make a silly PVE video montage, it seemed more like the PVP side of TSW needed to represent! If you PVP check out the latest #IAMTSW contest and tell your story!
