#leviathan mafia

[isdiaz]

Been a good long while since I touched on my Bootleggers stuff. Vipra is the very first character I made for it back when it was still a college project. This is her latest redesign--I try not to rework my Bootleggers characters as often as my old high school characters, but Vipra's been particularly difficult to settle on a design for. Hopefully this will be the one that sticks.

Anyway, Vipra's gameplay is mostly inspired by Street Fighter's Dhalsim, though instead of stretchy limbs and Yoga fire, it's a long snake tail and molotov cocktails. She also has a shotgun as a mostly defensive tool used at close range to blow her opponent back to long distance, but if she has her opponent cornered then the blast can bounce opponents off the wall for extended combos.

[isdiaz]

A long coming redo of my oldest Bootleggers character, Vipra, the Leviathan Mafia's ace enforcer.

There's no side-by-side with her previous self, since I don't usually do that for my Bootleggers characters, but she basically just got herself a new outfit and pose. Those attack thumbnails are still of her old design though, so I still gotta redo those.

[isdiaz]

Back on my Bootleggers stuff with a rework of Orca, my giant whale mermaid. She’s the leader of a tribe of mermaids residing in Lawton’s waters, as well as the captain of city’s Coast Guard. Despite her position, however, she’s also associated with the Leviathan Mafia, serving as their aquatic powerhouse to rule the harbor’s docks.

Orca serves as one of Bootleggers’s three boss characters--with one associated with the Leviathan Mafia, the Lawton Police Department, and the Wine Down Speakeasy. Needless to say, Orca is the boss on the mafia’s side, and would be a major boss fight for most characters who primarily oppose the Leviathan Mafia.

As a boss character, Orca doesn’t really conform to the typical fighting styles of playable characters. Buuut that doesn’t Orca from having a focus on grapples complimented by huge reach and a tail she can use at range to set up close range offense. Since she fights specifically in a harbor stage along a dock, she can technically turn and move freely throughout the stage like a normal character (sans jumping). Her tail is always a fixed distance in front of her (though it momentarily dips under the water when she moves or turns around), so with the right positioning, she can place her opponent between her self and her tail for dangerous setups.

 Alongside Orca, there’s one other boss character done, which is Violet, associated with the Wine Down Speakeasy. The last boss character to be done is the Lawton Police Department’s police commissioner. There’s no progress on him yet, but he’s planned to be centaur.

[isdiaz]

Day 26, Candela, the construct gardener. She’s actually one of my older Bootleggers characters, but I never shared her original iteration. Now she got herself a redraw, so her original version’s kinda moot.

Her gameplay concept is that she’s a setup-based rushdown/mix-up character. By default, she’s in her main humanoid body, with the lamp body stuck in the center of the stage. One of her main moves is switching bodies by ejecting her flame from her main body, and firing it toward the lamp body. Her flame will occupy the lamp and bring that body to life while the main body stands limp (almost looking decapitated without the fiery head).

Along with having a new position in the arena, Candela’s lamp body has its own set of moves, and the ability to fly. However, her lamp body cannot block, and takes a higher damage multiplier if hit. If she gets hit in her lamp body, she’ll also have to take the entire following combo, after which she’ll automatically switch back to her main body.

The idea is for her body switching tactics to be risky. However, since her inactive body cannot be damaged, and her body switch is a fireball attack in itself, wisely using her body switch can allow her to mix-up opponents, extend combos, or escape pressure.

[isdiaz]

Inktober day 24. Another iteration on my Bootleggers character Orca, this time positioned how she might be in-game.

Orca is intended to be a boss character, and like a lot of fighting game bosses, she tends to break a lot of traditional fighting game conventions. She specifically takes inspiration from the big half-screen bosses, like Apocalypse, Galactus, Ultron Omega... basically any Marvel vs. Capcom boss. I notice a lot of fighting game bosses tend to just be giant armored zoners who maintain one side of the screen, so I wanted her to at least try to function as close as she can to a normal fighting game character.

Orca can still move around, block, crouch block, and use a set of normal attacks and specials to properly combo opponents. She can’t jump though, nor can she be launched, but I figure she’s tall enough that most air combos would still work on her anyway. As a boss, she’d only ever be fought on Undine Harbor, so she would lean over on the foreground gameplay space while using the water in the midground to move around. 

Her fighting style would largely consist of huge reaching punches and grapples, and maybe a few armored attacks. She would also “teleport” by diving and resurfacing elsewhere, allowing her to switch sides with the opponent. The tail is her way of doing ranged attacks, but unless it’s actively swinging, the tail would largely be a background bit that the player could still walk by.

[isdiaz]

Kicking off July with a pair of Bootleggers mobile doodles. The lower pair is Hashi & Hahn again, who I guess are just a new personal ship now. The upper pair are Cleo & Lotte, two characters who’ve popped up here and there, but don’t have full character sheets uploaded yet. 

Cleo’s a (highly stylized, kinda Thundercats-inspired) tabaxi, and Lotte is her best friend slime. They’re both fellow carnies from the showboat Sybil/Mary traveled with. In fact, Lotte’s slime body has a powerful ingredient in it that can be very hallucinogenic and intoxicating, so when the showboaters learned about this, Lotte helped produce some strong and unique cocktails that bolstered their business. As for Cleo, she’s the muscle of the crew, both for throwing out unwanted patrons and for showing off to an audience with her strongwoman act.

[isdiaz]

Some chibis of my Bootleggers project characters, that maaay get made into acrylic charms or something someday. Pretty much all of these characters have been introduced before, except the lizard girl ballet dancer--that’s Imori. Imori and the witch/noble pair, Mary & Sybil, are characters made up by @jabeanie, with Sybil specifically designed by her! Thanks again! Your characters are pretty much just as much a part of the Bootleggers family as my own!

[isdiaz]

Another Bootleggers character, the big don of the Leviathan Mafia, Scyllis, the scylla. Originally, the Leviathan Mafia was run by a family of serpentine lamia, but Scyllis's father staged a coup that moved the ruling power to his scylla family. Scyllis is the first inheritor to continue her father's new line of scylla dons in the Leviathan Mafia, and has much to prove as a boss worthy of leading.

Gameplay-wise, Scylla is a mid to long range hybrid between a zoner and grappler, a powerful combination offset by her near pitiful mobility. Instead of relying on mobility to close the gap, her tentacles and wolves can perform long range grabs that can force her opponent into disadvantageous situations, where Scyllis can use her mid-range tools to deal big damage. For those who are familiar, her gameplay takes inspiration from characters like Amane from Blazblue and Kan-Ra from Killer Instinct (though less from his traps and more from his normals and command grab).

(Re-did this post because the previous version was a mobile upload that went screwy)