Here we have the complete model sheets for Ahimsa and John for my final project in Character Design as well as another addition to the Yearbook: Momentary Thing mythos which I'm calling this installment 'Yearbook: Health Class Hell'. To define Yearbook: Momentary Thing in 25 words or less it's a prequel story to my current brainchild of 10-9 of Ahimsa and John as teens in high school and their adventures, misadventures, coming of age, and saving the world a handful of times. 10-9 takes place ten years after the end of Yearbook where a very different and hardened military captain Ahimsa is reluctantly reunited with his best friend and now rock star journalist John as they have one last bloody adventure in a world gone to hell. Yearbook and 10-9 are literally like night and day in several aspects, whereas 10-9 is one continuous story and one set look, Yearbook is a series of stories, scenes, or snippets with a variety of looks much like an anthology only with a recurring cast. In the case of Yearbook it's almost like a puzzle in realtions to 10-9. Some stories are very upbeat, others very serious, some purely comedic, and a few tragically romantic, all of them offer clues into where it all went wrong for the boys and their friendship as well as the world they live in-- however it also works in the way of you can read one story and just appreciate it for what it is and leave it, or you can read them all to get the complete map of the 10-9/Yearbook Mythos.
In the case of Health Class Hell, it's being treated like almost a Direct to DVD or like a late night Cartoon Network special, the animation's a little higher quality, not quite feature film but not as simple either (If the colors on Ahimsa alone is enough to indicate.) But plot wise while it has some straight up canon aspects from the story it also a bold faced parody that pokes fun at a few anime shows of my youth and how things were censored and changed for American sensibilities due to the fact that characters that ONLY appear in 10-9 will be showing up and will be rewritten as 'cousins' or 'uncles' as well as poking fun at the true nature of John and Ahimsa's friendship as cleverly alluding to they're a bit on the more than just friends side. Besides if you can't tell just by looking at his model sheet that Ahimsa is more flaming than the fires of Pele then I didn't do my job right. C'mon he's traipsing for crying out loud.
In the past two days I've redone each model sheet twice because they didn't look quite right at the time. In Ahimsa's case I didn't like his pose and a classmate advised that if they're going to be standing there have them show a little attitude.
I did the first version of John's sheet last night, proceeded to hate it because his pose was a little to swishy for a cantankerous jerk like him, so I ended up today with what you see here. Despite the technique I'm using to color these being something immensely simple and fast I got John's first figure done in 30 minutes and the other two took way too much time that I care to think about it due to stupid things of technical glitches and my hand twitching involuntarily while trying to make selections with the polygonal lasso. The cuts on John aren't as well rounded off where they should be like in the case of Ahimsa. I might have to go back in and round them off before I hand them in. Though I am rather pleased with the colors between the two of them since Ahimsa's all about the bright and HAPPY colors even if his jacket's dark and he has some cools on him they're either very intense or have contrasting warm and bright colors. John on the other hand is all darks and earth tones, the only thing bright about him is his hair which I can only describe as cross between Bart Simpson and a buzzsaw. I love how it all goes in the same direction no matter what angle he turns and looks vaugely like fire which fits him perfectly in firey temperament and powers base. I might do an alternate version of the sheet where he's summoning fire in his palms since that's what I did his pose like that for. He's also the King of Offensive Tee-Shirts but I didn't want to be so overtly offensive despite a favorite shirt design he has which I love is that of a stripper dancing the pole and the text reading 'I Support Single Moms'. I'd figure 'God's Gift' was a suitable replacement still indicating his arrogance without being completely raunchy.
Man.... my longest post yet. Hope all that text was worth the read. :3
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