Topics

1

Tips and Tutorials / Illustration tips?

« on: January 02, 2015, 05:34:03 PM »

I've been doing sketches for so long that I feel I should actually attempt to do some sort of actual illustration with composition and whatnot.

Of course, I'm not really sure how to break into that structure. Any tips?

2

Develop Your Story / Toby (Working Title for a comedy/romance in need of serious developing)

« on: December 28, 2014, 09:15:43 AM »

Okie dokie, wow, been a while since I had an new idea, right? Anyways, this just came to me, but it's got a long way to go before it becomes anything resembling a story. So, let's get down to the bare bones.

Story: Toby (Can't think of a title, so I'll just name it after the main character)
Genre: Comedy/Romance/Action
Plot: Tabitha "Toby" Bones is a young waitress stuck in a dead economy and a poor town taking care of a needy family. She waits tables all days at a crappy shack that serves waffles and not pancakes, despite how many customers wish they would.

However when Toby goes home to her family at night, she goes home to a secret in her heritage. She goes back to a family that just so happens to be a league of supervillains. Her grandparents, her brother, her little sister, and even the family dog has all had their own share of beautifully performed crimes in the city. Call it a family hobby. While they mostly steal from corrupt organizations or rob places only to give the money straight back, Toby has the villainous blood raging inside of her. And so, due to her stressful life, she can't help but to be more enthusiastic about stealing and keeping her riches. So much so that she finds herself out stealing almost every night for thrills... The family is proud of her villainy and accepting, though wishing she could find something more stable in life.

That all changes when a poor, stumbling vigilante busts one of Toby's crimes and nearly gets her caught. Unnerved, Toby and her family are on the hunt to find out just who this new hero is before he discovers who they are and sends the whole family to prison.


----
So that's what I got so far. It's just a random idea I had. I watched the Incredibles and I was like, no one ever focuses on a supervillain family! Well...they did...sort of in that one episode of Powerpuff Girls.

So yeah, tips....advice? I'll take anything.

3

Manga Anime FanArts / Austa's Fanart

« on: November 24, 2014, 03:04:28 PM »

Eh, I was told to make another thread if I wish to show off and do some fanart. So, here I am to pay tribute to things I love....and I must say that most of my stuff is video game and cartoon based.

But I'm sure I'll get to some anime fanarts too.


Total Drama Fanart #1- Heather


Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am a gigantic fan of Total Drama, pretty much all seasons too. But I'm a big fan of the girls on the show as well and my all time favorite girl character on that show is Heather. She's the mean girl, the Queen Bee! So why do I like her? Because she kicks so much ass. She's conniving, she's clever, she's determined and will never let anything get in the way of her obsession to win (even when a love interest appears in a season). In a way, I kinda look up to her determination and I hope that at some point, she'll return to Total Drama, because let's face it, nobody brings the drama like Heather.

I'm probably gonna show tribute to Total Drama by drawing all the females from the show, so Heather's the first.

Jen from Primal (2003), a video game


God I love Primal. It's such an intelligent and cool story with cool characters and an even cooler female. I mean, my god, I am so glad I kept coming back to this game. Now, I'm hooked. So, here's Jen, the main female from the game. She's strong, passionate, impulsive, and is pretty much the female version of Yusuke Urameshi. I am not kidding.



Lady from Shadow Hearts: From the New World

A creature of Malice, Lady is is the main antagonist in Shadow Hearts: From the New World. She travels the world, in effort to open the Malice gate in order to go home. (She's also fiiiiiinnnnnneeee.) She is actually a very tragic character given her backstory of when she was a loving sister to the main protagonist, Johnny.


So, there's a start and more to come.

4

Video / PC Games / Positive Gaming: Austa's Rejected Game Reviews (Hidden Gems: Kuon Review Is Up!)

« on: October 02, 2014, 12:52:28 PM »

As of late, I have received permission to post reviews on this forum. My deepest appreciation to Lego and Coryn, who have graciously allowed me to post my video game reviews here. *bows to them* I hope I get things stirring in this forum again as a result!

So, what is this, you may ask. Well, to start off...

Introduction

*closes a book* Oh, hi there. I didn’t see you walk into this forgotten land of supposedly bad gaming and glimpses of imperfection all around me. I am Austa. Some call me Aus or Austadophilus. Some call me Brooke, but that’s a forgotten name here. I am a Positive Gamer. What is that, ask?

Well, put simply, I am a gamer by heart. I’ve played games since I was three and I figured out the Ins and Outs of my Pajama Sam and Putt-Putt games. Don’t knock them till you try them. Soon, I moved to Japan when I was about nine and then got all cozy with my Spyro game, never once realizing that I was spending strange amounts of time playing these games. Video games.

Through my teen years, I grew up but my love for video games did not. I was playing everything I can get my hands on. From heavy RPGs to a few first person shooters, I played everything in between and I discovered that I had a secret fondness for horror games and platforming games in particular. With horror games, there was no rhyme or reason as to why I loved them. I just did, despite the fact that I despise horror movies (unless they’re super campy). And as for platformers, I was just brought to my love for Spyro and Sonic the Hedgehog games. To jump, fly, and run faster than the speed of sound was one of the greatest interactive experiences in the world to me.

And now, I am in college. I play the games of my youth over and over again, still enjoying the feelings they bring me. The stories they taught me that inspired me to become a writer. The ones that taught me that my imagination was valid in this world.

However, once I entered college, I discovered something terrible. Video games are things that are judged and thrown aside as fast as humanly possible when they come out. And the majority of them are so mainstreamed that it’s hard to find a single soul who remembers any of the games you played as a young soul.

My favorite games, namely the Sonic series and Silent Hill and all of them, were ripped apart on forums, judged horrendously for the flaws so much that nothing positive seemed to arise from what I once played. And I began to slip into that madness. I started thinking my games that I played (trust me, I played a lot) were trivial crap and that if they didn’t get some seal of approval from IGN’s website or from harsh fans, I shouldn’t bother with a game.

Then, something incredible happened. I met a boy who would become my boyfriend and he was a Sonic fan too. I was surprised to learn that he loved the Sonic 2006 game. A game that was rejected left and right and often referred to as an apocalypse of crap by its so-called fans. But my boyfriend, Matt (NostalgicOtaku on this site) didn’t care. He likes what he likes and he did what I hadn’t been able to do up until meeting him. He played the games he liked and he loved them. It didn’t matter what other people thought or said about these games. My boyfriend knew what gaming was to its beautiful core. Fun. Gaming wasn’t our new job on the side. It wasn’t a chore we had to do.

We play video games to have fun. And my entire perceptions of the games I loved and then denied changed.

I wanted to be a Positive Gamer and enjoy all aspects of games. The Good, the Bad, and the adventure that tossed me into both corners.

So, here I am. For your consideration, I am a Positive Gamer and these are Positive Reviews!

More to come soon!

5

Manga Creations / Euthanasia (Hiatus Over)

« on: August 17, 2014, 01:52:12 PM »

Euthanasia

Genre: Adventure/Romance
Plot Summary: In the town of Fontina, there is a Doctor who has the ability to bring a person back from the dead. However, before he could realize the error in his ways and control this ability, the people he had brought back suffered violent side effects and ran away from the Doctor.

In order to rid the world of the violent experiments he had created, the Doctor created six more experiments and kept them under his close control. Odie is one of those experiments and he spends his new life, seeking these rogue experiments out and assassinating them before any harm can befall the city. However, when Odie meets one experiment named Dath Rorick, he starts to question everything--his past, his purpose, and if the Doctor is truly done with his experimenting...

Introduction

Spoiler

There is a doctor who lives on the outside of a town called Fontina. Nobody ever visits that Doctor anymore and for a very good reason too. The Doctor lives in his own little world and has let time pass him by. But that’s not the reason nobody would ever visit him. Kids in the town had grown up with the tale of the Doctor who had the power to raise the dead, who would spend all of his days in his big, abandoned tower tinkering and creating spiteful experiments that would one day overrun the town and kill all in their path.

Well…they are half right. Sort of. Okay, so they got the whole thing a bit twisted. Let me explain.

My name is Odie. Yeah, I know the world was vindictive enough to give me such a stupid name and all. That name is all I have though and I hold onto it, even as people snicker at me from behind my back and crack Garfield jokes at me. So, my name is Odie and I live with the Doctor in that urban legend. I lived with him for the last three years of my life.

I have to admit that nobody actually knows the true story behind it. I learned not to question anything and to always follow orders so that the Doctor would give me everything I ever wanted. Here’s what I knew, the old man could bring people back from the dead, but it all came at a heavy price. Can’t anything be free anymore?! Noooooo, somebody always had to pay. The Doctor was happy at first. He brought people back to life! Oh, the possibilities, man. You could cure cancer, bring back love ones, or you know, cheat death in the first place.

So, the Doctor brought back a number of people from the dead, including me. But these people…these people who came back…they were angry. They were violent. They could do things that they couldn’t do before. They would leave the Doctor despite how he would plea for them to stay, but they left. I was smart. I was obedient. But then, I was an easy fool. I had no memories when I was created. No attachment to the outside world. The only thing the Doctor could find out about me was that my name was Odie. It was the one word left on the gravestone when he snagged my corpse remains.

After casualties ensued in Fontina, the Doctor shut down his experiments and made me make myself useful. I and a select few others who had remained with the Doctor became his assassins. I’m not kidding. My job is to track down these stinkin’ experiments that can’t stay quiet and to make sure they never utter any of our secrets ever again. It’s a rough business, but hey, I have a lot of pent-up anger and stress and nothing satisfies that better than needless slaughter. It’s a good life and I can’t complain.

But I had become too used to it. So used to it that I was in no way prepared for when I would meet one experiment in particular who made me question everything I knew and everything I thought I was okay with….

I think I have to take a look at myself then and ask if this was the place I wanted to end up in. But in my defense, not everyone’s lived like me. Not everyone has died and been brought back.

Not everyone has lived two lives…

6

Develop Your Story / Checking In

« on: August 04, 2014, 05:16:45 PM »

Okay, so in between playing my beloved Fatal Frame series and watching a movie called Room 1408, I was inspired with an idea regarding people being trapped in a hotel that actually belonged to the spirit realm. I will say this once. This was an old idea I had when I was in a relationship with someone who I thought cared about me. I didn’t return to this for a while after we broke up and it’s not that developed. It’s just an idea. It will probably never see the light of day, but for fun, I thought it might be good to practice my story developing skills and see where this takes me.

Checking In
Genre: Adventure/Drama

So, the basic idea follows a college student who is heading home to her folks through a winter storm. She failed school and is having trouble coming to terms with just what she’s going to tell her family about the ordeal when she sees a figure in the road. She breaks in the storm to avoid the strange figure, but drives off a bridge. She wakes up unharmed, but on the edge of a frozen lake. After crawling out, she gets a flashlight and goes searching through the snow for help until she finds a beautiful, erect hotel in the middle of nowhere. 
She enters the hotel and meets The Caretaker, who allows her a room for the night without having to pay for it. She accepts it, but immediately senses something is amidst when the hotel room she is given resembles her own childhood room. She uncovers more oddities in the hotel, such as changing paintings, whispers in the night, and an odd assortment of guests. A boy also becomes a guest in the hotel the same night as the college student and both begin to experience odd phenomena, realizing that the guests all around them in the hotel are in fact spirits.
After twenty-four hours of trying to get out of the hotel, The Caretaker from before reveals to them that in order to pay for their rooms, they have in fact sold their souls to the Hotel of Spirits and now must work off their debts for eternity as the new maid and butler of the hotel.


Again, just the bare bones. It may not be a good idea and I accept that, but I was thinking about it a lot recently.

7

break Room / Pets?

« on: August 03, 2014, 04:02:58 PM »

Okie doke.

I guess something hit me over the head this morning while I was at the county flea market. I want a pet. A low maintenance pet, but a pet nonetheless.

So, tell me about your pets. I mean, I'm guessing a good number of Manga Raiders have a dog or a cat or something. So, what's your pet and how did they come to you? Post their pictures! Talk about them!

8

MR Pub / When you just aren't going anywhere...

« on: July 26, 2014, 09:15:39 PM »

Okay, how shall I put this?

I am a twenty two year old girl in college studying to be a Medical Office Administrative Assistant. And...I hate my life. I really do. Because I know that is something I never wanted. Something I'm probably not even good at. And yet, I push myself to go for it only because I think it'll make my dad happy. I mean, I love to draw and I love to write but there's no way to make money off of that especially when you're no good at it like I am.

So, right now, I find myself thinking about the rest of my life and the fact that I have no idea where I'm going and what I want in this world. I have literally no clue what's best for my life or what I want. I think that if I just take this road, I'll make enough money to support myself and then start writing stuff. But something inside me feels like this is all wrong...that I just do these things because I don't want to lose my father from my life.

So, yeah. I have no clue what to do with myself. I feel very empty a lot of times, but I always convinced myself it was natural to feel unsatisfied like this. I just wish I knew what it takes to be happy and to find that happiness.

Anyways, thanks for listening.

9

Members Manga / Spacewasters

« on: July 06, 2014, 03:39:34 PM »

Welcome to the new thread for my newest comic project and I hope I do well with it. Lord knows, I could use some improvement, so I'm pushing forward with this story line.


Spacewasters
Genre: Slice of Life/Comedy
Story: In a city clouded by heavy pollution, so much so that the sun never shows, a girl named Amy "Cooper" Cowel spends her days wasting her life away with her only true love on earth: video games. She is joined with her friends, a bunch of awkward girls and one guy who make up a gang called The Spacewasters. The Spacewasters have no motivation in life and wish to rot along with the polluted city. However, the one thing they love beside video games is the Game Emporium which Cooper's father built with his bare hands.

However, when a hippie from out of the city named Derrick Garland wants to tear down the Game Emporium and make it into a national park in remembrance of his dead mother, Cooper and her friends are the first to object. And worse even, Cooper now finds a strange attractive to the pure, spiritual hippie. Caught between ideals, the gamers and the hippies battle and race to collect eighty-thousand dollars to buy the store before a third party seeks to wipe them both out!

Spoiler

10

Develop Your Story / Spellcooks

« on: April 23, 2014, 11:00:03 AM »

Story: When the teacher of a poor culinary student dies, the student, Jade Carrote, inherits his cookbook. Jade is a simple girl who dreams of nothing more than to be a great chef like her missing father, but unfortunately, while she was once a great cook, she has lost her passion and now burns every dish she can come across. The only thing that keeps her at the school and not giving up is her best friend, Lyle Snails Von Baker, a baker with a sickening sense of humor.

However, things start changing when Jade gets attached to her new cookbook and under the power of its strange magick, starts sneaking out at night, robbing grocery stores and cooking up spellacious goodness. When the students of the school interfere and start eating Jade's food, Jade and her friends are shocked to find that the cookbook is not just a cookbook, but a spellbook packed with every destructive recipe imaginable.

Jade and Lyle are excited at first, thinking they can control and manipulate the cookbook to their power and use it to get good grades and what they want. However, when beings from the Underworld begin to raid Jade's school in search of the book, Jade is forced to take responsibility and become a Spellcook, a magical girl-like chef who transforms to battle those creature from the Underworld who seek to rule the world through the food industry!

Genre: Comedy/Parody/Romance (Shoujo-ish, but stylized)

It was just a plot bunny I had lately and I've been trying to develop it further. But my stories always seem to fuzz out, so I'm trying to anticipate an ending for this.

11

Develop Your Story / Stalled on Untitled Circus/Fantasy Manga

« on: July 31, 2013, 11:35:35 AM »

Sorry, yeah, I don't have a title.

Genre: Fantasy/Comedy/Romance

The plot: When Ellis inherits a circus from his Grandfather, the former ringleader, he isn't exactly excited. There's been a reason why his family always avoided his grandfather and his big, creepy circus after all. But when the women of the circus trap his soul in the circus' realm, he has no choice but to help the all-women circus of The Circus of the Sky and return them home if he ever wants to quit the hellish fires and unwavering beasts of circus life!

The Bigger Picture:

Ellis Eckhart is an eighteen year old student who is failing out of his prestigious boarding school. What's even worse is that is his parents pay off the teachers just to change his grades. Ellis has gone through his whole life on his inheritance's coattails and has never felt needed or wanted, something that depresses him greatly. One day while walking home to visit his family, his mother informs him that his grandfather, Elbert Eckhart, has passed away due to a heart attack. Ellis is not bereft because he cannot remember Grandpa Eckhart that well.

A week later, Ellis is surprised to see that Grandpa Eckhart has left Ellis something quite big and had labeled Ellis (despite never knowing Grandpa Eckhart well), he favorite grandson. Then, to his dismay, Ellis learns that his grandfather has left him his circus. Oh and one thing, Ellis is terrified and hates the Circus with a passion. However, his parents advise him that he sells the place off and gets rid of it. So he heads to the Circus to receive its documents from his Grandfather’s trailer.

Ellis walks in on a circus show and witnesses several acts that disturb him performed by his grandfather’s all women circus. But when one of the circus performers, Alexis Elosyni, attempts to stab herself in the ventricle as part of her act, Ellis disrupts the circus act by tackling Alexis to stop her and thereby ruining the show and losing the circus of its daily customers.

Ellis then meets the angered women of the circus, who want to exact revenge on Ellis for messing up their show and losing them money. He meets Alexis, the masochistic act who performs in body manipulations, Tanis, the STRONG, albeit little girl, Naka Mayato, the diver and gynast, Morgana, the current ringleader and puppet master, Elsie, the sad clown, Edana, the fire-breather and sword swallower, and Luna and Sol, twin knife dancers. When Ellis tells Alexis and Naka that he wishes to sell the circus (and pretty much ruin their lives by putting them out of the business), they proceed to attempt to murder him.

However, Ellis soon discovers as he flees from them that the women of this Circus are not just circus performers, but women from another world with deformities and magic. More exploration leads to secrets about his grandfather and what he had to do with Ellis’s birth and existence. Ellis also realizes that the women of the circus are hiding out in the mortal realm because they have committed heinous crimes in their realm.




And we go from there.

See, it’s all still in development. But what I’m having trouble is adding some freshness to the characters and coming with a plot for advancement with these characters and the circus setting. My idea was to have a rival circus that turns out to be bounty hunters from their realm, out to make the girls pay for their treason to their realm.

But that’s all I got so far.

12

Members Manga / The A-TOM

« on: July 21, 2013, 10:10:27 PM »

Summary
The world of Keyale is one scary place, especially if you live on the continent of Totme. Totme is home to murderers, thieves, rapists, gypsies, mages, supernatural beasts and the like. And once, it was home to a mystic group of people known as psychics. Modern shaman, they controlled and balanced the fates of our world and the mysterious spirit world. But that was then and now the psychics have all been wiped out.

Except for one last survivor, named Tom Vaskim. He's done horrible things to survive and has since abandoned his psychic ways in order to keep living. But despite his efforts to lay low and forget his heritage, there are those everywhere who are after him and his legendary powers. Tom is alone and has never let anyone in…

That is until he meets a little pancho-wearing, cowboy hat-sporting hippie from hell, Zidga Masters. Zidga is Tom's complete opposite, a peace-loving traveling prostitute who believes love is the answer to everything. Now together, they have to get off the continent of Totme and onto the prosperous continent of Soong in hopes to find Tom's long lost brother. Together, they'll fight their way through an evil organization that captures and executes supernatural and paranormal creatures, an army of kitties, a conspiracy, an evil bartender, and a whole lot of ghosts just simply find one last psychic out there. So Tom won't have to be alone anymore…

But with anyone and everyone after him to abuse his powers, Tom and Zidga are out for one long, wild ride...


Note: I will update once a week as best I can. Hope you enjoy. I could use feedback and support on this as well. I apologize for my newb art too. It was my first comic.

Spoiler

13

Starter Gallery / Austa's Sketches (Would love thoughts and feedback)

« on: July 20, 2013, 09:40:51 PM »

I suppose I should put myself out there a little bit more with my cruddy work. Who knows? I might get a good tip or two about how to improve. Or better yet, I'll get better acquainted with you guys and make a friend. (I am lonely. <.<)

 Some of my more recent stuff-




Cat girls ftw.



Something I put together...not sure if I like it:

14

Welcome Center / Lo, what's up?

« on: July 20, 2013, 09:06:34 PM »

New here and eager to start.  Anyways, its nice to meet all of you. ^^

A few things to know about me-

 -I like writing scripts for video games.
 -I am a survival horror fan. My favorite games are Silent Hill, Haunting Ground, Fatal Frame, and many others. I also adore rpgs and platformers and I'm not limited to anything. I love lots of games basically
 -I draw comics and different stuff but I'm not that good. Still, I'm plucky...so hopefully that helps.

 So, that's me basically. What about you?