Vanguard Moon Princess Playmat

Once again we jump back to last year to talk about a playmat. I'm almost out of mats from 2012  to discuss although its amusing to think at one point I was worried I wouldn't have enough things to talk about to keep things going. Then again if I'm being honest quantity has never been an issue for me, I can create content at an amazing rate when I have to, its the attention to detail side of things I have to keep on top of.

The particulars of this mat then, and today we have my first Cardfight Vanguard mat. if you don't count the paladin sketch, and also one of my earliest implementations of some of the new materials I've been blathering on about over the last few articles. The other big detail was the choice not to outline it in black as at the time I felt like that style was becoming a bit constraining and needed to test out a verity of other techniques. 

I've lernt quite a lot even in the short time since this mat was created and quite a bit of the stuff I'm doing now with light and shadow has its roots in the mats I created around this time. The elements are all here although the stark difference between the light and dark areas is further emphasised by the limited colour pallet and anime style while the vivid reds and yellows came out really well, even if you can only see their shininess in person. 

The background was also something of a risky move at the time, partly prompted by the fact I am constantly on the verge of running low on black and due to the nature of the way the mat material shifts liquids from place to place a serious disaster was narrowly averted as a wave of dark colour bore down on a hapless and unsuspecting yellow moon. Still, crisis averted and with a newfound respect for flow I proceeded to liven outer space up some more with a variety of reds, yellows, greens, and blues and threw in some of my trademark disappearing stars for good measure, again an effect that doesn't come across as very apparent on the scans and another reason I switched to posting photos (that and this particular scan has a number of issues with slightly warped angles).

My favorite element is probably the electricity on the sword/beak?/reflex cannon, like the starts its subtle and you don't see it from every angle but its just something extra that brings things to life. 

And hey look new logo, I should probably talk about that a bit but haven't decided if I want to do so here or over on Infinity Flawed which I set up to be a bit more freeform. 

South West Yugioh Champion 2012 Playmat

At about the same time as the Bayonetta mat I had the 2012 South West Yugioh Champion mat to finish. This yearly event held in the South West of the UK at Mad For Miniatures not only brings together some of the best players in the area (as well as from farther afield) but has thus far provided me which an opportunity most mat designs don't, in that every mat will have one element that matches all the other finalists mats from previous years. No matter what other elements they decide to have drawn the text area is a common theme among them all. Which makes them a type of badge then, ID's that show you are a member of a very elite club.

As the common elements impose further restrictions on the design one of the most interesting parts of the process on these mats is figuring ot how to implement the ideas of the winners around them while trying to keep things fresh and yet still maintaing the same overarching theme. 

That doesn't mean the text area has remained static, each subsequent version integrates ideas and processes that I have developed duing that year and further refines the look. The text on the very first one, for example, has to deal with the fact it was the first time I had really done text. The blue center element also shifts styles each time, in this instance its more of a modern gel button inspired by interface elements while on the original mat its flat shaded with a circuit board texture effect and with the 2011 mat following suit except adding a radial gradient.

The rest of the center section has changed less over the years, benefiting from my improved confidence and lest need to rely on black outlines, the colours remain the same for each version for the most part with only slight tonal shifts depending on the needs of the rest of the mat and my colour preferences at the time. The text got a major overhaul for the second mat improving legibility at a distance, mainly as a result of the fact it saw a slight size reduction to accommodate the rest of the image, and has remained the same since. There are one or two minor tweaks that I might make to the purple section the next time around but mostly any slight differences will be down to texture effects, gradients, and shadows.

Also where appropriate the background designs should be bright bold and a bit wacky, oh hey look the orange is back! 

It wasn't ment to be this way, I had originally planned to do some sort of light vs dark thing but quickly realised that since one diagonal axis was going to be black on both sides that probably would have looked a bit odd (the large black area of the wings are balanced by the cloak on the opposite side) As it happend I had just recently bought some new slightly different colours and was itching to give them a full test run after some minor use on the Nyx mat (Here) The colours in question tend to come up brighter than the ones I usually use but have some special requirements and their own hoops to jump through especially on playmat material. I went with a fire based spiral pattern as a nod to Hyperion's background art and since it would fit in quite well with the the text areas central circular theme and the end result is nothing if not bright, and somewhat hypnotising.

Having Drawn Grapha before on another mat (although I have apparently neglected to post about yet) I knew what I was getting myself in for from the outset. Hyperion on the other hand I had no prior knowledge about and after much thought, some quick sketches, plus some desire not to repeat Grapha's pose I decided they should be facing off against one another. The end result also just so happened to help fit the pair around the text, I could have pushed Hyperion left a bit more but I really wanted them to be in each others faces and he doesn't really have the bulk of the dragon poor guy. Plus their arms in roughly in the same places so his legs might have been a bit odd all the way at the corner... and Bayonetta thought she had spine problems.

Who will win the next South West Yugioh Championship? Its probably a bit early in the year to be placing bets, still if you won, and baring the restrictions I have mentioned in mind, what would you choose to have on the ID Mat that proves your part of the champions club? 

Bayonetta Playmat

There is some debate as to whether or not spines are useful structures. Personally I find mine handy for keeping my upper body from being somewhere around my waist. Bayonetta's designers clearly feel differently however, often contorting her into a wide array of painfully impossible poses.

Her chiropractor must make a fortune.

Back Pain aside I have a few more mats from 2012 to get through before I start on 2013 and this is one of them.

Two things happened before I started production of this mat the first was I figured out how to do white on a much larger scale, not just leave white space but actually add white, and secondly I bought a different brand of black for the line work. these two elements combined to inform the overall look of the final piece with its much lighter than my usual colour schemes and a generally more realistic looking face and hair, although that may have as much to so with scale as anything else. A few mats on and I think maybe I would have gone a bit darker with it and if you have been reading my posts you will notice I havent been able to resist having an element of an orange sky in there somewhere, but overall for what it is and what I learnt from crating it I am quite happy with the end results.

As far as the curvature of her spine goes, after some research into gymnastics, I settled on something not quite as extreme as most artwork depicts her. I could have pushed the curve a bit more, real people can bend slightly more than I have depicted, but the sketches where I did proved that it didn't take much to push it over the edge from believable to somewhat silly looking.

Much like the characters famed flexibility its also my first mat to have been designed to work either way around which explains the rather nondescript horizon and general jaunty angle everything is draw at. There are a number of extra details that you have to consider when you decide to do this sort of thing though, the main one being that you really need to get the shadows right, which probably explains the minimal shadowing on the background elements. Its also why I prefer to view the image this way up since it was the direction I worked on the mat the most and therefore makes the most sense to me. People who haven't worked on it however may have other opinions and thats one of the nice things about this style, the added decision making.

I was quite a way into production before i noticed I had neglected to add her glasses though, thankfully I remembered as it also solved an issue I was having with her hair making her look to masculine when viewed one way around, its funny how things work out sometimes, one little detail can change everything.

Scryed Dragonball: Goku Vs kazuma Playmat

Ok so I know I implied the Lightsworn mat was the last of 2012 but sometimes a little misdirection is required. In this case because this mat was created as a Christmas present for my brother uploading it beforehand would have given the game away.

People often find buying gifts for others somewhat challenging, "they are difficult to buy for" they cry or "they already have everything,  could buy it for themselves!". I've always found this line of thinking somewhat odd if your buying gifts for people chances are you have spent some amount of time with them that year and as such sooner or later they will mention at least one thing they probably would like, often without realising it, you just have to be listening.

Maybe thats the real issue.

In any case when my brother mentioned that a Goku Vs kazuma playmat would be quite cool I immediately agreed and then set about subverting the whole concept the final result being bellow.

Combine the fact he plays quite a lot of wargames with the characters general predisposition to fighting and you get the idea. Still while this was always meant as a joke since drawing all those tiny models on a playmat would have been interesting to say the least the basic concept filed itself away for later use.

The final mat then and you will notice that while Goku is at his maximum level in both images kazuma is not. Comparing relative power levels between characters in different series is somewhat redundant, however, for the second design I decided that if they are going to fight you may as well have all involved at their maximum capacity, partly to add emphasis to the combat and partly to minimise debate as to who should win, because we all know how people like to debate such things.

The other major element with this mat was that I went a bit crazy with the use of the black, you have to imagine theres a light source above and slightly behind both characters mainly because I came to the conclusion that I didn't want to have a mat with some sort of landscape style background. With that in mind the elements of the image that were further from that source or obscured by other elements gradually became darker and darker and for a time I was concerned the style wouldnt look right on characters that are generally flat shaded though in the end I came to the conclusion it adds to the overall momentum of the image.

As for the background itself I went with the old Dragonball trick of using a patterned background to give the sense of movement. A technique generally used in animation to save time and funds so animators can get episodes done much more quickly, and used in Yugioh cards because...well I'm not to sure I would assume originally it was to make the characters stand out since the image frame is quite small and a proper background could potentially make it harder to see but more likely since many of the Japanese TCG's only tend to focus on the characters its probably a cultural thing. Back on topic, the dragonballs and Scryed necklace were added because I felt the background needed just a bit more detail than just some diagonal lines. It took me some time to decide on the colour of the stars eventually settling on the cartoons version.

The final touch and something I could only really trial on a mat that hadn't been requested for fear it's application would somehow cause the image to spontaneously react and melt away or some other nightmarish effect that could befall an image that I had spent countless hours on was to add pigments resistant to sunlight and that would generally provide another barrier against water and the substances that may be on a players hands and cards. My mats have been relatively water resistant for some time now, I don't advise testing it out on purpose though, but its nice to be able to add a further layer of protection.

And so in one fell swoop I now only have one major Jump series left to create a mat for, not that I have done a mat for the best Jump show yet but then I suspect there is little call for a Busou Renkin mat and  therefore would have to make it for myself if I ever wanted to make one.