Legacy LD5

Hi everyone! RipRoarRex here again.

As coincidence would have it, it seems these big changes at LD5 were going on at roughly the same as I was working on a complete revamp of my own website. As coincidence would further have it, the work on both has been completed within the same day (or at least on my side of the Atlantic it was the same day! Lol!)

I was rather tired of the grey tabular look my site has had pretty much since its launch in July last year, so I wanted to snazz it up a bit. The first stage in this was to produce a brand new set of banners for all 9 of my characters as well as a big site banner involving all of them together. It took a long time - each character was drawn individually for their own page banner then they were superimposed into one combined image. The second stage, which is the part I've spent most of the last week on, was the redesigning of the website itself - every page has a new, more aesthetically appealing layout, there are new character sections for Tydo and Mike, all page content has been rewritten and there are also some new site links on the homepage. Overall, it's been quite a lot of work which I hope look like it was worth it.

Here's the new site banner with all 9 of my characters posing for your viewing pleasure. Rexar of course takes prime position with his long-suffering victim, Tydo.



If you want to visit the new site, click the link below:

RipRoarRex's Realm

Comments welcome about both the site and the banner!

RRRex

The main font (Tempus Sans ITC)... takes some getting used to. The way it is thin and crooked is alright for captions, headers and short paragraphs, but reading entire pages full of it is making my eyes burn. (Maybe I've just been staring at the computer screen too long.)

Still, the addition of your in-depth walkthrough of how you create a piece, with pictures highlighting each step, is a really nice touch. Perhaps you could take it a step further and outline the steps you take between visualization and sketch? I've heard of some artists who start by drawing everything as stick figures or a bunch of ovals, leading to a lot of erasing of faint lines... do you do something like that or do you trace it exactly how you want the finished product to look like before coloring? (That's what I do, but only because I don't want to waste time erasing stuff on purpose.)

The character-themed banners are all quite appealing. I'll get around to reading the new (and improved?) character bios some other time. Overall, stupendous job!

Actually, Tempus Sans ITC has been the primary font for my website since its inception last year, so I didn't see the need to change it. I would be tempted at this moment to say the problem is more to do with the latter bracketed factor than anything else ( Heh!) but it's a matter of opinion really.



The walkthrough is not quite as in-depth as I have posted in the Artwork KnowHow Forums over at Eccentricities, but it is a sort of concise version of that. I haven't mentioned anything about visualisation though. In truth, there is very little to tell - I adopt what I call the Matt Groening approach to cartooning - sod the circles and guidelines, just draw the character! Lol!
It means my characters often come out looking different from one image to another and I frequently find myself having difficulty getting them right first time, but it's a method which I think is imperative to the style.

No pressure to read the vast reams of text on that site, but if you want to, by all means! It'd be nice if at least a few did! Lol! If nothing else, you might find a few errors that I haven't spotted or something.

Thanks mate.

Well, still playing catch-up and I gotta make time to do my taxes today, but I like the refresh your Realm has gotten! That's a really great banner/headline as well...and in case you were wondering, I intend to move your current "welcome to LD5" pic over to the new front page as soon as I makes it!

And man, the King of Rampage...what a great pic. It is so nice to see sexy footpaws continue to come out from your imagination and into graphic form.

Thanks, Dino!

Heh - it's up to you what you do with the old "Welcome to LD5" pic, seeing as by my standards it looks pretty old now, but if people still like it, by all means!

Pretty old, eh? Well, if you'd like to make a new one, I'd be more than happy to use it as well!

...damn...

...I have requests to do. Don't tempt me.

Lol!!! We shall see.