Specege Parade

I’ve been doing a lot of these guys. If you’ve been following my tumblr or my dA you’ve probably seen a couple. I just decided to do one big super post where I put all of ‘em in and talk about them briefly. VERY BRIEFLY.

First the coloured digital ones:

Shine – Protagonist/Adventurer/Professional boxer/Dude with a dark past

Anima – Romantic interest… I know it’s a bit obvious with the friggin heart on her chest. I’ll redesign her son enough. I’m prolly gonna give her a paw print instead.

Yo – Rival/Ex-Professional boxer

Dory – Teacher/Swimming aficionado

Floss – Thief/Parkourist

Foresite – Friend of Shine/Dude with equally dark past

Kiss – Gang leader

Smith – Grunt/Engineer

Spore – Nerd/Biological warfare expert/ Fungus aficionado

Ought-Head – Violent dick/Arsonist/Generally disagreeable fellow

 

Powerhaus – Experiment gone wrong/Juggernaut/Heavy

Now the traditional stuff:

First digitally colored stuff

Autoplasm – Phantom of mechanics and also the opera when he feels like it

DroyD – Generic robot grunt

Hot Staph – Colleague of Spore/Rash aficionado

Infa – Information and communication officer/General grumpy badger

An now uncoloured stuff… Though these are my favourites and I will tell you nothing about them.

Belloon

Party Fay

Eyelead

Short Stick

Varcity

Wipp

And my mind is done vomiting on to this poor unsuspecting blog. In case you haven’t noticed I made this one long on purpose. Makes it look like I got lotsa content

…Also I tried to keep them in scale with one another. Bare in mind that they are a Lilliputian species, so this is also probably their life-size too. 

Ugh I’m such a horrible father! D:

Yeah it’s been an entire summer since I’ve been here last hasn’t it?

Well I’ll have you know that I’ve been spending it in an extremely busy and work-addled state – alternatively undercut with spectacular bouts of procrastination.

I'm now in second year at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts and the work load is fairly stressful. In light of this I’m going to revamp my timetable as of tonight – hopefully – to accommodate a better online presence.

Prepare for incoming blogroll!

I can be found at:

deviantArt: jonozoom on dA and MandelaSix on dA

YouTube: jonozoom’s channel 

Tumblr: The Jonotoans Invade! and LipsLipsLips

Twitter: @Mandela808 and @jonozoom 

and saving the best for last:

My work site and online portfolio, Jonathan Nelson Designs.com

And of course the Phantom Force 5 itself.

Stay tuned for new content!

The Fulord

Hey all, it’s been awhile… Are you mad at me?

I’ve got some s’plaining to do, I know. Don’t worry my faithful subjects, you will find the tales of my absence and more on my tumblrrrrr.

Today I decided that I wanna talk about one of the alien races I’ve been developing called the Fulord.

The Fulord are a gelatinous species of alien from the far-away Planet Fulaag (pictured right). An asexual species, they are born as secretions from the mineral Fulophite, that can be found all over their planet. Fulords are generally impossibly ancient, and share a collective consciousness and intelligence with all other Fulord there and across the universe.

Besides their telepathic abilities, as a result of their biological composition the Fulord can fuse with the physiology of all other alien species. They form a mutually symbiotic relationship with a host creature, and are able to use their bodies as a means of locomotion as well as for other purposes. Otherwise – much like a plant – the Fulord are constantly rooted.

Fulaag is inhabited with few other species, all of them spineless. For eons the Fulord used the other creatures on the planet as limbs, such as with the Champions of Gurble (pictured left). This Fulord society is known for using a worm called the S’Buxit as makeshift arms, and using a Scyphozoid creature called a Plue as a locomotive appendage.

As of 10 years ago a colossal meteor strayed into the orbit of Fulaag, eventually colliding with the planet and sending chunks of Fulophite careening across the galaxy at incredible speeds. These minerals crash-landed on alien worlds, resulting in young Fulord being born and fusing with creatures from all over the star-system.

These include (but are not limited to):

• The Gawen

A race of pseudo-humanoid beings that have yet to achieve space flight themselves, but still get lots of intergalactic traffic. Well known for their artisan and trading culture they have two arms for heavy lifting, and two arms for delicate work. This Gawen (pictured right) in particular gained intergalactic enlightenment from her amalgamation with the Fulord collective, eventually becoming a space-traveller. I have a lot of sketches of these guys, so they’ll probably get their own post.

• The Som Nom

I’ve spoken about the Som Nom briefly in this post. Basically they’re SPACE ZOMBIES. This guy in particular had already achieved an advanced state of mutation, when he stumbled… shambled upon the crash-site of a chunk of Fulophite. As we all know, a mutated Som Nom’s brain is in the giant eyeball. Suddenly he finds himself with two brains – one of which has an incalculably large mental capacity. Boy he must be really confused now.

• Terrans

Ya’ll were waiting for this one (I know, don’t lie). A car-tire sized fragment of Fulophite landed in Green Lake, Wisconsin, and was quickly found by a college student named Chloe Olivier. From it was born five young Fulord, who for her curiosity, tried to possess her body. Unlike many other alien species who can only fuse with one Fulord at a time, Terran human physiology allows us to combine with many of them at once.

The Fulord can diffuse into her body at will, but since they still retain their mass, this ends up with – as she would call them – unfortunate side effects.

Luckily for her, she eventually figures out how to turn the Fulord into any shape she needs. This means that they can even become articles of clothing, or weapons. With her newfound companions and abilities she becomes the super-heroine The Jade Bug!

In conclusion, I love the concept of the Fulord. The only problem is that I recently looked at their standard design and realized that… well… it’s boring. So I made a line-up sheet for some new designs. Rather than them all looking the same, I wanted to give their designs some more character.

Phew! That’s enough for this post everyone. Ciao!

New junk

Unfortunately for me, I seem to have misplaced my faithful jump drive Amber. I just found this out as I sat down to write this post, and though it seems like a bearable concept to most this is an especially dreadful set of circumstances.

I will continue my search tomorrow, but if she just happens to be where I think she is, she’s probably already dead.

Sigh.

On a lighter note.

Just a few new sketches just to show I’m always doing something.

This is a female warrior from the planet Karparu (Pictured Left). The Karparu are one of the five alien races that joined together to form the invading force of the Periphera from my tentative series, Big Ego.

This person in particular is a war-pilot named SeLe, and is one of the best on Karparu. This isn’t a finished design, just a sketch.

Each member of the Periphera has one of the five senses as their theme. For the Karparu it’s touch of course, hence the large hands, extra pair of hands on her shoulders, and five bent horns on her head signifying the five fingers on the hand.

Originally the five horns were open, but now I’m considering leaving them closed for some and open for others. Maybe a way to distinguish between different ethnicities in Karparu culture.

Next is a mini-study of one of my favourite characters from Paranormal (I have a lot of favourites from this series) Alphabet K formerly known as Kick Gato. I won’t go into her story too much in this post, that’s for a future Character Bio.

I will tell you that she runs a gym/bar & grill called Knock-Outs. In the mornings it’s a gym, and she holds self-defence classes for whoever is interested. When evening turns, the tv’s turn on, the drinks come out, the food start’s-a-cookin’ and the people come runnin’. During the series, this will be one of the settings of leisure for this blog’s titular characters, The Phantom Force 5.

Otherwise, quite a bit of the recurring female protagonists will show up in the mornings to train, spar and be taught by K. Even Turnip (seen in this post) , when finally coaxed to come out of her house by Marshmallow – now affectionately dubbed MaMa - takes up classes at Knock-Outs to try and build back her confidence.

These two are the aunt and mother of the main female protagonist in Paranormal, Ribbon Knot. I will get into her story in a later post, maybe.

At any rate, this is Butterfly Flutter, and her little sister Moth. Moth is the mother of Ribbon and her brother Bow, whereas Butterfly has no children and is quite satisfied with that fact.

It’s a classic tale of ugly-duckling I suppose? Throughout their youth, Butterfly was exalted for her natural elegance, while plain old moth was generally ignored.

Everyone who saw the fantastic patterns on butterfly’s wings (She wraps around her body to use as a type of natural dress; this was originally Moth’s ideas) would immediately fall in love with her staggering beauty. Inspired by this idea, Moth decided to make outfits that could capture and harness that same beauty. She wanted to be as adored as her sister, but unfortunately she couldn’t change the wings she was born with.

Eventually she realized she had a passion for designing and making clothes – outside of the need to look like her sister – and decided it was her calling. Currently she is one of the greatest and richest designers in the world, has a wonderful husband named Tie and two gorgeous and talented children, while her sister makes a living as a professional goldigger. Go figure.

I just noticed that this post is pretty much completely composed of females. Not that I’m complaining.

I’ve been thinking about doing one post a week on this blog, and at least one a day on my tumblr. This artblog is more like my personal website, and not really a up-to-date recap of recent events, especially not with the directions I want to take. I need to type up things ahead of time though, and thanks to the publish-date-setting-thingie I can type up a post today, and set it to come out on Saturday if I want it to. Until then.

Ciao.

I have a tumblr

Yeah I have a tumblr account now, just in case anyone is interested in following me there.

The Jonatoans Invade!

Enjoy!

Ciao.

When Emoticons attack!

This is one of a set of new headers that I made for use on the site. There are also headers for my concept art, as well as some other secret content that I was planning on releasing soon. Sorry for the crappy quality, the pictures were heinously blurry. Unfortunately, until I can get a scanner, the rest of the headers are gonna pretty much have this same quality.

But I digress.

This is Broken Smiley, a psychopath from my most developed series so far: Paranormal. His real name is Sphere Bearing, and he is a homeless murderer.  

Wielding a completely totaled, yet once sophisticated suit of attribute-enhancing armor, he stalks the pitch-black back-alleys of the city of Feldspar.

He spends the daytime pick-pocketing as his means of income. His nights, however are a different story. Waiting in a dark corner of a parking lot, or behind the dumpster at the back of a restaurant, he delights in meeting any unsuspecting individuals who were unlucky enough to bump into him. Completely insane, he loves nothing more than killing. It is now his hobby… though it used to be his job.

Meet Smiley. He is notorious as being the greatest assassin on the planet. Whoever he’s been hired to kill, has met their end, one way or another. Smiley actually got his name from his employers, who at the time mocked him for his appearance. He quickly proved his legitimacy by slicing one of his client’s drinking glass in half from across the room, without any indication as to how he had done so. Needless to say, his employers were impressed, and it all started from there.

Smiley’s suit increases his strength, speed and senses tenfold. This makes him a perfect-shot every time – he could clip the legs off of a Sneaker* from 2000 yards away – with the suit accounting for wind disturbance, air pressure, humidity, etc, etc.  He can make calls and perform research on targets with the suit as well, using a holographic HUD interface in the helmet and a constant connection to the Network**. It comes with a series of retractable short range and long range weapons, as well as the pièce de résistance: three different sniper rifles of increasing range stored as data in the suit’s memory banks.

In his time Smiley became a legend. Other assassins saw him as an example of perfection. He left no trace of himself after his task was completed, and the only people who new of his existence were those willing to hire him.

One day he was hired by a mysterious benefactor to kill the main hero of Paranormal, Ghost. The idea was that to cut diamond, you use a diamond – to kill a ghost you use a ghost. Unfortunately for Smiley’s client (and eventually Smiley himself) this philosophy works both ways.

What began as a simple assassination attempt, exploded into a prolonged battle, fueled by Ghost’s inability to stay down and Smiley’s refusal to let dead men walk away. It ended with Ghost being almost fatally wounded and Smiley’s armour being essentially broken in half.

All the hype surrounding him had gotten to his head. He thought he was untouchable. He thought once Smiley was on the job you were a dead-man. He thought no one would ever see his true face again, not even himself. He was wrong.

Driven mad by this realization he fled from Newstate, some say he even fled the country, and was never seen again. After a while he was pretty much presumed dead, the legend dying with him.

But what’s this? Inexplicable murder’s are turning up in Feldspar? People afraid to leave their homes at night? The perpetrator is completely untraceable?… As if he was a ghost?

Just keep smiling kids!

Ciao. 

*A Sneaker is essentially the Planetarian equivalent of a Terran chicken. Like chicken’s they are flightless and delicious, but unlike chickens they are especially fast and very silent, hence the name.

**The Network is the Planetarian equivalent of our internet. It pretty much functions in the same way.

THE “DEATH STAR” SAGA… DUNDUNDUUUNNN!!

These days I’m mostly doing concepts and designs as practice for big projects, or if my eventual job involves conceptualizing. If I keep coming up with new ideas my imagination will stay healthy, because it gets regular exercise… This being the reason why I should start reading again.

Back to the topic.

I’ve been writing down concepts and making up series since I was in prep school – for the sake of foreigners in my audience: basically elementary school. Now, I would be all happy and boasting about this fact if it weren’t for the realization that most if not all of my series were largely unoriginal.

The few I can remember off the top of my head that were actually completely original are:

• Jono Zoom – which I speak about in this post.
• Ninja Cats – Though this is only a half-qualifier since it showed a lot of influence from Thundercats which had been running on the Cartoon Network at the time. I’ll probably go more into the Ninja Cats in a later post.

One of the least favorite of my old ideas was the Death Star series, a vague story about a motley crew of individuals from a bunch of different alien worlds being dubbed Death Stars and getting together to save their solar system from… Something. Destruction? I don’t friggin know.

I’m not entirely sure about the new story either. I believe there’s some kind of interstellar despot involved?… And maybe a tournament? Each planet chooses their best and brightest to represent them in a contest for their lives? Notice how I’m asking questions here? I’m just not sure.

I like these designs too. I’m not going to do anything with them most likely, but I still think they at least deserve a proper back-story. I will continue to work on it. Also I think I’m gonna change the name to Star Savers. Not only is “Death Star” an unoriginal name, it’s a misleading one too. The name Death Stars make them sound like villains.

It consists of 9 heroes from 9 different worlds; each one vastly different from the other.

The monk Kar Dio from the chilly Planet Mente, the war hero Grizzlion from the scarred Planet Ross, the mechanical marvel Ducois from the divided Planet Servol 20 (drawn but not pictured), the king of the skies – all skies – Tein Bova of the windy Planet So Ar, etc, etc.

I probably gonna bring them all up race by race once I finish them all, cuz to tell you the truth: I’m having a lot of fun with these guys.

My favorite so far is the Rossians because of the relationship that they’ve built with some of the planet’s fauna. There’s – what can best be described as – a type of mollusk on Ross called a Baquelez. For centuries the Rossians have used the Baquelez as containment devices or as holsters, while the Baquelez have become domesticated, and are fed by their owners. The pictures I have of them so far are too small so I couldn’t get a good one, but the swirly things on Grizzlion that look like an alien utility belt are actually Baquelez curled up around various items of his. They produce a sticky fluid that helps keep them things fastened to them when they’re being used as holsters. For example in the image above Grizzlion is drawing some kind of gun from a Baquelez that had curled its body around it, keeping it in place.

Here are two Rossian women chatting about the day's happenings while letting their Baquelez roam (right). If used in a casual setting, Baquelez are usually worn as living bracelets.

Species mutualism is an interesting concept, and it helps distinguish this planet from the others.

I should be doing more of these in the future.

But until then

Ciao