Shooting Stars
“Shooting Stars” is the name of an idea I’ve been developing for years now. Long before any of my short films or comics actually – I was much more immature then, but maybe that’s a good thing. Now before anyone says anything, I’ll just say that this idea came before “Gurren Lagann” and “Oneechanbara” – if these names mean nothing to you, then great, if not, well take my word for it.
Let me break it down to you: “Shooting Stars” is really supposed to be a parody of all the super sentai shows I watched as a kid (Changeman, Flashman, Jaspion, Jiraya), Silverhawks and Thundercats, and of 1980’s Brazilian television kids programming, which is hard for anyone from outside the country to really know what I’m talking about, but just Google the word “Xuxa” or “Paquitas” and you’ll probably get it right away.
She’s “Star 2” but somehow the leader of the group…
“Star 3” is the magic user… though she still carries a gun…
“Star 4″… don’t bring a knife to gun fight, unless that knife is also a gun.
“Star 1” is the rookie… but also the karate/kung fu master.
“Star 5” is just trigger happy… a little too trigger happy.
For me, the thing with parody is that for it to work it has to have an amount of homage to the works being parodied. So far I haven’t gone too far beyond the visual development side of things, and I think that’s partly due to the influences it has: it’s all pretty shallow stuff. But, they keep coming back year after year, and I’m always hesitant to draw them again, but once I start I have fun with them and think “I should do something with these characters…” And so I did. So, expect them to come up soon. I won’t tell you how, and I almost feel like this is kind of a spoiler, but I just felt it was about time to let them out.
(As a side note, each took about an hour or two to sketch. Vega is the first I one I started with this past week and they are posted in chronological order – yet I feel it’s that first one that came out the best… I think I got tighter as I went along, and by the time I got to Zeta, I was being a little too zealous about my lines and tones.)
Of course, expect more to come in the future. If nothing else, drawing them just makes me relax a little about story and just have some fun with character design while learning some painting techniques in the process.
Ré
Damm! Those are some sexy ladies. My only thought on them is to just make the bodies a little bigger. Right now the heads look too big for their bodies. But other than that, these are really fun!
James! Hey man, thanks for the compliment! Yeah, proportions are always hard, and now that you mention it, their torsos are kinda short… not for all of them, but I totally agree with you and will watch out for the next post. Also, I guess that’s what happens when you draw child-like figures for a long time… I gotta learn how to do draw some women, dammit! 🙂
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