Archive for the ‘Illustrations’ Category
2 years, 6 months ago by Chewy , 9 Comments »
Quick note: I added a book image to the last excerpt, so check it out!
Winters brings us to Jeff, who we already established in an earlier blog post as, well, this:
Jeff pushed his covers aside and placed his feet flat on the cold floor with a clang. Peeking out from the bottom of his pajama pants was a support harness made of aluminum, steel, and leather, wrapped around each of his shins. The noise echoed horribly in the depth of the darkness, and just as he always did, Jeff scorned his own unpleasant body—Frankenstein’s modern-day monster. An unshapely, pitiful monster dragging around a ball and chain the weight of a bowling ball around his ankles.
And upon leaving on his journey, he had to deal with, well, this:
By the time Jeff climbed the gray carpeted staircase of the abandoned dormitory, down another staircase, walked through the long hallway, and climbed another staircase to finally reach the entrance hall, he was already panting for breath and out of energy. The iron around his legs made them nearly impossible to bend, and he couldn’t lift them up very far, so he struggled when he didn’t have a handrail to walk against. His joints creaked like an unoiled robot, and his calf muscles were swollen and throbbing in pain.
He realized how Tony had always been by his side, casually supporting him for everything. At the time, he was annoyed with how Tony would meddle into every little thing he did, but now Jeff realized that he had been totally reliant on Tony. It even stopped him from getting proper exercise on a daily basis.
How is a guy like me supposed to make it over fields of snow? Jeff worried. I’ve got to cross the ocean all by myself to go save these people I don’t even know.
–Leading to Maxwell handing over the school’s greatest treasure. But not before Tony gets to him.
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2 years, 6 months ago by Chewy , 3 Comments »
Part four is still part of chapter three, but now that Paula is safe and sound, we come to Threed to check out the area. Let’s get right to business.
The band continued playing an endless medley of music as the bus rolled on. Ness remembered a night long, long ago when he awoke in the middle of the night. He could recall hearing the radio playing some of this from his parent’s bedroom. Paula recognized a few songs she had heard while lying on her dad’s back. The music continued to blast, so everyone in the bus was so caught up with the tunes—not to mention the bus windows completely blocked by costumes and instrument cases—that they didn’t even notice they had already passed through the ghost-ridden tunnel.
The seemingly endless inner-bus gig casually changed to the closing song of auld sang lyne. They took turns with solos; the trumpet, then bass, followed by harmonica, each playing with master technique. Before they knew it, the bus had come to a stop.
“Alriiiiight, we made it to Threed!”
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2 years, 6 months ago by Chewy , 4 Comments »
Our next excerpt takes us to Chapter Three, to one of the sections in the game that translates powerfully into novel form: Happy Happy Village. Fittingly, we find ourselves in a temple that basically resembles a school gym, and in this gym-like stadium we have a stage with a zushi–essentially, a small buddhist shrine shaped like a cupboard that holds a statue of Buddha. This time, though, the doors are housing none other than a small statue of Mani-Mani–there is a mini version of the statue that appears in the book, and here it is.
Carpainter and the Happy-Happyists (a fantastic band name) have just completed their Outstanding Believer Awards Show, wherein believers win awards for outstanding acts of innovation and courage in demonstrating unparalleled faith such as setting free 300 blue coral snakes in a neighborhood area, striking down 50 people–pitiful, unknowing sheep astray from the ways of Blue Blue–with loving smacks until they were covered with so many bruises their skin turned black and blue, and, most Japanesely of all, rewiring every single traffic light in town so that all of them would always display that lovely color of blue-green at all times.
It’s always bizarre when this game novelization, which takes place in the very epitome of America, throws out strictly Japanese cultural cues. I’m not even talking about the Buddhist props being used by Happy-Happyists. I’m talking about the fact that Japanese people, to the chagrin of all non-native Japanese speakers, call the green light of traffic lights “blue”, not green. And now I’m trapped having to convince people that a traffic light has even a vague tint of blue to it.
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2 years, 9 months ago by Chewy , 3 Comments »
Time for another installment of fanart recruitment!
This next excerpt will be from Chapter Two, and rewind a bit to a previous blog post: Just Two Cops in Love.
Jim and Maggie, welcome to the MOTHER 2 novel illustrations. Let’s make this one count.
Behind the glass partition, a crowd of detectives was spitting while consulting one-another, practicing their quick-draws from the holsters beneath their overcoats, and snacking on cherry pie. Others were handling the zealous citizens who’d come to plea for the expulsion of wild dogs or the eradication of youth delinquency.
A group of policemen scuttled through the hallway and out the other door like a SWAT team, knocking some documents out from the arms of a passing female officer. She looked as though she were about to say something, but relented and threw her arms up in exasperation. Ness and Jim helped her with the fallen papers.
“Oh, thank you so much, Jim.” The woman adjusted her crooked glasses and, batting her eyelashes, gazed at Jim. “My goodness, is everyone on edge. I can’t concentrate on my favorite speed traps like this.”
“You’re so right, Maggie.” Jim, with a captivated expression, took her hand. “It’s terrible not being able to see your chalk lines. After all, they are the very best.”
“Tee hee. Well, the way you tear off tickets is so sexy and charming,” she said, girlishly.
“I hope we can set police traps together again soon.”
“Absolutely, honey <3. Let’s dish out those citations together.”
The next illustration for the novel will be the following:
Behind the glass partition, a crowd of detectives was spitting while consulting one-another, practicing their quick-draws from the holsters beneath their overcoats, and snacking on cherry pie. Others were handling the zealous citizens who’d come to plea for the expulsion of wild dogs or the eradication of youth delinquency.
A group of policemen scuttled through the hallway and out the other door like a SWAT team, knocking some documents out from the arms of a passing female officer.
2 years, 11 months ago by Chewy , 6 Comments »
For the illustrations, I’ll provide some more excerpts from the novel–hopefully enough to provide enough visuals to work with. Just a reminder, illustrations should be as detailed and dynamic as possible. Even if you don’t think you have what it takes to make a professional-looking drawing, fanart will be happily accepted for the blog, so don’t let that hold you back!
I hate to screw up the order of the chapters, but I’m going to go back to chapter one and start over for the illustration excerpts. So I’m sorry if it gets confusing when I post illustration excerpts mixed in with excerpts from my current progress. This blog is kind of a draft board, anyway, heh.
The first illustration excerpt is going to be a portion of the novel that I originally intended to keep secret, because I’m still preserving a bag o’ spoilers. I don’t want ALL of the novel ruined before anyone has a chance to read it!
I changed my mind with this part because I thought it would be a fun image to include in the book. I also want to make sure that the images are exclusive to the novel, and not just something that looks straight out of the SNES game.
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2 years, 11 months ago by Chewy , 4 Comments »
Well, now that the translation has passed the halfway point, I want to introduce a new portion to the blog. Hopefully community involvement can carry this beast along as I finish up the rest of the book and head into the long, grueling process of editing the dang thing into oblivion.
I want to include artwork into this project–there’s no artwork included in the Japanese novel, but as long as we’re being flooded with story-lines and scenes that don’t show up in the game, let’s enjoy it and assign some visualization to the madness.
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