Light of Shadows
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Bandigalz Update
🕑 Added 2020-05-05 08:40:05 +0000 UTCGrammar Warning
It’s super late and I pretty much just typed this in so please forgive any grammar issues.
TL:DR
I’ve scrapped a lot of bloat from the bandigalz project and finally settled on a concept for the first bandigalz series which will be Bandigalz N. Flated. I kept some other concepts for later in case this goes well and I want to make more bandigalz stuff. Also, I want to give a thanks to everyone that’s been supporting, especially those that chimed in when things got really REALLY bad in my home life situation. I appreciate everyone being patient and while I’m going to continue working at my own pace, I hope folks stick around for not only bandigalz stuff but just more stuff in general.
Bandigalz Update
So originally I wanted to do a series of expansion comics featuring female characters from the N. Sane Universe spanning across every level in the trilogy plus a few levels from lesser known games and concepts while incorporating the various costumes that where being released with CTR, styles based on character concept art and do all of this with each level being a 22 page (24 if counting the covers) comic. needless to say, i have countless spreadsheets and draft files trying to make this work dating back to over a year ago and it became a mess. So I decided that enough was enough and stripped down all the Ideas I had come up with to the core ones that I thought would work best. I don't want to spoil to much, but I know people have been waiting for a while so I want to at least explain what I've settled on.
Many Ideas consolidated into Five Brief Concepts.
Since I didn’t want to trash everything outside of the main series I’ve decided to break those concepts down and save them for later, as well as giving them names to help me keep organized. If the First Series of Bandigalz does well and I want to continue working with N Sane characters, I do have some Ideas in mind but they’re not as fleshed out as the main Series.
• Bandigalz N. Flated (Main Series): Instead of jumping across games, I want the First Series to be based on the Trilogy and have settled on a name similar to that of the remake. Instead of the original 24 pages per issue, I’ve opted for 12 pages (10 without front and back covers). While I plan for the comics to be primarily digital, I’m designing them with Print in mind, which is why page number has been an issue as it must follow a leaf structure to print correctly and I don’t want to add blank pages to completed issues. This is an aside, but I’d like to make sure that everything reads well in both digital and print as working on this comic is also helping me with non-fetish works and hopefully learning how to do my own prints at home in a semi-professional way.
• Bandigalz XL (Follow up Series): Will be built around the GBA Crash Titles and focus on Nina and Evil Coco Teaming up.
• Bandigalz Nitro Fueled Wumpas (Pin Up Collection): A series of pin ups featuring all the costumes of Coco, Tawna, Ami, Megumi, Liz, Isabella, Nina, Pasadena, Yaya and perhaps some guest characters from the Spyro Series. I’ll be taking some artistic liberty with the costumes, specifically with the ones that are pretty much just recolors in hopes of making references to other games and franchises. I prefer this idea over bandigalz carnival but we’ll see when we get there.
• Bandigalz Carnival (Mini Series): A collection of short expansion comics focused on Ami, Megumi, Liz and Isabella and the games of crash Bash. I feel I’ll be better able to justify using their CTR costumes here and I think working with crash bash will be easier then attempting to work with CTR as far as comic structure works.
• Bandigalz Eve: The Bandigalz enter the metroidvania realm of Eve, corrupting the dark horror of the world with Warner brothers inspired antics and a technicolor palette, leading to trouble for both the hero and villain of the Eve Saga. Will take heavy inspiration from metroid, shantae and other similar games and will most likely be non-cannon to the Eve Story line. Both Eve and Bandigalz has to do well for me to want to do this so it’s last on the list.
• Bandigalz X-Mas Special: I recovered the working files and script so I’ll be finishing that also. When and in what order? Not sure yet.
Consolidating Bosses and Levels from the N Sane Trilogy
Instead of doing every level from the trilogy, I've decided to only to one level per level theme from each of the three games. I've chosen to include the bonus levels from crash one and added two cut levels from the original PS1 game that seemed unique enough (and functional enough) for me to build upon. As for bosses, I decided to have the main antagonist to serve as the boss throughout instead of having to design several additional characters to go along with a new Dark mask.
I was originally going to style the comic as a grand adventure across the world but have instead settled on designing a new warp room so I could incorporate crash bandicoot warped levels without having to go into a huge explanation as to how they’re able to revisit those levels. I may alter their themes slightly so that they’re less time travel focused but we’ll see.
So in all I've chosen 42 level themes to work with and 7 bosses that i think will work well for a comic. Along with a Prologue comic to set things up and use some characters that I decided to cut from the main focus there are 50 planned issues, each at 10 pages, 12 pages including covers.
Costumes and designs
Needless to say doing costumes has been dropped because i couldn't fit everyone's different outfits to different level themes in a way that I was happy with. Instead I've opted to redesign the characters for the needs of the comic and will alter costumes when fitting for the level or for parody reasons.
I want their main designs to be close to their CTR-NF versions, though coco will probably be sporting a look a little closer to her twinsanity design just with my usual "big hair" look that i prefer for her. I will be working on finalizing these designs and uploading them once they are completed.
Expansion
Each featured character to have a different expansion type in each issue they’re featured in. after breaking down the series to 50 issues and choosing to use the first issue as the prologue I decided to split the remaining 49 issues into 7 acts.
Each act will have one of the 7 main characters getting expanded, with no expansion type repeating within an act and no character having the same expansion through the entire series. As far as comic lore goes, each expansion will be connected to a specific colored Topaz in the level or used by the boss.
• Breast – Blue Topaz
• Booty – Red Topaz
• Belly – Green Topaz
• Bimbo - (Breast+booty) – Magenta Topaz
• BBW - (Booty+belly) – Yellow Topaz
• Breeder - (Belly+Breast) – Cyan Topaz
• Blimp - (Breast, Booty & Belly / spherical) – light Gray Topaz
Main Characters
After cutting down the levels and selecting 7 bosses to work with I decided that since this series is called Bandigalz I would focus on the Bandicoot Characters and giving them skill sets to spice up how I represent the levels in the comics. I may alter these in the future but they’re based around the super abilities from the games, with coco being the standard.
• Coco – BandiPro: Tried and True Bandigal with Crash 2 Skill set.
• Tawna – BandiBlaster: Wrist mounted wumpa shooters and grappling hook.
• Ami – BandiPower: Super Slam and the ability to and throw certain crates and enemies.
• Megumi – BandiDash: Moves faster and can ninja dash past Enemies.
• Liz – BandiSpin: Death Tornado Spin and glide with tazmanian devil movement.
• Isabella – BandiBallet: Higher jump and can land on and walk across nitro crates at normal speed.
• Evil Coco – BandiBoss: Uses the 7 variants of Toxic Topazes to mimic boss abilities.
Side Characters
These are the characters that will either only be in the comic briefly, play a supporting role or will be featured in future bandigalz projects.
• Pasadena & Yaya: I wanted to narrow how many characters I was working with but decided to use them in the prologue issue.
• Crash & Crunch: They have a small cameo in the prologue comic. Originally I wanted crash to be the first expanded victim of toxic wumpa and I still have that finished script so I may do that comic once I’m done. I’ve yet to decide.
• Nina Cortex: Originally, Nina was going to be the main antagonist. However as I wanted to have a new mask and the 10th dimension was a good place for it to hail from. So I opted to evil coco instead. However, Nina, Pasadena, yaya, Crash and crunch are characters that I want to feature in the next bandigalz adventure after this series is over. We’ll see when we get to that point.
• Deprava: The name of the new mask, sealed away within Toxic Topaz gemstones which scatter across the world after evil coco frees them and begins corrupting wumpa in those areas, with both the gems and wumpa causing expansion. Deprava Shares her name shake with a character from Eve and is a projection of their will, but being in the realm of the Bandigalz and crossing from the 10th dimension has rendered their powers to being a nuisance rather then deadly. However, if a Bandigal becomes immobilized, it’s game over.
Last Notes
I already have the first 8 Scripts finished and ready for story boarding and I have the Outlines for all 50 issues done as of today. While The Eve Data Logs is also on my mind, it’s planned to be one large comic and kinda pales in comparison to the effort I’ve put into Bandigalz. I really want this to be something successful and to run along side the usual pin ups and single images that I make.
Currently, Besides Work, getting my life in order and Commissioned stuff (wedding is kinda up in the air due to the Backstreet boys reunion tour but I’m still helping with that) Bandigalz has been my main focus for a while now. I honestly can’t begin to go into how many times I allowed ideas, writing and sketches to get way out of hand and how many scrapped files ended up in the recycle bin.
After taking time to get my life back in order and coming back to the project I found that I was still interested in it, even though I still want to work on other things in between. I also think reducing it down to this will be much better as far as presentation and focus.
With all of this said however, I will still be uploading things when they are finished and when I’m able to work on them. I do not want to over burden my self like before and would like to enjoy the creative process. I know that to most, It might just be fetish content and that’s ok. But to me it’s also the chance to do a larger project, to learn from it and develop my skills. In addition to that, the primary reason I’m doing this is because I love the characters and the series. The Bandicoots where my very first video game experience after all. So this time I’m going to do my best not to spoil it for my self and try to put out good work over rushed work. From the responses I’ve seen, you all would prefer that.
Lastly, having mentioning that, I want to thank everyone that’s been supporting me. From the Views to the Faves, to checking in when life shoves lemons down my throat and giving me helpful advice and encouragement, the patience and patreons and just the general awesomeness I’ve seen on FA and my other pages. I want you to know that I do really appreciate it. I know these updates are long overdue but work and life has been crazy as I’m sure it has been for you all as well. So I’m hoping that you all are staying safe out there and that things haven’t gotten too rough.
