3D artwork

Well I am starting to get motivated to write again. Playing persona 4 and my new toy are getting in the way a bit. Here is the further experiments in digital art I have created and mini stories to go with them.




Ranma walked into the suite he shared with his aunt and cousin. "So are we still going out for ice cream Kari-nee?"

Little Akiri perked up at this, but her mother grabbed her shoulder before she could run off. "Sis wants something first."

"And that is?" The young man asked.

"She thought a group picture would be nice." Kari smiled as Ranma's cabbit jumped up on the passthrough to the kitchenette with a digital camera in her paws.

Ranma looked at the young woman with a raised eyebrow. "Why do I get the feeling there is something your not telling me."

"Nothing really," Kari replied with a mischievous grin. "I just wanted to show her us girls getting ready for an ice cream run."

"Ah," Ranma sighed. "I see. You buying the ice cream?"




"So Kari-nee," Ranko asks lightly as they walk along the beach after getting ice cream. "How quickly can you change out of those conservative clothes if we wanted to really knock the food vendors out?"

"Who needs to change clothes?" Kari returns with a giggle. The younger girl lets out an incoherent squeal as she turns.

"Kari-mama!" Akiri shouts.

The red furred cabbit of the group lets out a giggle as she snaps another picture.



On a warm spring day a man walks through a small thicket, wondering at the beauty of nature around him so close to the city. Stumbling and twisting his ankle he suddenly realized that the city might be farther away then he would like.

"Would you like me to to come to your rescue?" A girl's voice asks from behind him. As he turns to look his eyes go wide in shock, and his pain is forgotten to the embrace of sweet oblivion.

The girl giggles as she looks down at his prone form.



"Tell me again why we are doing this." Paru asks the redhead with her on the beach blanket.

"Well we did talk quite a few of the others into posing for pictures for the website." Kari says with a grin down at her ministra.

Haruna Saotome snorts. "Like you really need an excuse to pose."

"And you do?" Kari snickers at the younger girl.

"Okay, enough talking.' Kazumi calls out. "Smile for the birdie!"



Training never stops, not even in heaven. This is just a pic I created to show off the model for Akiri




"What is with these costumes!" Ranko fairly screeched at her aunt.

"You said you wanted to have a photo of yourself and Inhoshi." Kari said with only a slight giggle. "You also let her pic the outfits."

"I wanted something attention grabbing." Ranko's golden eyed body double snickered at her glare. "I thought something like Hanaukyo Maid Team would be fun."

"Even the bed warmer trio in that did not wear anything like this!" Ranko shouted.

"But you promised." Inhoshi sniffled. "Please?"

As her cousin breaks down to the cabbit girl's pleas, Paru leans over to whisper in Kari's ear. "Funny how Ran-chan did not start to protest until after she put the outfit on."

New toy to play with

I finally tried my hand at creating some artwork. I still can't draw but I found a 3D animation program that is fairly fun to work with called DAZ studio. Here is a couple of pictures I have created with it.

Crossover issues

I admit, I only write crossovers.

I personally don't have a desire to simply change something in the story and try to rewrite all the cannon events.

Now the problems I have seen with a lot of crossovers I have read. Authors take characters from one story alter them significantly without a lot of explanation as to why, or try to sell them as cannon characters.

A few months ago, I was asked what I thought of a Ranma and Tenjou Tenge crossover. I said it had possibilities, but a lot of thought and study needed to go into how Ranma could fit into the world of Tenjou Tenge.

I realize now alarm bells should have gone of when the response was attend Todo and maybe work with the Juken club. Obvious answers really, real alarms should have sounded off when the gentleman admitted he did not know the story that well.

Now I will admit I am guilty of bashing on characters or stories. Mostly because I feel like it. When I started "In the Shadow of the Moon" I fully intended to send the amazons, from Ranma 1/2, in with magic weapons and thoroughly humiliate the sailor senshi.

The problem was after reading the Sailor Moon manga, don't ask me to watch the anime I really will rip into them, I just did not have the ire for it anymore. Sailor Moon is basically a romantic drama aimed at young teens, especially girls, with the magical defenders thrown in for added fantasy.

The story is so full of plot holes and inconsistencies it begs to be made fun of. Which is why it is so easy to work other things in. The story taken for what it is though is not bad. The characters are reasonably well developed and well human. Does not mean I can't poke some fun at them.

When you have no idea about the underlying systems that make up a story it is easy to put in random stuff because it sounds cool. My problem is that having absolutely no desire to understand the world your working with shows a basic lack of respect for the original work.

It defintely shows lazyness on the part of the authors involved.

I have no problem with characters growing or developing in ways you want, but not even trying to understand their basic motivations and showing some sort of progression in changing their behavior is insulting.

Now Uber Ranma goes to Todo. Of course he is going to pound on the newbie characters, there is no avoiding that if a fight starts. The better question is why would he suddenly take a fight seriously, just because he is at a new school would be reason for him to be more reserved in showing off his possible aces in the hole.

Having Ranma simply overpower someone likely to be at least physically on par with Ryoga is outside anything he could do in cannon even at the end of the series.

Ki enhancement also does not fly. While it is likely an underlying thing in Ranma, never is it specifically mentioned, nor has Ranma ever been shown to do any training in strength enhancement.

How strong is Ranma?

Something has been bothering me in stories that I have been reading lately.

Just how strong are Ranma and Ryoga? One could easily say they are impressively strong, especially Ryoga, but just how physically powerful are they.

Lets start with Ryoga. The greatest argument for his strength over a long term is the umbrella he carries. Other instantaneous physical feats like pushing himself and Ranma into the air with one arm is impressive but less physically taxing then continually holding up his chosen weapon.

First we need to make a couple of quick assumptions about Ryoga. He and Ranma are about the same height and are definitely not the tallest male characters in the series, actually there is evidence that they might both be shorter then average. The average height for a adult male in Japan in around 5'7" (172 cm).

If we assume a height of 5'7" as a start, and go with the proportion theory that the length of a persons arms is around the same as their height from pictures we can see that the umbrella strapped to Ryoga`s back is slightly longer then half the span of his arms. Going with that let's say that it has a shaft one meter long. Now to find a volume we need a diameter. Assuming they have reasonably large hands then we can say perhaps the shaft of the umbrella is two inches (5 cm) wide.

So a quick calculation of volume using a cylinder. pi*r^2*h= 3.14*2.5^2*100= 1963.5 cm^3

now that we have a value for volume we can look at different metals it could be made of (or filled with) to find a weight. The most likely candidates are steel, iron, or lead.

Steel and iron have around the same density at 7.874 g/cm^3.

Lead is much heavier at 11.34 g/cm^3.

So to find a max let's look at lead. 11.34*1963.5 = 22,266.1 g or 22.2 kg = 49 lb

Steel would be both stronger and lighter then this.

Considering this could be a third to a half the weight of an average high school age boy in japan, it is not really that surprising they would find this very heavy. This still does not make it a superhuman feat to use.

Now to the crux of the problem. At the beginning of the series Ranma as a female did pick up the umbrella and hold it defensively, even opening it up to deflect Ryoga's bandannas. Even then this is not a superhuman feat to do, especially considering she kept it tucked in close to her body.

No where in the story after this did Ranma ever do heavy weight training to increase his strength beyond this in either form. Ranma`s training was extensively on speed.

No where was there any discussion of Ki enhanced strength, let alone Ranma learning techniques for it. On several occasions they show female Ranma lifting large chunks of ice or stone, but this was always an instantaneous action that involved lots of adrenalin and leverage.

Now for the biggest argument I could offer against Uber Ranma. Regardless of how strong he might be, outside of a life or death situation why would he reveal so much about his abilities to an opponent?

Ranma is a secretive individual by nature. He almost never in the series talked about his past with anyone, the only exception would be him discussing the dragon's wisker.

Almost all exposition about the past was done by Genma so he could try to portray himself in the best possible light.

Hallelujah

Not really related to the stories here, other then getting rid of roadblocks to working on them.

Now I have a real reason to celebrate, I have completed my defense and just have a few edits left to submit my master`s report and get my degree.

So to celebrate let me show you the newest picture I had created. For once a male Ranma gets to show off his charm.
The characters in the picture are Ranma Kadoya, a.k.a Kamen Rider Decade from "Anime Rider Worlds", and Natsuki Kuga a.k.a Kamen Rider Yuki Ookami from "In the Shadow of the Moon".