I don't actually DO "fanart" of the guys. I primarily specialize in AoD-specific characters or illustrate scenes involving the guys interacting with them. Some of my earliest drawings were my first Vanguards: Tanya Sanada, Raurgoth, Danae, Black Hawk, Mal Daggur, and Trakar. In order to avoid potential copyright snags, I only use self-made artwork for World Anvil, so any new artwork featuring RW: OAS characters has to be drawn from scratch: no official RW/YST artwork or stills from the OAS. Companies have a strong tendency to be very hostile towards fan efforts even if they are a labor of love (*cough*Astartes*cough*OGL...), so photobashes are off-limits too.
I only ever posted artwork on one site that shut down nearly twenty years ago. I had wanted to post drawings on Elfwood during its heyday but held off because I didn't feel "good enough". Ironically by the time my drawing style improved to a level I felt comfortable with, Elfwood sadly shut down in 2017. I'm too much of an introvert to use conventional social media and what applications I do use are strictly for communicating with immediate friends. There are newer sites that claim to cater to artists, but on top of plotting behind their customer's backs to sacrifice creators to their AI pagan gods like the Children of Vaal in ST: TOS, they also seem to attract a rather unsavoury clientele which-quite frankly-need to be nuked from orbit...
But I digress. I already had partially-completed sketches and subjects lined up to focus on for WorldEmber '23, and I had a choice between Ryo's monstrous alter-ego Demon Ryo or Roxi Hirochner, Rowen's new girlfriend. I decided to go with Roxi since I couldn't quite decide how to categorize Demon Ryo at the time. I had a good amount of sketches prepped for Roxi, and this one featuring Rowen in his Strata II Armor would end up being one of the most challenging...
Oldest Sketch of Roxi Hirochner by Mardrena
Sharpshooters Side-By-Side Pencil Sketch by Mardrena
Raw Sketch
I actually had to erase and redraw this because the scene in particular positions Roxi to the left of Rowen, while the first doodle had her on his right and the shot reversed. The composition is inspired from a scene from the TV miniseries "Buffalo Girls" where Annie Oakley and a rival marksman are in the midst of a high-stakes competition and the camera pans down from on high. After I started over and redid the positioning, I ran into another snag... The redraw had Rowen viewed from the front with his bow in his right hand, but after consulting OAS stills and artwork, I realized he predominantly holds his bow with his
left hand and draws with his
right. I think what threw me off was the old practice of reversing images to avoid copyright flags on geocities/tripod/angelfire sites... So I had to erase him
completely and redraw him
AGAIN, which frustrated me to no end since I'd put so much effort into getting that
STUPID KNOT AT HIS WAIST just right... You can just barely see the old lines.
Closeup of Sketch 1: Roxi and Rowen by Mardrena
Close-up of Sketch 2: Roxi and Rowen by Mardrena
riginally I only had a handful of grainy/low-res references I'd collected from online years ago to go by. I swear if there were a complete compilation of all RW/YST artwork in one volume I'd pay $1000. I managed to find a huuuuuge artbook for
Persona 5 at Anime Matsuri, but it is pulling teeth trying to find anything from RW/YST OAS. There was a special edition artbook released for the 30th anniversary but only place that seems to have copies for sale is ebay and the *
bleep* I'm touching THAT...
The guys are featured in their 2.0 Armors in the finale of episode 5 of OVA Message, and even then very briefly. There were only a handful of portrayals in official artwork and usually either close-up shots or specific angles. Unlike the semi-futuristic samurai style of the "vanilla" Armors, the 2.0 Armors sport a more ornate, antiquated style with lots of curved surfaces and flourishes. Thankfully with the 30th Anniversary Celebration, Sunrise posted colorized-versions of original concept art featuring both front and back full-body views of the guys in their 2.0 Armors. With these high-quality references, I was able to redraw Rowen in Strata II properly down to every last seam and rivet...
Onward to Inkscape!
Outlining and Swatching
Sharpshooters Vector Lines by Mardrena
Sharpshooters Swatched by Mardrena
Strata II Detail Assets by Mardrena
hen drawing Roxi holding her Sharps, I used a broom as a reference for the position of the arms. I thought about visiting the gun store just down the street, but they might've given me funny looks if I asked to take pictures of a rifle being aimed, even if strictly for artistic reference. I slightly adjusted the position of her arms in Inkscape since I thought it looked off in the original sketch even after the redraw. In order to maintain consistency with colors, I copy/pasted the hexcodes from both Rowen and Roxi's portrait images. I borrowed the Strata Emblem and rivet assets from Rowen's portrait in order to shave time.
Strata II Details
Close-up of Helmet by Mardrena
Close-up of Quiver by Mardrena
Close-up of Legs by Mardrena
hen drawing the portraits for the guys in 2.0 Armor, I had to do extensive research when vectorizing them because I'd actually drawn the tab on Rowen's helmet the wrong way. Because the only references I had were low-res, I couldn't quite make it out, but with the newer high-res references from both the YST site and the 30th Anniversary OAS HD Remaster, I was able to correct it by simply flipping it in Inkscape. For the rivets I simply duplicated and rotated as needed to match the lighting of the scene. The quiver proved challenging to draw on paper, but Inkscape's Power Stroke path-effect really made it shine: figuratively and literally! I was able to scale and skew the emblem to fit accordingly.
Bow and Gun Details
Bow Grip Close-Up 1 by Mardrena
Bow Grip Close-up 2 by Mardrena
Arrow and Muzzle-flash Close-up by Mardrena
ecause drawing each individual part of the wrapping on Rowen's bow would just be silly, I drew a couple rows then created a group using Ctrl+G and duplicated using Ctrl+D and stamped along the length, adjusting as necessary until I had the entire grip covered. The arrow and muzzle flash are entirely power stroke! When researching the Sharps I came across a video of a guy test-firing one on a block of ballistic gel. This is the stuff you see in crime shows to test the force of a bullet. The block was nearly two feet long and set up on a wooden table. The shot from the Sharps
BOUNCED THE BLOCK UP OFF THE TABLE and nearly smashed the table itself in half! Talk about a big boomstick!
The Sharps used cartridges instead of shells like modern .50's, so I drew a single cartridge and duplicated and stamped to create Roxi's bandoleers under her jacket. Only after I'd completed the full vector drawing did I realize I had actually placed the ladder sights (the little ring doodad) in the wrong location. It should be lower along the stock, closer to where her chin is, and while I could always move it in Inkscape, I'm not going to lose sleep over it. Most of the time in animation forms are simplified enough for viewers to recognize something but easy enough to draw quickly, so while some eagle-eyed viewers might be able to nitpick, sometimes its okay to take liberties.
BlackInk Background Time!
Sharpshooters Background by Mardrena
had made a personal pledge to use BlackInk in as much of the artwork for WorldEmber as possible. The devs had recently released a paid update which caused a bit of a nontroversy and ruffled quite a bit of feathers with users due to a years-old 'free updates' pledge when it was first released nearly a decade ago. The amount of
SALT on the forums would've shamed an entire
pallet of Morton Brand salt... Bleank is pretty much a Mom-and-Pop studio and the base BI program a one-time purchase for
far less than some games these days. I would rather support them as much as I can than flush money down the toilet with other programs where everyone and their literal
mom demands "subscriptions".
The scene takes place in the
Dark Territory, a nightmarish, blighted, desolate landscape. I started off with a simple Linear Noise gradient then used the Wet Ink Cloudy brush to add in some messy overcast. For the ground I used a combination of Swarm, Bubbles, Sticks, and Blur brushes to create a sort of discolored gravelly soil and one of my favorite brushes-Smudge Scatter Trebeculum- to blend things a bit. Using the Ruins brush I added in a few scraggly looking dead trees in the distance.
The Final Piece
After exporting I used Paint.net to add in the blur, noise, and saturation tweaks for the grainy-cel effect.
Full-size
Sharpshooters Side-by-Side (Scene from Aftermath Ch. 12) by Mardrena
I really liked how it turned out in the end. My goal before making entries for OAS characters is about 10-12 images for any given character, so pieces like these I hope to incorporate for Core Cast articles. In addition to giving form to my Vanguards, I get to hone my skill drawing the guys as well! I see so many fan productions where a guy in his literal mom's basement can make something fabulous that hearkens back to the original and far surpasses any current productions only to either get hit with a cease-and-desist or get legally kidnapped.
One example of a fantastic fan-production is the "
Berserk" '97 "Season 2" pilot. One of these days I'd love to do something of that quality, but I've got quite a bit on my plate, and even that took a dedicated team of incredibly talented artists. I thought about calling up a old acquaintance from school and hire her to do art for me, but I simply do not have the financial wiggle-room currently. So in lieu of that, I'll simply have to do as much as possible on my own!
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