Yugioh Card Summoner

CH.615 Getting Painters

Today I was again working on my new Yugioh card project.

See, while I did manage to do the printing and all of that, the idea of having hand painted cards stuck to me. So I threw out some feelers and decided to hold an art competition.

The idea was simple. Paint or draw or scribe, or whatever something. Maybe a monster, or a knight, or maybe a legendary figure and show it to me. The showing part can be done by someone with a phone taking a picture of it and sending it to me. The ones that I like get to move on, and might get a job as an artist for the Wood Trading Card Company. I

Yes, that is what I named the trading card company. It is boring, but I don’t care. I’m not going to steal ‘wizards of the coast’ or something like that. Besides, that sounds more like a clan name for an adventuring clan.

Also, I think I need to specify a few things. The Yu-Paint shop is the card production facility inside HomeBase. That is not the name of the company selling the cards. All of my trading is done under the ‘Wood Company’. Wood Trading Card Company and Tahlia Technologies are both subsidiaries under it. And the Yu-Paint shop is just a single workshop working for the Wood Trading Card Company. I know bureaucracy is stupid, but I have to deal with it.

Anyway. I actually got more pictures than expected. A lot of them came from the magic academies, as they advertised it the best. I suppose when a sage asks for something, magic academies tend to do as asked. Many of them depicted me with Sephylon, the Ultimate Timelord. They must remember it from when I held the magic lectures at different schools.CH.541

Most of them were … not so good, but a few were actually quite nice.

There was a guy who either misunderstood, or perfectly understood, the assignment as he just drew a very detailed magic circle. It was Dark Magic, but if you attempted to use it, it would actually fizzle out because of a few flaws. But still, a card showing a magic circle like this could definitely be printed. 

Stuff like Spellbinding Circle, Serial Spell, Double Spell and every Rank-Up-Magic could use a design somewhat like that.

Spoiler

[collapse]

Another guy sent in some very detailed paintings of knights. Apparently he was a junior knight once upon a time, but his legs were paralyzed in a training accident. Because of that, he picked up painting and became quite good at it. 

Now I’m decently sure I … well, Lua and I, could heal his legs, so if he does come to work for us, we’ll probably do that. Sure we can just have him in a wheelchair, not like we didn’t do that with Cailie, but I think giving him his legs back would be nice.

Last one I’m noting is an octopus-folk girl. … oh right, you want to know more about the race first. Octopus-folk are basically human looking people, except that they have four octopus tentacles coming out from their back. And their skin is also much more suited for underwater living, and they can even breathe water through their skin.

She drew some really nice underwater paintings, depicting different aquatic races. And she was the only one to draw anything depicting places underwater. 

That already got my attention, but her detail work was amazing. I definitely wanted her, if possible.

… I also want an octopus-folk onto HomeBase. That race is quite interesting, as it has Regeneration as a potential racial skill. I want to unlock it for myself. But I can’t just ask the System to give me the race, I have to somewhat understand it, or cheat it with a Reverse Union or a Fusion. But if I can study an octopus-folk, I can replicate those tentacles with Manamorphic Body and that should get me the race.

Naturally there were people other than these three I’m inviting to paint something I specify, but they are the three I’m most interested in currently.

So I wrote everyone an invite and a few days later, I sent out a few ships to go fetch them.

After all of my artists were on HomeBase, I gave them something, or specifically someone, to paint. That someone being Himeśaila. 

Himeśaila is very photogenic in her dragon form, but when she is in her humanoid form, she is a bit more shy and reserved. So I gave each of the artists some time to draw her, first as a dragon, then as a girl. 

I wasn’t expecting anything amazing here, as they only had two hours for each of these paintings. I just wanted to see what they would do at that time.

From those paintings, I confirmed a few things. First off, the guy who drew the spell circle can’t draw people. His painting of Himeśaila’s humanoid form was the worst of all of them. The one he did of her dragon form was alright, but even that was below the middle of the pack.

The knight painter did extremely well with Himeśaila’s human form, making by far the best of them, but he couldn’t capture the majestic beauty of her dragon form. But still, humanoid monsters are everywhere in Yugioh, so I definitely want him.

Our octopus girl was the best though. She, while not making the best painting from either of Himeśaila’s forms, did my second favorite for both of them. Her painting of Himeśaila’s dragon form was also Himeśaila’s favorite of all of the paintings, and I promised the dragon I’d get the painting to her ice citadel.

After those two paintings, I gave them free rein to paint anything they can see on HomeBase. This was to see their creativity and what they would choose to paint.

A few of them came to me asking me to summon some monsters for them to paint. Naturally I summoned a few different things. 

I wanted to add a Machine monster, as nothing they painted thus far has really been a machine, so I summoned out XYZ-Dragon Cannon and Overdrive. They are very different looking machines, so I want to see how those who choose to paint one or both of them well do that.

Spoiler

[collapse]

For those who wanted to paint a beast, I had Unika model for them in her full fox form. She definitely isn’t easy to paint, but I want some paintings of her, so I think it will be fun. To add to the challenge, Unika made a little baby fox with her unique-racial skill, making it seem like she was protecting the little fox cub.

And for those who wanted to paint people, well, HomeBase has plenty of dhampirs, as well as the monsters I have roaming around in the avatar dolls. Today there are more than usual, as we have higher security due to the visitors. And since they are keeping guard while just modeling for the painting, I didn’t mind a few of my monsters just posing for a painting.

The dhampirs I couldn’t force to do it, but most of them still agreed. So a small group of them got together for a group painting.

After everyone had something to paint, I began to roam around so I could see what they were working on.

My magic circle drawing friend had set up his chair and easel on a pathway, and he was busy painting all of the HomeBase citadel, as well as the magic circles that float in the air above it. I think it will make for a really cool painting, and it is good to see that his skills extend beyond just magic circles, as what there is of the citadel looks quite nice.

The paralyzed knight had wheeled himself to the practice grounds, where Einar was practicing his Twin-Sword Technique with X-Saber Uruz.

He hadn’t even asked them to stop and despite that, he was able to capture a lot of details about the two fast moving warriors.

Finding the octopus girl took the longest. That is because she was outside of the area I expected anyone to be in. In fact, she had entered an area of HomeBase she couldn’t have access to, unless someone opened the door for her.

She had somehow, and I do know how, gotten to the CropFields, where she was painting not just the fields, but also Cailie. Cailie was swimming through the air with Aromaseraphy Rosemary and Aromaseraphy Sweet Marjoram flying next to her. She was humming a soft melody, but it was enhanced by her skills to the point where you could likely hear it even if you were on the other edge of the CropFields.

Spoiler

[collapse]

I simply let them be, as I didn’t want to interrupt the painting process, nor Cailie’s work. Besides, I have to have some words with Alice about letting people into places they aren’t supposed to go to.

By the end of the day, I had my first set of painters. Naturally my favorite octopus girl got hired, and she was able to join the crew immediately. She was a resident of the Hero’s country and had seen the advertisement there. Her name is Inka, by the way. Yeah. An octopus-folk whose name is basically ink. 

The paralyzed knight was also able to join immediately. He didn’t have a job, so for him to move wasn’t a big deal, as long as we could help him deal with his disability. And his name is Jonin.

Sadly my magic circle painting friend couldn’t join. He was still a student at a magic academy, and he didn’t want to quit until he graduated. But I promised him I’d save him a spot if he wanted to join after graduation or if he just felt like quitting. His name is Lange.

I also picked up two more on top of them. One of them was a bear-folk girl. She had painted a cityscape shot for the initial entry and I had assumed that was what she was good at. Her paintings of Himeśaila had been some of the worst, but she did a really nice job painting the two Machine-type monsters I summoned. That is why I decided to pick her. And her name is Artie.

The last one was an older lady, horse-folk by race. She had made a painting of horses for the entry, her painting of Himeśaila were nice, especially the dragon form one, and for her ‘free rein’ painting she did the Unika and baby fox. 

That one was really the one that got her in. She was able to capture the protectiveness, but also the gentleness of a mother very well. So I decided she’d be one of my custom painters. And her name is Odessa.

Also, now that I have my painters, I realized that my idea of having them hand paint cards is … kind of stupid. Since I have the printers already, why not use them?

Now I know what you are asking. ‘Then why get them in the first place?’ And the answer to that is simple.

Even if they won’t hand paint each card, they can still hand paint a card. Then I just scan it and print more copies of it. I can have my ‘full art’ cards, without them being so unique that my collector hands can’t let them go.