I have noticed a few things in my arduous journey.
Firstly, I almost think of undead as native animals now. Depending on what species the undead is I totally leave them be, mostly because I find them hilarious (undead emu being a good example, though I have also come across groundhogs and horseshoe crabs). Since killing them tends to wind up in them getting back up, for the most part I leave the non-threatening ones alone.
Before I do a full post, I wanted to say something. Because of arguments that have been happening in the thread, I want to make it immediately clear that despite it seeming like Vanod is some kind of unstoppable badass, I'm honestly constantly tense. I could die at any turn (which I have mentioned in past posts). I have had to crawl away from Nganuz, run from the trolls completely, and back away from the cyclopes. Getting the cyclopes all down on the ground like that was a several-round challenge. Once they were all down and one was running away, I felt it was a hilarious "guys get up \:| " moment, so that's what I reported on.
I'm not going to give a blow by blow of Vanod's journey because that's
1) not fun to draw
2) not anything different from what other adventurers go through.
I'm trying to show/tell about the interesting and different. I don't expect anyone to worship Vanod or think he's some kind of unstoppable badass; rather, I take pride in his victories and wish to share them as over the top ruthless angry caveman scenes, because he's a single little human on an island full of bloodthirsty monsters. Humanizing the monsters and demonizing Vanod seems like the logical step, here. Especially since he's a mockery and absolutely tongue-in-cheek right now. I'm mournful that that doesn't come across. If you watch stuff like Metalocalypse or Brock Samson from Venture Brothers, it'll hopefully become clearer what he's supposed to come across as.
I really don't give a shit about being the ~most 1337 gamer~ or anything like that. I'm having fun with the game and that's literally the only thing that matters. This isn't a pissing contest, this is me doodling my adventure on a really weird island that spawned. And hopefully bringing that fun to others visually. If you want to talk about how Vanod is not special or badass or whatever, I can totally agree with you on the statistic level; he's an @ symbol in an ASCII world with some numbers strapped onto him. The badass aspects are what I put across in my writing and art. Yes, I take it personally when you're self-important about it, because it's taking a lot of time out of my day to draw up something to entertain people, and this is just how I ended up characterizing my specific @ symbol. I could have made him anything- a snivveling idiot, a happy-go-lucky daydreamer- but I went with tongue-in-cheek metal caveman. Didn't you notice how he's got perfect flowing locks at all times? I've made other Adventurer stories with people with emotional ties and very human motives, but it just doesn't fit Vanod. He's from a ridiculous world, so I treat him in a ridiculous manner.
I will try to include more of the failures if that helps to humanize Vanod for you, because there are definitely failures or times where I have to sneak away and come back from a different direction after they've been picked on by undead or what-have-you. I constantly edit stuff out in the interest of length, I have like three pages of "eeehh this really doesn't add to anything" text that I've clipped away. I'm going for succinct and entertaining.
I haven't run into a semi-titan/titan again for a long time, so that is why Nganuz is the only one I've taken seriously. Next time I run into a bigger challenge, I will record it dutifully, as was the plan from the start. Things like Bilbo are just lame, but I like to include all named mobs that Vanod kills, no matter how ridiculous and short the fight is.
I will make a bigger update soon, this was mostly to address general stuff. I have a few more doodles and progress but I need to finish drawing it. Sorry for the wait, been having a crazy time recently and not getting much time to continue on this. I'll update as soon as possible.
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Topic: Adventures on Monster Island (Read 257098 times)