Monster misbehaving
Planet’s needing saving
Situation’s grave and
I’ll form the head

The enemy is clever
We’re smaller but whatever
When we put it together
I’ll form the head
Y’all can do the treading
Swing energy machete
If combination’s ready
I’ll form the head
I’ll form the head
I’ll form the head

Topper, anyone?

http://io9.gizmodo.com/an-old-school-voltron-set-is-officially-coming-to-lego-1797499994

Took a minute to get some screencaps to show more of the detail, because frequently, these small areas are taking me longer to do.. I'm adding details as I go, whereas with the body of the lion, barring one tiny patch, I still need to go back and add details to those..

8652 nodes is where this currently stands today.. had no idea this was going to be every bit as detailed and complicated as one main character's full body! Got screens of how it looks in outline view and node view.....

Lion-08-06-17 (resized).png

Lion-08-06-17-Nodes (resized).png

Lion-08-06-17-Lines (resized).png

I know I keep saying this is close to done but I keep finding more and more details!! This is really legitimately nearly done though....13031 nodes at this point! Detail level far far outstrips any of the previous pieces..

Lion-WIP-08-13-17 (resized).png

*fist pump* I've been biding my time...watching...waiting...

Finally managed to snag a copy of Season 5 (black lion tin) for 15 bucks shipped, as opposed to the more-usual price I've seen of 30-45. So I'll finally be able to get the scans for Keith and the Black Lion head. Only season I'm missing now is season 2 (yellow lion). I'm more comfortable shelling out more cash to finish the set, as opposed to overpaying for two seasons.

Okay... I'm calling this done. If anyone can spot anything glaring I missed...then you just caught something I just fixed. Oops. LOL. *edit* For anyone interested, this ended up being 13968 nodes. Crazy.

FinalCompare (resized).png

Ooh, thanks for pointing out the eyes. Looks like I missed the part that curves back down on the dark gold, or it layered incorrectly. I'll check it. I already fixed the cheek gouges and there is actually a spot at the very bottom middle that I fixed also, you can see that there'ss some shading that was missed.

Really...I try to be as close to the original as possible. Things like shading and matching colors are the worst part, because when you zoom in, these things are artifacted all to hell by the printing process. Halftones and whatnot...like this is what you see when you zoom into the main blue areas of the lion. Which blue is it? There's probably 15+ shades you're going to be able to pull out of this image with an eyedropper tool. The answer is "Whatever is closest to the average." You find the area between the lightest and the darkest and pick whatever is in the middle, and that's typically 'close enough'.

There's no dedicated way that I've seen to reproduce halftoning type shading like what's in those grey areas of the cheek. Inkscape is pretty versatile in how it handles flat gradients though, and I'm mostly satisfied with that. If I had a better understanding of how 'mesh gradients' worked I could probably make it a *little* closer to how the original looks, but I'm not really sure it's worth the effort, since I'm okay with how the flat gradients can look. Most of the other shading is accomplished by a combination of gradients and tinkering with the blur and opaqueness to get a smooth transition along the edges.

PrintingArtifacts (resized).png

Oops, just noticed I missed some dark shadows on the bottom of the cheek too. lol.

Apparently I had roughed out the shading I'd missed before...and then it got buried under a ton of layers. It was super poorly drawn too, not sure what the crap I was doing.. I just deleted it and redrew that part.

BlueLion-Final-oops (resized).png

Time for an update. Things have been kind of hectic at home, so haven't had much time to work. I do now, however, have 4 of the 5 boxed sets, so I've got PLENTY of art to keep things rolling for a while! Here's what I've been working on...big progress today, I basically doubled this one in size. I might be overkilling it in the details...it's already 5600 nodes..

Rawr (resized).png

GreenLion-WIP-09-10-17 (resized).png

Today's progress...

GreenLion-WIP-09-11-17 (resized).png

Getting some more definition now.. I'm really looking foward to finishing this one and going back to do a few humanoids...it feels like this just takes forever to do one of these lion heads, and it's wearing me out. Finding motivation is difficult sometimes, but work continues... slowly..

Node count: 7035

GreenLionWIP09-19-17 (resized).png

I wasn't going to post anything else on the Green Lion until I was done with the outline, but I noticed I've reached a crazy point on this today..it's now just over 10000 nodes. Here's where I'm at as well as a closeup of the detail on the face. The source art on this lion shows a lot of wear and tear, so I'm trying to preserve most of that, but it's pushing the required amount of attention to detail through the roof. Clean lines take a lot less points to chart out.

GreenLionWIP09-23-17 (resized).png

GreenLionWIP09-19-17-2 (resized).png

WRISE FROM YOUR GWAVE

Life has been busy, what can I say. I'm still not done with the Green Lion, but at least progress is still being made. This thing is out of control... it's more complicated than anything else I've done. I have a single path that makes up about 50-70% of what's drawn here, and this is 20649 nodes. YES. TWENTY. THOUSAND. NODES. And I'm still not done with the keylines! >_<;;

Green Lion - WIP - 11-12-17-NODES (resized).png

Green Lion - WIP - 11-12-17-Lines (resized).png

Just gonna leave this here...

Voltron-GreenLion-WIP-12-04-17 (resized).png

I'm officially saying the keylines are done on this one. Time for some color...thank christ! 28455 nodes was the final count on this part..

Open at full size to see the details.

GreenLion-Head-hires.png

I'm so lazy. =(

hmmlol.png

I might be slower than glass flowing, but I'm persistent! Thanks for the kind words, appreciate it.

Alright...I've been tearing this up this afternoon trying to get as much done as I can because I know I won't get much done the next few days. Current progress....the pink is unfinished areas. I use a neon contrasting color to see where I might have missed gaps due to extensive use of blur and opacity for shading effects.

ColoringProgress03-15-18.png

Come back in 4 years. LMFAO!!

Building pinball is hard, but art is harder for ME. I knew this was going to likely be the longest part aside from learning Python...but no regrets. I'm happy with what I've done so far...maybe not the timescale...but the quality of it.