WARNING: This blog contains detailed descriptions of characters and events featured in the video game Suikoden IV, developed by Konami. If you have not played this game and would like to experience it yourself, please be aware that these posts contain spoilers.
Last we saw of Lino and Cassandra, they had accepted their fate as guardians of this ominous power known as the Rune of Punishment. Several years have past, and they have born two children - a daughter named Flare, and a son named Marco.
This is the first appearance of Suikoden 4's hero. When playing the video game, you decide the hero's name. For the purposes of this story, I chose the name Marco. Marco, son of Lino. Works for me.
Marco is playing with a toy boat, and Lino hints that one day, the young prince will have his own ship. It then cuts to a real ship, where the family are on a little cruise together.
On deck, we see Lino helping the men man the ship. Young Flare asks her mother why daddy works with the men instead of letting them do all the work for him. Perhaps one day, she'll learn to fend for herself and not ahve to rely on servants all the time?
Unfortunately, the happy family gathering is ruined by the arrival of a pirate ship on the horizon...
Last November was the Suikoden Day 2012 event on facebook - an event held by fans for fans. Of course, I took part, and included links to some of my artwork and animations, and gained some nice comments. I also won first prize for the fan art competition, with my image 'Escape', which is based on a scene from Suikoden 2.
Escape: The hero of Suikoden 2 and his friends have fled the burning fortress to escape from the Highland forces. Now they must regroup and decide what their next move will be in this war-torn country.
My prize for winning the competition was a special edition copy of the Suikoden 4 video game, which came with the official concept art book. This will no doubt help me out a great deal when it comes to working on my adaptation comics!
It's been a while since I updated this blog, so here we go...
Last we saw of King Lino, he was searching the palace grounds for his wife. He was then shocked by the sight of a horrific red light shooting up into the sky - coming from the direction of the ancient ruins. The guards try to calm the townspeople, who are all disturbed by the strange phenomena, and Lino rushes towards the light, heading into the ruins, and finding the wall which has been smashed open during last night's storm.
Lino finds his wife in a heap on the floor, and she tells him that she discovered a grave where a sinister skeletal hand reached out for her and poured a strange power into her body (the same power which caused the red light)
When the queen comes too, she discovers a mark on her left hand - it is the Rune of Punishment, a magical entity that grants the power of vengeance to it's bearer. This is an incident that is mentioned in the video game, but we never got to see it. The game also does not mention anything about what Lino and the queen may have done to try and rid themselves of the curse, so I decided to invent a scenario where they consult Jeane - a sorceress who specialises in runes. Jeane is a character who has appeared in just about every Suikoden game ever made, but she is not relaly given a lot of depth on the games; you recruit her and she provides you with a means to customise your characters' rune abilities, but that's about it. I decided to give her a supporting role in this story, and surely, the king would want to seek the advice of a rune expert to find out about this power that his wife has been given, and Jeane is the only rune master in the game universe who actually has a name. so she is kind of an easter egg for my little comic!
So, Jeane diagnoses the Queen with one of the 27 True Runes - which means it can not be removed from it's host's body, not even by the most skilled rune master. She also explains that the rune will drain it's bearer's life, little by little, until the host dies and the rune will transfer to a new body to begin it's destructive cycle again. This is pretty dark for Jeane, as she is usually a ligth hearted character int he games who just shows up and giggles, but here I've got her being a bit more serious. The queen accepts her fate as bearer of the cursed Rune of Punishment, and she vows to stay strong and never misuse the rune's power. Her husband takes her hand reassures her that they are in this together.
This is a graphic novel I started working on to tie in with my fan fiction based on Suikoden IV. It also acts as a prequel to events in the video game.
The comic opens with the queen of Obel standing before the ruins where she will discover the cursed Rune of Punishment. To me, this seems like an iconic image from the video game that we never actually got to see, but its referred to in some of the game's dialogue.
The next two pages are intended to establish the relationship between a young King Lino and his wife to be. Obel is not a particularly grand kingdom - there other more impressive kingdoms that exist in the Suikoden world. But Lino's people are very fond of him. His subjects and servants are very loyal. The steps of the palace and Lino's royal garb that he wears on his wedding day are referenced from the video game. In the final shot, we also see Lino's chief servant Setsu, who is having a good cry from seeing his master all grown up and settling down with a good woman.
The next two pages become a little more sinister. I've set it up so that ever since the Queen looked upon the Ruins of Obel, she has been haunted by visions beckoning her into the ruins. Lino is oblivious to her visions. One night a storm breaks out across the island, and part of the ruins becomes dislodged, revealing a new area that nobody has ever seen before. Lino wakes up alone the following morning, and as he goes off looking for his wife, a red light fills the sky, frightening everyone in Obel. The queen has finally unlocked the secret of the ruins, and its not good news for anybody.
Before I begin, let me give a quick update on events in my personal life, as it relates to how things have developed with my Suikoden fan animation, which can be viewed here:
At the beginning of July, I moved house with my family down to Hampshire. The countryside is a drastic change from the city locale, and its a lot harder to find work out here (not that I was having that much luck in London) but the natural scenery has provided me with some inspiration, which I have applied to my most recent animated project.
From an early stage in creating my fan fiction, I decided how I wanted to introduce the hero (from the video game Suikoden IV) in his first scene.
When you play Suikoden IV's "sister game" Suikoden Tactics, you find that the hero has taken up residence on the Deserted Island, which is the central most island in the archepelago of Suikoden IV.
Check my rendition of the map below:
Map of the Island Nations, which is the setting of Suikoden IV and a big chunk of Suikoden Tactics.
And so, I decided that the Deserted Island would make the best place to kick off my story. In the opening scene, we would have the hero practicing with his swords on the shores of the Deserted Island. As I progressed with this idea, it became more clear on what sort of iconic imagery would help enhance the scene and ground us more into the heroe's world - images such as waves crashing into the shore, while the hero poses with his trademark weapons, the duel swords. His red head band blowing in the breeze. Seagulls flying overhead. And of course, the Rune of Punishment emblazoned on the hero's left hand. Usually, the hero wears gloves to conseal his rune, as people in the Suikoden world tend to panic if they notice an unusual rune on your hand, and rightly so, considering the Rune of Punishment's reputation of devouring the the life force of its barer and every human in sight.
But since our hero is isolated and all alone out here, he takes to the shore with his bare hands, untroubled by thoughts of any unwelcome passers by.
However, whilst the youth is calmly practising with his swords, the rune of his left hand begins to glow ominously, and it causes him enough disturbance that he doubles over, dropping his swords, to try regaining control of the rune. As the red glow dies down, he looks up to see another light before him - a pale blue vision which reveals the cloaked form of a familiar figure - the sorceress, Lady Leknaat.
Leknaat the Sorceress
Leknaat the Sorceress, as she appears in the video game Suikoden IV.
Leknaat is a recurring character in the Suikoden universe. She is kind of like the fairy godmother to each of the main heroes who appears in each Suikoden game. Her story is that she was born into a clan of magicians called the Clan of the Gate. Both Leknaat and her sister Windy possessed runes with the power to connect different worlds, but Leknaat's sister, in a typical fit of rage inspired by sibling rivalry, sought to take Leknaat's rune from her so she could become more powerful. Lenaat repelled Windy's attack, but she was blinded during their struggle. However, she did develop tremendous powers of prophecy, and she became an almost divine figure, watching over the powers of the true runes and ensuring that none of them became too powerful and end up leading to global catastrophy.
Leknaat's role in Suikoden IV was to make sure the hero used his power wisely throughout his exploits in the Island Nations. Depending on certain decisions that you make as the player, Leknaat appears towards the end of the game to help restore the balance of the Rune of Punishment, so that it no longer drains the life of its barer.
Of course, with my fanfiction, I don't want it to end there. Now she appears to the hero to tell him that the dark properties of the Rune of Punishment have been lying dormant, and are now resurfacing to wreak havock on the hero's world. And so, he must once again embark on a mission to restore the balance to his cursed power.
Animated Oceans
When it came to animating the scenes of the hero and Leknaat on the beach, I was faced with a dilema - how do I animate the sea? I've seen oceans in animated movies and shows before, and some of them look fantastic, and some fo them... not so good. Initially, I tried using photographs which I had taken from previous trips to the coast and cutting and pasting and editing them using flash and photoshop, but I was never really able to achieve a natural effect.
Barton on Sea, Hampshire - my local inspiration.
Fortunately, now that I live but 30 minutes away from the sea in my new contryside home, I have been able to film live footage of the ocean using my digital camera. It was this footage that I would edit using various programs to create an animated background, which would work quite effortlesslty for my animated scenes in Flash.
Of course, it wasn't THAT simple, as the footage I took on my camera tended to be very jerky. I'm not a professional cameraman and I don't have access to professional camera equipment. Fortunately, the web is full of valuable sources, many of them free, and I soon found that the virtual dub program, along with it's deshaker filter plugin, was exaclty what I needed to achieve my "natural" ocean scenery.
The room that Lino wakes up in after having his dream is modelled after the Obel Palace environments from the video game Suikoden IV. Suikoden takes place in a fictional fantasy world, but it still takes influence from real world cultures. The kingdom of Obel seems to be mainly influenced by Japanese styles, so I also googled a lot of old fashioned Japanese bedrooms for inspiration. Lino's bedroom doesn't actually appear in the video game, you can only go as far as the entry hall and throne room when you explore the palace in the game, so the layout for Lino's room had to be invented.
Four pillars support the cieling in Lino's bed chamber. They are built
from wood, and have shiney golden guildings for decoration. A red
carpet leads to the king's bed.
The images you'll see here are very dark - thats because i wanted to keep the lighting as natural as possible. there are no candles or torches keeping the room alight while Lino is sleeping. But I have included some very pale and subdued looking omni lights to shed light on areas such as the red carpet leading to the king's bed. I also added some raytrace maps to the metallic materials to create a shiney surface effects. 3D modelling is still vastly new to me, so I'm still making gradual progress with my modelling skills.
The material for Lino's bedding is from my lense cloth that I use to clean my glasses. I scanned it in and messed with the colours a bit in photoshop. I wanted the sheets to look creasy, as it reflects Lino's personality - that he's not concerned for neatness and formalities, and that also, he's just awoken in this scene from a nightmare, so the sheets will be crumpled from where he's been tossing and turning in his sleep. The logo that you see in the background is the banner of Obel - four rings linked by a fish tail. I've placed two banners at the back of the room, flanking Lino's bed, and the head of the bed itself also has a wood carving of the logo.
The cupboards in this room have a material that I used from photos of some old cupboards in Osterley House (some of the old furniture they have there is in oriental style)
As I made quite clear in one of my earliest posts, Lino En Kuldes is one of my all time favourite video game characters. I love his backstory, and I've decided to make an animated sequence specially based on his relationship with his beloved wife, who died at sea. This is actually a prequel to the animated movie that sees Lino, Akaghi and the hero fighting against skeletons in the Rune chamber.
Here's the published result:
The dream scenario is not intended to be an accurate depiction of how the Queen of Obel died in the video game - its a dream. Sometimes we do have dreams about loved ones who have passed on (hopefully, these are usually pleasant dreams that remind us of how the deceased person touched our lives) but for the sake of making things more dramatic, I chose to have it as a sweet dream that turns into a nightmare.
The idea is that Lino is haunted by the memory of losing his wife and being unable to save her, and this compels him to help the hero, who now carries the rune of Punishment, as they travel to find out what secrets this rune hasn't revealed yet. Is the queen trying to contact Lino through the rune? What important message does she have to give him? Will he finally be at peace if he does learn the answers to these questions?
But these are all questions I'll answer as I make progress with my fan fiction (which could take years so don't hold your breath!)
Storyboard for King Lino's Dream, originally intended to be a dream within a dream sequence.
If you look at the storyboard above, you may notice that intended for Lino to have two dreams. I may do an extended version at some point, but for now I think one short dream is enough.
Most of those shots have appeared in the animation up until when Lino wakes up. You can see a couple of shots when the queen disintegrates into ash in Lino's arms and the ash scatters across the ocean - I did in fact animate several versions of this scene, but they sucked and I just was not getting it right, so I cut it down to just the first person shot when Lino is caressing his wife's cheek and she disintegrates and then it cuts to Lino waking up in his palace.
The speedy version works just fine for me - I don't think we need to many shots from loads of different angles showing a woman crumbling into dust. Keping it brief is dramatic enough, I think. And it works quite well, seeing Lino's hand reach out from the first person shot, and then jumps up in bed in the next scene with the same arm reaching out at the camera, so we can see the horrified expression on his face.
The ship and Lino's royal chamber have both been created in 3ds Max, using photographs I took of the gameplay as reference.
Most of those shots have appeared in the animation up until when Lino wakes up. You can see a couple of shots when the queen disintegrates into ash in Lino's arms and the ash scatters across the ocean - I did in fact animate several versions of this scene, but they sucked and I just was not getting it right, so I cut it down to just the first person shot when Lino is caressing his wife's cheek and she disintegrates and then it cuts to Lino waking up in his palace.
The speedy version works just fine for me - I don't think we need to many shots from loads of different angles showing a woman crumbling into dust. Keping it brief is dramatic enough, I think. And it works quite well, seeing Lino's hand reach out from the first person shot, and then jumps up in bed in the next scene with the same arm reaching out at the camera, so we can see the horrified expression on his face.
