Some AI-generated character images from Richard's fan fiction
Richard has begun to experiment with images for characters from his fan fictions. Below are several examples that he provided, along with some related info.
First up: AI generated renders of Dibrana, a.k.a. Deprave, as she appears living undercover in Bombay Beach at the beginning of Richard's
The Storm, Race Bannon Adventure fanfic. Dibrana originally appeared as the villainess in the Jonny Quest Eighties Adventures episode
Temple of Gloom. Richard states: "Out of about fifteen renders, my favorite is the attached version on the neutral background, but the desert street scene was a close second. These took about an hour on Bing Copilot Designer to tweak to get the likeness I was looking for."
Next: The Zin Twins: Richard says: "This was my attempt at getting a Copilot Designer render of the Zin Twins, Anaya (in gray) and Melana (in black). Dr. Zin's daughters appeared in the Real Adventures episodes The Bangalore Falcon and Night of the Zinja. I also featured them in my
Daughter of the Dragon JQ fanfic, and they made a cameo appearance in my Corona fanfic.
I thought the fourth render with the side-parted hair was the closest likeness to how the Twins appeared onscreen in Real Adventures, but I thought the two high-collared versions had a very aloof, cold-hearted look that fit their character. I'm already learning that you have to finesse your prompts to the AI. Asking for villainesses for a technothriller story gave very flat anime/gaming type characters. I got the above likenesses asking for models for an executive fashion ad.
And here are some pertinent details from Grayson:
Artwork Details:
11"x17"
ink, nib, pen, and halftone paper
digital lettering
"The Art and Legacy of Doug Wildey" is an assignment I completed for my Survey of Sequential Art course at the Savannah College of Art and Design. The assignment was to create a four page comic about a particular comics writer, artist, or creator. I knew immediately that I wanted to write and illustrate a story about Doug Wildey. I wanted to do the project on him for two reasons: one, he's my favorite comics artist, and two, there are so few published works about his life and career.
I grew up watching Jonny Quest (and still do), having been introduced to it by my dad, but I've come to admire Widley's work across his career. I had a general idea of what career points I wanted to cover and that I wanted to draw the entire comic myself, even though the assignment allowed for the inclusion of images by the artist. I used as much reference from Wildey's career as possible for each panel, relying on specific comic images and model sheets. I also created new compositions and posing relying heavily on photo reference as Wildey did himself. The drawing of the Outlaw Kid, for example, is actually a snapshot of Audie Murphy from a Gunfight at Comanche Creek lobby card.
I'm glad I got the chance to draw a comic about Doug Wildey's career, but I wish there was an official artbook, or biography for sale, as Wildey deserves much greater recognition than he recieves.
To see any of my other works, this is
my personal website.
Race Bannon Book Covers
When we first received copies of these images from
Lance Falk we bemoaned the fact that these weren't real books! Then we
laughed, and decided to truly appreciate Lance's creativity. We think you will,
too!
Lance writes: (regarding "The Rarest Jade" cover)
Here's something I banged out which I'll share if you
want to post it. An old Pulp novel had this perfect art, so I added the banner,
and swapped out the type. My pal Mark distressed it in Photoshop and here we are.
Lance later sent in the second "discovered" cover. It had originally been suggested
that these images would make a great April Fool's presentation (and we agree!),
but we just couldn't hold on to these for that long without showing them.
Maybe we will do something in April (or maybe not); meanwhile, enjoy!
Lance also provided the "back story" for these books:
In my fantasy world, this series is a Sex and Violence-fueled
exploitation series which takes place between The Korean War up through his assignment
to the Quest family. The series was very popular in its day for Ian Fleming fans
who wanted a more American point of view. There were over 200 novels bearing the
Wildey name, but he actually only penned the first few and consulted on the balance
written by a number of by-the-word Pulp writers of the mid-late '50s from Doug's
plots.
Custom Classic Jonny Quest Figures
Louis Badolato submitted images of the
set of figures that he created.
Louis writes:
My son was looking at the photographs of protoype 1:6
action figures of the Jonny Quest team by "Playing Mantis" on your website, and
asked if I could get them for him. I saw that they were conversions of the 12 inch
"Captain Action" (Race Bannon and Dr. Benton Quest) and 8 inch "Action Kid" (Jonny
Quest and Hadji) figures. My son really wanted them, so I decided to see if I could
perform the conversion myself.
To see larger versions of the images below, click on the thumbnails.
We think the results look pretty good, Louis!
For more details on how Louis created his custom figures, please follow
this link Lots of good information for someone who might be planning to
tackle a similar project.
Recent Updates
In the spring of 2013, Louis provided the following images, with the following commentary:
It took me months, but I finally found a head I could
convert into a proper 10 year old Jonny Quest: a Star Wars Anakin Skywalker figure's
head. The action figure cost me $5, while carving the hair and ears out with an
exacto knife cost me 4 cut fingers.
We always knew Jonny Quest was "dangerous," Louis; hope your injuries don't stop
you from creating! (ed.)
Real Adventures dolls
Susan Dundas submitted images of the set
of "action dolls" that she created, based on the Real
Adventures.
Susan writes:
Back when Real Adventures came out, I made some dolls
to be Jonny Quest set. Since there were no real JQ dolls ever issued (that I know
of), I took a GI Joe doll for Dr. Quest (it is the first doll I had ever seen with
a beard - I did not think I would ever be able to find one - and not only that,
but hair and beard flocked as well. I used brown felt pens to change the hair color).
Race is an Action Man doll (I used white-out to paint the hair white). Jonny is
an Allen doll (I think that is his name - he was a doll put out many years ago by
Mattel, to be a friend for Barbie's little sister, Skipper). I did not have to change
him at all - he already came blond and blue-eyed. The best I could do for Hadji
is an Aladdin doll - I never did figure out how to make a turban for him. And Jessie
may be a Skipper doll, I cannot remember. And I even found a tiny stuffed dog for
Bandit.
I dressed them in Barbie and Ken clothes, dyeing the material when necessary to
match the outfits in Real Adventures, then set them up to have adventures in my
living room!
Roger Romage submitted images of a Race
Bannon costume he created.
Please click on
the picture or select this link for a larger
view of this picture, plus more pictures and details on the construction of the
costume.
Roger writes:
I designed and created this costume (see attachments)
back in 2007, initially for Dragon Con here in Atlanta. I wore it again in 2008.
It went over really well and got some really joyful reactions. Now, if I can only
get my 12 year old daughter to dress up as Jonny's long lost sister Joanny! LOL
You'll notice two different guns. One is the Race Bannon Gun from the Comic series
and the other is directly from the show. Both were co-designed by Steve Smith and
myself, with more credit going towards Steve than me. The Guns were both wonderfully
realized and built from scratch by
Steve Smith.
Steve Smith sent in these images of the
work he has done reproducing some of the guns seen on the show. The pistol is at
a 1:1 scale and is 13.5 inches long. When I asked him to provide some more details,
Steve replied:
Last year a
friend of mine wanted to do a Race Bannon costume. He came across the shirtless
Race sketch by Steve Rude on your site and asked me to build the gun from the sketch.
We decided this would be Race's service pistol with Intelligence 1. I built this
gun using an airsoft pistol, some wood, plastic, PVC, and brass tubing.
I decided I would build the Quest gun for him for this year. I came across the model
sheet of the gun on your site and also used the DVDs as reference. I started out
scaling up the blueprint of the gun to what looked like the right size. I worked
on the gun off and on over several months. The gun was built using plastic, wood
and brass tubing. When I finished building the gun, I had a friend mold it and cast
it in resin as by this time I had several friends that wanted copies.
I am continually amazed by the talent our visitors wield in expressing their appreciation
of the show! Click on the thumbnails below to see larger versions of these images.
The mask was a prototype created by Classic Plastick's
Wes McCue, and repainted by artist Rich Fowlks.
Also included are a short-sleeved black turtleneck shirt, short-sleeved white labcoat,
tan slacks, brown loafers, a clipboard, and stethoscope (all from Mattel's Dr.
Ken set), displayed on a Playing Mantis Captain Action body dummy.
By Wes McCue of the
Classic Plastick Toy Company Another super effort, Wes!
You can write to Wes as "ClasPlas" at AOL.com. Just reformat that description as an email address.
A physics poster
Lee Bowling (who
shared his own custom JQ work previously) sent us the following:
I thought you might also be interested in my son's physics poster assignment. He
(Grayson Bowling) is in 9th grade, and the
teacher was trying to make things as interesting as possible. The assignment was
to watch an online video regarding the physics involved in different winter olympic
sports, take notes, look into the topics in a little more depth, and then come up
with a poster describing what you have learned. The posters were supposed to be
informative, as well as engaging to make them as interesting as possible to get
other students to read them.
After watching the video on skiing, he remembered a couple of Jonny Quest episodes
where the characters were either on skiis or dressed for snow. His idea was to use
Dr. Benton Quest's "research" as what was being presented. I thought he did a great
job. (And so do we -- great creativity and excellent
execution, Grayson!)
Below are thumbnails of an image for the project and an accompanying credits image;
click each to see a larger version: