Leko's Library

ALMOST done with 2006! I promise! (I've been organizing my various folders in preparation for posting stuff to the Library, and it looks like 2007 was probably my busiest year, so if you thought we were stuck in 2006 for a while...just wait.)

Anyhoo! Remember that awesome Super Smash Bros. Brawl announcement trailer in 2006? I sure do! It was probably the most excited I'd ever been for a game release since Sonic Adventure 2.

You can basically just read my previous Metroid-related post for the full context of my history with Metroid and Super Smash Bros, so I don't really have much else to add on that front. Although looking back, I'm a little less sure of the timeline. I might be off about when I actually got Metroid Fusion.

I think I assumed my friend got Melee because it had just released, but for all I know it could've been out for a year or two by the time he got it. I wasn't exactly following Nintendo releases all that closely around that time. Given that I got my copy of Metroid Fusion from a cheap games bin, it HAD to have already been out for some time. I feel like 2004-2005 lines up a bit better with what else I remember about my early Metroid experience.

I remember borrowing Zero Mission from Dragon Master*, so I was aware of "Zero Suit Samus" by the time the Brawl trailer revealed her as a (sort of) new fighter. And of course there were plenty of "Ha ha! Samus took her clothes off!" and "Woah! Samus is a girl!?" jokes going around.

Also, I drew this one in Flash, so it had to be later in 2006. And I was still in the middle of using my "How To Draw Manga" book for drawing faces, apparently.

Oh, hey! A BIONICLE thing I almost forgot about because it was in a different folder. So this might seem like a strange crossover to draw, right?

Well, there IS a very specific reason this drawing exists. I haven't really gone into significant detail about it in any of these archive posts yet, but BIONICLE was singularly the most influential and formative fandom of my life.

Yes, even more than Star Wars.

I can say without exaggeration or hyperbole that the person I am today is a direct consequence of the launch of LEGO's BIONICLE series in 2001. My interest in comics, pixel art, animation, even game development? All because I stumbled across some silly sprite comics on a forum called BZPower 22 years ago.

It's very difficult to imagine how different my life would be if I hadn't discovered BZPower. I tend to arrive at the conclusion that I would most likely have found a Star Wars forum to join and eventually gotten on the same track, but I honestly don't think I would have found the same creative inspiration from any other fandom.

BIONICLE was still new and targeted at a younger audience, so I think the community was probably a lot more accepting and encouraging when it came to artistic endeavors even when they weren't very "good." It also helped that there were some older, genuinely talented members in the fanart forum in particular to look up to. Some fantastic pixel artists, and one guy who made really awesome 3D models and animations with them. Basically, pretty much everything I'm currently into is because I saw someone on BZP do it, thought it was awesome, and said "I want to learn how to do THAT!"

I would have to wait until college to start learning 3D animation, but pixel art and sprite comics were easy enough to do in MSPaint, and as long as I was willing to keep making new email addresses I could keep using Flash for 30 days at a time.

Okay. So now that that wall of context is out of the way, you're probably wondering what any of it has to do with Vakama talking to Cloud. If you've been paying attention to the rest of this archive, you might just recall a certain OTHER series I was just getting into around 2006...

...

Final Fantasy. It was Final Fantasy. 7 in particular.

I was fully immersed in the BIONICLE fandom, and just getting started on exploring Final Fantasy. So that's it, then? I just decided to create some art combining two things I liked at the time?

Not quite. BZPower ran various contests from time to time, and one of them was an art contest. There would be a theme or prompt, and everyone would create some visual interpretation of it in whatever form of media you liked. (Besides LEGO pieces because there was already a building contest for that.)

In whatever month this was in 2006, the art contest prompt was "movie crossover." Advent Children was obviously still pretty fresh in my mind, and I thought about how Cloud and Vakama were both kind of whiny and had that "I suck and everything bad in the universe is my fault" attitude.

I thought it was funny. A fair few other people also thought it was funny, but not enough to get anywhere even close to actually winning the contest. Never surprising, never discouraging, but still always a tiny bit disappointing.

Ah, Metroid. Another game series to which I was a bit of a late arrival, but fell completely in love with.

I was primarily a SEGA kid growing up. We did have an NES, but only a few games for it, and only one I really ever played for more than a few minutes at a time. (Original Super Mario Bros.) Can't say for 100% certain which I actually, definitely played FIRST, but it was the Genesis and Sonic The Hedgehog in particular that I feel truly started my journey into gaming.

My first ever experience with the Metroid series was when my friend who lived down the street got Super Smash Bros Melee for his Gamecube.

I wasn't too familiar with fighting games, but it was pretty easy to pick up and a lot of fun. I recognized a lot of the characters even without having played most of their games, but there was one character in particular who caught my attention.

This cool orange robot dude...

Me: "Who's this 'Samus' guy?"

Friend: "That's a girl in a robot suit. She's from Metroid. She shoots lasers and missiles and stuff."

Me: "That sounds awesome!"

So Samus became my Smash Bros. main, and I was interested in learning more about the Metroid games, but unfortunately wouldn't get the chance to actually play one for a little while longer.

Metroid Fusion and Prime came out later that year, and I remember playing both on the demo consoles at...I want to say Target, but I still didn't actually get my own copy of a Metroid game until what must have been the *next* year, because I found some copies of Fusion in the cheap games bin and I managed to talk my mother into getting it for me.

I loved it. The story didn't depend too much on you having played the other games, and recapped the most important parts of them at the start, so I was able to follow the plot and understand everything that was going on.

In fact, I was a little disappointed when I did eventually get around to playing them that Adam didn't appear in any of them after Samus spent half of Fusion talking about him and how her new ship's computer reminded her of him, and how important their relationship ended up being toward the end of the game. I just assumed he must have been a major character, and that Samus was talking about stuff they did in the other games. (Which I also assumed were as narrative-focused and straightforward as Fusion.)

I was surprised to find they were not, but still enjoyed them. It's interesting when your first experience with a series is the installment notable for diverging from the formula.

Anyway. What about this drawing? Well, I had started using Flash for the first time in 2005, but it seems I hadn't begun using it for drawings until the *middle* of 2006. Almost everything I've posted to this archive that says "2006" has been from mid to late 2006.

I think I got through all the Comic Shorts stuff from 2006, so let's look at some old fanart and comics!

Bleach, right? What can I say about good old Bleach? Definitely have some strong nostalgia for it. I started watching it with my sister when it first aired on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim in...2006.

It's also the first anime I ever watched in Japanese with subtitles because we got impatient waiting for episodes, and started looking for them on that cool new video site, YouTube.

We ended up pretty far ahead of the English dub because of that.

Anyway. There was an episode early on where the characters needed to use their spirit energy to activate these crystal balls that would make a protective shield around them so they could get through a barrier or something, and the brief conflict of the episode was that Ichigo was the only one struggling with it.

And yeah, I guess I thought it would be funny if a couple of those giant Menos showed up and started playing tennis with him after he figured it out.

I think I've pretty much covered all the vital Comic Shorts backstory, so these posts should start getting shorter unless I have a lot to say about a particular comic or drawing.

We're still in 2006! Still drawing comics in Flash, but Leko has progressed closer to his final form. In trying to distance his design from the BIONICLE version, I made his head a dark teal and gave it a weird gradient. At some point, I decided it was okay to keep the bright blue, and just make the rest of his body silver, gray and black.

And the little cutout above his eyes is gone. Strangely, though, I did notice that I actually kept that detail when I made updated chibi Flash models.

Probably because I just recolored the old version and changed the eye, but I definitely took it out at some point because I have animations and art of these designs where he doesn't have it. Just another interesting detail I noticed while looking through my old stuff.

So. 2006. December, 2006. Nintendo's Wii was released a mere few weeks ago, and news spread fast of folks wrecking their TV screens by accidentally flinging remotes at them.

Fortunately, this didn't happen to me or any of my friends. That I know of. But it was still a fun idea for a silly comic. And as a bonus Label Buddy doesn't even get hurt in this one!

"Label Buddy Dies Again"

"Leko Plays Final Fantasy VII"

Woah! A two-fer! If the dates on these files are to be believed, I drew these two comics in Flash less than a week apart. And since they're in the same style, I might as well post them together and save a little space in the archive.

Around this time I was really trying to get into the actual *animation* part of Flash animation. I learned how a lot of my favorite animators made their cartoons by just watching them and seeing how they basically drew characters and split them into parts to make animation models. So I did that with our Comic Shorts characters with the intention of making many animated adventures with them.

And that did not happen with these version of the characters. But I did make a few comics with the models. And by "a few" I mean exactly these two.

Leko's design was still in a transitional period, which is why he still has that cutout above his still circular eyes, and is a little more bulky and squat. He still had a lot of Matoran in him.

"What if Label Buddy got hurt a lot?" Was pretty much our longest running "joke," and we definitely never had any real plans for a "canon" for these guys early on. Buddy being cloned every time he is violently killed was never intended to be a definitive explanation for why he keeps coming back.

Oh yeah! This is also one of the ONLY times I ever used one of our main villains! In one of Dragon Master's older comics, Buddy chokes on a speck of dirt, but he coughs it up before he can die. Speck of Dirt curses his failure and became a semi-regular villain.

There was also the creatively named Villain, an evil ninja with a demon arm. Dark Buddy, Label Buddy's counterpart from the Shadow World (where everyone has opposite traits, so DB is an eloquent evil genius.) And Shadowy Figure, a...shadowy figure with like darkness powers or something?

ALSO ALSO, I think this is the first appearance of the "white walls and red floor" ambiguous house setting I would go on to frequently use. I just realized that while I was writing this.

SO LET'S TALK ABOUT FINAL FANTASY NOW.

I did not grow up with this series. I knew almost nothing about it except that there was a guy with a really big sword, and another guy with a really long sword. And I think I knew the long sword guy's name was Sephiroth (and *maybe* that he was the bad guy?) I remember watching "The Spirits Within" and being disappointed that there wasn't any magic or sword fighting in it, even though I do love a good sci-fi story and the animation *was* absolutely mind blowing.

Dragon Master, however, was SUPER into it. We watched the recently released Advent Children movie together, and I had 100% no idea what was even happening, but it was still awesome. At some point not long after that DM lent me their copy of FF7, which resulted in this comic loosely based on my experience. I *probably* didn't actually stay up until 4 AM playing it, but for all I know I might have.(Definitely didn't hallucinate and attack anyone with an 8-foot katana, though.)

I ALREADY REGRET STARTING THIS BLOG. I WAS UNPREPARED FOR THE CRINGE.

Okay. Just need to fight through it and talk about THIS thing.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the only surviving comic featuring Leko as "Lekonua." Pretty much every single one of them was drawn in one school notebook or another, and I'm 90% sure they've long since been thrown away.

But even back then it was pretty rare for Leko to appear in hand-drawn form at all. I originally created him to be my author avatar for the sprite comics I used to make for BZPower. And he looked like this most of the time:

Yep.

In middle school I made some new IRL friends, and we started drawing comics including each other's characters. (Which were basically just cooler versions of ourselves.) Since Lekonua was really the only character I had ever used to represent myself, he migrated into the "Comic Shorts" universe to appear alongside Dragon Master the ninja and Label Buddy the generic faceless guy whose only real purpose is to be dumb and get hurt a lot.

A LOT of our older comics were just either complaining about how boring school was, or doing "lol so random" stuff. Also references. And jokes stolen from much funnier people than us.

Like the entire concept for THIS comic! I knew "plutonium from household products" was ripped off from SOMETHING, and I had to do a bit of searching to find what exactly it came from. (And this was made slightly more difficult because I slightly misremembered the line.)

It was from Weird Al's movie, UHF, which I must have very recently seen for the first time if I was making this overt a reference to it.

Anyway. "Dragon Master" had a fairly consistent drawing style where all the characters were simplified and had large eyes, and Lekonua needed to be simplified a bit further to fit that style. The end result of that was basically the current version of Leko who looked much less like a BIONICLE character, and more like...well...just some robot.

Eventually I decided it would be a good idea to make Leko his own unique thing and significantly reduce the likelihood of getting sued by LEGO. So I adopted the simplified design, made some small adjustments over time, and settled on the current official version of Leko The Robot Who Is Entirely Unaffiliated With The LEGO Company.

Or just...

Well, I don't actually have a lot to say about the design and concept process this one that I didn't already say when I made a certain other post a few years ago.

The colored version was my first ever post on DeviantART, and I don't think the original sketch ever made it there. (It might have been in my "scraps" folder, but I can't confirm that.)

I don't recall if the colored version was based on a sketch, now that I think about it. I definitely remember the head and face coming pretty much straight out of a "How to Draw Manga" book, but I think I just drew it directly in Flash.

I'll have to dig up my old sketchbooks and see if I'm remembering that correctly. I might have based it on this original sketch and just made changes as I traced and colored it.

But yeah. I did a lot of my early drawings and comics in Flash of all things because I hated trying to do line art in Photoshop. Being able to precisely drag lines around and fill in colors quickly without worrying about aliasing giving everything fuzzy outlines just made everything so much easier.

Unfortunately, being 15 at the time I couldn't actually afford Flash, and as good with computers as I was, I wasn't good enough to figure out how to get a working "yar-har" copy. I ended up with like 4 Adobe accounts so I could keep using the free trials.

Then in 2009 I was getting ready to graduate from high school, and was taking a couple of college courses early to get a jump on that. They were just basic Photoshop and Flash courses that I needed credits for, but they gave me an excuse to finally legally purchase a copies of Flash and Photoshop CS4 at a significant academic discount.

It occurred to me that with the deaths of MAJHost and DeviantART, a sizeable amount of my older artwork has effectively vanished from the internet and become completely inaccessible.

In particular, a LOT of Comic Shorts comics are just gone. You can't even find them on the website anymore because most of them were hosted on MAJ. (Along with a good chunk of the site's UI images, apparently.)

I've been thinking about doing this for quite a while, actually, but recent events have...motivated me to start existing even harder on the good old internet, and this seemed like a quick and fun way to get on that!

Basically I'm just gonna post old stuff and add a little commentary.

These will in NO WAY be presented in chronological order, but I will TRY to post at least approximate dates when I can find them or reasonably guess. SOME files on my PC seem to have accurate dates in the properties, but most of them think they were created the last time I restored them from backups. But the "modified" date appears to remain correct.

So I'll have a comic for instance that says it was created in 2023, but was last modified in 2011.

So yeah. Most of this stuff was on DeviantART, but I'll probably post some even OLDER stuff that never even made it on there!