the Bugbird and MecaAntelope

Illustrator and Comic Artist Gabriel Picolo

Alright, so I’m a huge fan of this little wink to courage the Cowardly Dog so I’m going to make a little homage post to it, So people who support the AU have a little more ground to stand on besides the original picture and some speculation:

What we know already:

First lets analyze the original image, first seen in the Replay Update comic, page 7, bottom right panel:

A fairly good shot of both his parents and their house. Now compare this to:

and

Uncanny enough to be true right?

The Further Speculation

From here on in, everything is my own theory and just passing fancies and timeline. Nothing is confirmed, nor do I truly take this seriously. This is just AU fun for the sake of AU fun.

Let’s examine timelines for a moment:

Team Fortress 2 is said to have taken place in (at least during the Red vs Blu era) in 1968, as posted on the Timeline page of the Official TF2 Wiki.

Courage the Cowardly dog debuted in 1999, and seems to take place in said era.

Lets just say that Eustace and Muriel are….70-80 years old. Thats fair, I think.

Sniper is somewhere around late 20’s, early 30’s, i can’t see him being much older or younger.

So! Lets take a look see -

1968 - 25 = 1943

1968 - 35 = 1933

Sniper was born anywhere from 1933-1943, within reasonable deviation, depending upon his actual age.

Now lets do his parents, given the 1999 air date of CtCD -

1999 - 70 = 1929

1999 - 80 = 1919

Meaning Eustace and Muriel were born anywhere from 1919 to 1929.

So if Eustace and Mureil were born around 1919 and had a child around 1943 (at the age of 24) that would put Sniper to be 25 in 1968. They could’ve even had a child a few years early to put Sniper into his late 20’s.

But if Sniper is only late 20’s, how did he get so skilled?

Enter Horste Bagge, Eustace’s “successful” brother. According to the CtCD wiki, horse is described as a brilliant hunter, explorer, and rich man. Its well known in the show that Horste is despised by Eustace.

Being the older brother, Horste would’ve seemed interesting and amazing to the young sniper, and might have been brought along on several “adventures”, and thus trained by his uncle.

Why do I believe this?

Look. at. that. hat.

Coupled with the shades? Its fair to theorize this is where sniper learned his skills, and gained some of his accessories.

Horste is dead at the time of the series, but the thought of him often haunts Eustace.

Enter Courage:

So, via the Meet the Sniper video, we’ve learned Sniper’s parents do not approve of his career choice, and we see a particular scene where his father gives him a hard time over a pay phone.

Let’s do a small recap of things in this AU that makes Eustace mad:

- Horste being so high and mighty in his son’s eyes

- Sniper’s occupation, most likely brought on by Horste

- Courage

But why Courage? Because he’s sniper’s dog.

(This is of course ignoring the whole episode about Courage’s origin)

There never is a true reason in the show as to why Eustace has an extreme dislike for Courage. If Courage was adopted by Sniper, and left with his parents to keep him safe, its perfectly possible that Eustace would terrorize the dog to get back at his son and by extension, his older brother.

The Bagge’s Dead Farm

So we know Sniper is of Australian descent. So why are his parents living in the middle of nowhere, U.S.A.?

Simply, when their son became a full time mercenary fighting over gravel pits and dustbowls, they moved closer to the action in worry of him.

Obviously this doesn’t do well for their farm. In 1968 it seems perfectly fine in the Picture taken (See first image) But the farm is all but dead in 1999. Yet, we never see the Eustace and Muriel struggle for money to feed themselves and make ends meet, and they go out often. Why is this?

Sniper sends them his hitman money.

Sniper lives in a camper, and beyond some of the new rifles we see him brandishing, most of his gear is fairly simple. I mean hell, the guy lives in a damn camper.

So with all this hitman money he’s picking up, where is it going? To the farm to supports his Mother and Father. Rather noble of him really.

Other little bits of fun:

In 1999 when Eustace terrorizes courage, he uses his classic “Ooga Booga Booga” mask. Its a very tribal looking mask in itself.

From items like Ol’ Snaggletooh and The Trophy Belt, we can see Sniper is fairly fond of keeping big game that he takes down. With that in mind, and given his rivalry with spies, is it not possible that this mask is a very cartoony counterpart of:

finally a good update in tf2

Saves from a 1-on-1 session :) 

also starring my first 3ds max thing with fucked up shadows…

… and this masterpiece

OK

heyy!

first of all thanks so much! and aaaa making tutorials is always challenging for me because most of the time i don’t know what i’m doing myself orz, and my steps and approaches vary a lot, but i try to break it down here! kinda

there are a lot of great tutorials for constructing faces and all! i’ll refrain from doing this here now because i would probably end up talking a lot of nonsense T_T but a good thing to do is always looking at references, observe your friend’s and family’s faces and movements and try to bring this in correlation

what i can do is to show you how i approach my scribbles i guess?

this is like… my usual way of doing things here (bigger version):

1 - first step is always a rough idea of what i want, with an accent esp on the eyebrows and nose and a general direction of the face

2 + 3 - most of the time i draw over the rough scribble on the same layer and try to define the expression. the transform tool is my best friend in these steps, because i tend to draw heads and esp upper headparts waayyy too big. this is also the time when i remind myself that it would be great if a body was involved orz… oh and i use a lot of references here, a picture of the character’s face in an attempt to get the proportions right

4 - outlines on a new layer, add some details here and there. this is the most frustrating step because outlines turn never out like i want them to be 8)

5 - outline layer on multiply + some colors i posted tutorials on how i usually do this part here and here

i really try to not go into too much detail at the beginning because i get easily stuck either by trying to get a specific expression or getting the proportions right too early? i have the feeling of wasting a lot of time here fumbling around with stuff, and that’s annoying. so yeah try to keep it simple at the beginning

i also highly recommend this tutorial by makani!

Back in the days before SFM I could only rely on the Half-Life Model Viewer if I wanted to play dress up with my favourite classes. Then the uncraftable hat market happened and suddenly I didn’t have to pretend to be fashionable anymore.