REKIRA THE SUPER-MONSTER - Teaser Posters (for 2025)!

 Today is the 34th Anniversary of when I started the project that ultimately became Rekira the Super-Monster, my own original kaiju project! Production is still underway, and to mark the occasion, I did two versions of the teaser poster, in Japanese and English! This has my current V3 Beta model of Rekira, done in Blender (with which I'm animating the project), and the posters were done in FireAlpaca.

Japanese:

English:

BONUS: Japanese with fixed text (thanks to Instagram user "masked_elone"):

REKIRA 2022 Teaser Poster!

 Today is the 31st Anniversary of the creation of what would eventually become my original kaiju creation, Rekira! In honor of this, with the project still in production, here's a new teaser poster I assembled over a month ago. Assembled in Flash. Rekira, of course, was done with Blender and FireAlpaca.

Rekira Teaser Posters (2020)

 And now, a little midnight teaser... ;)

Obvious parody here. In English (top) and Japanese (bottom), assembled on August 20th in FireAlpaca.

Japan's Avengers - English Version

Using the same resources as last time, I have just assembled (pun intended) an English-language version of my very popular Japan's Avengers poster (originally in Japanese)!  Done in the style of international posters.  I had to do a lot of last-minute changes to make sure there weren't any typos or such!  I hope you will enjoy this one, too (though the Japanese poster is my favorite).  :)

Japan's Avengers - Assemble!

I saw The Avengers in theaters twice in May, and it has become one of my favorite superhero movies ever!  So I was imagining my own version of the film, where Japan's famous superheroes are assembled the same way Nick Fury assembled Marvel Superheroes!  After pondering and pondering over it for about a month or two, I finally decided to realize it!  Using various pics from the Internet (mostly toy pics from the manufacturers' websites, or from online stores like Hobby Search), I put them together into this fake poster.

In Japan's Avengers (Nippon no Abenjaazu), Godzilla, Ultraman, Masked Rider, Mazinger Z, Ultraman Zero, and Sailor Moon (and Tuxedo Mask, though he's off-poster) are assembled to fight legions of monsters and aliens led by Ultraman Belial!  And yes, that is Times Square in the background.  :)

The tagline is: "Earth's Mightiest Heroes Unite!  Defeat Ultraman Belial!"

The "Japan's Avengers" logo is completely original, done in Flash in about an hour.  The source poster was assembled from various photos in Photoshop, and titles were added in Flash.

Imaginary cast/crew credits on the poster are as follows:

CAST:

Susumu Kurobe (Shin Hayata/Ultraman)
Hiroshi Fujioka (Takeshi Hongou/Masked Rider)
Hiroshi Abe (Jirou Gou, Godzilla's human form/disguise)
GACKT (Kouji Kabuto, pilot of Mazinger Z)
Mamoru Miyano (Human form/voice of Ultraman Zero)
Miyuu Sawai (Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon)
Jouji Shibue (Mamoru Chiba/Tuxedo Mask)
Sonny Chiba (the Nick Fury character)
Hiroyuki Watanabe (the Agent Coulson character)
Yumiko Shaku (the Maria Hill character)
Shirou Sano (the Dr. Selvig character)
Hiroyuki Miyasako (Voice of Ultraman Belial)

STAFF

Director: Takeshi Yagi
Special Effects Director: Shinji Higuchi
Screenplay: JP Cassidy (obviously), Kei'ichi Hasegawa
(Based upon the Avengers screenplay by Joss Whedon and Zak Penn)
Executive Producers: Shougo Tomiyama (Toho), Tsugumi Kitaura (Tsuburaya), Hideaki Tsukada & Kazuhiro Takahashi (Toei), Dynamic Planning
Based on characters created by Toho Company, Ltd., Tsuburaya Productions, Shoutarou Ishinomori, Gou Nagai, and Naoko Takeuchi
Music by Alan Silvestri
Produced by the Avenger Production Committee
-Toho Eiga
-Tsuburaya Productions
-Toei
-Dynamic Planning
Jointly Distributed by Toho, Shouchiku, and Toei

I know that a movie like this will never be made, but the imagination is up to fans like myself.  :)

ADDENDUM: To justify my position on the two Ultramen (three if you count Belial!), I had both of them in mind.  (I thought of Ultra Seven, but I wanted to give his son Zero a chance to shine!)  Zero's inclusion aside, I wanted to pick out the characters most iconic and recognizable to the Japanese public, rather than just the fans.  Also, Zero plays an important part in Ultraman's surviving for more than three minutes in Earth's atmosphere.  :)

I also wanted Zero, because he parallels to Thor, as Belial does Loki.  As far as other Avengers parallels, Ultraman and Masked Rider share Captain America's role (although Ultraman is the team leader of the above depicted characters), as they're the pioneer archetype heroes of Japan.  Sailor Moon is sort of like Black Widow, Tuxedo Mask is like Hawkeye, Mazinger Z/Kouji is Iron Man, and you can guess Godzilla's role...  :)

I even got comments about not including Super Sentai!  LOL  Actually, I'd love to include them, but they're already a team!  The fun of this team is that they're a team of individual heroes, the kind you wanted to see together.

Here Comes Pippi Longstocking!

It's been a while since I posted anything new, as I've been busy moving to another part of Richmond. Progress is going well, and to get me back into drawing, I just did this movie-style teaser poster of one of my favorite characters, Pippi Longstocking!

In both Swedish:

...and English:

This was done entirely in Flash. I drew Pippi in my own Mighty B!-esque cartoony style (similar to what I'm doing for Lily Merriweather) with my Bamboo Fun tablet, and I had painstakingly designed the logos in both Swedish and English. In fact, I did one for each of the three book titles (Pippi Longstocking, Pippi Goes on Board, and Pippi in the South Seas); I added "The Strongest in the World" for the first, as I thought it was cool to have a subtitle. Plus, that's what everyone calls Pippi!

I do admit that the 1988 film, The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking, was my first exposure to the character, and I found her to be quite appealing. I saw the film on cable in 2004 or so, and really enjoyed it! (I was already aware of the 1969 Swedish TV series between then; as my older sister remembered them upon looking at VHS covers for them at Suncoast, and I was intrigued.) I saw it again on Netflix in early Spring of last year, and my interest in the character was rekindled, so much that I bought all three of the original books by Astrid Lindgren. I have to say personally that the original books are the best versions of the story, hands down. They're just as compelling as any comic-book, and possibly the most extreme version of the character. (If it were up to me, I'd do a movie trilogy!) But as far as adaptations go, the aforementioned 1969 Swedish TV series with Inger Nilsson in the title role is the best adaptation (because of Astrid Lindgren's actual involvement)! Despite the major changes, it was very well thought out and conceived. Other adaptations I enjoy are the 1961 episode adaptation in The Shirley Temple Show (with Mousketeer Gina Gillespie as Pippi) and the aforementioned 1988 movie (with Tami Erin as Pippi). I'll present reviews of these adaptations later.

But whereas Ultra Seven, Underdog and others are among my favorite superheroes, my most favorite superheroine is Pippi Longstocking.

So why do I love Pippi so much? In a way, I saw Pippi as an inspiration for Bessie Higgenbottom from The Mighty B!; just as wacky and silly, but very lovable. Pippi is also super-strong, like Superman! (And possibly invulnerable! She can jump from tremendous heights, and land on the ground with not even so much as a scratch!) Some adaptations give Pippi magic powers, though, but in the books, she's really just super-strong, and super-imaginative, always telling tall tales. And another great thing is that she lives all by herself at her father's cottage Villa Villekulla (with her pet monkey Mr. Nilsson, and her nameless pet horse, who had several names in adaptations, the most popular being "Lilla Gubben," the Swedish word for "Little Old Man," a name given to the horse in the 1969 series), has an obscene supply of gold coins (with which she buys things), and does whatever she wants! (Who wouldn't want to do that?) But most of all, she loves her best friends, Tommy and his little sister Annika, and she looks after them as they all go out doing fun things, going on adventures and such. She's nice to well-meaning adults, but reserves her worst behavior for bad adults (bullies, crooks, pirates, etc.). And for a children's character, Pippi is also pretty brutal; she wrestles a bull (which almost tried to kill Tommy), but while she doesn't kill it (she already knows the value of life, as a hero should), she breaks its horns off, and basically wrestles the animal down to complete exhaustion! Mas Oyama would be proud of her. Unlike most adaptations, the books truly show Pippi's emotional side, my favorite of those moments being in Pippi in the South Seas, where, on Kurrekurredutt Island (where her father ruled as the natives' king), she saved Tommy from almost being eaten by a shark, and when realizing that he had a bloody scratch on his leg (from the nick of the shark's tooth), Pippi hugged him dearly (almost squeezing him), and she wept, as she thought she was going to lose him. It was a very touching moment.

I may discuss Pippi more in future posts, and you'll be seeing more fanart from me as well!

Rekira Halloween poster 2007

Despite being a day or two early, I present this Halloween drawing, which I did on October 31, 2007. Here, my monster Rekira pays tribute to Snoopy's famed WWI Flying Ace character, as he battles the Red Baron! This can also be seen on my deviantART site. Done in less than 90 minutes, with Crayola colored pencils and slight penciling. Note that I went for the look of a retro-Japanese movie poster of the 70s!