What is Toys for Bob planning..?

Recently Toys for Bob has updated their site to be a cryptic black page with their logo, so what could this mean?

I uh, actually don't know either. Some people are speculating that it may be Spyro 4 due to the purple color, others are speculating Crash Bandicoot because of the tiki mask, which is not the best assumption when the tiki mask is just the studio's logo. Either way everyone is hoping that this is the launch of a new game. Now we just gotta wait and see...

Don't get your hopes up for a new Skylanders game like me.

A followup birthday post???

So a package arrived late for my birthday, lo and behold, the Power Blue Splatter Splasher! Still with its box too! (Ignore the staples... it came like that) 

As for the Scarlet Ninjini, I managed to snatch that up on my own thanks to some wild circumstances. 

So our school held its annual art show in April, and a kid that I faintly knew was interested in buying some art from me, and I knew this kid had Skylanders before due to a conversation I somehow remembered from many months prior. So I instantly, instead of taking money, I asked for a Skylander, and bam, I give him my art and a few days later I come home with another Skylander in my collection!

Roberto Moreno | Prop Design

Roberto Moreno is an environment / prop artist that worked on Imaginators and Trap Team (I can't find info regarding if they have or haven't worked on Superchargers). He did a majority of prop models and designs for the games, such as the various gold that you find laying around, or the breakable objects that you don't even truly spare a glance. If you want to check out some more concepts I have excluded, here is his site!

Various props Roberto made for Trap Team

Roberto also mentions the extra setup it takes for breakable props, "These props were interactive in some form or another and required extra setup time and working with animators, level designers, and technical artists to get them to work as intended, whether it be rigged animation sequences, pick-up items, or destructible props."

Props that would require additional setup

"I worked as an environment artist specializing in props while [working] on Skylanders. Most of the textures were provided by our sister studio Vicarious Visions, who also worked on Skylanders at the time. I modeled, unwrapped, optimized, animated, and set up for destructibles, as needed"

I bet it takes a hell lot of time to get this all done- Roberto has a ton of images of prop sets that even if I wanted to include them all here, I probably wouldn't be able to! Again I have linked his site just in case you want to check out all of it.

That's a ton of props! And that isn't even all of the work he has! Major props (hehe) to Roberto for the insane amount of work put into this! Maybe I should replay Imaginators after all...

Christian De Pedro | Skylanders Academy prop design

Alright these are probably the coolest concepts I have seen for the show which I uh, have never really talked about here... Even though I have binged it- lets see... A few too many times to count? 

I suppose I should also make a tag for the show now.

Real quick before we delve into these amazing works we have Christian's art page right here if you want to check out more! Let's kick off with a few environments: The full link

The arena / prison

An absolutely stunning painted hallway

Malefor's islands

I cannot stress how much I adore this matte painted style of Christian's works, it makes me wish I could be in these places and live in Skylands. I also aspire to reach this level of painting... But with my gushing out of the way, here's a few props they also painted together: The full link

Is it just me or does that cheese look really good right now...

Ah the iconic Dread-Yacht!

Sail away~

And lastly we have the paintings from Eon's explanation to Spyro, also giving us a full resolution closer look at the dragons! The full link, again.

For a better look you can click to enlarge the images

I could probably be going out and praising their artworks for days on end, but you're most likely just here for the Skylanders content. Again I will urge you to actually go to their website and appreciate the rest of their works, I also left out a few concepts you can find on their page. 

Thank you for sticking around! 

Skylanders Superchargers and how the models work

To all the potential tech and 3D model nerds scrolling my page, or if you've stumbled upon my Skylanders rips online, (which haven't been approved to The Models Resource yet at the time of writing this) I've decided to make a post explaining Skylanders Superchargers models and how to properly set up the nodes in Blender! This probably works for the models from other games but I haven't gotten around to ripping those apart yet.

Blender Render of Lava Lance Eruptor with a basic lighting setup

For this particular instance I'm going to be using the WiiU models that I ripped. And I'm going to be using Eruptor since he is a good instance for having all of the textures I need to cover.

First thing's first, import the DAE of the Skylander you're using (yes, this tutorial is for beginners too) and you might have a fully textured model already. If it doesn't have textures already hooked up then... oops. First thing might look nice already but it doesn't have any of the extras plugged in, you're going to have to do that yourself.

No extra textures plugged in yet...

And the Shading tab in the top of the screen is where most of our work will be carried out.

As you can see, those blocks below are nodes, and that large green one is where everything will be plugged into. Add more image texture blocks and find the textures that correspond to your part.

These are the textures we are using, in reading order we have the Color, Composite, Normal, and Emissive maps

Just plugging these in directly won't do much, a lot of these have prior setup required. Let's start off with the composite since there isn't too much difference from adding it unless it's a metallic prop.

Add a Separate Color node and connect the composite, and plug the green channel to specular and the blue channel to metallic. One of the more simple node setups. 

Now for the emissive:

Plugging in the emissive right now won't look correct, you have to add a color mix node.

Add a color mix node and place it with your regular body color and emissive texture. Connect the emissive to channel B and connect your regular body to channel A. (Don't disconnect your color from the base color! One texture can connect to multiple nodes.)

Now set your color mix node to Multiply and the factor to 1.000 and now the result good for plugging in! You can adjust the emission strength to your liking for however bright you want the lava to be.

Now for the normals which are the most important texture, even if you don't want the other textures, I would recommend adding the normal map. Skylanders has a strange problem with normals where the red channel is inverted, but luckily Blender can fix it no problem with one extra step! To fix the normals add a RGB Color Curve node and plug in the normal, flip the red channel in a straight line.

(Click to enlarge the images if you need to understand this step better)

Now add a Normal Map node from the vector node section and plug the curve output into that node. The normal can now be properly plugged in!

Before and After adding the nodes

Have fun messing with your models now!

My Birthday!

 Hi! It's April 27th, and you know what that means? My birthday! This year I just asked for Skylanders and uh, didn't get any, again... But that's okay cause I finally got a Cricut machine to help me make stickers! And with making stickers I can hopefully make some of my own money to buy Skylanders with!

Dive-Clops is my favorite Skylander

I'm 17 now, and one year closer to getting that internship that I really want...

Thanks for sticking around! 

Bill Tiller | Environment Concepts

Bill Tiller worked as a senor concept artist as Toys for Bob on Imaginators, primarily working on props and environment designs.

Cool environment concepts!

These two seem to be for the Life sensei realm and... I actually haven't played Imaginators (My least favorite of the games, not sorry) in a long time so I'm assuming this might be the light realm? The only realm I don't have access to is the dark realm, so I have never seen it...

The dolls from the tech sensei realm. 

Of course, I always make sure to leave some stuff out of posts to let people support the artists by directly visiting their respective pages, here is Bill Tiller's website, holding a few more Skylanders concepts and tons of other cool art! https://www.billtillerart.com/skylanders

Anthony Avvento | Skylanders Swap Force 3Ds and Count Moneybone

Anthony Avvento designed a ton for Skylanders Swap Force 3Ds including making Count Moneybone's design. 

Even citing Clark Gable and Skeletor as inspirations for the design!

Throughout the game Moneybone's suit becomes more elaborate with each fight

I personally think Moneybone is criminally underrated for being such a fun character, I almost never see him mentioned in most Skylanders media. He's pretty charming for being a villain (I would say thanks to Clark Gable's part in the design) I love his overexaggerated voice and grandiosity. 

There's a more concepts on Anthony's site such as for Moneybone's robotic monstrosities, please support the artists!

(Fun fact, Count Moneybone was actually introduced in Swap Force 3Ds and not Superchargers)

Toys for Bob is going indie, and what does this mean for Skylanders?

 

So last month Toys for Bob announced that they're going to become an indie studi0, they shut down their physical headquarters in California since it was too expensive to keep up, and people almost worried that TFB were going to be shutting down for good. TFB have stated that they are still in a partnership with Microsoft too, so what does this mean for any future Skylanders games?

In my personal opinion, I don't think this actually changes much for the future of Skylanders. Since Microsoft is still partnered with them they can still use IPs such as Crash Bandicoot and Skylanders.

I still hold onto some hope that a remaster is a possibility in the future, but I do doubt that there will be anything relating to Skylanders being released for years to come.

Addressing some claims going about from their post: (Note that I am not an employee of TFB and that these are just what I have inferred from research)

Skylanders is not cancelled forever but the chances of a new game are still slim

No, the fact that 'horns' are mentioned here does not confirm a new Skylanders game like some people are saying (what logic is that???)

Toys for Bob mentioning Skylanders (once) in the post also does not confirm a new game

So in the end, what does this mean? Nothing too much really in terms of Skylanders.

The chances of getting a new game is the same as before, still miniscule. But this doesn't mean that the series is done for good.

Happy Birthday to my Blog! And a small update-

    So I went on an accidental hiatus for a bit, whoops! I didn't post anything all Feburary, and I haven't been making much progress on my comic for a bit. (Sorry!) It's weird to think this blog is already a year old now, my first post was about me saving up to buy the land trophy for Superchargers, I still haven't actually brought it.

(Apology sneak peek)

I've 3D modeled the environments for convenience! (I hate drawing different camera angles...)

    I haven't been doing much related to Skylanders in general for a small while, I have been doing a lot of other stuff, juggling working on multiple games, such as my own project, two Yo-Kai Watch fan projects, and working on an entirely original game as an animator and modeller. I'm a highschool student too, which also cuts down my time to work on projects by a lot. 

Also I haven't had my Skylanders hyperfixation come back swinging in a while, don't get me wrong I still adore Skylanders but I've ended up gravitating towards other games for the past while. Though I still enjoy drawing Skylanders from time to time. 

    I was going to say that nobody really visits this blog but I went and checked my website statistics and it seems I get a small amount regular viewers which honestly surprised me! A very pleasant surprise, I wish I could shout them out here but I can't view usernames which is honestly for the best.

    Either way thank you to any readers that visit, it means a lot to me! I'm sorry about my lack of recent posts, I hope to get back to my regular posting schedule of once at least every week. I'm also going to be back on doing regular renovations and working on polishing some pages while making some new ones, as you can see by the Fanart and Collection buttons I've made that take you to an empty page...

Thank you for visiting! And happy birthday to a now entire year of my Skylanders blog!