ART POST!!
First up, random Inspector Sly Cooper AU series (because I've been neglecting that poor thing)
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Next up, a "how it should have ended" comic for the China level of Sly 3.
I decided to try my hand at doing a "How it should have ended" AU in storybook form instead of a comic. Basically, I just put in random scenes and images and accompanied them with text descriptions. It was pretty fun and it allowed me to be less self-concious about how polished the drawings look. Since most of my art gets done at work (where I can't use my fancy light box and T-ruler), I can't really do a lot of polished things these days.
First up, the surprisingly non-awful scratch/brain-storming scribbles:
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A.U. COMIC
I adore the original Sly Cooper trilogy. However, one of it's few flaws is the fact that there aren't many female protagonists (though Sly 2 has one of the most awesome female villains EVER). And you rarely see two female characters interact. So I thought it would be fun to re-write one of the storylines in the third game to give the girls stuff to do
together.
The canon ending for the China level of Sly 3 is that Penelope (the cute mouse girl) gets kidnapped by a dragon at the end of a rescue mission (the mission involved saving a girl named Jing from a forced marriage to a jerk named Tsao). In my little "what if" story, the boys get kidnapped by General Tsao and Penelope and Jing King have to seek out Officer Carmelita Fox’s help to get them back. I don’t have time to turn this idea into a full comic (and I don’t have the writing skills to write a fic), so I just scribbled the ideas as they came to me.
And here are the story pages:
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Page One:The idea behind this is that the final Jing King rescue mission got botched right after the Panda King got his daughter Jing out of the palace. Tsao noticed her gone before Sly could get Carmelita to take her place. So Tsao sent the dragon after them and the boys were captured while girls narrowly escaped. And Tsao plans to re-acquire Jing King by announcing from the highest rooftop that he’ll kill them if Jing doesn’t return to him within a few hours (since he’s a sexist jerk who believes that two girls wont be able to mount a rescue and that Jing will come running back to him simply because he’s “strong” enough to capture the entire Cooper Gang).
Sadly, since Penelope is still new to the team and woefully unequipped to handle something like this (and Jing is, presumably, not trained to fight or do espionage), the girls seek out Carmelita in the village and ask for her help.
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Page Two:I really dig the first panel. Penelope would totally have a fangirl moment upon meeting Carmelita (since Carmelita is basically a fuzzy Xena). Also, if you replay the original trilogy, you’ll notice that Bentley and Murray always seemed to have a pretty unfair sense of hostility toward Carmelita (instead of acknowledging/accepting that she’s just doing her job like Sly did). So I imagine that Bentley and Murray had some less than flattering things to say when/if Penelope ever asked them about her. XD
As for the second panel, I had fun drawing it (even if I do suck at drawing backgrounds). I like the idea of Carmelita remaining totally collected and focused despite having to make her way through a hostile town full of violent guards while escorting two civilians AND avoiding a patrolling Dragon overhead! The idea here is that Penelope needs to find the location where the boys are being held before she can use her RC car to attempt a rescue. But the dragon prevents her from doing air reconnaissance with her RC chopper. So Carmelita escorts the girls through town so they can find clues to their location.
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Page Three:The girls manage to get to the boys in time. Carmelita goes in ahead of Jing and Penelope to make sure there aren’t any traps and/or guards waiting to ambush them (and Carmelita wastes no time slapping a pair of handcuffs on Sly once the boys are safe). However, the dragon spots them and grabs Penelope (I LOVE that dragon boss fight in the game and cannot bear to ret-con it even for a silly fan-comic AU)
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Page Four:Since it’s clear that Sly is the only one with a shot at getting Penelope down safely, Carmelita lets him go without a second thought.
As much as I loved Sly 3, I think it would have been improved if Sly and Carmelita had a moment or two like this before she dramatically rescued him from Doctor M’s monster at the start of the final chapter. I mean, Penelope and Bentley were able to build up a believable friendship before hooking up (despite their limited screen time together). So it’s a little disappointing that pretty much every “moment” Sly and Carmelita have together in the third game before their dramatic hookup involves her shooting at him.
