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TRice01 — Power Rangers: Thunder
#dairanger #gosei #mighty #mmpr #morphin #power #rangers #sentai #tenshin #thunder #toku #tokusatsu #thunderzord #geekshirt #thunderzords
Published: 2017-09-18 16:22:34 +0000 UTC; Views: 6283; Favourites: 32; Downloads: 0
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Description
And here's the first entry in the new commission series I'm working on. A sort of "What If" scenario. What if, Saban had adapted Dairanger completely, instead of just the "zord" footage. In the mind of my "patron", this is the result. Power Rangers: Thunder!The old style Power Rangers "lightning bolt" was reused from my Zyu/MMPR mash up a little while back. The main text that says "Power Rangers" is created simply by tracing over the original logo and then recreating the shadows and gradients as best I could.
Though it's hard to make out, the symbol in the background is the one seen on the shoulders of the Thunder Megazord/Dairenoh, as well as in the cockpit of the Thunder Megazord. When I was a child, I had always interpreted this symbol as a stylized "Thunder Bolt" to go with the idea of these being the Thunder Zords. Thus I made sure to include it with this representation. Added triva, the cockpit for Dairenoh is completely different from the Thunder Megazord and does not include this symbol. This is made interesting by the fact that on the American version of the toy, the symbol on the shoulders is replaced by the PR Lightning Bolt. Why go through the trouble of putting it in the cockpit for your original scenes if you're just gonna ditch it in the toy?
As before, these designs are available on my RedBubble store for T-shirts and other merch.
www.redbubble.com/people/rodim…
Media is vectors in Adobe Illustrator
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Comments: 18
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Dang, man. You do these real good. You got a tutorial for this 3D text thing in Illustrator? Looks awesome.
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Not really I'm afraid. And in this case I "cheated" in the main portion and traced over the original MMPR logo to get my 3D shape.
Most of the time what I do is as follows:
1. Create my text (hand letter or type out, it's all the same for this as long as it's converted into "outlines" by the end of this step.
2. Modify text to desired shape.
3. Copy text and past behind original.
4. Change the shape and size of copied text to get the final size of the "back" part of the 3D extrusion.
5. Go through and connect the corners of each letter/shape. You can see this in my "behind the scenes" posts.
6. This is optional but you can clean up the lines so that you only have the ones you need in your final version.
7. Convert the collection of lines and shapes into a live paint and fill the sections with color to make the final "shapes" for each part.
8. Expand the live paint
9. Go through the shapes that have been made and convert them to the desired colors or gradients to get the 3D effect you want. Some times you'll need to make copies of a shape and over lay gradients and effects to get the desired look.
It's time consuming, but it gives a better look than the 3D tools that exist in Illustrator as far as I'm concern.
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Oh, okay. Seems like quite a bit to go through. And, you mean this indeed does 3D in Illustrator, just without its "tools". Right?
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It's not really "3D" to be honest. You can't select what I'm talking about and rotate it around . Any changes like that have to be done by hand. This is more the equivalent of drawing something "3D" by hand. Like what Mark Kistler did in his old shows on PBS.
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Ohh, okay. Now I gotcha. Honestly not familiar with Mark Kistler, but I understand otherwise.
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He had a couple shows on PBS back in the day and currently does drawing tutorial videos on his YouTube page and runs art camps for kids. He's one of my biggest early inspirations when I started doing art when I was a child. I've actually got to meet him in person a couple of times too.
Here's a video he did not too long ago that shows a little of his 3D stuff
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFeB-Q…
And this is a book of his that I've had since he visited my elementary school
www.amazon.com/Mark-Kistlers-D…
If you have any interest in that kind of stuff, i'd highly recommend it.
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Thanks for the enlightenment, but I don't really do traditional drawing regularly.
But wait! I just looked him up, I Recognize him!! He visited my elementary school too! Though, it might've actually been a video tape of one of his shows. I remember he was drawing....uhh...space men on top of a ship, all out of shapes I think. Though I was way too young, mentally, to learn anything of what he may have been teaching. But yeah, I recognize him.
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It's possible. He did quite a few school visits back in the day. He also had several VHS tapes of his PBS programs and I know my school tended to show those every now and then.
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Heh, I see.
Say, I think we need a proper introduction. I mean, why not?
My name's Andrew. Andrew DeSoto.
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Thomas Rice. Though I tend to just go by my online handles, so TRice or Rodimus13.
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Nice to meet you, Thomas. Would "Tom" be okay? If not, that's fine.
Well, I can see we both love Power Rangers. How old were you when it came out?
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I'd rather not give out too much personal info, to be honest.
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Oh, okay. Sure, I totally understand that. I don't mean to come off as overly talkative.
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(Oh boy. Now you've done it... Get ready for a long, mostly playful rant!)
Alternatively, you could have also gone with "Mighty Morphing Thunder Rangers", which would keep with the naming pattern up to Alien Rangers!
Also, love your choice of the Dairen-Oh symbol, but I have to know, was there a reason behind not using the DaiRanger badge/symbol that they have on the chest of their suits? Too distracting? It is colorful after all... I guess you could make it all gold or something, but then it loses some of its identity.
Actually, I quite honestly liked that the 90's toys just used the Power Rangers' lightning bolt. It gave the toys their own identity, telling the world "this is specifically the Power Rangers' version of these robots". I liked the idea that the adaptation and the source material had subtle differences in their designs. But then the Power Rangers Legacy toy line came out recently, and they made the Zords super screen accurate to the Japanese design with no Power Ranger lightning bolts or anything, so there goes any cultural differences.
But I do like this idea. 
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The client told me he wanted it to say Power Rangers so that's why I did that. As for the Dairen'oh symbol, that was something I wanted to use from the start as I loved how the Thunder Megazord had their own unique symbol, so I knew I had to integrate it somehow.
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Ah, I keep forgetting that a lot of your works are commissions. Still, you do excellent work.
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