4/30/15 - On Playing with Fire

So today I did some fire studies! I did this one with reference:

I spent some time studying it and trying to figure out how fire worked, so I could make more fire and fire-like effects in the future without having to rely heavily on reference for all of the crazy angles and proportions that I could be using fire for. So I wrote some notes and looked at how fire sources change its behavior. After that, I did this:

It's not perfect, but I think it's a fairly passable fire. This one was done without reference. I still have more to fix up if I want to create believable (but still ever-so-slightly-stylized) fire on my own, but for a 20 minute test I think it was fairly successful.

So that's all for today. I'll be back again tomorrow!

4/29/15 - Steampunk Blade

As part of a /r/sketchdaily prompt, I did something (loosely) steampunk: in this case a sword, also inspired by the Spur in Spiral Knights. I didn't polish it much and the handle proportion...could be better, but hey, I think it was a decent design at least:

I'd like to do more weapon design in the future. I'll post the results here when I do.

Well, until tomorrow!

4/28/15 - Some hands

I did some studies of my skeletal hands a few days ago for /r/sketchdaily. Here they are:

and the line underdrawing, post-cleanup:

Yeah, I'm going to take highlights from sketchdaily (read: days where I have time to put effort into it) and also cross-post them here for some filler while I'm in-between multiple projects to spice it up a bit.

Well, that's all for today, be back tomorrow!

4/27/15 - Olivia, Take Two

So I came back to that Olivia drawing I did earlier. I figured an Olivia piece would better be served by a portrait, so I started this:

Yeah. Not much else to say. I'll be back tomorrow with more!

4/26/15 - Red, Finished

I think so at least. This is probably as far as I'll be taking it in the near future. I think it looks pretty cool. I don't usually work this busy so it was hard to find a good balance. Well, here it is:

That's all for today; I'll be back again tomorrow!

4/25/15 - Bluejay Completed!

Finished the second character design, using the male bird people base. Here it is:

And, here's another version that looks closer to how my character would be:

He lost his wings and has the eye of a dragon. Not a very fair trade but looks kinda cool. And the staff, which is nice I suppose. I realized after the fact that he kind of looks like he could be Link from the start of a Zelda game, before getting the hero's clothes. I might do something with that...

Well, that's all for today! Be back tomorrow!

4/24/15 - Back to Bird Business

There's a reason for this, I swear.

See, I'm going to do some character commissions for my RP group. Both of my characters were a madeup race (this bird/human hybrid) so I did these to figure out the anatomy and then to come back and add costuming to make them my characters. So this is the male version, and my second (main) character:

So yeah. That's all for today, I'll be back tomorrow and hopefully I'll have something interesting to report...

Be back then!

4/23/15 - Back to birds

Only somewhat. I'm working on this illustration alongside the Red piece, so I thought I'd put in updates for it now and again. Here's a far earlier rough in of the piece, to give an idea of where I started (after thumbnails):

Yeah, I guess that's all for now. Be back tomorrow!

4/22/15 - More Red Progress

Not much else to say really. Here's what the last few updates looked like:

And here's the next step: I rendered the face decent amount and began work on the background.

So uh, that's all for today. Not a lot of text but good progress. Well, be back tomorrow!

4/21/15 - Red Progress

Hey, so I'm doing a TON more work on these projects that I used to, so I'm actually somewhat ahead of what I'm posting now (at least 1 step ahead on this painting and a few hours into another painting). That means I'll have backup posts in case anything happens and a steady stream of decent updates (hopefully). So that's cool!

So today, I have some progress on the Transistor poster from yesterday. I actually got quite a bit further than what I'm posting now, but I feel like this color step was significant enough to warrant its own post. I'm trying to make these big painting posts a sort of process/update so I'm going to stagger them to line up with significant progress. That said, here's Red (heh, rhymes):

Alrighty, well, that's all for now. I'll be back tomorrow!

4/20/15 - Something completely unrelated to birds

I feel like it was time to move away from birds. Well, not really, because I have another illustration with that character in the works; but at the very least I thought I'd show something that isn't more damn birds. So here's a rough for a project:

The project, in my Digital Illustration class, is to make a gig poster for a band, or in this case a singer. Seeing as my repertoire of known artists consists almost entirely of electronic music from YouTube, covers of game songs, game soundtracks and classic rock (pre-cool posters), I opted to do Red, from Transistor. I thought it was a cool style, a cool character and something that I might actually hang on my wall when I'm done. So, I did my thumbnails, liked this one and took it a bit further in the time I had today. I like it so far; the question is whether or not I'll be able to finish it with the level of detail I'm trying to depict here (and render it all accurately).

Well, hopefully I can do some more of it tomorrow!

4/19/15 - A Better take on Costuming

So I did another variation on the costume - the last one was intentionally pretty bare and revealing for the sake of the Anatomical class while this one is more along the lines of the costume I'd like to do. So, take three:

Last time I'm doing this, I swear! I liked this design much better - it's a bit busy but I wanted it to be vaguely tribal so I think it worked out. I do need to improve my design sense, though, and that's something I intend to work on over the summer. So that's all for today and tomorrow I promise I won't be showing another variation of the same painting!

Till then!

4/18/15 - Yesterday with Clothes!

Well, that's an interesting title. But it works! And before midnight, too!

So I misread the assignment I had to do before and realized that I could re-purpose the study I did purely for myself by adding some slightly more tactful attire (still revealing since it's an Anatomical Illustration assignment) and basically calling it done. So yeah. I added clothes and changed the colors.

I'm pretty satisfied with it, like yesterday. There's a few things I'd like to improve on, but I think this was a good step in the right direction!

Till tomorrow!

4/17/15 - Yesterday's With Color

I'm fairly happy with this one too!

Now it's still rough around the edges of course, but I feel like I'd be able to fix it up nicely with time; I've solved pretty much all of the design issues at this point and all I'd need to do is render, and fix smaller things, really. Not to mention the entire reason I did this was to figure out proportion and anatomy - I just rendered it to test something that wasn't just a portrait and I'm pretty happy with the results so far. I've still got ways to go but now I feel a little closer!

I'll probably be able to start the actual illustration with this character tomorrow. Be back then!

4/16/15 - More Bird People Anatomy!

It's only something I've done over and over again! But this time I feel much better about it. I didn't try to force the cartoony style and instead went for something based on realistic anatomy. I realized that since I wanted to make the anatomy morph believable, I should first make the base anatomy believable and that meant staying closer to realism (but still stylized). So I got this:

I used a lot more reference here. I started with realistic anatomy and stretched it where I could. I might even go back and stretch the legs a little bit more. Aside from that, I went back to a more human face though I did keep the eyes large, nose looking like a beak and eyebrows a little more wild. I did research on bird wings to try and keep these wings somewhat accurate. It was fun to study the different parts of anatomy to try and see what I could get away with and I'm happy with the results so far. I'm probably going to go back, tweak it a little bit and then get to rendering.

Be back tomorrow!

4/15/15 - Logos

Hey! Quick update here; I'm pretty tired now.

I did some logos for classwork - I don't have much to post today so I'll put these up:

It's a little rough around the edges (not literally with Illustrator but I hope you know what I mean) but I think it came out pretty cool regardless. I like the bottom color scheme better but I think I'll brighten the blue a little bit across the board.

Well, that's it for now. I'll be back again tomorrow!

4/14/15 - FE Portraits continued

So I think this one came out quite a bit better!

Of course, it's far from perfect, but I think it's a step in the right direction and it certainly looks more presentable. I think I either need to stylize it more or adhere more strictly to realistic anatomy because I'm falling in a weird middle ground but those are issues I feel much more comfortable addressing. Before my biggest concern was making things look well presentable; I was trying to avoid the sloppy factor. While this piece still looks rough around the edges I feel much better about cleaning this up than some of the older pieces. I know how I would do it whereas I got lost trying to fix it in the others.

Overall I thought this portrait series was very helpful - I found a middle ground between the styles of the artists I followed and I think I can build on it to create a really solid foundation for myself!

Until tomorrow!

4/13/15 - FE Portraits 1

After I ran into that style problem on Threnody, I went back to the portrait drawing board. I did this one first as a webcam test but tried to change the face. It ended up looking like Awakening's Mustafa, so I ran with that.

I'm happier with the clarity I reached here - it's far from perfect but much more readable than the last few. I've got another, more polished one of these in the works but I'll be saving that for tomorrow!

Be back then!

4/12/15 - Threnody Continued

I worked on Threnody a little bit more, and I said I'd post what I'd get. Here it is:

I'm happy with the statue and the colors so far but I just can't get that figure right. I took a break; I was out of ideas. I'm still trying to integrate that new method of paining in and I think it would've been really handy now, but I fell back on my older methods of painting - and realized why I was trying to learn something new.

That said, I went back to practicing the new method and I think I'm getting decent at it. Hopefully I'll have something cool and more polished to show using that method soon!

Until tomorrow!

4/11/15 - Threnody Start

I'm really tired now, so this'll be a short post. Among other smaller things, I started this painting today:

It's based on a creative writing prompt I answered for a class. I'll post the whole thing here when I do an update of this piece (hopefully tomorrow) but for now I hope the image will be good enough.

So yeah, that's a short update but hopefully a pretty enough picture to make up for it. Until tomorrow!

4/10/15 - Pre-Rework Lyn Thumb

After sitting stumped for a while on what to do with this piece, I think I'm going to rework it. Or part of it at least. So here's what I got before opting to rework:

Super rough. I liked the pose and composition, but the face and general proportions of the figure keep bugging me. Hopefully I can agree with it eventually but I dunno what I want to do with it for now. I'm putting it up here as sort of an 'anchor'. I can compare any changes I may make to this as a a starting point.

That's all I've got for today. Until tomorrow!

4/9/15 - Portrait of a Friend

Basically what the title says. I wanted to practice using his picture and he wanted to see what I could make of it, so it all worked out!

Unfinished, but ha asked me pretty late so this is what I got in that time.

That's all for today; I'll be back tomorrow!

4/8/15 - Making Funny Faces

So I picked a thumbnail and started working on the full Lyn piece...except I wasn't able to get the expression or general face structure right. At least, not to the level that I wanted. So, I took a break and made some funny faces at my webcam. They're pretty quick studies (and they don't exactly look like me), but I thought they came out alright, looked funny and are good enough to share:

Yeah. That's all for today - I have the Lyn stuff I was working on but I don't want to post that every day; if I did, it would probably start to look pretty stale after a while. These little exercises ought to spice things up a little more.

So that's all for today! I'll be back tomorrow!

4/7/15 - Lyn Sketch Progress

I actually did this right after posting yesterday but I'll put it up here because I think it looks much better with the shading:

I tried something different here: all of the value is only one color brush; it simply has variable opacity. It's all eraser and one color. Again, I'm trying out a new approach.

I think it came out alright. Now that this portrait is worked out, I'm moving on to the next part: choosing and refining a thumbnail!

Until tomorrow!

4/6/15 - Lyn Prep Work

So I'm going to do a full painting again. Like the Twin Swords, except this time I'm going to take my time between steps and really finish each part to the point where I am 100% satisfied with each step before moving on to the next one.

This time, I'm going to work with an established character as I'm focusing on the rendering and artwork itself, not the design. Since I'm in a Fire Emblem mood, I chose Lyndis (FE7).

So, here's my initial portrait work. I'm attempting to make it read like Lyndis in my style instead of an anime style. The costume is from the Fire Emblem Awakening DLC official render. It'll be more apparent later; this is mainly a portrait study.

Obviously it's not there yet, but I just thought I'd introduce the project now.

I'll be back tomorrow!

4/5/15 - Value Added

So I realized perhaps a little too late that I did this technique wrong - I missed a rather crucial step (in fact, the reason I wanted to try this) which means I can't try out the new colorizing technique on this B/W sketch. Whoops.

That said, I did add some value:

So that's all for now. Sorry bout that; I did want to take this further but the whole point of going further was to try that colorizing technique. That said, I have something else cooking. More on that in a few days - I'll probably fill the interim with daily warmups or something.

Till tomorrow!

4/4/15 - FE Inspired Line Art Practice

So I started this yesterday and got a bit further today - lineart like this takes longer than I thought! Here's the finished 'step one' of the linework:

Up next I'm going to do a value pass then add color after. I'm trying this technique again and I'm going a bit slower this time - I'm taking my time with each step and so far I think it's working out much better.

Well, that's it for now! Be back tomorrow!

4/3/15 - A Step in the Right Direction

Not much to report today - I worked on a few different things but I'm hoping to show others in a more complete state, so here's a color version of yesterday's sketch:

It was fun to play with color gradients in the wings and skin - I like how that came out but I think my lineart needs significant improvement if I'm going to continue in a style like this. Well, that's why I'm practicing line I guess.

So that's all for now; hopefully I'll have something fun tomorrow!

4/2/15 - Another Bird Person Test

I got a project that allows me to experiment more with bird people, so that means more tests!

This one was also a linework test - I want to practice linework and also see if this style is conducive to good paintovers. So here it is:

It's sort of an in-between of the slightly older stuff I wanted to mimic and the bad stuff I was doing in days past. I think it came out okay, but only value and color work will truly tell if this will look good.

Until tomorrow!

4/1/15 - Creative Writing

So today was a schoolwork day - the only art I got done today was thumbnails, and I have no means of scanning them in on hand (nor would they be particularly interesting to look at. So nothing fun to show today. Sorry.

That said, I don't want to leave with nothing to show, so I'll put some of the creative writing work I did in here:

There she lay, strewn midst the fresh rubble, exuding an air of serenity even among the countless fallen and tattered flags wavering in the faint wind whistling through the shattered windows of the sanctuary. Her eyes drifted up to meet mine and I understood, so I played her a song she would recognize as bravery and courage, and of loss and deep sorrow, it was a song ushered forth by a lifetime of friendship and of bittersweet triumph, but all that echoed in my ear, accompanied by the mourning wind, was her elegy.

We had to create a scene within one or two sentences. I thought it ended up sounding kind of neat, and I might illustrate it soon, if I have the time.

So that's all for today. Be back tomorrow!