Catch-up Time

You know, I was doing so well at updating regularly last year before work really started dropping on me like piles of bricks. Here's some updates on that thing I was drawing.

Color to another character.

Reduced the size of the troll, corrections to a pose, a few touch-ups on colors.

Costuming!

Lines.

Colors.

Costuming. Removed a figure for the preview; the wing covers a chunk of the troll.

Color! Also some line for the critter, with some changes to the tail.

I need to get back in the habit of updating more again.

Catching Up

Work seems to have been kicking my butt lately.

It's been a while since I've made an update to the blog, so it's time to play a bit of catch-up.

Visited my boyfriend back in July and had a wonderful time, then came back and went right back to work. Between now and then, the newest iteration of the Pokemon franchise has come out, and I have to say I've enjoyed it. X and Y have put some fresh new mechanics into the games, something that they've needed for a long time. On a more subjective note, the designs of the new batch of monsters have been pretty fun for the most part. I'll doubtlessly produce some scribbles documenting my adventures at some point.

But for now, a bit of sketching.

Playing around with old characters.

 Having fun making an alien species. I knew I wanted it to have horns, four arms, and a goat-like aspect to the feet, but beyond that it was experimentation for a direction to go.

 Four eyes made the species appropriately alien, so I set about playing with the skull: the placement of the eyes, shape of the horns, etc.

 Good lord, I have played entirely too much Mass Effect. Just some color scribbles to experiment with the look of the things.

 I wasn't fond of the armor from above, so I did some more playing around with that and a more "conventional" space suit. The podcast Welcome to Night Vale is a great motivator for art.

A monster sketch, incorporating a few animals into one beastly ogre.

A fantasy-themed mount creature. Drawn on the plane.

In other news, I've got an idea for a short-story-comic. Still drafting the script, though, so it may be a while yet. Stay tuned.

How do I lighting

Better late than not at all! Been another busy week, but I did a bit of playing around with this again tonight. Experimenting with backlighting on a skin membrane, so expect to see more than one go at that wing.

Oh man, update, I need to update. Okay, just need to find where I left that last process image... Aha, there we are.

I'd been planning on getting another post up sooner, but things have gotten a little distracting here with a trip planned to happen in a few days, among other things. Excuses, excuses. In any case, here's what progress there was the last time I worked on this guy. Took me a little while to figure out exactly how to progress, but I'm liking where things are going so far. We'll see what happens!

Should have some airport sketches sometime in the future as well, though I can't say when. It may be a month before I have access to a scanner for any work in more traditional medias. Not that I don't have plenty of digital work to catch up on.

Yes, I still exist

Wow, so, been a while, huh? Got into a slump and then got depressed and had a little bit of a breakdown before recovering from that, and now I'm feeling more inspired and confident. Now if I can just keep Minecraft from burning through all of my time while I'm not at work, I'll be able to get things done.

So it came up some time ago in a conversation with a friend of mine that I really, really dislike designs in the Gears of War series. I decided, I said, that when I got some time I would sit down and put my money where my mouth was, in a manner of speaking, and do some redesigns. I was also spurred to try this out by the excellent redesigns of the Justice League, Batman, and Legion of Doom by Aaron Diaz. You should really take a look at those if you haven't yet, by the way.

While I won't be going so in-depth as to rewrite character histories, I do want to find a better, more distinct look for a few things in Gears, though. And let's get this out of the way, too: I've only played a portion of the second game. And I did have fun with what I played, even if the writing had about as much subtlety as a house on fire. All that said, I've done a little bit of reading on the wiki to get a better grasp on the Gears creatures, characters, and conflict.

So to kick things off, I thought I'd start with the basic Locust Grunt. Apparently, they're supposed to be reptilian. I never knew this until I read it. I never even guessed. I guess the Locust are threatening by... being large and ugly? but then again so are the main characters, and both groups have the same basic stumpy, burly look to them. The Locust really don't look that inhuman, all told. Especially the Queen. Someone please explain that one to me.

Since they're supposedly reptilian, I thought I'd push that angle a little more:

It's all pretty quick, but there are some basic ideas. All in all maybe 30 minutes to an hour, I really need to remember to keep track of time when I'm drawing. Based mostly in lizards and lastly in pit vipers. I want to get a good idea of a face and skull before I get into how the body's going to look, so these are really just the start of the busts for the Locust.

Widget

(I'm working on getting some kind of Lightbox thing working, bear with me)

So, here we are, the first post with an image slapped onto it. This is a particularly quick scribble from a few weeks ago. Not sure why I didn't post it sooner, but that's probably just my over-thinking things like I usually do. This little griffon-beastie is Widget, based on eagle owls. He's a twist on a Pathfinder character's pet. Did I mention this was a quick sketch? It is. It's very quick.

In other news, I'm a little put off by the new Harley Quinn costume. She's been one of my favorite characters since I became a Bat-fan long ago in the 90's watching the Animated Series. While I don't read superhero comics (ironic, since I love a lot of the shows like Justice League and Teen Titans), it just disappoints me where they've taken the character, at least visually. I'm not aware of anything in the DC canon that's been happening, so I can't say anything about plot points or character development--the last time I knew anything about Harley, it was during the Animated Series and the Arkham Asylum game (ah, what a wonderful game). Speaking of which, I'm excited for Arkham City. Everything surrounding it looks fantastic so far. Trying not to get too psyched up about it, though. I don't want to inflate my expectations too much and have the game fall short. I'll be interested to see how Tara Strong fares as Harley's new voice, too. A bit ironic there, too, since she used to voice Batgirl. But she's a great actress, so I've got every confidence for the character in Arkham City. Even if that corset is far too tight to be breathing, much less doing acrobatics.