My trip’s jet lag has sucked my energy dry over the last few days, so rather than force myself to work on demanding drawings, I’ve been spending some time writing out story notes and a general timeline for Serenian Century . This is something I actually started a few months back but haven’t been able to work on consistently, so I’m having fun with it right now. But I got stuck yesterday, whereupon I revisited old drawings to feed my brain. They were just the nostalgic nutrition my brain needed, but I also found lots of unfinished pieces, a few that I’d love to finish even after all these years:
A select few from 2008 to 2010. Sneaked in a couple of RO ones too. Someday!!
A tiny work in progress of a Journey fanart. I have no idea whether this really is exactly 1/10 of the entire picture, and I am too sleepy/lazy to go check. Good night!
Ever since Valentine’s Day 2009 on the SC website, V-Day shall always remain Eynord Day for me. Unfortunately, I doubt I’ll be finishing this by the end of the day, so preview it is.
A mini horror story. I’ve been constantly drawing/painting digitally for a while now, my grasp on drawing/sketching with lines, especially characters, completely escaped me. I think I’m getting it back now, but the process still feels eerily foreign… I should probably make some practice sketches before I go make manga pages again…
Circles… spirals… agh. D:< /tableflips
Frustration aside, I made a livestream account to test its recording features! (Thank you so much for telling me about it Sensei-Hanzo! ) I have a few recordings, but I stopped after realizing that this picture is going to take a while… but I sure hope to use it some more for faster drawings (and notify when I stream next time rather than record in secret… /swt )
And as mentioned through twitter, I recently played The Witch’s House on Kira‘s recommendation. Like Ib, it’s a free horror/puzzle game made in RPG Maker, so the controls and graphics are rather simple, but it still does a damn fine job creeping you out anyway. I personally think it’s far more disturbing with more jump scares than Ib though… but the endings, if seen in the proper order, are rather brilliant. It’s really short (1.5hrs-2hrs+?), so check it out if you have the time!
Many years ago, I used to use Open Canvas and it had this really cool feature where it records your progress in a video. I no longer use Open Canvas, but I really miss that recording feature from the good old days… :( I’ve contemplated using other recording programs or using livestream, but I never gave them a try. Livestream, well, the thought of having people watch me as I draw was freaky for me. I finally looked up recording options, and discovered that Quick Time had recording capabilities! So I gave it a try with this piece I’m currently working on, which is a bunch of experiments in itself as well.
Sped up x8. I’d speed it up even more but x8 appears to be the limit on Quick Time and iMovie.
I have no idea whether using other recording programs would help, but when I use Quick Time, the file gets huge pretty quickly even when I use the lowest settings I could find (2-3GB in 20 minutes or so, and 5GB in 30 minutes). I try to solve this by stopping the recording rather frequently and compressing it to something much smaller, which gets each recording down to 200-300MB on average, so that’s an improvement! But even with the size dropped down, it’s really going to add up unless I draw fast and know exactly what I’m doing… which I clearly do not! D: And I honestly do not enjoy being pressed for time and having to keep checking how long I’ve been drawing for, so I really hope I can find an alternative. I thought about checking out livestream, even if it may mean people watch me draw live (*shiver*), but I’m curious whether it’s even possible to store recordings on a free account, and if so, what the archive limit is… At this point though, I honestly get the feeling that no matter which program or service I use, sizes in the GBs like that just might be a common thing for recordings, in which case maybe recordings just might not be my thing (but it wasn’t this bad in the Open Canvas recordings…?_? )
As for the drawing, I usually don’t start out this way at all (by blocking in everything with a single color). I usually jump right into all the colors of the rainbow and fill up the background, but I found a lot of people actually take the time to plan things out (well duh), not just with lines (what I used to do) but also with values. So I decided to give it a try, but quickly got stuck trying to figure out how to add the colors I wanted onto it, and kept struggling until maybe 7 or 8 minutes into this video when I finally added a layer underneath everything and filled it up with colors. Dx Even after that though, you can see I’m not very efficient as I continue to keep redrawing things, but this part is very typical of me. orz
I also tested out some new brushes I found: some by Sakimichan and some by Feohria, though I think I might stick with my familiar brushes for the most part and save the brush testing for some other time.
In progress. It’s no secret that I started out as a manga/anime artist, and I still enjoy it and consider myself to be a manga/anime artist. And like most such artists, I used to detest backgrounds and landscapes. But at some point over the years, I started growing this fascination with backgrounds and landscapes and I really, really wanted to be able to make them myself. I still love character designs, but as of late, world design is right up there when it comes to things that make me SO happy when I watch shows or movies (I can’t get over how colorful and beautiful the Sugar Rush world in Wreck-It Ralph is, as well as Vanellope’s design and character).
So… here is me trying… :/ *gulp*
Speaking of colorful worlds, I started a new distraction called Magic Tree. It’s supposedly like Harvest Moon…? I’ve never played it (….shush) so I wouldn’t know… but it’s been a nice daily dose of kawaii to control my negativity.
I got this ominous-looking magic tree, but it’s supposedly really rare…? Wasted on noob old me… /swt
I started this without much planning and now I’m suffering the consequences. I think I went through 3 versions of the horseman so far and I still might change it. But on a more positive note, all the noodling helped me try out a few more Painter brushes and I’m starting to really like a couple of them. Brushes so far for self-reference: Dull Conte, Thick Gouache Flat, Real 2H Drafting Pencil. Hoping to finish it by Halloween~
Still in the works. To be another Zelda fanart (cookie to whoever can guess which dungeon this is, even though I added an extra picture frame).
Practicing Painter, since my ancient Photoshop CS is incompatible with Lion. About time I upgraded it I suppose… but it’s great that I can run Painter smoothly now! While I’ve had it for a while, I’ve only used it for touch ups (with the exception of the whale doodle that I made into a pencil case), so trying to make an illustration start to finish on it is still challenging. I keep catching myself thinking about my Photoshop brushes and layer effects and filters, and trying to find similar functions in Painter, when it’s not about a software’s functions at all and I REALLY should be thinking about the basics like color and value. I’m still at the stage where this is all so hilarious to me and I’m having fun, but I’m sure it’ll start becoming frustrating fast… at least it’s not lag that’ll be the cause of the frustration this time.
Work in progress. So many layers in that background ugh! I normally flatten the bg layers by the time I start adding the figures, but I think I might go back in and fix something later… so it shall remain messy for now. :(
