Transformers needs more... Transformers

Hiyo from the late side. I bring new pics!

First some general activities: I saw Transformers on Wednesday. I have to say while the movie was pretty good, the outing itself was more enjoyable than the movie. Had a nice workout followed by a good dinner and dessert. My sentiments have been voiced by Scott Ramsoomair of VG Cats, but generally Transformers is a decent action movie that is severely lacking as a Transformers movie... the main problem being the triviality of the Transformers in the movie. I liked the many references to 80's cartoons and the original plus the compulsory geek-references, too... but I really was hoping for some really direct ones other than spouting 'More than meets the eye' a few times. Starscream's original voice would be nice. Optimus having his mouth-guard on all the time would be nice too. You could probably call this a G.I. Joe meets Transformers movie that's more the former but the latter got the credit (incidentally there ARE comics out on this premise).

Other than that it's been a fairly decent and 'bleh' worthy week.

I've had some requests come in too. My pal finally sent me one of his pictures which I convereted into Pic 3. Took me HOURS to do and I was experimenting a bit on the shading. Took several sketching iterations too as I was really keen to do this entirely by tablet instead of hand sketching and scanning the drafts. Overall, I quite liked my base sketch which involved a fair amount of shadowing. The flats are nothing spectacular and the shading is slightly off... however, the background and foreground 'smoky' atmosphere with the silhouettes and lights behind is rather nice. The drawing is supposed to reflect his newfound hobby of poker so that he can use it on his own blog or banner or something... I'm not sure yet.

The first pic... the no-nose girl... was a rather rushed experiment on shading using a brush with different flow rates. Not so good so I didn't bother to give her a nose. The second pic, the little raindrops was a request from my mother as she wanted something to add to her presentation that she'll be giving around some countries. I hope they'll serve her well and not get her fired. I tried to cover a range of expressions, assuming she would have some good news and a fair amount of bad news to present. I doubt she'll use many of them, if at all... but mothers are quite the encouraging lot, aren't they?

Anyway gotta sign off. Enjoy 'em

My favourite scene

So I managed to get something out over the weekend. No drinking session tends to be conducive to that. It allows one to sit down and consider going to see Transformers on your own or trying to clear your anime collection backlog.

Anime won... something about saving money. Anyway, 2 pics to test out some stuff. The first is a girl that's partially inspired by Pani Poni Dash, an anime that takes over an hour to watch for one 1/2-hour episode because of all the notes that explain the otaku references within it. So as not to come of as a pedophile, this combines the pink/blond hair of Rebecca Miyamoto, that little ahoge and the chest size of some of the other students. The colouring I tried to base on this Chugworth Academy book I picked up from the local comic store (trying to go against the Harry Potter crowd). So sad that the main site has been down for a while. Anyway hope the book helps me decide on how to colour web-based pictures.

Second pic is something that came to me over the weekend. I was browsing through the old titles and stumbled upon my Eureka 7 lot and I recall how fond I was of that series. Of particular note is when Renton uses the Nirvash (a giant surfing mecha) to save the free-falling Eureka (who has damaged hair and skin at that time due to contact with the Skurve (or Skab?)... or whatever it was called... thus making her look rather boyish. I reckon I drew her more attractive hairstyle numerous times before). Definitely one of the most enjoyable moments although not as emotionally charged as when Renton snapped and massacared a troop of enemy mechs (and soldiers). Anyway, I tried to capture that moment, although my angle is a bit off and not quite as dynamic. Still, I like the depiction of the earth far below... all of this is done in mid-air. Ahhh... I wish I had time to watch that again.

I'll get to the commission requests in time. Not today. Too tired.

What a week...

Phew... it's been quite a week with some deadlines to be met and some generally tiring activities. 'Spelunking' within a very interesting mechanical services tunnel within Melbourne, writing reports and helping proofread some documents. Wolfed down some ChocoChurros (www.chocochurro.com.au) and attended some free drink functions and several seminars. I've also kept at my tablet as you can see.

It's a good thing I have this weekend to put my feet up because next weekend I'll be having a huge get-together to attend (and to pay for) a soiree to celebrate my new job and to congratulate some of the newer Doctors among my old postgrad group. Looking forward to it, but generally dreading the financial hit, especially from the alcohol consumption. I still need to see Transformers, though!

Alright, these two I squeezed out this weekend. The second pic is based off my sister from her visit to Japan recently. I hope it's 'realistically coloured' to her liking as she has made that comment recently. I spent ages trying to get the patterns down and messed a bit with that hedge behind. I really need to start drawing more interesting stuff behind my main stuff. I'm pretty happy with the shading on this one as I've reverted to using a darkened copy of the flats, adding a hidden mask and slowly removing bits.

The first pic was done after to put some relief on the sheer number of women I've been drawing recently. A cool one with wings. Tried something newer with the background but I really should have added more of a 'curve' effect to the lines. Hard to do, really... but at least my sword is straighter in this one. Wings a bit messy, but I reckon it looks pretty nice like that.

Alright, it's late and I've listened to my anime OST collection for quite a bit. Got quite a bit to do tomorrow so I'm signing off.

Bleh work and some pics

When you see a mid-week update you're definitely scratching your head in puzzlement. Nothing to panic, it's just the frenzy of having a new toy to play with, that's all. More stuff to put up as I try as hard as I can to master sketching on the tablet. Hard to get straight consistent lines that seem quite easy via inking. I guess I'll start doing more of that once I get frustrated enough with the tablet clean-sketching.

The second gray-goth-girl was drawn first. I once saw a brilliant Youtube video forwarded by my friend (Who has just arrived in Australia. Welcome!) (www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBIOq4P2Llg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Exanga%2Ecom%2FHlK4Rl%5FM3KURA) detailing a very cool way of sketching via tablet. You'll note I tried to emulate the cloud effect as well. Anyway, this was another attempt as using rough lines to sketch without outlining it to give a 'clean' feel.

The first pic was drawn today. My cousin who is another tablet-buddy was working on his own piece of a girl and her mecha. I couldn't be arsed designing and colouring a mecha so I just settled for some boat-like floaty things. It was at this time I realised how bloody complex those floating ships you see in the Final Fantasy series are to create. Ah well, imagine a cheapo-Protoss sort of design. I'm also still working on skin tone. At present I'm balancing between just a simple 1-shade or doing multiple layers with different tones. It's quite hard to figure out how to apply the tones but the end result is usually very nice. For instance the flesh should have stronger pinkish hues and maybe some white to denote shine.

You may have noticed that I'm slowly departing from my usual set of colours as well. Originally I used the 'web safe' colour set which is pretty limited and gives a pretty dull skin tone. Experiment, experiment, experiment.

Work has been tough. It's a constant roller-coaster ride from being treated as a Wunderkind to being the Dumkopft (how do you spell that?). Quite frustrating. At least I get to watch Simpsons, Futurama and Family Guy at the gym again.

The Third...

Some better samples of what I can do with the tablet. A Kill Bill-like picture (note how hard it is to draw diagonal lines like the sword on the tablet) and one of my earlier picks coloured.

You'll note that I absolutely LOVE the grass and leaf pattern you can do with your paintbrush. Brilliant stuff!

Another era approaches...

Well here we are again. Let's see... the first era was actually scanning and then uploadin my sketches onto a blog of sorts. The second was to actually get a little more sense into my scanner settings, i.e. not all just black and white. I guess you could lump in some inking and sketching with coloured pencil prior to inking into that era. The third and most recent one was adding colours into my sketches.

Now... we come to the latest era, that which is now possible thanks to the arrival of several gifts from Japan courtesy of my kind sister, mother and father. Behold, the might of the WACOM Graphics Tablet! (Dun Dah Dun Dah DUN!) Yes, my little poppets, this is probably the firmest step into professionalism I've ever taken. You've heard me complain about not having a tablet for years and years and years (even though I've never really seen one, less use one) and how it's quite a bother without one. Well, now I do and I have to admit it's a brilliant piece of technology and it'll take some getting used to. As you can see, I'm still very very rough at it. At this point of time, if the work is crap I can no longer blame the lack of tools because frankly, I've got everything a pro-artist has (more or less). I just need to get good with them, or to at least figure out how to use them properly. Well... maybe I can still complain about my computer monitor size.

There's a whole torrent of things to learn. Different brush strokes, getting used to the tablet layout and everything else in between. I still can't get my head over how brilliant the gadget is and how it must have taken years to even get to that stage.

So we have some very rough pics, some drawn immediately after I installed the machinery so really rough as guts. So far, I can still say that drawing on paper and scanning produces much cleared and more defined lines so if I want to do a really nice clean piece, I'll stick to pencil and inking. However, if I want to do a rough sketch followed by colouring over that... I'd use the tablet. Colouring will be done entirely on this though... it's SOOOOOOO easy. Absolutely fantastic stuff.

Along with the tablet I've gotten Bleach DS 2nd, some figurines of Kurosaki Ichigo (I'd much prefer Kuchiki Rukia... but Bankai Ichigo is still nice), some utensils and I've still got other things coming along. Gonna have to visit the post office quite frequently.

Anyway, a big thank you to the parties involved in getting me the tablet. I hope my skills can improve now that it's not as constrained as before.

Could YOU work without your voice?

Man, was I ever sick last week. Coughing, flu-like symptoms and sore throat. Combined that left me voiceless for the entire week. You'll never imagine how hard (and funny) it was to try to do my job as an engineering consultant without my voice. Well, most of the week I managed a very raspy sound so that was the funny bit. I swear, you could do standup solely on the basis of a raspy voice. Anyway, I didn't do any uploading because the week was pretty filled with sickness and I was generally groggy from the lozenges I was choking down. It's amazing how some have anasthetic in them that leaves the mouth a numb. I'll file that bit of knowledge somewhere so I can figure out how it's done later. It could become useful.

Nevertheless, I did have a backlog of pictures that I had done previously or one or two I did while I was sickly. I was waiting for some photos from a friend so I could do his commission but he was a bit slow so I'll just get these up first. There's more, but I'll get to that later.

Not much I want to say about these pics. The first is a tribute to the gorgeous artist who does Dresden Codak (http://dresdencodak.com/). Unbelievable artwork spanning a huge page that seems to delve into philosophical and scientific ideas that just flies right over my head. It's like Cat and Girl (http://catandgirl.com/) with insanely good art... and a little bit more science. The second and third... I probably did out of boredom trying to actually have something worth uploading. The last was something that came to me about trying to put a little bit more humanity to some of my characters. That means having those little spontaneous poses every now and then and really, it's really quite refreshing to see a girl push her hair back. Hard to explain... sort of makes them more real rather than just standing stiff. It's quite hard to do and I definitely need to work on it.

Anyway there's another post coming up. In it I describe the new era that I shall be embarking on with regards to sketching...

Even More 'Shipping

Ahoy there mateys. I be back. Arrr....

No I haven't seen Pirates or anything similar. It's just the spirit of a dead sea man (heh heh... sea man) inhibiting my shell. Came with the 'shipping' phrase. Yes, more of that. Starring Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke as in pic 1. Pic 2... Originally I wanted to do a better pose than this because the idea came to me while I was watching some anime or other. Then I just copped out and did something relatively simpler. The girl is somewhat based off Harmony from 'Sore Thumbs' but I just didn't get that far. Also part of the original plan was the intent to colour. However, time constraints during this weekend have forced me to reconsider. Doesn't seem worth it for these somewhat crappy versions anyway.

Busy week it has been. Coming up with reports, undergoing training, starting new projects and also a company dinner on Friday. Nice food but I didn't chance too much alcohol. I reckon I should have. Some good news though... some goods coming from Japan for me soon. Possibly a drawing tablet among them. Hopefully I'll be able to put it to good use. I just don't know how these pros are able to get so clear (and not crooked) lines unlike mine. Frustrating!