Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Projects and Seminars




Man, have I been busy. More so than when I was doing my Masters (which isn't saying much), but definitely busy. Going into the office during weekends and working late nights - busy. Thing is, there's been many things going on.

First thing is that I finally got around to going out with my old postgrad group for our get together to celebrate my new career and basically to congratulate the numerous new doctors among us (and those who will soon become ones). Somehow, drunken karaoke got involved and I seem to recall a butchered Bohemian Rhapsody somewhere. Frightening.

After that I had to push on one of the projects I was working on as I had to attend a Green Building and Design course the past 2 days. As cliche as it is, I have to admit that there were lots of cool engineering stuff and it was interesting to meet new people out of the office. Now I've got to go back to the huge pile of work that's been building up while I was gone.

So anyway, that's what I've been up to and therefore I had some drawings backed up. The first was recently drawn as my attention was turned to a new anime that stars Samuel L. Jackson, Afro Samurai. As was mentioned in Family Guy, Samuel's in EVERYTHING now. Geek films and anime included. First episode was definitely mind blowing in terms of animation, and the story looks promising although a few bad voice coordinations, some very weakly-done characters and definitely some bizarre plot holes.

Second pic was something I was working for over a week. Seeing as it was drawn and coloured entirely on tablet, it was a big undertaking, although I did delay it because a lot of the time I just couldn't dedicate myself to it. Now, it has been mentioned that my drawings tend to depict scantily clad women a lot, and this is no exception. To that, I have to say... I am a single heterosexual male... scantily clad women in suggestive positions are second nature to me. That said, the idea was a 'Desert Rose'-like character of a female sniper with her shirt off due to the desert heat... but the view angle got wrong and then I just felt I needed to put other stuff in to flesh it out. The background was intended to be much better but in the end I became sloppy. I realise now that an area of improvement is definitely my backgrounds.

Third pic was something for my friend's Discount Politics website, that I hadn't been contributing for ages. A funny take on a recent article that the Australian Prime Minister was polled as being 'rattled'.

The final picture was drawn a while ago, and many have asked me questions about it. Now, the thing you need to understand is that a subset of anime deviants like me are quite fond of anthropomised (spelt right?) animals called 'furries'. A subset of 'furries' is 'scalies', referring to the more reptilian of the species. Felicia from Darkstalkers is a prime example of a furry, although catwomen are slowly being accepted outside of the category. Now that I've lambasted you with otakuness, I'll just mention that while surfing Phoenix Wrong videos on Youtube (hilarious stuff!), I came upon a very hypnotic Dragon-Girl (literally... not the Asian metaphorical one) dancing to a Gorillaz song. Really cute, so I wanted to try my hand out. Besides, it's interesting to come up with a green-skinned girl once in a while, with those little marks.

Alright, busy days ahead and I've just made a huge post. Be catchin' ya'll.

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Wow... Sakura became hot...


Man, have you seen the recent Naruto Shippuuden episodes? I mean... what happened to Sakura during that time skip? How did she get so hot? Maybe it's the maturity they've added to the character or perhaps the animators are just better at it... or maybe it's a combination of both. Either way, that fight with Sasori? Niiceeee...

Because of that hotness, I came up with the ditty that is Pic 2. Drawn and inked with fine line pen and then coloured. Took a LOT of time colouring, I don't mind telling you. I rather like the effect because my shadow layer was changed to a 'darkened' type instead of leaving it as 'normal' as I usually do. Seems to turn out somewhat better. I think I got the flesh colour right on that one too. You may recognise that scene from the anime... but my Sakura is slightly deformed (and therefore less hot as compared to the original).

Before I came up with that one, though, I had to do some practice runs as I was rather rusty and tried colouring by 'dissolving' layers. First pic is the result. Somehow it's not that bad a result.

Other than that I've been horrendously busy checking essays, proving equations and getting a pile of work at the office. Not much time to do much sketching and not much time to take note of anything else.