AKA Lunchbox

Mini-tut: terms definitions

2011-03-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

Just a quick list of words I use a lot and what I mean by them. Some of them might be obvious, but that’s better than.... not-obvious.

DESIGNING

silhouette/shape:

--1)the shape of something, or

--2) a shape in the composition. Like, a crowd of people might treated as one shape. That shape (as in 2) has shape (as in 1).

element:

--a part of something. For instance, an element of a composition could be the shapes in the foreground.

composition:

--1)the way shapes are arranged in the image, or

--2)the image itself.

negative space:

--the area outside of a shape. Without negative space, a shape wouldn’t have shape, lol.

positive space:

--opposite of negative space, i.e. the area inside a shape.

design:

--1) as a noun, it’s the elements that form the shape and details of a shape, be it a character or a building or whatever. This usually refers to relatively unchangeable, manmade things like costume or architecture. Designs like this can be redrawn from different angles and still be recognizable as the same thing.

--2) As a verb, it’s the act of creating shapes and making them work. everything you do when you draw is DESIGN. You design poses, compositions, shapes, etc. The act of designing (as in 2) doesn’t result in a design (as in 1); while you can design a basic cloud, it doesn’t result in that cloud having a design (as in 1) because if you draw it from a different angle it looks like a different cloud. If you purposefully made it shaped like a butt, on the other hand, it would be a design (1). Basically, a design (1) is transferable into many uses, but designing (2) something is generally a one-shot thing that results in something tailored for each different drawing’s needs.

character design:

--treat these two words as a unit, and that’s how it’s different from plain “design”. a character design is the sum of all elements on a character: their body shape, hair, clothes, etc.

CHARACTERS

character:

--1) a participant in the story, most likely autonomous and/or sentient.

--2) Also refers to their personality. So, the phrase “a character’s character” is possible.

COLOR

color:

--1) as a verb, like to color something. It replaces “render” or “shade” when I’m feeling casual. Otherwise,

--2) er, it’s just color. When we think of it we mostly think of “hue”, a subset of color.

hue:

--the identity of the color, like “red” or “purple”.

value:

--the light-or-dark-ness of a color. value is easiest to see in grayscale. I like to think of values as percents (even though I hate math) such that white is 0% and black is 100%.

saturation:

--how bright the color is. 0% saturation results in a grey, showing you the value of the color you just had.

I’ll add to this as I need to.

Mini-tut: designing pairs of characters

2011-01-02T23:28:00.000-08:00

I’m not doing these tutorials in any particular order, I’m making them at my leisure so I try to do subjects that aren’t too hard to describe if I’m short on time/patience. XD;;; Bear with me... I’m gonna talk about designing pairs of characters. I’m going to be using boys as an example because I see it way too often in BL manga that the two characters are actually hard to tell apart. Try not to mind that, cause what I’m saying here can be applied to any situation where two characters appear together often.

I’ll start off with a little chart using Daichi and Suzu:

I only pointed out differences there, though they're pretty forced differences. Since Daichi and Suzu are older characters, i.e. I made them back when I was young and foolish, they don’t look as separate as my newer characters. Their faces aren’t markedly different in shape, their hair is basically the same except styled differently, their eyes are also the same except Daichi holds his wider, and their bodies aren’t different at all (then again it’s not like I really LIKE to stray from this body type lol). I had to play up the differences in their gestures/poses/attitudes in order to make up for all that.
However, one thing they’re a good example of is being easy to differentiate when in manga form, aka their value patterns. If I were drawing them in a manga, I’d leave Suzu’s hair white and use a dark screentone for Daichi’s hair (it might even be dark enough for solid blacks). It always gets hard if the characters have the same/similar hair color, and making at least those different is a great first step in the right direction.

Here’s some newer pairs for comparison:

That’s all pointing out specific stuff I did when designing them to make them look different from eachother. I guess you could boil it down to simply choosing opposite characteristics for each. If you're into long haired guys, that's cool, but it's best if they each have different hair lengths. Giving them both obviously different shaped eyes could be a good idea, as well as being an interesting affront to the norm of anime anyway.

Think of an overall theme for the characters' appearances. This theme could go beyond just their physical proportions and actually help determine their attitudes as well, or not if you want to be a little more unexpected. But either way, opposites and complements are the key. Rus is short, Neal is tall. Yui is thin, Sean is rounded. Rhamiel is light and fluffy, Nate is dark and... probably rather dry and gritty. *shot*

Needless to say, it REALLY HELPS to know how to draw lots of different variations on facial features, hair especially (since within anime style, hair is the most variable feature). Think of texture, not just color:

Those are all basically the same hairstyle, but they can look very different if the textures are different.

Anyway, it can get tough to remember everything about a particular character that makes him/her unique, especially if/when you find yourself with a lot of OCs. It might be a good idea to keep a little book with descriptions and drawings reminding you of which features of the face, hair and body to emphasize on which character.

When drawing anime, it’s easy to get caught up in creating your own “style”, which most people interpret as “this is how I draw eyes, this is how I draw noses”. Don’t lock yourself into things like that. Here’s a line of a bunch of eyes taken from a bunch of my characters, which I made to go with a future tutorial. They don’t all look the same, but does that mean I don’t have a coherent “style”? No, of course not. They’re drawn by me, so what does it matter if they aren’t consistent with eachother?

You don’t really have to worry about having character designs NOT fit together, as long as their characterization is all right. If anything, the more different your characters are, the more interesting they’ll be to look at together.
But characterization is a whole different conversation than character design.

Well heh...I hope this was helpful. :D;; I know the drawings are a bit silly and rough. Maybe I’ll substitute them for better ones when I have time, but for now I’d rather just at least get the tuts themselves done in whatever time I have.

The stuff

2010-12-23T18:09:00.000-08:00

I moved back to my house for winter break a week ago, and I brought all the projects and things from school I'd gotten over the semester. While I was doing that I decided to take out all the stuff I'd gotten from PREVIOUS semesters and try to organize it, but doing so only made me realize how fruitless an effort that would be as there is SO MUCH OF IT.

So I took pictures.

that's nine 18x24 inch paper pads from all my drawing classes.

that's a crap-ton of canvases from painting classes.

And this is all my matted projects from illustration classes.

I'm such a packrat. 0m0 And my room is very small. orz

Also, in the Illustration department, we have a thing called the midpoint review where you send in a portfolio and the director of the department and some teachers look and give comments and suggestions for your future schooling. Normally it's done when you're in Illustration 3, but they changed it to Illustration 2 some time into the semester and told us in a sort of "Oh, by the way this mandatory thing you have to do now hahaha" So I was kinda worried about having enough to put in it. But I got it done, and it's here if you want to see.

Answering questions from previous entry

2010-12-12T16:32:00.000-08:00

(watch as Blogger magically multiplies the number of indents I have in this entry)

Anon: "How did you come up with sean's story :D?"

That one...was from a dream, lol. Again indicating my crazy love of Evangelion, the dream originally was played out by Kaworu and Shinji. That means that, again, Yui is based on Kaworu and Sean is based on Shinji. OTL;;;; It was just a dream about one scene, where Yui/Kaworu was living in a closed room and was able to read computer code from the inside of a computer without actually being able to see it. And I guess Sean/Shinji was just, like, some lab assistant or something. Anyway since it was a dream, I forgot the majority of it, but what I remembered after I woke up was immediately written down and eventually... well yeah, I've got what I've got now.

Helen: * multiple parts*
"Where did Trish and Jason go?"

OTL They're really hard to draw. Honestly I don't think about their story as much because... hmmh, I dunno, I guess it's not my favorite. But as far as their characters go, they've got a lot of tension which makes them hard to draw. This is different from Russell and Neal, who've also got tons of tension (I'll get to them later) because they're actually IN a relationship so I CAN draw them interacting as such, but Trish and Jason are just... uggh vague flirting at most. They're frustrating lol. I SHOULD draw them sometime. I know I don't HAVE to have them interacting romantically to make a good drawing but. honestly. that's the most fun to draw. >_> I draw in a sketchbook, which means I don't plan my drawings out all the way and just accidentally end up with stuff worth coloring most of the time. The result is that I don't get drawings with backgrounds or any sort of context very often, and I only end up with things that I draw to relax or for fun (like boys laying all over eachother in an indistinct white magical land, or people standing up and smiling-- BORING). It's really not a good practice and it's something I am so used to that it's gonna be really hard to get out of.

"Steven and Joshua from Soul's Circus - Are they lovers? How do they become lovers?"

0w0;; LOL, I've been waffling back and forth on this one since I made them. Well, so far they're stuck in a sort of.... not-overt way. I mean like, you know series that aren't TECHNICALLY listed as yaoi but are really full of the subtext/could be argued that there really is something there? That's how they are so far. This goes along with the theme I've set for the world they're in, which is "bizarre things happening which everyone acts as normal". I think they do develop some srs feelings for eachother regardless.

"Sean and Yui - did Sean like Boys before he met Yui? When did Yui start to love Sean?"

It's kinda weird for me to think about Sean having a sexual preference before meeting Yui, cause before that, honestly, he only had eyes for his brother Tyler. It's like, he didn't have any emotional needs at that time except to be around his brother, so he'd probably never felt any significant sexual interest in anyone before Yui; and even then, his for Yui developed more in response to Yui hitting that point before him.
As for Yui, you can imagine that Sean is also the first person he could feel this for, because Sean is one of the only people he's been able to have intimate contact with.

"What's RK's motivation for being the leader of the geurrilla movement?"
That's a secret ;_;

sakryu: "Won't you go anymore in-depth about Russell and Neal's story at all?"
I was kinda saving it for the character bios, but I guess I'll put a quick basics here >w> Lets see how basic I can get, cause their stuff is kinda complex lol.
Well first off, as you may have noticed, Russell seems to be a cancer patient. Yup. This is his second bout of it, and he's contacted an old childhood friend (Neal) who he grew apart from because he's pretty sure he'll die and he just doesn't care about anything but having one last hurrah. He's been a gigantic punk for the last few years of his life, so this looming of death is giving him feelings of regret, and he tries to run away from taking responsibility for himself by convincing himself that he can make his life worth it if he can just "have" Neal.
Neal is tall and awkward and doesn't really know what to do when Russell suddenly comes up to him (they haven't been friends since they left middle school or something) and basically says "I have cancer, wanna go out with me?" orz Russell can be kinda manipulative like that (mostly when he's under stress.... which is, like, all the time now).
Anyway, Neal, in spite of being very socially awkward and whatnot, is a very nice and all-around much more together guy than Russ.

... I like answering questions Q~Q

I've been writing this post off and on all day

2010-12-11T16:11:00.001-08:00

I was of course sitting in bed thinking about my OCs and stories this morning, cause my teacher in comics class told us that for finals week we should bring in some of our personal stuff and share with the class... and I realized I have nothing physical to show for all these stories I've got. And then of course I got distracted and started ruminating on the origins of most of my stories, and I thought I'd write them down so I don't forget. And then I thought I'd post them here because I love THROWING INFOS AT PEOPLE.

Daisu started out as I was just getting into BL after flat-out-NO-ing it for a long time. The foot in the door was Kaworu and Shinji, after which I was like ONLY THEM, ALL OTHER YAOI IS GROSS. Then I realized Kaworu was hard to draw, I couldn't change the canon they were from to suit my needs when drawing them, and I was already really into OCs, so I made my OWN bl pair. It was super-typical just starting out, Daichi based on Shinji and Suzu on Kaworu. orz The seme-uke dynamic was foolishly applied, the height rule conformed to WAY overdramatically, and their whole image was compounded by the fact that I really DIDN'T know anything about male anatomy.
Anyway, these original incarnations were stuffed into my 515 story (at the time I only had two stories: Sakura Tree and 515. Oh the simple days lol). Looking back, they never fit in the way they'd have to to make me happy. I never wanted them to participate in the main storyline because I'd gotten so interested in their romance, so their story going alongside 515's actual story was more like a bunch of totally unrelated omake or a WAY over-important-ified subplot. If they ever appeared in the main storyline, that was all they did-- just APPEARED. I tried to give them roles in the story, like I gave Daichi a love of computers that somehow translated to him learning how to program Sissumi, when really this was already made totally unnecessary by the existance of Tsuyo, who IS the one who built her and should be the one to fix her anyway. And Suzu never found a good place in the story. Their motivations as characters were just too separate from the motivations the storyline should have given them, and I couldn't make it change without sacrificing their relationship. It got to the point where a key dramatic scene late in the story was centered around them, and I stopped and realized, WAIT. They're not even then main characters.
So I took them out. That allowed them to develop into what they are now, imo two of my best characters. Or at least my most-loved. orz Also I don't think they'd be the way they are now if it weren't for my friend Erica giving me LOTS of great ideas for them.

Bahh this reminds me, I need to rewrite their OC bio entries. They're the hardest to describe. orz

RK story-- Baahhh I still need to decide on a title for this. Originally it was just RK as a bizarre storyless character. Then I thought about robots. The first incarnation of the story itself resulted from a doodle "comic" page I did in a tiny sketchbook intended for my sister, of a car speeding out of control in the hands of a robot while her owner begs her to slow down. That's Jana and Paige now. But basically, I got the backbone of the story when I decided I wanted to make a story based on humans as a contradictory creature; where many scifi stories about robot technology are in favor of their humanity, in this one, most of the main characters are working to whipe the technology out from the world even though they use it extensively to further their mission OF destroying it. In the middle of this is RK, the most contradictory character of them all.

Now that I think about it, a lot of my stories grew from singular things, like if one scene popped into my head from listening to a song or something. More often than not I develop a story just so I can give that one scene context LOL.

This newest story with new characters Russell and Neal is like that. The initial scene idea that sparked the story... er, it involves Russ throwing up?? POOR GUY I won't go into it.

The one with Jun/Eito/Kaimei started off with one scene from a song, only... it wasn't originally with those characters. I originally imagined it, for some reason, as an Alternate Universe version of Sakura Tree, which I thought of after I got bored one day and started slashing my own characters herp dur. Jun=Mamoto, Eito=Malkin, Kaimei=Matsuro, and Michi=Sakura. This whole thing came up to the song Psychobabble by Frou Frou, again for one particular scene. >_> I eventually got around to making new characters to replace the AU universe ones YEARS after I first thought of this (that's another thing that happens a lot; I think of a story or something, then quell the idea for a long time, and if it keeps coming back to me then I eventually have to do something about it). I took an old character that never really left planning stages, "November", renamed him Jun and added some new designs for Kaimei, Eito, and... well Michi pretty much looks exactly like Sakura, so that's hardly a new design.

Hmm... Those are the only particularly interesting origin stories I can think of right now. Since I do have so many stories, I'll be willing to answer questions, if anyone has any... >x>

(Also I need to update my chibi page so I can start posting more bios. I'm having a hard time resisting doing this. I should be working on my comic final. orz)

Illustration 2 Final

2010-12-08T22:02:00.000-08:00

I didn't post the color roughs all that long ago, and now here I am finished, lol. I worked on it all class on Monday, and finished pretty much all of it except the birds in class. So, cumulative work time on this, under six hours.

I wonder if that's too fast. I just worked until I couldn't find any more things to do. HAHA OH WELL

So yeah, one less thing to worry about lol.

Oh, did I mention the assignment was for a book cover? I'm not sure I did. Well, it is. I chose The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. The part I chose would make one of those covers where you understand more about it after getting farther into the book, then you look at it and you're like OHHHHH!

click for biggerrrr.

Almost there

2010-12-04T20:41:00.000-08:00

Just two more weeks of class, which means I've only got two finals left to do and that's that!

When I get my previous project back from Illustration 2, the one with the beetles and stuff, I'll take a photo of it and post, but for now here are the color roughs of my final in that class:

He's letting us use any medium we want, so I will be bringing my computer to class with me on Monday. AwA

ALSO LOL, when I uploaded the picture onto photobucket, apparently I had forgotten to switch it back to RGB, and I guess photobucket thinks that every cmyk image should automatically take place underwater:

Woo bloggin.

2010-11-17T23:49:00.000-08:00

Wellll welllllllll. I've got some schoolwork to post now:

For Illustration 2, our next assignment is a double page spread illustration of a fable or fairy tale. The story I ended up going with is The Beetle Who Went on His Travels. Basically it's about a beetle who goes on an adventure and is a jerk to everyone. Lol, I was really having trouble deciding on a story. I came across this one the night before thumbnails were do, and reading through it I was all *outrage* at the stupid beetle through the whole thing, and it was kind of silly but that's why I chose this story.
Anyway, here are some character designs and thumbnails:

Second, the final project for comics class has been assigned. It's just two finished pages of your own story, so I took this opportunity to finally put in some of my characters. 0w0

And third, apart from homework... hurrr, I have a lot of accounts/places where I post stuff. Just recently with the addition of a tumblr blog for yaoi doodles, I'm beginning to wonder whyyyy I am compelled to spread myself across so many different zones. Part of it could be that I just am really picky about everything. Like, it started with DA and MB back when I first joined MB. I wanted to be on MB cause it was a new startup with a nice community and sensible people running the place. But I was already on DA. So I decided MB would be for more "scrap" work/doodles/WIPs, and DA for more finished (in my eyes) work, cause DA already had a lot more watchers. Then later I had livejournal, which I wanted to make a sketchblog for things I wouldn't even post on MB, but this didn't really work out well because 1)Livejournal's UI is trash, and 2)It ended up seeming pointless, cause I rarely actually wrote anything. But really, it just wasn't pleasant being there. So I dropped that and eventually made my way here, with my OC journals and this blog. This blog is pretty much a replacement equivalent of Livejournal, but so far I've gotten much more use out of it, what with the posting homework stuff and now the future prospect of those mini-tutorials. So I've got DA for finished, MB for scrap, OC Blog for my character descriptions and here for misc. Now somewhere in the middle there I joined y!gallery ~*in seekrit*~ to post yaoi. Er, the problem was that I didn't have much to post. I wanted to keep up with the exclusivity thing, but I just don't draw mature yaoi all that much. Sssso ygal isn't very active. And then, just recently, comes a tumblr blog for OTHER yaoi stuff. This is finally where I start to get confused with myself. About ygal, they are strict about quality rules. Stuff gets deleted if it's on lined paper or has binding showing. I'm not srs enough about drawing yaoi that I usually feel the desire to color it or make it nice after I've done it and scanned it and stuffed it into my secrety folder, so I rarely posted there. Also, I'm not really all that interested in actually LOOKING at yaoi on the site either, I just post something once in a blue moon and then leave. >_> This new tumblr blog came about because a friend of mine decided to finally start sharing her BL drawings with the internet over tumblr, so I made an account to follow her there (as well as http://reasoningwithvampires.tumblr.com/ hurp hur), and then I remembered I had a bunch of sketches unposted on ygal sitting in my folder, so why not follow suit with my friend and post those? But really. I guess all this is making me consider. Like. Just leaving ygal. The onllyyy thing keeping me from doing so is my paranoia and uncertainty at tumblr's actual allowance of mature materials. I mean, basically their ToS said "nothing illegal plz", but UGH I AM PARANOID and pathetic and packratty.

Well, that's a dumb dilemma that I've made unsolvable simply by talking about it. ffff

Oh man, look at all that. This all just devolved into self-indulgent ramblings. Wait, it wasn't ever anything more than self-indulgent ramblings. I think I was gonna talk about that too. Man, the internet sucks.

Oh, and Twitter too, but I have no idea why people follow me there? Why did I even bother putting that link out there anyway? Sigh. What's with me?

Well, I don't post much there. UGH not that that makes any difference. Ok now I'm jsut rambling and I need to stfu.

Mini-tutorials?

2010-10-18T18:28:00.000-07:00

So, I’ve been thinking about tutorials recently. People ask me for them sometimes, but I have always had a problem with how... limited they are. I believe that all knowledge is connected regardless of the subject, so it’s frustrating to try and make a tutorial for just “coloring” without adding a branch-off lesson on “understanding form”, and then adding one on “blending technique”, “color choosing”, “values” etc. etc. That’s why I’m often hesitant to give people random bits of isolated advice; because often the advice I give draws upon so many other things I’ve learned in other focuses of drawing too.
This approach is really not for casual artists. I think to comprehend things this way you need to be really dedicated to practice, observing, and improving. It takes a lot of energy to practice, I know. I have realized I’m at a point now where I don’t need to FOCUS so hard on just practice, because I’ve gotten enough hours of serious drawing under my belt that I can now start to express my ideas confidently. Because I’ve gotten here, I’d really like to be able to help other people get here too. So I’ve been thinking of ways to use this blog, and I think this might be a good use for it. I could write and illustrate some mini-tutorials every once in a while and slowly build up a bank of my knowledge. I’m free to edit and add things as I learn more over time, too. I think this could be really fun and helpful.
I’ve been brainstorming some possible subjects too, ranging from general to really specific. Here’s some that I’ve been considering:
-designing characters
-designing pairings
-proportions of hands
-using reference
-perspective (from isometric all the way to 3-point, as well as constructing shadows in perspective; these ones would be rather intensive lol)
-tinkering with proportions for effect
-the concept of chibi
-anatomy of an eye
-how anime relates to realism
Thoughts? Further suggestions?

So, while it’s still on my mind, I’ll write an impromptu first lesson now.
This lesson will be about what you should consider before you even start drawing.

#1- BEFORE YOU DRAW

I would like to first say that the backbone of any drawing routine is PRACTICE. This is the underlying foundation of ALL drawing habit. You MUST PRACTICE. I’ll come back to this.

Learning is awesome.

As I mentioned above, I am aiming this at people who are serious about their drawing. If this is you, then I strongly suggest taking at least life drawing classes. Even if you are just planning on drawing Bugs Bunny for the rest of your life, you should learn from drawing the human body. Everything you can learn helps you, so try to think of every experience you have as a way to help you improve at drawing.
Also, if you want to draw professionally, you never know what kind of work you’re going to get. It’s detrimental to only practice drawing Bugs Bunny because that’s what you like, when who knows if you’re ever going to be hired to draw Bugs Bunny? Even if you aren’t planning on drawing professionally, but still want to learn seriously, why would you gyp yourself out of knowledge? Like I’ve said, everything you can learn helps you draw better. No exceptions.

Life drawing classes not only help you learn anatomy, but you also learn how to construct shadow shapes, control your line work, use your tools proficiently, build form, etc. But most importantly, you’ll have a teacher there in the flesh who can give you interaction and feedback in a way online tutorials/ online classes can’t.
(I strongly suggest drawing from the nude figure, if you can access classes like that.)

Practice

Now, back to practice. All “practice” really means is “how many hours you spend drawing.” By practice you build skill. Talent, bleh. Talent is inconsequential in the scheme of things. People would say that I showed that I had talent at a young age, but all that amounted to was convincing me that I should go into art for my future. Talent merely pointed me in this direction; practice is how I keep moving in it. Just because I have talent doesn’t mean I have to work any less hard than my peers here at school.
And yes, you do have to work hard. Again, this is why I’m making sure I cover my ass and emphasize that I am writing this for dedicated people. orz
How old you are doesn’t factor in to your skill level. How you grew up doesn’t factor into your skill level. The ONLY thing that determines your skill level is how much of your life you have spent practicing. If you’re older, you’ve probably had more time to practice, and if you grew up with your parents encouraging you to draw, you’ve probably gotten more time to practice. If you draw just one drawing a day, in a year you'll have 365 drawings. If you do just two a day, you'll have 730. How many drawings a day would it take to get at least 1,000 drawings in a year? Just 3! That's practice. It’s all practice.
Likewise, there’s no magic way to improve. I know everyone says all this. It’s totally true, though. Now you can think of this negatively, as in "It takes so much work to improve, I'll never get it done." Or you could consider that improvement never ends, so you are always somewhere on that line pointed forward. Practice will improve your skill infinitely. And really, if you enjoy drawing, and practice = draw a lot, what's to complain about? :>

Attitude

Also I’d like to make a note on attitude (this is what I personally feel like the best attitude to approach art with would be):
First point would be to remain humble. I see a lot of people at my school going into the animation major with the purpose of working at Pixar after they graduate. While it’s not bad to shoot big, it is bad to scorn anything less than Pixar. Recognize that Pixar is in astronomically high demand; don’t count on getting a job there. It’s not beneath you to take a job at a company that makes Flash games for Facebook (these jobs are actually quite the market these days). Jobs like these help you build your library of skills, and eventually you can work your way up through more prestigious jobs, and maybe one day get to Pixar.
This ties in to the second point: Maintain pride in your work; i.e. always perform to the best of your ability. Maybe you didn’t get a job at Pixar, but that’s not stopping you from making the most drop-dead gorgeous Flash game for Facebook. Take Michaelangelo for example. He was originally contracted to design the Pope’s tomb and fill it with his magnificent sculpture work. However, at the last minute the Pope rescinded and told him to paint a certain ceiling instead. Michaelangelo was upset to be taken off such an important and prestigious job, not to mention he didn’t even really enjoy painting. But he sure knocked that ball out of the park, and now the Sistine Chapel ceiling is one of the most important pieces of art in Western history.
Finally, I believe it’s important to be pragmatic. While you shouldn’t overestimate your work’s worth, you shouldn’t underestimate it either. Being pragmatic and thinking in dollars and cents per hour of work will save you a lot of unnecessary pain. Being pragmatic will also help you accept critique, deal with rejection (this will definitely be necessary lol), and plan your path to improving.

Well, I think this is good for now. I can't predict when I'll have enough time to make a first tutorial thing, but when I do I think I'll start off basic with sketching techniques. Or maybe one about handling critique, that's always useful (not to mention I don't have to draw any visual aids for it lol)

Well, I look forward to it. :>

BIG THING

2010-10-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

WOAH MAN. It's all my BL characters, plus Wendel and Che for the lulz. The two down in the bottom right corner are newcomers, and I have yet to go find names for them. I'm putting down flat colors on it right now lol.

week.. I don't even

2010-10-10T22:04:00.000-07:00

So much for regular updates lol.
Well, I've got my Illustration 2 homework now:

The name of the assignment is "faceted shapes", and we had to just make an illustration (imagining that we were being commissioned to make a design for a shirt advertising something-- in this case, the Monterey Aquarium lol) using only shapes and no lines or rendering. Yay.

Well I like fish, so this was fun anyway.

And I didn't post last week, but my comics homework was:

This assignment is based in the concept of "missed connections" (like on craigslist lol). The basic template is "guy and girl attempt to meet, are on opposite sides of the street and something keeps them from meeting" etc etc. I decided to do MOBSTERS lol. We had a substitute last week, but (and I live how my school has totally qualified substitutes lol) he said I did a really good job and especially commented on my unique take on the assignment prompt.

Yeah, I just knew I had to sneak in a tiny hint of BL somewhere. I could post the brainstormy design pages I did for these two guys, but I am lazy. Basically it was a bunch of the Rookie character acting all sparkle-eyed kouhai at the gruff hat-wearing guy. And of course all through it I was imagining repressed homolust and romantic feelings etc etc. orz which makes this comic ALL THE MORE SAD.

I MAKE MYSELF SO SAD SOMETIMES LOL.

Anyway, that's that. I also made another shimeji over the weekend, this time of Wander from Shadow of the Colossus. Download here~

Shimeji

2010-09-27T23:30:00.000-07:00

I don't have homework to post today (cause really it's just slightly modified pencils on the comic pages from last week.... oh wait I didn't post them last week either. OH WELL they're too big to scan anyway) but I do have some extra-curricular activity:

Shimeji!

It's a program that makes a little character that walks around your screen, climbs stuff, and multiplies. It's really quite cute. And because of the way the images are saved in the folder, you can easily overwrite them with your own. Lots of people do this, though Shimeji is still pretty unknown in English-speaking circles. I found out about if from a thread for it on /cm/ recently. And since I'm not into fandoms, none of the offerings there were interesting to me. So, here is Yui, who I used to test it. As you can see from the screenshot, I need to do a better job of fixing the edges next time; but I think the best way to fix that would be to use a bigger brush so the lines get evenly black rather than semitransparent like how I normally draw. >_> And I need to adjust the speed of a couple of the animations. orz But for now, it is super cute and I have it on pretty much all the time lol. It's somewhat distracting.

You can download it if you want: I hope dropbox works ok for this sort of thing

It takes me about a day to make one. Maybe I'll have time to make a few more soon. :'D

Week something something something

2010-09-27T00:22:00.000-07:00

ARGH WHY I AM ALREADY FEELING BURNT OUT

This is for Illustration 2:

Whelp. There it is.

It was foolish of me to think that I could stick to a regular update schedule lol. I'm going to not worry about that so much if I have to stay up late doing homework more. Ugh I'm a dirty procrastinator.

Week 3 Clothed Figure homework

2010-09-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

Just another drawing. BORING

The reference was from here.

I had Comics class today, and it was also rather boring. We watched a bunch of Batman motion comics that were incredibly dorky. I would rather have just read them in motionless form, but I guess you gotta save paper. However, we did each get a packet of some color copies of background paintings from Tekkon Kinkreet, which is so awesome. I want to eat them and assimilate them into my consciousness. Also I felt proud at being the only person in the class who could pronounce it properly.

Also, just being in a class where something like Tekkon Kinkreet is brought up naturally is pretty much the best thing.

Week 2-Clothed figure & Week 3-Illustration 2

2010-09-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

So laaast week I had homework in Clothed Figure drawing, but it's far too big to scan, and I didn't have the cord that hooks my cellphone (only camera) to my computer. I still don't have ti this week, but I figured out I can just email the photos to myself from my phone, though it takes forever lol.

And then I have the homework, and some of the classwork, that I did for Illustration 2 today.

Clothed figure-
The assignment was to use a reference photo to make three drawings like in class; one 20 minute, one 10 and one 5. I started with 20 and went down to 5:

I think I like the 5 minute one the best. The pose is best captured in the faster one where I'm not worrying about details.

And in Illustration 2, our main homework was to make a color chart of all our watercolors mixed with every other color on our palette. I actually turned that one in so I don't have it. (Should have took a picture of it yesterday with I finished hurdur) I'll post it next week, cause I like how it turned out somehow. But the other homework he just checked that we had it, so I scanned it just now:

For next week I have to transfer this to watercolor paper twice, then paint them both. One is daylight lighting with the sun coming in the window, the other is nighttime light. Two paintings D': At least he just wants grayscale.

And in class we just experimented with the paint. Again, the paper is too big to scan but I did parts of it:

Tonight I am going to do the final pencils on big paper for that comic that I posted previously. I thought what I'd already done would be the last of the pencil work, but whatever OTL. I guess if I'd needed to fix anything, this would be less redundant. But seriously, mine was the one the instructor spent the least time looking at. He was just like "Nice style. Good flow. Make sure to play with line weight. *moves on*" I guess that means mine was easy to understand.

Week 2- Comics hw

2010-09-14T09:46:00.000-07:00

This is the first homework for my class "Comics: pencils and inks 1". The assignment was to do pencil sketches of a three page comic about your everyday happenings, or something like that. The guideline there was a little unclear, as he said one thing in class but the assignment sheet said something slightly different. Oh well, I'm sure this'll be alright.
Oh yeah, and I had to include a close up shot, an establishing shot, a bird's eye view, and a worm's eye view. The worm's eye is supposed to be that weird big panel on page 2, but the perspective is really surreal so I'm not sure that comes across very well lol. Well, we'll see.

(click for bigger size lol)

Oh, so if I'm going to be posting all my homework as I finish it (hopefully I can stick to this), I'll put down a tentative posting schedule here:

Sunday: Illustration 2 homework

Monday: Comics homework

Tuesday: Clothed Figure 2 homework (if there is any)

And I'm not gonna bother posting my art history homework cause booooring.

I think the only consistent one will be Comics. Illustration 2 homework is going to be arduous and time consuming, so I might end up staying up late sundays to finish it. If I do, then I proooobably won't have the energy to take a photo and post, so I'll go right to bed and post it on mondays. Then again, maybe I actually get in gear (unheard of) and finish it earlier in my weekend, then I'll post it earlier than sunday.

And as for clothed figure 2, we won't be getting homework every day hopefully. I really hope we don't. lol.

I found a weird thing

2010-09-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

I was looking through an ooooold folder a couple weeks ago and found this collage I did for an in-class project in 12th grade photo class:

I found it and just made a big WAT face. Like, I remember making it, it was for a dumb assignment to make one symmetrical collage and one asymmetrical collage. For one, I hate making collages, and second, I had no idea what the assignment was supposed to be teaching me. I remember sitting alone in class, laughing really hard, while making this. And I remember not even intending for it to come out like that, with males all over it and such. It was a complete accident, but then when some of my classmates looked at it they looked sort of O_o at it.

Ah, high school art classes. Good times not really.

Well, I meant to make entries more frequently than this, but uh... well, school started, but that's actually not the reason. I've been goofing off mostly so far, cause I only have classes assigned on three days, which gives me a monstrous four day weekend.

But uh, that thing I mentioned a couple of entries or so ago, it was going to be the first six pages of Rhamiel and Nate's story, which I was going to use as practice with Mangastudio. That turns out to be more complicated than I though, and since I am taking a comics class this semester, I think I'll see if I can put Rhamiel off a bit and use comic mojo for class (but who knows? I do have a really long weekend).

I've decided I'm going to post my homework each week on this blog, just so I have something to do with it. So, there's that at least, and I think it'll be interesting for some people to see what sort of work an Illustration major upperclassman (!!) does. :>

Things that made me happy today

2010-08-30T20:43:00.000-07:00

In no particular order:

- My internet works! I moved into the dorms on Saturday and the internet wasn't working for me, so I waited to see if they had just not activated my account yet. But it still wasn't working today, Monday, so my roommate took a look at it and... found the problem, which was something I had on my computer which I meant to turn off but forgot. lol.

- I went to Japan town with my roommate and Erica today. It was really fun, I ate delicious and cheap sushi, and, in the bookstore, I found Evangelion volume 12 HNNNNGGGG and I read it and HNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

- The french fries on the menu in the cafeteria today were curly fries omg

- I found out that in addition to having one more free week than most everyone else at the school (the first day of the semester is on Thursday, but I only have classes scheduled on Monday through Wednesday), next Monday is Memorial day and there is no school.

- Since I can get to the internet now, I checked my email and saw that the download links to the two pieces of software I won in that SMASH contest for second place (MangaStudio and AnimeStudio) were there. So I'm downloading them now and I'm excited to try them. :D MangaStudio in particular has relevance to my previous post, and hopefully I can get to that soon.

So yeah, in the three days I've been here at the dorm I've felt like a person with a life. So that's good. :>

And, for your troubles, here is a WIP:

Sticky hot ew

2010-08-25T15:46:00.000-07:00

Oh my god it suddenly became really hot. It hasn't been really hot all summer, and now at the end of August, summer finally decides to show up. Good thing I'll be moving back to the city soon, it's always cool there. D:

Anyway, it's a bit too hot to draw but I'm gonna try anyway. I'm sure my hand will get sweaty and smear my pencil and I will complain loudly soon, but I'll get done what I can before then. Here's a preview of what I'm going to try to get finished before I move away from my scanner:

Mushishi and OUTER SPAAACE

2010-08-19T01:46:00.000-07:00

I started watching Mushishi with my sister today. And geez, I do love pretty things. It's pretty episodic so far so I'm waiting for more backstory to happen and tie the story together, but for now GEEZ THE PRETTINESS. I love the drawing style, and the backgrounds especially just make me want to walk through life in awe of everything. I'm excited to continue.

More life-y stuff:

Lately, I've been wanting to try my hand at animating, too. I could probably do that, one day if I'm bored enough and don't mind sitting in one place for a long, long time. It's just that I've been out of school for so long it feels (even though I took a summer class, it wasn't like it was a heavy workload or enough to keep me occupied or FUN or anything), and I'm reaching the part where I want something to bring structure back into my day. Without structure I end up skipping meals, forgetting to brush my teeth and clean my living space and other such things that make me look (and probably smell) sort of like a bum. And since most of my personal time is usually spent mindlessly drifting about the internet, refreshing my message boxes and watching videos I've already seen countless times, I go through periods where I just don't want to be anywhere near a computer. This is pretty much one of those times, only I don't have many ways to (super, full-on) draw without my computer, and most of the projects I've got going on have to be done on my computer (like the OC bios, and the commissions which I just finished). I'm moving back to the city on the 28th, too. I haven't signed in on MSN in a long time, which I feel bad for, but. I kinda just. Don't want to be sitting at a computer talking to people all day. I think I'll spend some time hanging out with my mom. My mom is awesome.

Anyway, on a related note, I bought Spore recently. For anyone who doesn't know what it is, it's a game where you start out as a single-cell organism, then grow and evolve through various stages of life until you eventually get to exploring outer space. The space level is where I'm at right now, and I'm slightly dismayed to find that it's worlds more difficult than all the stages before it, for no apparent reason. Even though I'm playing the game on easy, I've had to quit the game and start from an earlier save point a couple times in the space stage already. First I got into a war without even meaning to, then I couldn't figure out how to add ships to my fleet so whenever my home planet got attacked I had to periodically go offworld and pay to heal my ship, then run back and fight more. So I got poor, then I tried to leave to one of my allies' planets and sell stuff to make money but the INSTANT I left my planet it was under siege again. Finally, all the cities on my home planet were destroyed suddenly (really, I didn't see it coming AT ALL. I HAVE LIKE TEN CITIES) and I was like ugh forget it. so I went and started over again. Eventually it got so annoying that I caved and looked up cheat codes to give me more money, so I could just BUY my way out of the stupid war. And now that I know the code for it I can't get myself to stop using it. orz Really, I just want to be friends with everyone, but then my friends attack eachother and then BOTH ask for help. :(I'm like OMG THERE ARE SO MANY PLANETS EVERYWHERE I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING, JUST TAKE SOME AND STOP KILLING EACHOTHER GEEZ. Well, anyway, it's still a really fun stage aside from the warmongering that is apparently inevitable. I love that there's so much stuff to collect. I am a completest and love collecting things in video games. It's also lasting a really looong time, probably just because I am bad at multitasking so I haven't put very many colonies yet (not to mention I keep getting loooosssttt in the huge star-filled menu screen arrrrrgh). But it taps into my exploring-ey part too, cause OOH A RED PLANET I LIKE THE TREES ON IT WHAT SORTS OF ANIMALS ARE HERE OH COOL I FOUND A BLACK HOLE IT'S REALLY PRETTY NOW I FEEL AWESOME
So I like it for that. The creature stage was my favorite though, mostly cause I splurged on wings and just flew around everywhere. I love flying in video games. Flying and exploring and collecting. I am such a gaming pacifist. That's a big reason why I loved Shadow of the Colossus so much, because the majority of the game is just riding your horse through a huge, beautiful and detailed overworld.

Well, I was going to do pictures so I started up Spore and now it is four hours later. Too late now, so I'll just be done for the night.

2010-08-13T03:59:00.000-07:00

Tonight I drew on opencanvas with my friend Matt.

I was trying to teach him how to draw bishies, but then... this happened

I've always dsliked the... er... "yaoi" style. Like, there seems to be some common style elements in a lot of yaoi, and I don't like ANY of them.

Anyway, since bishies failed me, I drew a loli.

And then I was like ooh, I can always draw Daichi. But then out came Daichiko. D:

In other news, cinnamon-sugar bagels are delicious. I want to eat one every day.

2010-08-10T20:45:00.000-07:00

I decided to finally give up on Livejournal in favor of a more personal (and less choked with advertisements) blog thing. Hey cool! I guess I should start by writing a journal entry.

Hmm, lets see what's been on my mind lately...

Well, for starters I have SO MUCH CRAP in my room. I am surrounded by it. It's because of school and all the supplies I've had to buy for it, and I've accumulated paintings/crap on canvasses that I'm too packratty to let go. My sketchbooks, which I keep in a companion cube box, have long since grown to a stack twice the height of the box itself. And just recently I bought a set of lightly used markers (not copics, of course. :/ Soexpensiveargh), and there's... a lot more of them than I though. And yet I still want to buy more because I do not yet have every color ever and I WANT EVERY COLOR EVER.

Ooh ooh, also, I really like how you don't have to put a title for entries here. Seeing as coming up with titles is a humongous weakness of mine.

Speaking of titles, argh, going and doing all my OC bios reminds me how I can't come up with good titles for my stories. And how many of them aren't even titled at all. orz

Well, that'll do for a first entry I guess. I hope to write stuff more consistently, if only just because it's easier here.