WIP Wednesday!

Work-in-Progress Wednesday!
(If I make it almost-alliterative, that means it's a feature, right?)

So, yeah, that was embarrassing, saying that I update at least once a week, then... Missing an update. *cough*

On that note, I think I will make this dinosaur thing a little more... infrequent until I can work out a proper schedule. ... I'm new at this, okay?

So, yes, the art post for today, ahem.

I recall something my portfolio class teacher said, about not uploading bad art, something to that effect, and that time my mom told me to stop being so self-depreciating.

Well, today, I get to defy TWO authority figures with one stone! Post! Figure of speech!

And by that I mean this is what I've kind of been working on lately:



The working file is WAY bigger (which is why the glowy effect around her wings is so large *cough*), but yeah, here we go. I intend to make this part of a wallpaper when I'm done, and right now I need to shade this and... fix that eye, but I'll save that for later.

So... Yes, explanation. This is Arianna, a character I made waaaay back when. The shortest (and long-standing) backstory is that she's one of those shoulder-advice angels. Depending on my mood that day, she also might dispense hilariously bad advice.

Normally, though, she's kind of Ari's sidekick, as seen here (incidentally, another work in progress):


"That's the problem with real people, Anna. They're so boring!"

Also I created these two between the ages of ten and twelve, so there's a LOT of history with them. Also explains why they're kind of anime-ish and crazy-haired.

The Max to Ari's Sam, as I said once. Only... Ari's not exactly smooth herself. They're both sort of cartoony bringers of chaos, and are comedic-duo-y with each other. Something like that.

ANYWAY, today's drawing.

My main issue with it at the moment is the fact that Anna's left eye there looks off. At first, it was kind of uneven:


"Whoops, made her hand too thin... *furious scribbles* GOD BLESS PHOTOSHOP."

So, I thought, 'hey, I'll touch it up in photoshop, how hard could that be?'

I've gotten better at gauging my skills in these situations, so usually I'm right. However, I redrew that eye like five times and it's still looking kind of wonky. Of course, I also have been staring at it for a long time, often too close to the screen, so hey, maybe it's not so bad.


Ariel-vision, reduced by 50%

Of course, at the time, I was inwardly a ball of rage and fury at this misbehaving bit of art. I start shading, realize that I'm too tired and frustrated to have it look right, so I call it a night. And before I do, I think of something...

Ariel: Hey, what's that thing some artist do? Right, they flip their work to see how it looks like from a different perspective. Hey, maybe if I do that, what I need to do to fix that eye will be clearer!

Ariel: Hm... No, it still looks kind of wide. *leans back* ... And now, her head looks flat too. ... FFF whatever I'm going to bed.

So, yes, readers. Not every day is one full of great success, but that's why you've got to leave that file open and keep working on it.

... Or something deep and inspiring like that.
WELL! Back to work I go!

Dinosaur Day - Stan the Stegosaurus

(These posts would come faster and easier if I wasn't such a research purist. To look more professional, I wanted to avoid wikipedia or any books with 'Extreme' or 'Awesome' in its title. Ah well.)

Stan the Stegosaurus



Stan is an adventurous little guy, which is why he has a pith helmet, and that shirt, and that canteen. He likes exploring the melting pot of time periods that is this cartoon dinosaur universe he lives in with his best friend, Terry the Triceratops.

His favourite type of food is garden salads.

Stegosaurus Armatus

When people usually talk about Stegosaurus, they probably mean this guy.

Stegosaurs were large herbivorous dinosaurs, and roamed around during the late Jurassic. They were about 9 metres long, and supposedly could reach three or some odd tons.

The most interesting feature that I and many grade schoolers doing reports on dinosaurs find are its plates and tails. Speculation on the plate’s uses have ranged from armour, communication, cooling system, or mating signal. Or other display signal. Maybe like those neck-fans and frills some lizards have.

They also have a large canal-type deal on their back - some think there was a second brain there to help with reaction time, while others suspect it is... a gland of some sort, I’m not sure and I don’t want to copy+paste off a website to sound like it.

That spiky tail at the end was probably used for defense, and yeah, I imagine it would hurt quite a bit to get smacked by it. Also, apparently some scientists actually refer to it as a Thagomizer! Score another point for Gary Larson! [/old news]

I will include development sketches for this Stan character at a later date. For now, enjoy his vector image and be amazed. Also thankful that I am not going into extreme detail about how I drew him for a cereal box. I did that enough over here.

Sources

(Will add when I am not halfway out the door. Hello, graduate event!)

I am either terribly rusty at this 'research' thing, or it is too hard to find information that does not look like it came off a site built in '99.

Yup! If all goes well, hopefully I will have another post like this next week. But better.

Musical Drawing: I've Got Some Falling To Do

Nervous posting as the hours tick by for this event? You'd better believe it!

So... Yeah, I also imagine little animations in my head while I listen to music sometimes, and Lemon Demon's "I've Got Some Falling To Do" is one of those songs.

This image therefore is sort of what I see in my head when I hear it.



... Though, honestly, I feel this looks a little crowded. In my mind, during the musical interludes of the song (seriously you guys listen to his music if you don't already) the main character falls through the sky, and passes by some weird trippy stuff chilling on the clouds.

That said, if I had the time I would exploit the infinite canvas that digital drawings can have and make this thing even even longer, so I could space out the oddities better and add some more.

Speaking of, if you've listened to the song, the imagery in the picture is probably a little obvious, but for those who are at work or school or are otherwise without speakers or something, then I will give a short rundown: The plane represents the plane the character falls out of, the grim reaper on the cloud represents the Angel of Death who rings him up, the squid represents the giant squid that catches him, and the lemons raining out of a cloud represents the creator of this song.

And because I don't like how crowded that drawing is, here: have one without stuff.



Yup, and that's all for this post!

Musical Drawing: Cell Block Tango

So in light of this event that I'm going to today, I decided to do some new art to make myself look good!

Then I hit an art block.

As I was fishing for inspiration, I put my music on shuffle and closed my eyes. Cell Block Tango from the Chicago musical started playing, and then I got a great idea.

So, yes, I think I might make this a thing, now, where I listen to a song and draw what's on my mind, ideally something that accompanies, represents, or symbolizes something from the song.



Ta-dah! ... I think it got a little blurry when I saved it last, but, er, there will be a higher-quality version in those little portfolios on my sidebar. Yup!

So yeah, I was inspired also by the movie adaptation of Chicago, since that's the version I have. I didn't draw any of the women in particular, just elements resembling the kinds of outfits I remember off the movie. Though I'm pretty sure none of them had tails, she looked kind of small without it. It... It made sense at the time.

Yup! That's it for now.

Montage Assignment - City of the Lost

So we were given an assignment in another class to do a montage-image based on song lyrics, scripts, a book, or our own creative writing. Guess which subject I picked.



Alright, so I could probably write a novel about each of the little thumbnails here (and in one case I kind of already have!), but I will be short and quick about it:

Top left, Nero and Yuu, those demons from my other post. Below those three, is a layout for a zombie story I was/am writing. Beside the zombies is one for a small sci-fi-ish idea I had involving a guy on the run from police robots. I'll make a post about them later. And finally above that one are some ideas that eventually turned into the one I went with. (If you tilt your head to the left a bit, you'll see it at about the top center of the page)

So I fleshed out that one a little more.



So these are characters from a comic I want to do one day (after I get through Superfailure and more of Carol in the Woods). From left to right, we have Mechael the clockwork robot; Thane, the teen who can slowly kill things by touching them; Sarah, the scientist with some kind of parasitic/symbiotic vine-thing in her veins; Aaron the centaur, and Steve the human. Behind the first four there are little streams that contain bits from their backstory, while Steve doesn't get any.



Tadah, here's the final thing. It's a bit blurry because the board it was mounted on was a little too big for my scanner. Also I was scanning this at not-four-a.m., and therefore kind of... uh...

SO the basic premise is that five people from different worlds wake up in a weird, empty city one day and then try to figure out why they're there. In between epic, mind-screwy breakthroughs, they just hang out.

So yeah, I have colour schemes for these characters picked out, which you can see here. I don't want to go into too much detail because part of me is convinced that this will spoil the plot before it's even finished, but, eh... Well, Mechael's is about his 'sister' and the fact that he's a wind-up-robot, Thane's relates to some traveling party of magic-users he was a part of and a girl he likes, Sarah's is about her 'acquiring' the sybiote, and Aaron's about him being in university because he is basically a normal guy, just with half-a-horse as his legs. Steve doesn't get one partly because he, too, is a normal dude, but also because he's a city-kid, and to adapt to the situation he starts identifying himself with the city. Or something like that. His colour theme is red, make of that what you will. Also!

So yes, other elements in this story is someone who drops cryptic hints via graffiti, two creepy newscasters, the apartment they live in, and the creepy hospital. And monsters called Sweepers, you can see a warning about them on a billboard in the background. Also! I tried to make the city background transition into the backstory-backgrounds, and sort of line up with elements there. It... kind of worked.

Speaking of, I intended for the buildings to be blurry! Since the city is ~mysterious~ and all, you see.

For the sky to be streaky... not so much. To be honest, I had to do a lot of this in a short time, which is a shame. On that note, the ink is supposed to be smudged in Thane's bar there. I did that by accident, realized it went cool, and then went with it.

Like many things I draw, I will go back and make this pretty in photoshop, and unlike many things I draw, I really mean it with this one.

Vector Revisits

I am insane. I know this because I attempted a vector imaging of the pirate I drew way back when. Why would I even do that? (Aside from the fact that it was easier to fix up a few mistakes and that I wanted it to be clean and shiny for a new twitter background)

Oh, right, it looks smooth and sharp when I do that. Carry on, then.



In retrospect I probably should have resized this a little more, because it is either that or my more experienced artist's eye that's making me see a bunch of tiny mistakes (which I won't tell you because that would destroy the illusion of me knowing what I'm doing).

So, yes! I'll go back to working on this when my wrist doesn't feel like its melting or turning into limestone.
(PS. omgomgomg look at the telescope looklooklook it is shiny!)

Final Assignment [3 page comic, Carol in the Woods]

So in a long story I documented on my project blog, for my final project I did three pages of comic. It was about a crazy person dressed vaguely like a Mountie walking through the Canadian wilderness, and I called it 'Carol in the Woods'. You can read the whole thing over here, but for fancy Art-Blog purposes, I'm posting the first page and my personal favourite of the three:



A close second was the last page, because of my playing around with perspective and frame arrangement, but this page I ended up spending more time on. Even if that log on the third frame is a little unfinished. I'm thinking of doing a version of these pages coloured, and a version of these pages just black and white inked. I'll let you know when that's finished.

About the page itself (and I promise I won't write a novel; I already did that in the project blog), I was playing around with the panel flow, sort of, making it look like Carol was walking uninterrupted, while traveling great distances, that sort of thing. I also wanted to show off a variety of scenery, too. And finally, I wanted to hint that she was a little unhinged, through including little things that are 'off' about the scenery, like eyes where they shouldn't be. Er, though the 'story' is more about Carol going places and seeing stuff than any deep analysis of an unstable mind.

Yup, I think that's about it. I've gotta go do some more art and stuff to mass post by tomorrow, cheerio!

What I REALLY Did Over The Semester (sketchings)

'No Ariel, noooo this is an ART BLOG don't post terrible art here!'

Well... Okay, see, I have a confession to make. Throughout the semester, I carried a binder around with me, with the intent to hold lined paper for notes and also assignment/instruction sheets, that sort of thing, but going through it last week, I noticed that a lot of it really was just pages and pages of little drawings of things ranging from eyeball-practice, to whichever character of mine I had in mind that week, to my reaction to something I'd seen or heard or thought (towards the end of the binder, there are a lot of me looking like a sleepy zombie). I slightly justify it by having notes from a lesson or assignment brief in the side (come to think of it, that's kinda funny, since I've gone from doodling in the sides of a notepage to writing notes in the side of a doodle page).

Now, a disclaimer for my parents and past/present/future instructors: I have a short attention span and I'm very fidgety. Even if there's a lesson going on, and one of the things I found I could steady myself with is occupying my hands with something. At this point we get a choice: Clicking a pen repeatedly, or using that pen to draw. For my sanity and that of others, I generally do the latter. I'm still listening, and heck, I might be listening better with my hands distracted. It... It makes sense to me. IN SHORT: If I'm drawing during your lesson, I'm still there! ... Or I'm trying to keep myself from falling asleep because I had to get up at 5 for your class or something.

ANYWAY enough writing, because my teacher commented on that last week, here is a few pages out of my improvised sketchbook:



So, here are a few characters I find myself drawing when I can't come up with anything else to draw. The spikey-haired fellow calls himself Nero, he's a demon; the man with the feathers is Yuu. The kid down at the bottom is called Kri, he's sort of an artificial demon. It's a long story.

This page was mostly an attempt for me to practice action shots. I think I have poses well enough, I just need to practice motion and flow... My hands are getting better, though! Also bonus fun of drawing reaction faces/bodies. Like how Yuu's feathers ruffle, or Nero's wings go squiggly.



You see, in this story, Demons and Angels refer more to beings that live on a different plane than anything religious. Yuu was framed for something really bad, so he was exiled from his plane. He kind of blames Nero for this, but hilarious circumstances force the two to work together! What an odd couple!

In this edition, I sketch up how Yuu looked like while he was still in inter-dimensional law-enforcement (yes his hair is supposed to look hilariously bad), and basically use this as an excuse to draw his wings some more. Bonus round for Nero showing some demon features he'd rather not let people see.

I could show you one more page but that might require more explaining and I think I'm running long already, so I'll leave you with something I coloured kinda quickly, as practice in photoshop/a way to ease my nerves with the upcoming thing on Tuesday.



Bonus note about Nero: his wings are made of shadows, partly because it's cool, and partly because I liked drawing thin, papery wings. Also gives a contrast between Yuu's big, beautiful, powerful, and sometimes more detailed wings, and his tiny, simplistic, thin wins. I'm going to try to contrast those two a lot, see, it's part of their dynamic.

And yeah! That's all for today, tune in tomorrow when I post a certain little dinosaur again...