Sketches - Chase and Margaret

So, yeah, I missed a week or so of posts due to falling horribly ill shortly after that post with Anna (and by 'horribly ill' I mean 'mild cold', but whatever), and I was actually unable to draw. And then there was a convention, don't know if you heard of it, but Anime North? Yup, recovered just in time for that, and the week before it was spent with family frantically working to get ready for it. But... Those stories are better fit for Livejournal, or, maybe, a different post someday. Costume Making is kind of like art, right?

But I digress.

Today is another post featuring things I drew in my sketchbooks and scrap paper. I think these guys are some of my more interesting characters, for their origin, if anything else.

See, one night, I had an incredibly vivid dream about this futuristic utopia-sort of world. The short version was that there was little poverty and no crime; everyone was happily living their lives in their own little world, sort of, just goofing off. Society was kind of like a cross between the positive sides of a big mall and college life.

All except for one guy, who was, for some reason unknown, wanted by the people running this utopia. He was constantly on the run from security robots (or any robot, really), or anyone who cared enough to pursue justice. There's more to it than this, which also explains how he gets by and why other people don't turn him in, but that's something for later.

Meanwhile, a woman graduating from her college program with no idea what she was going to do with herself (up until then, she was content partying and socializing, but that gets stale after awhile). Inevitably, she and the dude on the run cross paths (though she drags him to a few parties before she figures out who he is, first), and naturally, she ends up stuck with him as he continues dodging the law.

This was all clear in my mind that morning, which is sort of rare for me. It had a coherent plot and everything, and several scenes were still very clear in my mind and still made sense! I also knew how they looked like.

The first thing I did that morning, after writing down what I could remember from the dream, was to draw this:



On the left is Chase, the man on the run. I couldn't really remember his name, but I remembered how he looked like. I think I was close to naming him something else (I wrote down a list of names that sounded similar to what I remembered from the dream), but settled on Chase for irony. I think he had a slight accent, but he might have just been putting that on when he talked to people, y'know, for advice and directions. On that note, he can act all cool and confident and classy for about six lines of conversation, but once the other person talks about something other than the city or whatever answers he wanted, he is incredibly lost. Fortunately, he has Margaret.

Margaret, the girl on the right, is pretty interesting, too. I could remember her name clearly, most of her appearance, but the best part of her sort of developed as I drew her. Initially, she was in sort of a retro sundress-like thing, but I was sure I pictured her in something more modern or futuristic. I played around with her design a bit until I realized that, hey, why couldn't Margaret change her outfit frequently? She is definitely the kind of person to wear a different fashion every day, even while on the run! So, yeah, I took that idea and ran with that. You can see beside her that I wrote a list of styles she could cycle through. Really, this is also an opportunity for me to stretch and come up with lots of different outfits.

Also! With her changing style, it's kind of important for me to give her some consistent, identifying features. Those would be her curly hair, her face, and her colour scheme, as much as I can help it.

Bonus round: in the middle, you can see Chase talking to a blackberry-like-thing. It doesn't actually have A.I., just a few voice-activated features, but since Margaret is one of about two people Chase has ever extensively interacted with... He gets kind of lonely.

So yeah. I have a ton more on these two, but I already have more writing here than art, so that'll have to wait.

So, have some more sketches:



I sketched out a few other scenes I could remember later that week. Top left is what these domed cities look like from the outside, to the right of that was a hall in one of the college buildings, leading to a underground movie theater, as seen from a little service corridor.
Below that is an open ice-rink area in one of the mall-like parts of the city.



And here is Margaret looking uncomfortable at some kind of school reunion or social gathering. To the right of that, a view from behind of a different party she goes to later that night, or the next day, and drags Chase along to (before she knows who she is and such). Naturally I decided to draw them from behind, sitting at that couch.

Below the couch party is a scene from a restaurant that was also in the dream. I was more worried about the table-layout than the people there.

Bottom left is Chase, caught between two groups of robots.

Speaking of robots, the final two little doodles are some sketches for them. They're supposed to look more goofy than intimidating, since they're usually used for friendly interaction with civilians. And, hey, normally, they're great to be around. They love humans! Even the one with sawblades on his hands. He's usually in landscaping, but a few of them were out so long, they started malfunctioning...

And it looks like I drew a tiny robot beneath them that sort of resembles the GO-4s off WALL•E.

Okay, and one more for the road:



I used to colour everything in marker before I got a fancy Mac and fancy photoshop programs. Sometimes, I miss it.

That's all for now, folks!

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...

Original Stuff

As I vaguely said in my post yesterday, I AM going to post something today, be it schoolwork or not-schoolwork. As it happens, it is the latter. *cough*

Well, okay, technically, this was still for school, but this is a character I created on my own and sketched prior to the project she featured in. The project in question was a laptop skin, and this was the main image, with a bunch of panels showing scenes from her story as the background. Maybe I'll post the whole image someday! But this was my favourite part off it:



The short story behind this character is that I asked myself what I'd look like as a superhero. Then I got bored in class and drew her a lot and then came up with a plot and personality and so on, and now she's an original character in a Superhero story I'm totally going to write sometime. PS, her name is Annie Matterson. Her hero name is Animator. She did not pick her hero name.

... Of course, part of me thinks it might be bad form to start off original-character posting with a blatant self-insert, but I was having trouble picking which characters and sketches to start with, and this at least looked finished, so I'm starting with her.

... And, self-critique time:
Art-wise, the shading is very basic and could probably stand to be more detailed. Also the pen's shading/highlights look kind of weird. And her right leg looks a little odd going into that boot. I'm not so sure about her arms, either... I don't know, what do you guys think?