Digital Art 2: Sheep Castle

Sheep Castle

Medium: Digital

Time: A Month

Date: January 2018

So here's the second digital art picture I did right after the previous sheepdog one! [Which as you may notice they have pretty similar subject matter XD ]

Full timelapse video below and more details underneath!:

So - wow - this work really was something. Summary: I wanted to force myself to draw pretty much all of things I was afraid of drawing digitally: grass, rocks, rocks, more grass, and more rocks.

This drawing took literally forever but I was determined to finish it. Once I finished the castle I started getting super excited because it was finally looking decent but before that it was a bit of a drag to force myself to keep working on it. But hey - I did it! I finished it and I love it. I mean I wish it had a little bit more of a magical/stylistic element to it but overall I'm super proud of it... but I also don't plan on doing another digital picture like this any time soon - they're exhausting.

In general I relied on the techniques I knew from painting and tried to translate them to digital mainly because I have actually painted grass before and it came out okay; and rocks and they came out okay... but I feel like digital really leaves you with no wiggle room! Real materials naturally already have a bit of organic detail to them and I never realized how much I used that as a crutch. Digital painting is HARD. And I didn't even end up doing anything realistic.

So basically I still have a long way to go but I'm really proud of both the final product and the fact that I stuck with it and finished.

I was particularly happy with how the castle and the clouds turned out. The grass I didn't like very much but at the same time I didn't really mind it. The sheep and sheepdog were cute but I probably could've made them a little more realistic but that's okay. And that cliff in the front... let's just not even mention that.... as well as the wall - though I'm relatively happy with how it ended up turning out I think I discovered how not to digitally paint a wall rather than how to.

Anyways the video is kinda long so I rambled enough in that already ;)

My next post will likely be about the crazy thing I baked today so look forward to that ;)

Thanks!

Digital Art 1: Sheepdog

Sheepdog

Medium: Digital

Time: A couple hours

Date: January 2018

And.... after a long hiatus I'm back with a whole bunch of new (and some old) art! starting off with this cute and quick sheepdog! And even more exciting is that I now have the ability to make time lapses and videos of my art!:

[full story below the video]

Soooooo :) - wow where do I even begin? I've always wanted to be able to make digital art. For years I've wanted a drawing pad and I've tried to play around with digital drawing tools on my phone and kindle but I always thought I wasn't a good enough of an artist to fully utilize fancy digital drawing software/hardware... until more recently when I stopped caring so much and just wanted to have fun drawing what I love and just going for it! A couple years ago now I got my Surface Pro which has allowed me to draw right on my computer and it's literally the best thing ever! I love it! 

Over the last couple years I slowly became acquainted with the different drawing software and now screen recording/video making software. I'll shortly be posting some of the other digital drawings I have made over the last couple years that slipped through the cracks.

Now I'm absolutely in love with making art both digitally and with real materials and I have plenty of projects planned so hopefully I'll be posting often ;)

Anyways about that sheepdog!

I'm not sure where exactly the idea for this picture came from but the best way that I can explain it is: you know how everyone has a bit of a fantasy 'escape'? Like when people joke that they'll just leave everything behind and live on a tropical island somewhere or in a shack on a mountain? Me: I've always wanted to be a shepherd in Wales.

So in a sense this is my dreamscape: castle, hills, dragons (cause they're real in Wales), sheep, and to top it all off a cute fluffy sheepdog. :) and really this picture is as simple as that :)

I talk more in the video about how I wanted to challenge myself with this picture because I still view myself as being really bad at drawing line-art cartoony pictures and I don't really have a developed artistic style. But I was really proud of how this picture came out! especially since I drew it super quickly because it was my first time using the screen recording software and it was making me a tad nervous so I was rushing like mad.

I wanted to try to draw something soft and cute and it was the dead of winter when I did this so it became a pastel(ish) snow scene. I absolutely love how it turned out! (except it makes me a bit nervous because I'm still not confident that I'll be able to keep creating and growing as an artist but at the same time every drawing I do I keep surprising myself and I'm starting to think that as long as I'm drawing something I like and just having fun then maybe my pictures will keep turning out okay :) )

Well that's it for now! I had a ton of fun making this picture and the time lapse and I can't wait to do more!

Fan Art 1: Queen's Thief - Costis & Aris

Costis & Aris

Fan Art for the Hamiathes' Gift Exchange 2016

Based off of characters from The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

Medium: Digital

Time: A couple days

Date: June 2016

Other Fan Art for the same series: Sea of Olives

This was a fan art I did a couple of months ago for the Hamiathes' Gift Exchange on the lovely Sounis fan site. I was super excited for the exchange, and I had a bunch of ideas that I wanted to draw, but alas I was finishing my hectic last couple of weeks studying abroad in Italy and thus I did not complete the more ambitious of my planned fan art (which I have since been finishing up and will be posting shortly!). I did however complete this lovely little drawing of Costis and Aris who are predominately from The King of Attolia (Book 3) in Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series.

[Quick Note: The Queen's Thief series (the actual official series title now { ;) } is absolutely my favorite book series of all time, and Megan Whalen Turner is a wizard of an author. I can no longer remember my life pre-Queen's-Thief series. They are the most amazing work of literary art I have ever come across, and as an author I can only aspire to be half as amazing as Megan Whalen Turner. This is the sort of books series where every single word has a meaning and a purpose revealing more with each reread (yes, even many many rereads later), but they can also be enjoyable on a surface level without delving into the hidden treasures of extra meaning and foreshadowing. The characters are wonderful and a joy to read. The books are a perfect balance of everything a book needs but done in such a masterful way that I consider them more a work of art than a mere book series (mind you these are children's/young adult fiction and written in a modern style {as opposed to the more antiquated style of most of the greats of children's/teen literature} so that really is saying something). I could literally write a whole series raving about how amazing each book is, so I had better get on to my fan art~~~]

Prompt: The prompt I worked off of was from a lovely fellow fan who adored Costis and Aris and their friendship [or a little bit more ;) ]. Throughout The King of Attolia, which is narrated from Costis's point of view, there are several scenes with long time friends Costis and Aris. There is everything from them doing their normal daily duties as guards, hanging out in their free time, worrying about each other (such as when Costis desperately has to plead the King for a way to save Aris), etc. Costis is very just, upstanding, and passionate. He comes from a landed family which is huge as far as status goes in Attolia. Aris does not come from a landed family and cannot afford to be as upright as Costis sometimes. They stay friends through thick and thin despite their difference in status or the trouble they find themselves in throughout the plot of the book.

This is my initial sketch. I wanted Costis (on the left) to be standing openly and reaching up around Aris's neck without care for how awkward the reach or how cumbersome the armor he was wearing. I wanted to witness them spontaneously having fun: Costis, a more genuine and open fun with his best friend; Aris, a more precious fun grateful for the friendship he's found in Costis. I was also working on the design of the armor which needed to both feel like Greek/Roman-ish armor, but also be plenty decorative since as Queen's Guard they were expected to look both impressive and perhaps just a bit ornamental. The symbol on the chest plate was meant to be the lily of Attolia which is mentioned to be on Attolian currency.

This is my completed sketch (in pencil). Costis is smiling unreservedly. There's a bit of funkiness going on in some of the hands and elbows, but the armor looks nice. I also added a second lily on the hip plate.

I decided that I was going to turn this into a digital drawing to keep it cleaner, and besides I think I only had 12 colored pencils with me in Italy and no other art supplies. This is the black and white digital version of the drawing. I decided that I was going to keep it 'sketch-y' and stay simple on the coloring, with more muted, everyday-happy sorts of colors. I wanted a simple clean fill in that maintained the feelings of my sketch.

I wanted both of their hair to be dark brown, but I didn't want them to be the same color. I wanted to give Costis a slight red tinge to his hair (since for some reason I related reddish hair with warmer, more open personalities - not that Costis is that 'warm' per se, but he is very genuine to his feelings and beliefs as opposed to Aris being slightly more reserved and constrained.). I do wish I would have made Costis's hair curlier, but curly hair is hard. 

This is the final drawing with highlights and shadows added. I also darkened Aris's hair a bit, and cleaned up some of the dark sketch-y areas a little. I made the horrible elbow a bit less horrible. There is definitely a lot more I would have done, especially now that I know a bit more about making digital art, but overall I am happy with it and it makes me smile every time I see it :) .

One other note about this pic, where I wanted Costis to have spontaneously slung his arm around Aris, Aris in turn is gripping Costis's shoulder. Though he can't afford to be as impulsive in his actions as Costis, they have an equal, comfortable friendship, that is important to both of them.

I know this is a cheesy over-analysis of one little sketch-y picture, but it goes to show how much I love this series and it's characters, and how even when I'm only making a tiny little sketch-y picture there is so much that I am thinking about and that I want to include to do justice to my some of my favorite characters~~~

Other Ideas:

Below is one of my other ideas for a drawing of Costis and Aris. This one was supposed to be them hanging out in Costis's room when off duty. I really liked the idea, but I had a lot of dimensional issues, so if I do end up completing this some day I will likely just have to start over.

One other idea I had was more of a comic of them eating in the mess hall - starting with when they were younger and became friends (when Costis didn't care about being friends with someone of lower status) and later throughout the plot of the book (for example there was a scene when Costis was ostracized and Aris decided to throw his lot in with him and sit with him anyways). I might still do this eventually~~~

Darn, I should've known that I couldn't keep a fan art post for the Queen's Thief series short and sweet and to the point.

Video Game Art 1: Platform Concept and Sprites

Platformer Video Game

Time: Around a month

I recently took a class in Java/C++ object oriented design and I was really excited because one of our main projects was to design a platform game! Of course I volunteered to make all of our sprites and everything :D - This was super fun! There was so much more that I wanted to do with it, but I am still pretty happy with everything and I have learned a lot. I definitely would have done a lot of things differently, and I wish I would have had more time to make the game more unique and have more of a cohesive design, but now I have a better idea of how to go about things next time ;)

Also I wanted to mention that I made most of the sound effects too which was super fun and totally outside of my spectrum of abilities. But the thing that made the game THE BEST was of course the music! Because of how the code was made I needed a MIDI file and couldn't figure out how to make one, so my super awesome beast brother composed a short looping file for me (check out his music website or his soundcloud)! He's the BEST! The music he made for my game sounds totally outer space jazz lounge and I really wanted to redo the background to make it more lounge-y and create different items that could be placed into the game, but alas the time of a college student is limited so I will have to leave all these ideas for the next game [which will be a lot more professional and actually have a plot and everything - the main point of this project was basically just to get all of the proper functionality]

Concept:

Our original concept was going to be the sort of game where everything seems cute and happy and then suddenly shifts to being evil. We wanted our protagonist to be a normal looking person who for whatever reason ended up in this situation.

Background:

Since the platformer game scrolls across the screen, I wanted the background to start super happy/light/harmless, but at the end I wanted the level to look like absolute chaos/terror/destruction. I ended up making a much more simplified version of my concept with just a simple rainbow for the first half of the level and then a scary volcano at the end.

TNT and Gas Blocks:

The TNT blocks subtract 20 health and the gas blocks keep the character from shooting for a set amount of time. The regular blocks came with the sample skeleton code we were modifying from here so I had a lot of fun using that basic design to create the TNT and gas blocks. For some reason the RED block with TNT written across it was not obviously enough a bomb because out of the two of my friends who I had play my game, both of them would purposefully hit the block thinking it gave them points or something. Oh well...

Main character design:

We wanted the main character to be a bit unobtrusive. I will probably make another quick post specifically about his design once I get my other computer back and running because I had some fun concepts for him and his full sized artwork had a lot more to it than the little sprite we ended up using. I really wanted him to have big boots, and I love it.

Happy Creature Design:

This is what the main enemy creature looks like, bouncing up and down before he sees the main protagonist, gets angry, and begins his attack.

Angry Creature Design:

This is the main enemy creature in his attack mode. I wanted him to look a bit psycho. I loved the slight sketchiness to his style as opposed to the 'cleanness' of his cute version.

Dying Creature Design:

This is the short animation that plays after the angry creature has died. All I did was distort and darken the 'angry' sprites. He sort of shrivels away, and it is absolutely awesome. One thing that was really cool is that a 'star' in our game makes the main character invincible, so I have created levels with just a line of enemies and periodic stars so you can literally just run straight through and kill all of the creatures and they do like this domino effect of dying animations.

More Screenshots:

Angry enemy attacks

Star cave and mushroom garden

Hiding from the enemy

Well that's all for now! I can't believe this is my first post in over a year. I have a couple projects (and hopefully some more crochet patterns) I've been meaning to write about so hopefully over Christmas break I will be able to make a lot of updates!

Other Art 3: Discover Drawing

 Discover

Size: Small... approx. 6ish x 10ish in.

Material: Prismacolor Colored Pencils and Computer [Paint.net program (love it btw)]

Time: < 1 week

So, this was a lot of fun. I made this picture for a t-shirt contest [didn't win, but I didn't expect to; it would make one expensive t-shirt! {congrats to whoever the winner was}]. The theme was DISCOVER, so I created a picture in which you can discover the word 'discover' inside discoveries... or something like that. Anyways, I thought my concept was pretty cool, so I made it, choosing to work on the picture as a picture rather than a t-shirt design. I put it together really quickly so it isn't that great; my colored pencil technique is especially bad but I really wanted to see my concept take shape. Initially I thought that I would draw it out and then color it on the computer and make it look super professional, but I am not very skilled with that yet, so instead I just unleashed my messy colored pencil skills on it and used the computer to make it a little more... neater? [Basically I just increased the contrast and decreased the noise]. Overall, I had a lot of fun with it, and I would love to go back some day and make a better, more detailed drawing/painting of this or a similar concept.

Developing the concept: It started when I asked my brothers what they thought of when they heard the word 'discover.' One replied 'Columbus,' and the other, 'Finding something new.' So I immediately thought of some sort of multi-terrained area that included a Columbuslike figure [originally he was Columbus, but I changed that when I had to turn him red and make him into a 'D'] and finding the letters of discover in famous discoveries. Originally it was going to be water with Columbus in a boat, the shore with a clam, 'C,' and then land and a volcano. Later this changed into mostly a water scene. The first letter I decided on was the telescope aimed at the moon for the 'I.' I wanted the other letters to represent other discoveries. A sunken ship became a 'V.' Electricity inspired 'S' [though S was one of the last letters I decided upon]. The tree 'E' and dolphin 'O' represent different facets of life sciences, just as the 'S' represents both the discovery of electricity and the study of everything derived from that discovery. Similarly the volcano is both a discovery that 'that mountain is not a mountain after all' as well as the science of geology and similar fields. The 'C' cave was initially supposed to have a shining jewel inside it, but I decided that caves themselves had enough to discover inside of them. That's pretty much it...

Side note: It's really interesting to see at what point people discover 'discover.' It took my roommate forever, but she watched me from the beginning, so it makes sense that she wouldn't see it since she saw it mainly in parts. Took my brother a while to notice too ;) Other people notice it immediately. [shrug - it's fun to watch].

Alternate Work:

 This is the exact design I submitted with the title. I think the noise level was slightly different...

This is the picture with a 'pen ink' filter. I thought it looked kinda cool :D

Concept Art:

 Early sketches... Originally the 'C' was going to be a clam, then I thought of a cave with a jewel, and later I got rid of the jewel to just have a lighted up cave. Notice I was spelling 'Discover' wrong in the dolphin pic...

Method in this madness??? Highly debatable. 

 The weird plant/berry thing was an idea for the 'O.' Also, I was trying to put in a windmill for either the 'D' or the 'S' [with swooshy wind forming the letter], but I decided against it.

 Final Placement and sketch.

 Begin coloring. :)

Final, unaltered picture. Note: this is a picture of the picture whereas I altered a scan of the picture, so in reality, the altered picture isn't really that altered, just that the blacks are a little blacker pretty much.

And we come full circle :)