Xan, Cityscape, Preview

Lots of stuff I guess, but really I just need a break from lining this cityscape...and I don't feel like starting my reports at all, so..post!

A little warm-up doodle: a fanart for my friend Kasey's webcomic, Winters in Lavelle! If you haven't yet, you should read it! Though I think I made Xan way too shoujo...but that's what happens when you drink as much coffee as I do. XD;;


Speaking of webcomics, this is like, the most uncrowded panel in page 2:


Lookin' forward to coloring that. yep.

So here's the sketch for my much-complained-about Cityscape:


I hated the way it was coming out while coloring it without doing lineart, and when I tried to ink it traditionally it wasn't coming out how I wanted it to either. Unfortunately the only way was to digitally ink it, though this takes me forever to do. However it is a bit easier with PSCS4's canvas rotation tool. :)


Some close-ups that will look better when I add...more stuff...@__@;;


hey look Donato, they're not all perfect little teenagers now. HAPPY!?!??!? T___T;; Though I admit it is fun to draw 'squishy' people. lol :p

If I get chided again for not doing this more 'realistically' and all 'painterly' I may go on a shooting rampage. I'm sorry that I don't want to be that kind of artist anymore. really. T_T

Anyway, I should get back to work...here I come! :(

FT:Rebirth - Page 1 finished!

Since I'm fine with just posting the first page, here it is hot off the press! First without text:

I'm still debating between two font types, but realizing a fatal flaw in ShonenPunk makes me lean more towards CartoonistSimple. This fatal flaw being that in the middle of the word, there are crossed I's, which is one of the biggest no-no's in lettering. Just so you can see the difference, here it is in that font:


Can you see how where the crossed I's are it is a bit harder to read? CartoonistSimple does not have this problem, and although it lacks the organic quality of the first, it is much easier to read:


So yes, it will probably be lettered with CartoonistSimple. Thank you for all the feedback I got both here and elsewhere, it helped me so much! I hope you like this first page of FT: Rebirth! :D

On a side note, the last two panels were colored after I got CS4 Design Premium yesterday, and was colored in half the time as a result! I am so excited for the free CS5 upgrade to come, I know it will only make this whole process even easier. ^___^ Plus because of this, now I have a working version of Dreamweaver so hopefully I can get back to updating my websites regularly after school is over in two weeks. :'D

FT:Rebirth - Page 1 previews!

I'm terrible with keeping things to myself which is good news for you, and I just can't wait to show you some previews of FT:Rebirth, sooo...here's the first page's lines:


I meant it when I said backgrounds will be the main focus. ^___^

But yes, here is a preview of the first panel's color as it stands now with no text:


One of the biggest conundrums of every new comic is what font should it be in?? I'm having a hard time deciding, and I figure what better way than to get some opinions. :)

1. ShonenPunkv2:


2. MangaSpeak:
3. IndieKomiksSketch:
4. CartoonistSimple:
5. OnomatoShark!:
I like most of them, but the main thing I'm looking for is clarity and a certain type of organic quality. In all honesty, I don't know if I'm 100% satisfied with any of these, and I'm way too stupid to make my own font well. Most of these don't have options for bold and italic letters. Is there a font out there I should try out?

Thanks guys, I hope you will like it! ^__^

Sketchies, MoCCA

It feels like forever since I've posted, so much has happened!

Last weekend was the MoCCA festival, and it was the first time in a long time where I've actually had a genuinely fun time at a con. It was mostly due to the amazing help of the volunteers at the Cartoon Allies booth, and meeting so many amazing people!!

I got to meet...everyone...and see wonderful friends, old and new! It was wonderful to see my friends Kasey, Greliz, Ashley, Hanni, and so many others. And to meet new ones like the lovely Michelle, mostly known as HamletMachine who draws the beautiful comic Starfighter, who was so kind and even drew a sketch for me out of nowhere! haha, I still can't believe it. :'D She's probably the nicest person EVER. 8D


If the heart emoticon didn't screw up blogspot's code it would be EVERYWHERE. :'D

Also, this Wednesday was the reception of our Junior Thesis show, and it was a blast! The support everyone showed each other made me nearly cry, we did it!! :'D

I wanted to show much more stuff, but this will wait for another post next week...for now, have a bunch of sketches I never scanned! lol ^__^


Just a bunch of architecture, redesigns that probably won't go through, character developments, etc. I can't wait to show you guys the first page of Rebirth! but that's for another post. :D

Exciting, Color Studies HELP!

Happy Easter, everyone! Spend time with your family and love them, and celebrate Zombie Jesus together~! :D

EXCITING I have officially started the first 6 pages of FT:Rebirth! (Disguised as a prequel for my latest and last class assignment lol) :D And the lovely Ellie is once again being a huge help in helping me with all my current web-related woes. This is so exciting, I can't wait!

Previews will come later, but for now I NEED YOUR HELP GUYS CAUSE I SUCK SO BAD.
I bought this amazing book on Color Combinations and it's helping me soooo much, but now I can't decide which one to use! Here's the Amazon linkage where it's much cheaper than where I bought it damn it:
What color scheme do you like the most??? I DUNNO.

This is the suckage I did by myself before buying my new color bible:
1.
And this is where the magic starts to happen:
2.


3.
4.
5.
Normal people I've asked say they like 5 best because the colors seem more normal, but I've fallen for 4, where the colors are more like a poster but I think I just like that gold color a lot, and 1 is growing on me more I look at it. What do you guys think??? I may end up just doing 2 versions...lol XD;;

Ellie told me about these amazing color community sites, Kuler and CLOURlovers but I still have a love for my resource books. I like books. :) They are very good sites though, especially Kuler. 8D
I also caved in to admitting I have to get to know my weak points better, and just bought this book:
It seems like the reviews say it's good but I'll see for myself when it comes. hopefully it will help me out a lot 'cause Typography is probably my greatest weakness, along with everything Graphic Design related. lol XD; but at least I'm trying to improve!! ^__^;;

HAHA NEVERMIND GUYS, I totally just finished it:


DEVIATION IS HERE
Tried to incorporate both that I liked into this one. Hopefully it's a good image. It will be on sale at MoCCA, at the SVA table. Stop by! :D

Revolution, 3 Years.

A sketch I've been working on-and-off throughout Thesis, and now that I am FINISHED with my Thesis, I can go back to it. :D Still not done at all, but I'm glad to take it to more than sketch-level. :p


I don't usually use the blue-line thing but I wanted to ink traditionally and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately my ink bled a lot on the printed blue, and the lines when taken out are not what I'd like them to be. but that's all right, ya live and learn. :p

This is also probably the biggest preview of the direction FT:Rebirth is going in. :)


Also...today marks a very emotional day in my life. Three years ago on March 29, 2007 my father passed away. It is still very unreal for me and hard to realize that it is the truth, but it is. While all I ever wanted was for him to be proud of me and while I wish he could have gotten to see where I am now, I am happy for the good memories I do have of him. I guess what I want to say is never take those around you for granted because life is too wonderful to take for granted. Life is so beautiful, and I truly wish more people could see that. If my father could have seen that maybe he would still be with us. It just makes me remember why I do what I do, and I hope others can learn to see things in this way. Life is just too wonderful to go to waste, so enjoy it!

bye-bye, Spring Break.

So....it's the end of my spring break, and I feel like I haven't accomplished much at all. I am steadily on my way to being closer to finished with my Thesis, but I have no new pages since the last 5 I am working on at about the same rate. It's frustrating not to be able to gauge how much I have left to do.

anyway, here have a quickie of a 'model-ish' Lyra I did as my warm-up today:
I've realized she really is my 'pepper project' if you're familiar with that. haha! :p

Here's this piece o' crap that I can't seem to save if my life depends on it:


I hate it so much, and this is much better than it used to be. It's just...everything about it is bad and done without skill, it's like it's beyond the point of no return and I don't care I'll just take whatever grade Donato'll give me 'cause I've wasted way too many hours on it already and have a 7-page report to do.

On a lighter note, here's its companion piece which is probably the best thing I've ever done! (Though technically it still needs some tweaking before it's officially done)


Not every thing you do will be a gem, but you just have to deal with it and move on! :p

Little Twins and a Traveller

oh man, so many posts lately. I must be on a school break!

After Thesis there's a short project I'll be working on and it involves a younger Lyra and Deneb. This is me warming up today, trying to figure out how old I want them to be. Still don't know if this is too young or not, but aren't they the cutest little twins?


I didn't like how a picture I was working on a while back was coming out, so I wanted to see how I could save it. here are some thumbs I apparently did during my Irish Lit class where I was counting how many times my teacher said 'um' which ended up to be around 210 times, hence the doodling LOL:


And this is the changed image, do you recognize it? lol:


I still have a long ways to go, I don't know if I'm happy with the composition yet. but I do know that painting rock is extremely difficult...aahh! XD;;

Sketch Concepts, more developments

I'm on Spring Break right now! Not that it's much of a break since I have to try and finish my Thesis...but yeah. I wanna do stuff. Too much stuff than I have time for! >__<;;

Not some of my best sketches this post, but these were done a while ago to help me figure out designs and such. The only reason why I hesitated so long was 'cause I was deciding whether or not to keep some of the more spoiler-ish sketches in, but I just removed the text on them so it should be fine.

Zila and Lyra:


Cygnus and Lyra, a looot of spoiler text had to be removed lol:


Bizo/Kauz, again some spoiler-ish stuff was removed:


Deneb is getting a stockier build, I want to vary the body types more which means I have to do a lot more practice:


Drawn as a warm-up this morning, figuring out that I just wanted to draw Hiu's dreds loose since it's crazy fun to draw, and kinda finally deciding on a hair type for Bizo maybe:


I wanted to figure out a way to make Bizo look more At'rik and decided his design may benefit from having some shocks of silver patches in his hair along with making his skin hue more lavender-colored than it already was, probably more so than here I dunno:


Oh snap manly Hiu is manly?? lol kinda?? XD;; I need to study how I can draw his facial features better. :p

Emperor Ka'chkka

I haven't drawn him in a while, but as I was plotting the outline and realizing the larger role the At'rik would play in Rebirth I redid his design along with many others, but I figure I'll show you his for now. I still don't know if I'm entirely happy with how human the At'rik look, or if I should give Bizo an even bigger makeover to match them more, but hopefully Ka'chkka looks alien enough.

haha drew these on the train on my commute home. making him this much of a 'pretty boy' is still hesitating for me, but it may work better for the overall story so I guess it's fine? gotta have a little fun with the characters lol


Also, you get a little snippet of a small part from the story of Rebirth, which really hasn't changed much from the original FT in regards to this aspect of him. Although, this time he's a bit more of a playboy, haha!


Also, these are in pretty much full color. The At'rik have purplish skin, silver hair, black eyes, and are born with dark markings covering their body. The black eyes are new...I think it suits them better as being a more untrustworthy people.


Uhh...I just wanted to draw a full body to figure out his markings, but it turned into something risque, haha! I really didn't intend on it, but it seems the more I draw him, the more he is demanding to have this attitude about him...again, this works better than the original's sweet little meek Emperor to someone who will abuse his power and allies when necessary. :p