Mini Games

The annual Summer Steam Sales started today! I've been making do with flash games for the past few weeks (WoW hasn't been able to hold my attention) due to waiting for this, and I plan to make the most of it now it's out!

I've been particularly into games from Hitgrab, Gaia and OMGPOP recently~ With MonsterHunter (Gaia/Facebook crossover game taking up most of my day today), I was planning on going into the city to hand out more CVs but I'm afraid my feet are covered in blisters after being escorted around by The Boy for yesterday afternoon.

I did, however, go out for a celebratory meal and drink with my mother, mother's best friend and mother's best friend's daughter (one of my close friends from primary school/high school/college), for which I drank far too many alcoholic beverages and ate particularly delicious lobster raviolli~

But I digress!

Today, I tried taking my art-style-studies one step further by tasking myself with drawing in the art style of one artist in particular, today's being Patrick Brown.

Now, Patrick Brown is my second favorite artist anywhere (with my favorite being Genzoman), and I've been mesmerized by his dynamic, powerful style for a long time, though for about as long as I've known of him, I've felt that I'm not good enough to replicate his amazing works.

You can find out more about him here: http://patrickbrown.deviantart.com/

However, I'm aware you don't get better if you don't reach outside your comfort zone, and I think I've been trying enough new styles recently to think I can achieve, at least, a noticeably similar style to Patrick Browns and, as such, I present, Nico Bellic!

I particularly enjoyed working on the unique shading style he uses, thanks to finding a walkthrough he made online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtHCLWmPpLg

My WIP of this piece:

With the source image ofcourse~

And finally, when I'd almost finishes the lineart, I'm afraid I got bored...And so, while keeping the face the same, I turned it into a self portrait!

FIRST!

I averages 70.5% for my most recent year of university, meaning I got a first overall for the year! I'll be graduating with a very high 2:1, so am very happy with the results overall.

On another non-art note, I went out with The Boy this afternoon and we visited a Japanese restaurant for lunch, which did Teppanyaki, where they cook the meal infront of you while throwing around knives and the like. The Boy ordered duck and salmon done this way while I ordered sushi (which was delicious, and came with caviar! always a nice surprise) . The 'show' was amazing! We were the only people in the restaurant (a late Wednesday afternoon, rather expected) and the guy played everything up very well, including letting me nab a few cooking tips (salmon seared in soy sauce and butter is AMAZING). Great experience!

And later I got a Krispy Kreme donut, just to keep you totally up to date on what I ate today, but I digress~

Anyway, art-wise, I did some work last night which I finished off today which was to do chibi versions of the 4 main dragon types mentioned in the Harry Potter books, as such I present:

Common Welsh Green

Swedish Short-Snout

Hungarian Horntail

Chinese Firebolt

Rather took my artistic license to town with these, particularly on the wings... But still, lookie how cuuuuuuuuute :P

(You can probably tell I had the most fun with the Short-Snout)

Commissions!

So! I've been revising a forum I used to frequent, GaiaOnline, mainly playing the mini games (I'm addicted to Tiles and Word Bump at the moment :<) and today decided to wander around the art forums, and found a few requests going, as such, I managed to sell a few pieces today!
They're all in styles I've already done, but it was great to try drawing a new character in a style I'm familiar with! I spent around 30-45 minutes on each.

"American Dad" Style

"Graffiti" (unshaded anime) Style

"Anime Headshot" Style

"Shaded Anime" Style

It was certainly an interesting challenge, particularly as I hate drawing hoodies! I usually end up drawing them either too close to, or too far away from where they should actually sit on the head. ><

Also, I really enjoy drawing the American Dad style! Tell me if you want one done and I'll add it to my list, as long as you don't mind it being posted on here!

Spriting!

I've been making a lot of sprites recently for the group project I'm working on, and as such have been, I think, improving at it!

My old style (made about 6-8 months ago, posted a week ago)

Very simple, VERY small with no shading or any sort of real depth other than a slight leg over-lap on the diagonal-walking ones. General features are distinguishable (hair colour, jacket over a white shirt, bag) but there's not really much to go on.

So! Yesterday I entered a competition on DeviantArt, for which my contest entry was:

There's a lot of good artists usually entering these competitions, so I decided to play up the cute-factor due to time constraints limiting the technically-good factor. I think I pulled it off quite nicely, the large eyes, "cute" proportioning (large head, small body) makes it look "chibi", and the general composition of the piece is rather reminiscent of a squirrel, possibly one of the cutest animals I've ever had eating my shoelaces.

But, ofcourse, just drawing this wasn't enough, so today, after a long day of handing out CVs (and getting a few application forms to fill out!), I decided to sprite it up before continuing work on the group project!

So I present to you, a technically much better sprite than my earlier ones!

Sure, it's larger that the previous sprites allowing for more details, but I just love it! Had more of an opportunity to play with the shading, could put on more details (claws!), and try to get it closer to the original, which I think I pulled off here! I've lost some of the boyish charm and it has more of a 1st-gen Pikachu feel, but hey, it's cute.

Yipes!

My apologies for not updating these past 2 days! It's been a bit hectic, so I've given myself the day off today to relax and catch up on a few things (like gaming!).

A bit of a catch up: I attended my first ever figure drawing class yesterday! It was a lot of fun though some things were a bit unexpected. When I signed up, they asked me if I was a student at the university so they could pull my data up, I said no and went through giving them my details, but from this I assumed that most of the other people there would be art students, thinking 18-21, short pink hair, tunnelers, etc.

Actually, I was the youngest there! The ages were more in the 30-60 range, and there were only around 10-12 people there so no fighting over chairs!

It was a very fun 6-hour session, with us going around the gallery for half an hour at the start, doing a few 1- and 2-minute figures, learning how to judge proportions with your thumb or pencil, then we got onto the longer figures:

10 Minute Figure

20 Minute Figure

2 Hour Figure

Done as links as, as you can guess, there's nudity!

On the job front, I didn't get the job but am going back out again tomorrow, this time into the city to look for work, wish me luck! Tuesday is going up to Hull to get some prints done, then Wednesday I get to see The Boy! We'll be checking out a new Japanese restaurant in Birmingham, which I'm rather looking forward to and will be a nice break from the job search.

On one final note, my deviantArt page has just hit 1,500 page views! Thanks to everyone for your support, favoriting and commenting of my work, it really means a lot to me!

Didn't get the job

So I set up my own shop instead! :P

As I haven't received a call from the potential employer today, I'm presuming they're not leaving it till midnight to call me with the great job offer and instead have given the job to someone else.

Ah well! Have set up an Etsy shop today which may help to supplement my non-existent income while I carry on the job search. Am hoping to sell digital prints on canvas board however, first, I need to get some digital prints done, which I can't complete till Tuesday, so working on things to sell till then!

Link To My Etsy Store

Though I'm afraid that concludes my post-able art for the day! I'm also working on some sprites for the group project I'm working on and have spent quite a bit of today reading a book... The exciting life I lead.

I promise there'll be more up tomorrow! Also, it's this Saturday that I'm going to a 6-hour figure drawing class, if my scanner works I'll post here anything I get completed! 

(I'm also going to be posting some of my work on Shutterstock and CafePress, links in the future!)

I'd be a horrible lazy person

I always have to be achieving something.

Well, I went for my interview today! It went very well, I answered all their questions fully and without hesitation, chatted to a few of the employees while waiting for my interview beforehand, made sure I looked smart, etc.etc. I won't hear till tomorrow evening if I got the job, but I'm holding out hope.

Which leaves me in an awkward position right now... This would be an idea job, it's well paid with flexible hours in a friendly atmosphere. As such, I've been putting off any further job search till I've heard back from them tomorrow. Which basically means I've got nothing to do tonight...
I've played some games (Warcraft for the first time in a week, HOARD till it crashed out and a few flash games), done some art (

), chatted to people, watched TV (The Apprentice was particularly good tonight. Yes, French people DO love their children) and done some odd jobs around the house.
But I'm still left with the damning sense of unease! I want to be working, I would love to be bringing in some money from a job I enjoy to spend on the art materials and kindle I want to buy. But I can't. At least, not right this second.

So! I'm going to spend my night reading up on tutorials to drawing realistically, I did this piece with no preparation but, as I'm planning to do this more often, feel I should probably learn a bit more about the tricks of this specific area of the trade.

(Also, with the eagle piece, I decided to stop here as I've been eying up doing some other fur/feather types on future pieces and want to spend time learning how to do that, while the rest of this image would all be the same long-white-feathers as found on the back of the head, on the right)

Work in progress

Well, I'm rather nervous about my interview tomorrow! Have got my outfit all sorted out and making sure the cats stay away from it, keep double checking the time and thinking over everything FAR too much, to the point of at one time thinking I should take a washcloth with me in case I start nervously sweating and need to dab my head and if I should take a hair brush to avoid wind-ruined hair and blah blah NERVES.
So I did some art!
Decided to try something I've never really attempted before on my graphics tablet, which is a photo-realistic animal piece. As this was purely practice to learn the techniques involved, I allowed myself to eyeball an existing photograph for this piece. The original can be found here: http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/000/cache/bald-eagle_1_600x450.jpg
As for mine? Well, at first, I was all:

And then, I was, like:

 And that's what I did today! I realize the nostril is a little too far up the nose and, as such, is being drawn over by the fur, but this will be one of the many things I correct tomorrow.
Tomorrow!
Eek!

Sketch Dump

[Click for full view]

Afraid it's just a sketch dump for today, I began on the lower right image as a re-do of a picture I did last year:

But then I got bored... Then I tried drawing some more hands, and then I got bored... And then I started playing around with weightings and balance, and just went from there. 

I'm trying to draw more males but I still find females much easier to draw. I may of mentioned before but it's a thought that females can draw females better while males draw males better. Whether this is to do with the female eye preferring S-curves over males or just having yourself as a point of reference I'm not sure, but it's certainly something I want to try to break out of the habit of.

Afraid I can't predict at all what I'll be posting tomorrow. I've been meaning to draw another monster for a long time so that may well be what you get! But I'm off shopping tomorrow afternoon and have some work to do, plus I may well play around with 3DSMax again (if I do, anything I make I'll post on here).

On a side note, I'm unrelentingly getting more views each successive month, so would like to say thanks to everyone who's reading this blog and apparently telling other people about it! It's great to know people are finding this blog interesting, and hopefully not just another thing clogging up their Facebook feeds!

Ah Ahm IronMahn

Felt like I needed to get some practice in drawing hands and feet so spent most of the day swatting up on it. Did loads of doodles but this is the only one I finished off to a decent degree. I'm rather tempted to do a drawing-extremities tutorial, but if you have a quick look online you'll be inundated with guides about this subject matter and I fear I wouldn't be able to add much.

Also, something I've been putting off for ages! Well, not actively putting off, more completely forgot about while busy with my third year project then continued to be at the back of my mind for the last few months... oops. Anyway, a while ago, my sister's-now-roommate asked me to design a tattoo for him, I kindly obliged and my work till recently on the matter included:

And that's where I finished 3 months ago (Yikes! A long time to forget about a design ><) Click to full view any of the above images~ But aye, as you can see a general idea was set on early on, though many small changes were made from that original view, so I spent this evening mainly working on trying to finalize a few pieces for this tattoo piece, and below are the results!

If this gets decided on as the finalized pose and outfit, there will still be touching up and the like to do on it so expect to see this piece again!

Phew!

Looooong day! Started with a job offer and ended with teriyaki steak!
Unfortunately not a concept art job, though I'm not applying for those till after my holiday in Florida. Nope, this is a lovely summer job at a store in my town, have my interview on Wednesday, wish me luck!
I'd barely put the phone down when my best friend Steentrain came to pick me up for our first day out together in far too long. We went up to Xscape, where we usually go snowboarding (not been able to do any yet this summer, hoping to go within the next month) where there's also a load of restaurants, sports shops, an arcade, bowling alley, and a cinema, which on this occasion was our destination.
Long story short, we had a movie day and saw both the new Pirates of the Caribbean and X-Men: First Class. The former having a lot of great one-liners but an ultimately disappointing end (what the HELL happened with the mermaid?) and the latter being a very fun movie with some nice action scenes, and enough in it to have me and Steeny contemplating about it the whole journey home. Neither of us particularly enjoyed the comic-style montage and felt it took away from the film more than it added, but it probably didn't help that we had a kid behind us asking his parents what was happening as opposed to watching what was going on...
ANYWAY!
One of my favorite things to do (usually before movies, but this time after as we got into PoTC:4 25 minutes late) is check out the movie posters, to have a sneak peak of what's coming out in the next few months but also to see how different movies go about advertising themselves.
This interest continued when I got home as I checked out a few classic movie posters, and then I noticed something...interesting.
It began with this:

Obviously a very famous piece, but I found it a bit..eerie when I looked over it this time. Carrying on my search, I quickly discovered the reason for my unease:

 Ofcourse! The strong male lead holding up a line of pure light in a straight line into the air with a seemingly submissive female at his side, surely a great solution for a movie cover!
Except...
Well...
I don't believe it is. The point of the straight line is to create an incredibly dynamic image in which I believe symmetry would appear much more powerful. The image fading to black is a common theme across both but the second character takes away from this and rids the image of it's solo-superhero look that a singular character would. In my hope for a more pure version of this, I was thankful I had my movie-going from earlier in the day to provide me with a good place to start...

Perfect! A much more powerful image, showing off Cyclops to his full strength here. The fade to black is more prominent here than in the previous two images with the glowing fog providing an ample background for his legs to be drawn against. But while I feel much happier with my little search, having found what I believe to be a much purer 'poster' than the previous two (I'm fully aware this latter image isn't from a poster) I'm left with a slightly bitter taste in my mouth from the  'submissive' women used in the prior images. And this all lead me to my picture for today!

Portrayed above is Noel Vermillion from BlazBlue!

I WOULD write up a little post about working on this piece, but I'm actually giggling quite a lot at the moment due to a mistake I made halfway through. 

Right, to save my back before I get dubbed a certain kind of artist! Here's the manuscript, taken from Steam, of my conversation with The Boy (name changed here) which best describes what I was thinking...

Krillatron: Did her in her 2-guns, one point up, one down pose
Krillatron: And they're both shooting
Krillatron: And I thought a cool energy ray would look cool
Krillatron: So the down one's hitting the floor
Krillatron: And I thought, hitting the floor? Lets have sparks and stuff coming off!
Krillatron: And have it all glowing and stuff
Krillatron: Only...
Krillatron: It looks like she's peeing.
TheBoy: that's brilliant!
TheBoy: :D
Krillatron: I have the foresight of a lump of marzipan

Under the sea..

Finally finished the underwater piece I've been working on for my parent's bathroom!
The final piece hasn't turned out exactly as I hoped, and I've created 2 versions, a monitor-friendly version (the piece showed) which includes darker shadows and the like, and a higher contrast, generally brighter printer-friendly version to be the final piece to be printed onto canvas.

[Click to full size]

I also made sure to save frequently and created a walk-through for this piece! My last walk-through gathered quite a bit of interest and ended up being my most favorited piece on DeviantArt, hoping this one also serves to help, or just interest, people!

[Click to full size]

A blast of the past

Afraid I was working on projects I can't post on here for most of today, combined with going around town handing in CVs, so instead, here's a compilation of characters I designed for a group coursework last year!
It was a project to create a short (less than 5 minutes to play through), educational game to be used in schools to educate people about the options available to them after high school. Ours was the one which relied most heavily on the educational aspects while discarding gameplay, as such we had a simple point-and-click 'RPG' for the students to play through.
The characters to interact with had on-screen sprites, as such:

Which, when you interacted with them, popped up on screen in a Recettear-style so talk to the player.

(Not all at once!)
As 24 characters in total were needed, plus the 2 main characters (1 male, 1 female), these characters were edited to create multiple other NPCs in order to save on workload. The only character which was only used once is the second from the right, who was created near the finale of the cycle and saved me from going mad while I was working on the pixel art for the rooms.

American Dork

Keeping up with emulating well-known styles, The Boy and myself as American Dad characters!
Not much to say about this one, it's important to have very crisp line-art which, for the most part, I think I achieved here. The Boy's cheek is a tad jagged and the arm-crossing seems a little off, but I'm not dwelling too long as I've been working a lot today on other projects and this was my fun-evening-work. :)
Overall, I like this piece! It's easily recognizable and, while The Boy thinks he looks a bit too cocky here, at least I captured a little emotion.
Not 100% sure yet, but may well be a monster or a weapon tomorrow, as I've already done the other things people voted for me to draw on my deviantArt poll : http://krillatron.deviantart.com/
See you tomorrow!

I'm hungry...

[Click for full size]

After a long day of traipsing around town, I came home and remembered my muse from yesterday. You see, myself, The Boy and one of my university friends played through the new, still-in-beta level in Left 4 Dead 2, an interesting level with cool mud-men special infected, a Mario-esque tank-at-the-top-of-some-ladders, and a lot of slogging around in water.

But it also featured some of the ever-impressive Valve movie-poster art! I've always been a fan of the style they portray in these and wanted to try it out for myself, and, as such, the resultant above image occurred.

Hope you enjoy it! Now I'm spending my evening raiding on Warcraft and doing some pieces for a project I'm working on with some people from university.

In the Game of Thrones...

You win or you die.
Well, I for one am excited for the new episode out tonight! But before we get into that, I've finished university (other than the actual graduation) and have settled in, as such, from today onwards, expect 1 new blog post per day!
Today I have 2 pieces for you, with an additional scribble thrown in for the hell of it.
As you can probably tell, I'm a huge fan of Game of Thrones and am hoping to get the books once I've got a Kindle, till then though, I'm surviving on the weekly episodes. One of the things I love about the show is how well the actors were chosen, as in today's post I'm hoping to try to capture the essence of some of these characters!
As such, the image below displays one of the POV characters.

Any guesses who it is?
Highlight below to see if you can't guess.

Arya Stark

A big problem I had with this piece was getting the age seem correct. She actually has quite a lot of lines on her face, with pouches under and above her eyes, a split-chin (can't recall the correct term for this) and usually displays puffy cheeks, though in adding lines to an image usually denotes an age of which this character is no-where near. As such, I had to go for the prominent buck-teeth and her usual way of wearing her hair to emphasize who she is.

Next up!

Personally, I find this character much easier to both draw, and to recognize. The hair-braiding, scowl and wavy hair all join together to form Cersei Lannister. When I was looking for reference pictures, however, I noticed she pretty much always makes the same face, particularly the face I've depicted here. The pursed lips, scowling eyes and one raised eyebrow all form, well, this face.

Quldn't quait for quis quone!

[Click for full size: 1080p]

Sorry for the long wait between posts! Between exams and playing games because I've now finished my exams, I've not had as much time for art as I'd like, however I've been rectifying this!

As such, I present you with the female Qunari!

As you can probably tell, one of the games I've been glued to as of late has been Dragon Age 2. I've been putting off playing it as I knew I'd go full swing into it as soon as I started it up and, indeed that has been the case. However, after playing it for around 3 days straight (I'm not even sure any more) I've taken a break in order to get back to The Plan and produce this!

It took me two days, but I'm very happy with the result, and believe this to likely be my best piece yet. As such, and because it took so long to complete, I've included a guide to it's creation which you  can view below, but before we get into that, a few things about this piece:

• It began as a 3cmx5cm sketch in my notebook as the bottom image (you'll see in the walkthrough)
• I cumulatively used more techniques on this piece then I've ever done before
• After I've finished typing up this blog post, I'm going to do a WoW raid then disappear back into DA2 for the rest of the night

Hope you enjoy this piece, feel free to use it as a wallpaper, it's 1920x1080, or re-size it yourself for other resolutions.
Now, onto the walkthrough!