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)