Busy Busy!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Well.....I have a bit of a confession to make this week. I...well, haven't really done all that much in way of art this week. That's mainly due to the fact that we were extremely short staffed at my day job and I only had one day off. Not to say I hadn't done anything this week beyond working the day job however, but most of it was in terms of research gathering, which pretty much was what I did on my day off. So...not much to show for it so far, but it is all important for things such as increased internet presence, crowd funding and looking around for the best kind of card readers to use at conventions. After all, at conventions its not always easy to get to a cash point. Considering we (that is myself and TanraStudios) are also adding to what we sell as well, it makes sense for us to start accepting card payments to. Its easier for us and for our customers as well :)

Even so, I do feel a little bad for having nothing really to show you guys this week.

Thankfully, my schedule does seem to be calming down this week coming up and I do have plans for starting my sketches for ideas for badges, which I've been considering even if I couldn't actually draw any out, so I know that next time I'll have lots of stuff to show you guys!

But for now, forgive me this rather short and somewhat boring post. But I promise to have a few fun things to show you next time!

In the meantime, I can at least explain some badge ideas I have had, at least ones I'm considering.

So, there are character face ones, which include Rem, Somnus and Ashling (at least currently since other characters haven't really shown up yet), an Onreios (though dunno if to do it in its full creepy glory or to 'chibify'), a Luphin (while a personal mascot I do try to add one into each chapter, hidden or otherwise. If you have chapter one of Dreamwalkers, look for the Luphin!) and maybe Somnus' eye, because his eyes are rather interesting to draw if nothing else. But these are currently just ideas I'll be playing with and I may have a ton of different designs just using these as a basis to go from. But yes, those are ones that I'll be sketching first before I shortlist the best six, which will then be shortlisted to the best two which will be part of the TanraStudio sale roster.

Thankfully I have more than just one day off next week so that always helps as well. Yay!

Got tons planned and I'm hoping that you guys will like the end result that'll make up for this particular post. But either way, I thought I'd better at least leave a proper explanation rather than just a twitter post saying 'no post this week because I've been a busy bee, sorry!'

Until next time! (With actual picture content too!)

Tara

New Stuff!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Well, one of my resolutions for the year was to actually do more work on Dreamwalkers, something that I've not really been able to work on the last year as much as I would have liked for various reasons. As I'm not going to a con this year, my main focus, as well as that of TanraStudios in general, is to update our stock. This not only includes new chapter(s) to our comics (in my case, Dreamwalkers) but also providing new posters, keychains and badges, as well as other things related to our comics. As such, I thought I'd give a bit of an update to the plans of what I'd be providing, so to speak.

So, the current plan is to come up with several concepts for badges that are related to Dreamwalkers. I should be doing six sketched badge concepts in total, though only two of these six will make it through a process of elimination into becoming actual badges for sale - only the best will win! Currently, I'm considering what might work best for badges based on past experience when creating limited badges for my past comic Susanoo. The badge based on Orochi's eye sold out much faster than others. Unfortunately, the Oneiros in the first case don't have quite as decorative eyes that would stand out on their own, so its likely that the badge designs will either be a character (Such as Rem, Somnus or Ashling) or something like an Oneiros? This still leaves me with a badge concept and positioning of the people in the picture. Would they look more normal, or Chibi style, that sort of thing.

Similarly, keyrings will also have a similar concept procedure. This means that I'll have six concepts but only two making it to the final cut. I have a couple of ideas for those so far, but nothing yet set in stone. Still, I do think these might be more likely to have a more chibi style to them. I'm sort of looking forwards to seeing a Chibi Oneiros. If its similar to a random doodle I did in the past, it could come across as kind of cute. But that all depends on design and colour.

Finally, new poster designs. I've never actually done a proper poster of Somnus that I've printed out to sell, so that is a consideration, but art styles and colour styles change a bit, so it might be interesting to make all new posters. The posters will likely end up being focused on after the badges and keyrings, however, since those need just that bit more work in terms of making them the right size and shape that would work.

These, of course, will be done alongside the new comic chapter, as well as looking into which cons for next year will be the best for us and a bit of research into other things as well. Oh, and a banner as well. We've been needing one of those for a while.

I'm also considering doing redesigns for my buisness cards for once my current stock runs out. Looking at them they could be a lot better and much more professional (not to mention two sided) so I also have plans in the works for that somewhere along the line this year. Its not a major priority right now as I do have quite a few of my old stock left over thanks to restocking on those just before the last convention I went on, but I do think an updated buisness card for personal use will look much better, especially since TanraStudios should be getting an upgrade for our collective one. It'd fit in much better, I think.

I'll admit, most of this past week has been based around early planning for the year as well as my day job, so I'm sorry I've yet to actually have any interesting designs to show that I'm happy with just yet, but I should at least have some early concepts and sketches next time, though they likely wont be the full short list just yet. Either way, I thought it best to keep you all up to date on what I'm planning for the year, since I kind of....missed the opportunity before with the Mission Commission posts. Whoopsy!

Until next time!

Tara

Mission Commission! Pt 2

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Well, I said I'd be going over both of the commissions that I had been delaying on showing, but wanted them both to have their own blog page dedicated to it, so here we go! This is the second of the two commissions! If you haven't looked at the first one, go check it out, though you don't need to see the first part of this to understand what is going on with the commission here.

For those who are curious though but don't feel like re-reading or checking back on the previous blog post, I was tasked with two commissions that were being bought as Christmas presents for the client's son and daughter. Due to that I delayed talking about them to avoid any spoilers for the kids if they happened to read my blog. Last week was the commission I made for the son. This week is the commission I made for the daughter.

Similar to the first commission, this one also was one that featured two different people. The first being the daughter herself, while the second was a boy I didn't know myself, but I was asked to draw based on a realistic painting of the two of them. My task was to make a manga/anime-esque picture of the same scene as the painting. So, unlike the previous picture I did where I had a lot of reference in the art style, this one would be more applying my art style to something closer to real life. I've done similar things before based on photo references, so it wasn't ridiculously hard, and it also gave me some colour references as well, which helps, especially since I didn't have to estimate hair colour quite as much as I needed to with the previous commission.

Unfortunately, as the picture doesn't belong to me, I don't feel like I can show it here, as much as I'd like to. But essentially its the daughter and a boy listening to music through shared earbuds while on a bus traveling down a road with blossoming trees either side.

With this reference picture in mind, however, I began with a sketch picture first, though I only drew the inside of the bus as the sketch since outside the windows wasn't as clear ad so would be done with minimal line art to keep that vagueness.

As you can see, not much in terms of background details at this point. But, as mentioned, those come a bit later since they were to be indistinct thanks to the bus windows. The main sketch art here was for the people themselves and to help visualise where the windows themselves would be so I would know where the bus ends and windows begins. Since the characters themselves were the main focus, I had to be sure I knew where they would be, details and the like, though this was only the rough sketch. Some slight adjustments were made in the line art, however. For example, fixing a few facial proportions on the male's the ear and hairline felt a little out of place in the initial sketch.

By the time I got to line art, I had adjusted the mistakes that I noticed, so it ended up like this (if you pardon my terrible photography, as usual - I should learn to screenshot on a windows laptop...)

Admittedly, it was only after this was done that I realised I was missing part of the window - one of the upper bars. Whoopsy! I later added that in after I had taken the picture, but before I added the colour. As you can see, the boy no longer looks like his hair is trying to pull back off his head by being too far back. Not much to really say here other than I had a few adjustments requested by the client, such as removing the girl's tie, but beyond that, they were happy to give me the go ahead to start on the colour. As mentioned, the realistic painting gave me plenty of colour references.

With the flat colours, I focused first on the foreground so I knew exactly where everything inside the buss would be. With that done, I could then spend time on the windows to make them seem like they were after the rain, to work out the lighting from the sun etc. After that I could then once again focus on the inside to add the lights and shadows. Once it was done, I was also asked to ad the names of the girl and boy at the bottom.

Much as before, I'm showing the photograph here, though I'll later be adding the actual finished version to my DA page.

As you can see, the lightning is coming from the left window somewhat. The outside of the windows are indistinct as the windows themselves are marked by watermarks and aren't the main focus. The colours are also somewhat muted in comparison to the more brightly coloured previous commission, partly due to the colour references, and partly because the scene here gave me a different feel. Less 'action' manga and more slice of life subtler tones.

Much as the previous picture, the client was happy with the resulting image and I sent the finished product over to them and was paid for the work. 

I'll admit I had a lot of fun with these. I also finished them at a good time as the very evening I finished this one was the evening of my worst battle with gravity and ice that resulted in me almost face-planting off a pavement into a road that pretty much jolted my joins. Not sure my wrists would have appreciated more art after that. 

Would you call that lucky or unlucky, I wonder?

Either way, I hope that you enjoyed my rambles about these two commissions and will look forwards to seeing them both on my DA soon enough :)

Until next time!

Tara

Mission Commission! Pt 1

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

For any of you who might have missed my last post (and for everyone reading them anyway), Happy New Year! I hope that 2018 has been treating everyone well so far :)

I'm still suffering a little from that flu that's been going around, though its mostly just settled on my chest now. Not particularly fun to hack up a lung every half hour or so, but it's a lot better than it was, so I'm not going to complain!

Instead of listening to me going on about my health (since that's not what you're here for, I bet) I'll jump into what today's blog is all about. Well, as you may or may not recall, I had done a couple of paid commissions just before Christmas that were for a gift for a son and daughter. I held off on actually showing anything about it on the off-chance that said son and daughter might see the image before it was given as a gift. Then after that was the welcoming the new year, reflecting on the old post I did last time. But now Christmas and New Year have passed us by and the prezzies have all been given out, its now time that I can actually show you all what I was up to all this time!

Since they were fairly big projects, I thought it might be best to split them into two halves, so I could focus on each of them properly. That said, lets start off with the first of the duo!

So, for this particular piece, I had initially been asked to draw a manga styled version of the client's son. I believe I showed off the sketches of the son that I drew from front view, which ended up acting more as warm up/practice since after this I was instead asked to draw a two character picture based on pre-existing canon art. There was a poster for Accel World vs Sword Art Online that has the characters of Kirito and Kuroyukihime back to back. What I was asked to do was essentially that image, but replacing Kirito for the client's son wearing the same outfit as Kirito. Now, since I'm hardly going to cheat by just copy and pasting a new face onto the poster, this meant that I needed to draw my version of this poster without just tracing most of it. In fact, while my reference was on the computer, I drew the base sketch by hand, as I tend to prefer doing, given the choice, while attempting to blend the style used in the poster with my own art style, resulting in this:

I enjoyed trying to draw Kuroyukihime. If nothing else her outfit is rather different from what I usually draw characters in. The Son was admittedly a little more difficult to draw as I only had a vague picture of him that was showing him from side view which appeared to have been taken while he was distracted by something, so I had to do my best to work with his hair style and try to get it to match the hair types that would match the picture's style. Most of this would be done through the shading process, but I still needed to get my base as close as possible for that to work.

From there, once I got the ok from the client, I began the digital version:

Sorry, once again, for my terrible photography skills. I think I need to work out how to do a proper screen shot for this. Ah well....no use crying over spilt milk. So for here, I needed to work out where certain parts of the foreground would sit, including the flash of light that separated the two halves along with the placement of the butterflies - don't worry, they don't just end up staying white. At that point in time they were placeholders for me so I wouldn't have to confuse myself with the placements. I did, after this point, do some slight edits to Kuroyukihime, mainly because of her stance. As you see here, she does seem to be standing at an odd angle, which sort of made her look pregnant. Whoopsy! So I adjusted how she was standing somewhat so she no longer looked like she had a horrible spine defect. Weirdly, it was easier to see that mistake at the actual line art point than the initial sketch, though it was easier to correct thanks to working on layers and not having to completely erase something to correct it. With that done, I could work on the final piece itself.

I'll eventually be putting the true finished piece on Deviant Art, but for now I do have my photograph of the finished thing that I used as a 'are you happy with this' picture for the client before the finished product made its way into its new owners hands:

As you can see, no more accidentally pregnant Kuroyukihime. lol. Actually, doing her side of the picture was pretty fun, especially experimenting with the background/foreground effects. If nothing else, it's certainly good practice if I ever get around to doing a comic or image based around some kind of computer. Plus it was just fun looking at lighting effects. On the other hand, the lighting effects for the male's side was a little more difficult. Not only was his hair colouring diferent from Kirito's, but getting the light streaks in the background to not just look like I had no idea what I was ddoing rather than them meant to look so fragmented was a bit more difficult and needed a few tries to get right. I wasn't entirely happy with them, but the client was happy. In the end, since lighting effects are still a little newer to me in comparison to other effects, I count it as a win.

Is there room for improvement? Well, yes, of course. There always is! But all in all I was fairly pleased with the image and I had tons of fun with it. Not to mention that my client loved it too, so I think that it went pretty well! Certainly well enough that they asked me for a second commission to be a present for their daughter, too - but more on that one next time.

All in all, if nothing else it certainly helped teach me a lot in experimenting with colour and light, so I thought it was a valuable experience. I do hope you enjoyed this and will look forwards to the second part :)

Until next time!

Tara