Character Sketch!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

First of all I just want to apologise for the delay in last week's blog, which ended up coming out on Tuesday rather than the usual Monday. I probebly should have left a message on the Monday to mention the delay. Long story short, it had been the 30th birthday of a friend and co-worker of mine and I was working on that day to allow her the day off, which meant that I couldn't post on that day. Either way, last week's post was the second part of the Old Verses New that I had been doing, so if you missed it and were interested in how that went, then you can find that post here

With that said, on to the actual post for this time!

So, this week I was mostly looking at sketches, mainly because of the ongoing annoyance with my Tablet that makes doing line art a bit iffy - the issue being that the pressure detection keeps playing up, sometimes registering pressure I'm not exerting, or refusing to believe I've lifted the pen away from the tablet. I keep being able to temporarily fix it, but...well, the issue keeps coming back, so I'm looking into things there.

Either way, I was having a play around with a new design for a character that is in Pandora, the joint comic that is being created in TanraStudios. After the first chapter, which is also essentially the pilot, we had a think about the character designs for some of the main cast. While it isn't yet my turn to be the artist for Pandora, I thought it best to start to get used to some of the new designs. It felt fitting that the first person I should look at was the one I first had the most hand in making, Mizuki.

Out of all of the redos, Mizuki probebly had the least changed, mostly a slightly shorter hair style and a change in one of her outfits - after all, it would be really odd to wear the same thing every day. Mostly, however, I wanted to get used to the hair style. The sketches that I did were an idea of her in my regular style and then, for fun, I decided to try a chibi version of her, which came out like this:

Originally, Mizuki's hair was more a chin length bowl cut, which, while it worked, didn't quite match an event that happened in her past involving hair. As it is, Mizuki's hair style and even her outfit are the easiest to implement in the comic itself without it seeming all that random, since currently she's only been shown in a shrine uniform and a field uniform used for apprentices. Both of these are fixed through story events. Still, this means by the time it's my turn to illustrate Volume 2, the changes would be made, so getting used to the subtle changes helps.

Honestly, I think I'd like to draw a few versions of chibi Mizuki. I like her hair style :)

Another character, however, who has yet to be introduced in the comics (but has been met in the additional stories on the TanraStudio blogs, however, has an extreme amount of differences from his initial hair style, though because he has yet to show up in the comic, we do have some leeway. Unfortunately, his hair style change is much more complicated, so I'm still getting used to those. Suffice to say, I'll definitely be showing the changes and progression in that a bit later on, once the character is less of a spoiler risk. lol Should be fun to see the hair style attempts though!

Still, I'll have to draw full body versions of Mizuki soon to get used to the change in outfit. Part of it is seen on these pictures, since it shows around the shoulders and upper chest, but I hope to be able to do digital versions of it. If nothing else, getting used to the folds and shadows in her clothing should be interesting.

...Assuming my tablet stops playing up. *Sigh* Well, either way, I will try! And if it doesn't stop playing up, I'll just have to look into a replacement. But I am determined to do this!

Until next time!

Tara