Back Into the Swing of Things!

Hi everyone! Welcome back!

With True Believers done for this year, I've been getting back into doing all things Dreamwalkers. Line art wise I have everything done up to the first of two thought out endings of the comic, though it is likely I'll be trying for my second ending, as it seems to be far more fitting. In the talks with other people as well, its the preferred ending too. As such, I will be sketching out the additional pages soon.

I've got most of the colour done on the pages I have done too. Most just need a few extra shadows in there to be done. I'm sort of bouncing around at the moment between pages, so that it would let me work on a different scene for a verity of differing colours etc so I don't get bored. lol

Well, less bored and more so I don't give myself repetitive strain injuries. lol. My wrist is far more better than it was a couple of weeks ago, but it twinges if I am working on the small details for too long. I need my writ to behave itself after all. I'd show you bits of those, but unfortunately, its during a very spoilerish part of the story, soooooo....Yeah. Unfortunately, can't show any of that just yet. Though once I've got a page entirely finished, I will show maybe a panel image, so you can see a bit of what I've been up to without me spoiling important plot points.

In addition to the pages I was doing, I've also been doing some other, little things as well. I finished a chibi version of Rem, which is likely going to end up becoming a keychain or phone charm - I thought he came out quite cute, if I do say so myself. lol.

I did two versions of them. One of him reading a random book, the other with him reading Susanoo. One is probably better for advertising purposes though. like on price lists. The other likely works better for being a keychain etc.

Going along with something I did over Christmas, I once more made a seasonal Luphin! This time for Valentine's day tomorrow. I'm hoping to make one for ch major holiday - so the next one will me an Easter Luphin. For this one, though, I decided to have two Luphin's looking all cuddly together. I thought it would look adorable.

Most Luphin's I've drawn so far are pink, but yes, I plan to have them in all kinds of colours. lol but aren't they cute? :3

They are going up on DA tomorrow, for Valentines day - you guys just got a sneak preview of them!

As well as that, I've been helping out a bit at the uni with some new students who might be joining the course I'm on. It's been pretty cool - I just explain to them about how the course works or about the uni and answer any questions they or their parents might want to know. They all seem like great people, so I hope they did well on their interviews!

We've also started looking into how things are going for the Degree Show - true its a while away yet (like, in May) but there is a lot of prep work we have to do. I've been helping out a bit with layouts for a brochure. Not sure if any of them will work well or not, as Graphics is not my strong point, but hey, if it helps, then I'm glad to try! At the moment, they're all rough sketches, but we'll eventually have mock up pages for those, too. We'll all eventually vote on those next week to see which layout we'll be using.

Honestly, the whole class is really throwing in their all on this, its really cool! Our Degree Show is gonna be awesome!

....I so hope I didn't jinx that...

Aaaaanyway, next time I can hopefully give you some picture based updates on Dreamwalkers. I have a plan for the back cover, for example, which, if it comes out right, should be pretty cool. And It has been a while since I last showed a picture update on the comic itself. But with so many pages real close to being finished, I should be able to show clips of it soon! :)

Until then!

Tara

Convention Conclusion

Hi guys! Welcome back!

I was meaning to post this yesterday, but I had work pretty much all day, so this ended up slightly belated. But I will be posting again this week as well to make up for it! And the posts should then go back to my usual schedule. :)

So, last time I mentioned that I went to True Believers with Nadia, where we shared a table, so today I'm going to let you know how all that went!

Before I went, I had to be sure I had a business card to take with me. Last time I went to a convention I made my business card into a bookmark, thinking it might give it a duel purpose. As it was, no one picked those up unless I outright told them what it's purpose was, so this time I made a more traditional kind of business card, which looked like this:

They actually went quite well, the blue seemed to stand out very well against the dark tablecloth, and being a more traditional business card, people picked them up more or less straight away, even if they didn't buy something or came back later. We also put some in the bags that we gave to people with the purchases in, so that they had any contact details.

While Dreamwalkers isn't finished yet, Nadia and I sold some of our old comics, with previews of both Pandora and Dreamwalkers in the back, so people will hopefully get to see what the new things will be like and keep an eye out. 

The old comic that I sold was this one: 

It went really well, actually! we sold them at £3.50 each, but we made a bundle deal of two for £5 as well, and people seemed to like that. It was nice to see people really like Susanoo though, so I was really happy about that. We actually sold out of all of the comics we brought with us! I was so happy!

Hopefully, next time, I'll sell both Susanoo and Dreamwalkers. I'll let you all know when and where I'll be next time I'm at a con. Of course, if anyone is interested in buying Susanoo, feel free to contact me!

I also did some commissions at the con as well! Those were fun. I unfortunately didn't think to photograph all of them, but I did a few. The quality of the photo's isn't top notch (I'm afraid my affinity with a camera isn't the best), but everyone seemed pleased with the drawings! Here are a few of what I did:

I enjoyed doing them. I also took part in a comic strip where each panel was done by a different artist. Since I'm unsure if any of the other artists would want me to display there stuff on here, I wont post the pic here. But if you're interested in looking, then Todd Marsh on Twitter @OldManRupee has posted some pics on it, and I also retweeted it on my own twitter @chosha_kurenai, so you can have a looksy at those there too see what interesting story can happen when you have no set plot and give the artists the go ahead to lead the little story anywhere. It's fun!

All in all, we had a great time in Cheltenham at True Believers. I hope everyone else that went had fun as well,and if they had a table did well also! It's highly likely we will apply to this con again next year. :)

Until next time!

Tara

True Believers!

Hi everyone! Welcome back!

Just to let you all know that I may have a slightly delayed or early blog next week. This is because of the main point of today's blog! Not that this is a bad thing, of course, but rather because its a great thing!

Yup! Tanra Studios is going to be heading to True Believers next week, where we should be selling some of our older work. I'll be taking copies of my comic, Susanoo with me, Nadia will be bringing along Unbound and both of us will be bringing other things as well, like badges and stuff. We should also be bringing along small sneak previews of Dreamwalkers and Pandora as well. Should be fun, right!

If you want to find us, here are the table layouts. Nadia and I will be found on table 12, in area A, so if you're coming along, I hope you'll come and see us.

If you can't come along, I'll let you guys know how it all went next post. Since this one's a little short, I'll be posting a bit more mid week to give you a bit more on updates where Dreamwalkers is concerned and if there's any more developments before then.

So, until next time!

Tara

Ow Ow Ow...

Hi everyone! Welcome back!

Well, this week, its been rather productive for me where art was concerned. And painful. Not because of any writers block or artist block this time, though, but rather I've been getting wrist pains that feel very much like when I last got tendinitis on my left wrist last year. Only.....unfortunately, this time it's in my right wrist....and I'm right handed.

So....yeah....Ouch?

I'll be going to the doctors to get it checked out. Last thing I need is to have a busted wrist at the start of a new module, right? Especially if I want to get the first part of Dreamwalkers out for you guys.

Speaking of Dreamwalkers, one of the things I was productive with was creating the first of several posters for Dreamwalkers. I had the sketch done early on in the week, but I did line art and colour on the same day. (My wrist did not thank me for it. lol).

This is what I managed to do:

Still, I thought that it came out fairly well. Though admittedly, I was experimenting somewhat with the lightning here. I'm not entirely sure I managed to get the effect I was really going for - I'll be looking into lightning a lot more in the future, I think - I still liked how it turned out. Especially considering my wrist. lol

I also finally finished the image for the competition for Foxhat which I showed the flats to last time. I'm not amazing at backgrounds - they have never been my forte, so its nothing too interesting - I need to do a lot more background practice. Or at least for singular peaces look at background references like I sometimes do for my comics - it would make good practice if nothing else, but I like how the two characters turned out. I made sure to use the colours from the actual concept arts of Bubblegum and Marzipan, if only to try to keep the same feel to them, even if our styles are somewhat different.

I hope that I managed to get the personalities across in the colour. Marzipan is more outgoing from what I gather, with Bubblegum often trying to be somewhat macho and uncaring, even though he very much does love his brother. The picture almost came out as if they were posing for a photo. I also have an idea for a second entry, which came from that thought, buuuuuuut I dunno if I'll have time, since I do have many other things to focus on as well, not to mention the deadline coming up t the end of the month.

Last thing to mention was something I actually forgot to talk about last week. Oopsy! But it links with the sketches that I was doing for the sprites for the Tanra Studios Pandora website. We did some individual ones that would appear in the website, but to make it consistent, we decided to do a joint style picture for their group image, based on the posters Nadia did last year. So I had to do the sketches of the characters (individually, so that they can be moved around etch if needed) as if they were standing around/sitting on a large chair. I was so glad my artist block had finally gone! I was really pleased how they came out and I finally managed to draw Rodessa in a manner that didn't make me want to tear my hair out.

A sure sign that I have my drawing mojo back (even if my tendons seem to want to be as awkward as possible)

Anyway, here they are!

(in order - Huxian, Violet, Mizuki and Rodessa)

They are now all with Nadia, who will help turn them into the combined styles (I'll link you guys to it when its done!) but still thought I should probably share the originals, since I was fairly proud of them. Only think that really bugged me was Rodessa's boots. Not sure I got them right...But otherwise, I was fairly pleased!

Anyways, still got lots more to work on. I'm doing character expressions for the two characters I created out of the four (Mizuki and Huxian) as well as doing similar for Rem and Somnus for Dreamwalkers. I hope to create another poster idea if nothing else for Dreamwalkers, and maybe get started on some more pages. I also need to present what I'll be doing this module at uni too. Busy busy!

Should be fun though!

Till next time!

Tara

Banners and Eternal Work

Hi everyone! Welcome back!

Well, this week Uni has started again, so there is lots of stuff that I'll be doing, and lots of things that I'll be talking about where Dreamwalkers are concerned, since I'm back to working on that. Another thing that I'll be doing is external work - so this includes competitions, commissions, Conventions....

Maybe I should call it the three Cs. lol.

Last week I mentioned about a banner I was working on to help advertise Dreamwalkers, and will appear mostly on the Tanra Studio website once its up. Still, I am rather proud of how it turned out. I did have to do some adjusting, as I realized I as working at too low a resolution by accident, but I adjusted the line art and neatened it up a bit.

It's nice that I got my banner done now. I hope that you guys like it as much as me:

It took me a few tries to think of a good blurb for it. I didn't want to reveal all the plot, but at the same time, I wanted it to sound interesting as well. Hopefully, I pulled that off! 

I also finally started getting some work done towards my competition piece, and decided what I want to do with it. I showed the sketch image some time before, and decided, due to how the story Bubblegum and Marzipan works is to make it seem like a photo that Bubblegum is looking at during his journey to save his brother.

I actually would have got further than basic flats of the two characters, but Manga Studio decided to crash and lost quite a bit of my progress. Guess I learned once again that saving every five minutes really needs to be a thing, Still, this is what I have so far!

I'm just hoping that my plan works. I'm going to be working on finishing that next week, as well as make my finalized plans for my work for my next module where Dreamwalkers is concerned, including posters, keyrings and badges etc. The colours used are taken from the colours used for the characters in the comic itself, or at least as close as possible. It still seems a bit weird at the moment, as the markings Bubblegum was supposed to have were part of what I lost when MS crashed. Still, will be adding those in soon and will show my finished work next week.

If any of you have any questions about an of this or anything to come, don't hesitate to ask me on chosha13@gmail.com or on my twitter @chosha_kurenai and I'll answer what I can. Minus spoilers, of course. lol

Well, looks like I'm going to be busy over this next month. I do hope you guys enjoy what's to come.

Until next time!

Tara

Dreamwalkers and Tanra Studios Update!

Hi Guys! Welcome back!

So, there's a couple of new updates. Tanra Studios has its own Blog now! There, either myself or Nadia will be talking about all things Tanra Studios, such as updates on the website, on Pandora, Dreamwalkers and merchandising, along with any other updates on us as a Studio.

Don't worry, though, I'll still be updating here on Dreamwalkers and my personal stuff, with Tanra Studios blog being more about the joint stuff. Still, if you'd like to see what we'll be doing together, then you can check it out on tanrastudios.blogspot.com while my normal stuff will be continued on here. The first post of Tanra Studios will be posted later on today, and should be twice a week, assuming all goes well and we don't both end up ill or something. lol. Those days should be on Tuesdays and Saturdays, so look forwards to them!

On another note, about my personal stuff. I unfortunately didn't really get around to finishing those pictures off just yet. However, I've been working on some things for Tanra Studios and Dreamwalkers, ready for when we're back at uni next week. I'm making a Dreamwalkers Banner, to help advertise Dreamwalkers a bit more. So far I only really have the line art done, but I should have it finished soon.

I can give you a quick look at the sketched bit of it. just as a preview

I also drew an image, which I thought might be interesting - Remember way back when I was talking about how I made Rem? That he looked similar to a previous character and could probably be friends? I decided to make a quick sketch of the two of them as brothers!

I keep thinking that the Scientist Dad would be bursting in and complaining why he isn't in the photo or something. lol. I might even stick this in the actual comic at some point. Who knows? I already link some of them with references anyway. lol

Well, I'm starting to get ready for returning to uni and doing more on Dreamwalkers, as well as posting for Tanra Studios as well. Hope that you will enjoy that later on today!

Until next time!

Tara.

Happy (Belated) New Year!

Hi everyone! Welcome back!

So it is now the year 2016! Wow, time certainly flies. Sorry for this being somewhat belated, I've had a busy week with non-art related jobs, but I have been keeping up with art work as well.

One of the things that I have been doing, was the base sketches for the Pandora website. One of which I unfortunately had to redo, as it didn't quite fit into the correct sizing. It was a little difficult as I was struggling with a bit of artist block, but I did manage to do them. The Huxian one is as mentioned before, while I re-did Mizuki's and I drew the base sketch for Violet as well.

I thought these ones came out pretty well. Unfortunately, I seemed to hit a bit of a blank spit on Rodessa, though I wasn't entirely sure why. So the base sketch was mostly done by the character's creator, Nadia for that one, taking little bits from my base drawing. I do feel kind of bad that I couldn't get it to work out as I wanted it to.

Artist block is terrible. Blegh.

The now fully finished drawings are up on the Tanra Studio's DA page. A big special thanks to Nadia, since after the base sketches, it was her who did the final line art and colour.

You can find the finished sprites here:

http://www.deviantart.com/art/Finished-Sprites-582057506

Please give it a check out if you can!

In an effort to try and rid myself of artist block, I turned by attention to some other art, in case it was just that I needed to not focus completely on one thing. As such, I tried to draw other things in hopes it would help me to get back into being able to actually draw again.

The first was something of a fan art that I did a sketch of and might finish off at some point. It was in a different style to my usual work, so I thought that perhaps it might help inspire me somewhat, especially as I do need to keep my hand in 'Creepy'

It is, of course, unfinished as if I do do a fully digital version there is more I would add to it.

The drawing was from a game called 'Fran Bow', which has an interesting creepy atmosphere to it. If nothing else it might give me some inspirations for Nightmares for Dreamwalkers, or maybe even some help for Devil Contract, one of the other ideas I had been thinking of doing, had I not started on Dreamwalkers.

The sketch was this:

It did help a little, working on something unrelated to other things, yet still helping a little, I guess.

The other two things I was working on were to do with Deviant Art, rather than just sketch work to help me to re-find my drawing ability.

The first was I took part in an art exchange on Deviant Art with Unluckykuroneko, where we would each draw one of the other's characters from our DA selections. On my part, I worked with a character that they had made called 'Flit', who, from the info underneath the picture on DA of their version was that it was a 'Butterfly OC'.

I was rather pleased with how this came out, though admittedly my base sketch had one of her arms a bit too long. lol. Thankfully, I was able to change that before I began to work on it digitally. Unluckykuroneko was very happy with this and in the future appears interested in doing more art exchanges. It was quite interesting to do this with a character I didn't have a hand in actually creating, but I'm very glad that they liked it. 

If you want to see Unluckykuroneko's original version of Flit and o see how it looked in their art style, have a look here:

http://unluckykuroneko.deviantart.com/art/Flit-580222911

If nothing else, our art styles are very different, so I was really glad that things worked out well here.

Another thing I was working on was the competition entry that is for the end of this month for Fox Hat (I believe I mentioned it in one of my posts last month?). So far its just a sketch, but I think it's a good basis for what I'm hoping to get at once finished. It needs to be worked on digitally, but that is something I hope to get done soon. Still, this is what I have of it so far, for a sneak peek at my sketchpad line art:

Next week, now that the Christmas and New Years Rush is finally over at my bar job, I'm hoping to get the digital version of this picture done, along with another Pandora poster, maybe even making use of the original sprite that I never managed to use of Mizuki. Either way, my next Pandora poster is likely to be Mizuki's. I'm also thinking of doing something for Dreamwalkers as well, as admittedly, I was giving myself a short break there so that I wouldn't burn myself out. After all, I want the finished comic to be as good as I can get it!

This is, of course, if all goes well and I don't suffer from Artist block again.

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend it. It was kinda stress inducing when you feel you can't draw. I do feel rather badly for it. But I think I'm over it. I think. Hopefully.

Good luck to me! lol

Anyway, hopefully I'll have some new picks to share with you all next week

Until then, have a Happy (if somewhat belated) New Year!

Tara