Birthday Gift!

Hey guys! Welcome back!

So, its almost my sister's birthday and I unfortunately wont be able to attend her birthday event because I can't get off work from my day job, unfortunately. So, even though I already have a present for her, and will hopefully be able to arrange a small birthday hang out with her for a different day, I thought I'd make her a birthday pic! If I get it done in time, I might be able to get it as a birthday card if I can get it sorted out on the right website? Its a thought. If not, it could always be an e-card, right?

Dawn might be reading this herself, but hey, you don't know my main present yet! lol. But if you are reading, feel free to tell me your suggestions if you want anything changing on it, or any particular colours, I don't mind :)

So, the subject of what I want to do wasn't too hard for me to work out. My sister loves Penguins. Admittedly, they are very cute, so I have no problems drawing them for her. With the penguin idea in mind, I thought making said penguin look party-like would be good. So either cake or balloons or presents, party hats, that kind of thing. I tried doing a party popper, but I seemed to be on a bit of a fail where those were concerned. Shame though.

Either way, I messed around a bit and finally decided on the sketch I was happy with:

Yay my phone camera skills! They suck as usual. lol. Anyway, I decided to go with a more cartoony style for this. Not exactly a particular reason for it, other than it looks cute and It would work with bright, bold colours. It was also just nice to play around with styles a little bit again as well.

There is, of course, still a lot to work on, such as doing a digital version of it and I'm still thinking of a background. But I'm also looking to see if I can get the image on a card creating site, and that might not have as much flexibility in editing, or it might have tons, I'm not sure, but I'll be looking at my options on that and seeing what I should do.

If anyone has a good suggestions for card making websites though, let me know! It'd be a great help :)

So, this is my current mini project I'm working on alongside Dreamwalkers, so I do hope that all goes well. Wish me luck!

Until next time!

Tara 

Wrenched!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Guess what I found recently? When I was sorting through some of my various stacks of drawings and doodles and old notes, I found one of the first comics that I made at University! I remember the assignment, and I also remember somewhat enjoying drawing it. Along with a twelve page comic (which, looking back on, wasn't overly good, for something which was supposed to be more light hearted in an effort to make 'Life and observations in Stoke-on-Trent to be more than just a list of background pictures), we were asked to make a 'One Cut Comic'. The reason it was called a one cut comic was in how the paper was folded to crease a 'book' with eight pages, which needed, as you can guess, one cut in the middle to help the folding process.

So, for the comic in this case, we had to draw out three words from three bags. One bag contained random locations, another would have random objects, and the last had different occupations. Drawing out one of each, we were asked to make a comic which contained those words in some way. We were also limited to about 25 written words that we could use, so not much speech was permitted.

The words I got were 'Hotel', 'Wrench' and 'Farmer'.

It....took me a while to think up some ideas of how to make at least a semi-coherent story in eight pages with minimal speech. But in the end, once I decided to do for a different feel from the light-hearted story that my twelve page had been, I ended up going for something a bit darker, to test myself outside of my 'comfort zone'.

At the time, I had never used any digital art. I didn't have Photoshop or Manga Studio or any other programs, nor did I have a tablet. So the whole comic was done purely by hand, with felt pens (I know, I wince thinking back on my horrible colour ideas, in comparison to my current work). But I do remember being somewhat proud....and scaring Nadia, who had never seen me draw anything other than cheerful things.

So, having found the only version of this that I actually have, with it being purely hand made, I decided to let you guys see, if only to see where I've come from, but also just to share the first comic that I had enjoyed doing the most out of side projects in my first University year.

Please forgive my rather bad photography skills! And my somewhat terrible colouring skills. Please note that before university, I hadn't done art in high school and any art skills I had were all self taught. There was no true back page to this story. I should have put an 'end' somewhere, possibly. Maybe one day I'll do a digital version of it, with better colouring skills and with a better 'end card', if nothing else.

Not sure how coherent the story is to anyone else, outside my own head, but what I was aiming for was that a farmer and his wife broke down in the middle of nowhere with only a nearby hotel to help them. The wife nags at the farmer to fix the tractor, and books a room for the night. The farmer, seeing the wrench, gets a murderous urge and sneaks into the hotel, bludgeoning the wife to death with the wrench. Of course, this ends up being only a figment of the famer's imagination. He is instead woken by the wife, returning to find the farmer sleeping, and nags him further. Recalling the dream, the Farmer grins.

I had hoped to leave it open ended, so you can decide if he is just smirking at the dream, which 'cheered him', or if he was actually going to go through with what happened in the dream.

What do you guys think? I know for me, it's certainly interesting to look at some of my older work, anyway! Still, I do hope you guys enjoyed looking at a small relic of my past :)

Until next time!

Tara

Happy (Belated) New Year!

Hey Everyone! Welcome back!

And also, while slightly belated, a very Happy New Year to you all!

So, 2016 has come and gone, and we're now taking our first tentative steps into 2017. So, in order to celebrate the tremendous occasion....we'll look back at 2016 instead. lol. But really, what a year it's been. In all honesty, it's been a bit of a mixed bag for many people, but there has been some good in the year. After all, it was this past year that I graduated from Staffordshire University with a First to my name, after all, not to mention the first chapter of Dreamwalkers was completed as well. And the biggest happiness to 2016 for me was the birth of my baby niece, Tabitha. In light of all those little bits of Happiness, I can't truly look badly on 2016, even though there were a lot of changes that happened over the year otherwise - though how those will turn out will remain to be seen.

Still, I tend to try to look at things optimistically, so let's at least give the new year a chance, right?

So, with the quick look back out of the way, where will we be going from here onwards?

Well, there are a few things coming up. Firstly, Conventions. Like last year, Nadia and I will be attending conventions, where our comics will be available for sale, along with merch and commissions being available. I'll be keeping my eye out for more for later in the year as well. We're hoping to attend at least five, though that will, of course, depend on funding and print costs.

I'm also considering making a red bubble account. For those of you who don't know, red bubble is a site where you can have designs you made printed onto things like T-Shirts and the like, which can be bought online. If I do make the account, I'll be sure to link you guys in, as the money will all be to help better publish the comics :) And hopefully, because you'll like the designs I've made as well, of course.

On the Tanra Studio side of things, Nadia will also be running our YouTube Channel, where we'll be making short skits, tips and tricks videos and even comic trailers. Of course, we're both still new to animation (other than a brief practice stint of animation we did for a term at Uni), but we do hope you'll enjoy our wackiness anyway.

And finally, of course, I'll be working hard to do more towards Dreamwalkers, as well as many other art based projects for you all to enjoy, so I hope you'll all follow me through this year as well!

Thank you all so much for your support so far, and I hope I continue to enjoy it in the future, too!

Until next time!

Tara

Boxing Day Special!

Hey Everyone! Welcome back!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. If any of you have been following the TanraStudios blog, Nadia and I left a Christmas message there, which is mainly why this one is on Boxing Day. Well, that and I usually post on Mondays for this blog. lol. Either way, I hope you all had a good one, and we've still got the New Year coming up too.

I've been pretty busy with my day job over Christmas - its the time of year when everyone goes out to celebrate after all. But I did manage to finish the Christmas gift to Nadia on Christmas Eve and sent it to her. I'll show the image here, but I've found the resolution seems to be really off on the blog lately. Not sure why, so I will also leave a link to my DA account for anyone who might want to see it in its glory.

So, here was me finished Gift-Pic!

Though for the better quality version, click here

So, I really enjoyed doing the hair the most on this picture with the lowlights and highlights. Makes the hair seem as though it stands out more. With her clothing colour as it was, I thought it best to stick with the simple blue-and-snowflake pattern to help Rodessa stand out. As mentioned before, the previous blank space now has a Christmas greeting as well.

I sent it to Nadia, who was really happy, especially with the plushy character cameo as well. I'm just really happy that my rendition of her character came out so well! Its certainly good practice for once I'm the main artist for Pandora for a few chapters.

But, all in all, I had a lot of fun with this project. Maybe I can do something similar for Christmas next year, too :)

I hope everyone else has had as much fun this Christmas as I have. Stay safe for the rest of the holidays and I'll see you all in the New Year!

Until next time!

Tara

Christmas Countdown!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

So its less than a week until Christmas day now! But no rest for the wicked, as they say - Not only will I have one of my busiest weeks at work with everyone having Christmas Parties and such, I also have a few presents to finish getting and a picture to finish - yeah, I'll admit that I've never been the best at being on top of Christmas shopping. But I usually get things done.

Speaking of the picture I'll be doing for Nadia, I should give an update there. Last time I showed my sketched concept for the image. This time, I have a lot more done.

Firstly, the line art was fun - after drawing images such as the one I drew for Nogitsune, specifically the hair, I'll admit that drawing Rodessa's hair was the most fun. She has a lot to work with after all! lol. I also made a few adjustments from her initial design on the dress, giving it some sleeves. I thought that it added a little more to the outfit. I also adjusted the perspective on the arm, as it was a bit off before.

Oh, I should probably point out the pushy that she is holding dressed as a reindeer. I do hope that Nadia will get the reference. Unfortunately, can't say who it is without spoiling, but you're welcome to guess!

I also did the flat colour:

Even having just the flat colour does tend to make the image stand out more, I think.  I made sure to follow the colour references that were made for Rodessa in the past, specifically for her hair, skin, eyes and lips. After all, I want to be sure I get Nadia's character as good as possible, since so far I haven't done much in way of art for Pandora yet, minus some base drawings and images of certain spoilerish characters that can't appear online yet. (Don't worry, they will appear eventually!). And I've been doing some practicing of Rodessa, to be sure that I can get her design correct once it comes to my turn.

As for the background, I just went for something simple this time. The image is essentially like a Christmas card, and the space left behind will have words as a season's greetings, so I didn't want a background that would clash with those words. Hence it was just a simplistic snowflake design. Admittedly, it reminded me of wrapping paper a little bit, but I did think that Rodessa's colour scheme would also stand out against the cooler blues and whites.

Now I have the main part of the image to complete - the shadings. While flat colour makes the image more obvious, adding the lights and shadow will help to make the image really stand out. This is the bit that always takes me the longest, since it does add the most detail to the characters. Should be fun! But hopefully my day job wont make it difficult for me, since I have less than a week left. So, cross your fingers for me! I'll let you know how it goes :)

Until then, have a Merry Christmas and I'll see you next time!

Tara

Christmas Project: Start!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

So, soon it'll be Christmas - only about two weeks away now! Man, time flies, doesn't it? I still have a lot to do before I'm fully ready for Christmas where presents are concerned for friends and family, but I still have time to do a little project.

You see, as you may or may not know, depending on how long you may have been following my blog for, I've been working two comic series. The first being Dreamwalkers, which I talk about here, and the other is a project done alongside a friend. Pandora's art is currently being handled by said friend, though the both of us are working on the story. Eventually, the art will pass to me and we will back and forth. With Nadia, our work all comes under the name of Tanrastudios.

Well, I wanted to make a Christmas present for my friend and fellow Tanra-lite! :)

This in mind, I was hoping to draw a season's greeting using one of the Pandora characters (well, two, if you look at what said character is holding, though that one would be more of a cameo than an actual character picture). Out of the characters we created for Pandora, one of the main characters, Rodessa, was originally created by Nadia (whereas the other main character, Mizuki, was made by myself), so I decided to draw a Christmas Rodessa. Currently, I only have the sketch work that I will probably need to do a few adjustments on to get absolutely anatomically correct, but this is the basics of what I have in mind:

Sorry about the photo quality of my sketchbook sketch. I'm afraid I'm no photographer. But this is the basic idea I had in mind, which I will hopefully have inked and coloured and presented to Nadia for Christmas. The space over her shoulder should also end up with a Christmas message as well :) I do hope to make it look a little more interesting at inking and colour stage though, as I know just a sketch isn't always that interesting. lol. But I have been having fun with the basic sketch, especially where her hair is concerned.

I'm hoping that Nadia will enjoy the gift to her, since she has been working pretty hard to help with Tanrastudios with me, and I want to let her know how much I've appreciated the help, as well as giving one of my close friends a big Merry Christmas as well.

I'll keep you all updated on how the project is going and, hopefully, how Nadia reacts to the gift as well.

But, until next time!

Tara

Oneiros Types: Morpheus Class

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

In our exploration of the types of forms the Oneiros, the enemies in my Dreamwalkers comic series, we've covered two of the three main classifications - the Icelos and the Phantasos classes. If you haven't read those parts yet, I suggest you check them out first, to gain a full understanding of exactly what those types entail by clicking on the names of the classes.

For now, however, we'll be covering the last of the main three classes - the Morpheus Class.

Lets see how far down the rabbit hole this takes us, shall we?

Garbled version of the quote from Matrix-version of Morphius aside, no, this class is not named after him. Rather, similarly to the other two class types, this type also takes its name from Greek mythology. Along with Icelos/Phobetor and Phantasos, (and thousands of other much lesser known siblings), Morpheus was said to be one of the many children of Hypnos (though some also believe that Hypnos was a brother instead and that they were all children of the goddess Nyx). It is said that Morpheus was capable of shapeshifting into any human form (though his 'true' form was said to appear as a winged daemon) and could appear in dreams. During the medieval period, Morpheus and Hypnos become somewhat synonymous with each other, as Morpheus was also known as the god of sleep and dreams, similar to his 'father'.

A little extra trivia as well, the drug morphine's name also came from Morpheus.

In Dreamwalkers, Oneiros that fall under this classification will take the form of a human within dreams. Unlike the other types, who are more instinctual, Morpheus class Oneiros are capable of planning far more complex stratagies to entice or trap their victims, sometimes taking the form of loved ones, or will attempt to seduce the enemy into lowering their guard, similar to a succubus or Inccubus. Sometimes, they are even capable of mimicking the effects of other Oneiros types to lead on the dreamwalkers into going after the wrong target, allowing them to fulfil their goals. For example, by leading the 'prey' into an area that a landslide could be triggered. Due to the fact they take a human form, they could also blend into crowds with dream created people, or pretend to be just a part of the dream in order to stalk their prey. Due to their shapeshifting, they could also switch up their appearance, making it difficult to pinpoint exactly which dream-manifested-human is just part of the dream and which is the true target.

Morpheus types are usually not as physically strong as the more monstrous Icelos and not quite able to have the pure nature manipulation as the Phantasos, but due to their more humanoid natures, they are the hardest to pinpoint and to take down in the long run due to pure tactics.

Well, I suppose some people do say that humans can be the biggest threats of all.

So yes, the Icelos, Phantasos and Morpheus classes are the main three classes that the Dreamwalkers cast is likely to run into. However, this doesn't cover all Oneiros as a whole, as their are always discrepancies, even in nature. For now, however, those are the ones to know about in the series. :)

Still, I may cover those rare types at a later date.

Until next time!

Tara