Busy Birthday Buisness!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

This past week has been a hectic one for a number of reasons, some good, some bad, but certainly made the week a busy one. For those of you who've been following the World Cup, as you likely know the semi-finals, the finals and the runner up games all played last week. While upsetting that England ended up in fourth place, it is the highest they've been in a World Cup for a while, so there is that as consolation. Even so, well done to France for their win!

As much as I'd like to say it was busy for me, personally, because I was watching it...not so much. As you likely know (unless this is the first post from me you've been reading), I work at a bar and so have been covering shifts there whenever the games were playing, particually for the England matches and the big games like the semis and the final. This wasn't particually helped by one person leaving and another (through no real fault of their own) had to call in sick, so we were rather short staffed. Coupled with the local football team also having a friendly match on the same day as England's last match and...yeah, we were busy.

On a somewhat different, yet related in why this week was busy...T'was my 30th birthday! The big Three Oh! Somewhat scary to think about when half the time I dont feel older than 20 at most, but...eh. lol! Either way, my family, particually the girls of the family, ended up having a spa experence, which was really nice! Not only did I get to spend time with my aunt, who I've not seen since Christmas, but also got to spend some quality time with my older sister and my mum, all the while getting treated to massage, facial and use of the facilities like the sauna, steam room, jacuzzi and other things. Also had pool side drinks and we were provided meals too.

Not to mention the cake. Ah, the cake.

Followers of my twitter may have seen the cake I got for my birthday, but for those who dont follow me there, this is the awesome thing I got presented with!

Please forgive the not so presentable-ness of the photos. We had, after all, been having treatments and been in the pools. Not particually great for photos (Well, unless you're a move star shooting a scene complete with hair flicking. lol)

Anyway, apparently my mum had told the cake maker 'She likes foxes. Do something with foxes' and this is what we got! I don't know if you can tell from the photos but the thing was huge! There was three layers to the cake shaped like the tree stump and the attention to detail was awesome! I really loved the markings in the tree and on top of it, making it look like it was actually wooden. I'm not sure how long it took, but it was awesome! The cake tastes great too. But even after the four of us had some and some was cut for other family members I still have at least a quarter of the thing left! Looks like we'll be eating cake for a while. lol!

Well, with everything happening this week I'll admit I have little in way of art that's presentable to show off, but with the World Cup and my birthday passed, I should be back to my art once more. So, until next time!

Tara

When Tech Attacks!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Firstly, 'twas my niece's birthday yesterday! She was two years old! Though I saw her in person on Sunday, gave her a present (a pop up playhouse which she adores! :D) and went to her birthday party at this cool place called Imagination Lane - seriously, when I was a kid I would have loved it there. It was a place made to look like a street with different themed pods made to look like a theatre, shops, construction sites etc where you could play with the various props, such as the shop having trollies and items and a fake cash register and post office etc, or the construction site having foam bricks to build things (and kids sized safety equipment like helmets and high viz vests, etc) - I wanted to still, once more, wish her a happy second birthday! Many happy returns, Tabitha!

With my well wishes aside, what I would like to say to you all this week is 'Hey, look, more badge progress' or 'Hey look, that project about the twins I told you about before has progressed', but no. It seems that the technology I use to do those things decided 'Hey, here's a fun thing, lets make any kind of drawing or use of the tablet as difficult as hell and see how frustrated Tara gets!'

Basically, every time I try to use my tablet, the curser becomes 'sticky'. By this I mean it doesn't drop something when you lift the curser, or decides to continue a line even when you've lifted the curser, meaning any time I try to do line art, use the eraser tool or anything else that requires some precision, it just makes a mess. If I wanted to use a tool to move something to transform its size or shape, the curser wont let go at all and so it ends up nowhere near the place, size or shape I originally wanted.

Funny, usually its that the pressure sensor stops working so lines look like I used the mouse to draw or my computer having a tizzy. This glitch is pretty new to me.

Eventually, it stopped doing it just occasionally and is now doing it all the time, so litterally all I've managed this weak is Kuro's face in line art on the twins picture, and that was with a looooooot of frustration, erasing and backspacing to get that done.

I have, hopefully, found a few solutions to my dilemma, however, since 'turn it off and on again' and 'replugging it' doesn't seem to work. Essentially, it seems that sometimes the pressure sensor in the pen gets stuck and doesn't realise you've lifted it. The solution to this is apparently to remove the nib, which helps reset the pressure sensor and, hopefully, stop the problem. As it is, apparently doing it for a few minutes or even an hour doesn't work - you have to do it overnight. As such, this is now what I'm trying. If this doesn't work my last solution is to reset the drivers. If that doesn't work, well, I'm screwed. Or at least I'll need to get another tablet. But here's hoping that the nib solution works! Fingers crossed for me!

Should this work, I'll be back in buisness, though! Minus my birthday coming up in a few days. I'm really looking forwards to that, though! I'll be the big Three Oh!

(I'm getting old. Lol)

So, hopefully, I'll have lots to report next time I see you!

Until next time!

Tara

Return of the Badges!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

I've been working once more on the badge ideas that I spoke about in a previous blog and rejigged one of the ones that I decided to work on. There were a few parts to it that I wasn't entirely pleased with. Firstly, the eyes were a bit out of proportion. Secondly, considering the design would eventually be shrunk down to badge size, the line art was a little too thin and would have been lost once it was adjusted to the correct size. And lastly, I had made mention of having some difficulties with the colour scheme for the character himself.

Considering I'm talking about these issues now....well, suffice to say, they've been fixed.

So, for the first problem I had, I needed to adjust the face somewhat to put everything in its proper place. This meant the eyes are now in different places and a little narrower than the previous versions, along with some of the face placements to get everything in proportion. For the second problem, in order to fix it I ended up using my previous line art as the base to essentially redraw it. Ine of the main differences in redrawing was the hair is ever so slightly less detailed, since some of it would have been lost when shrunk, though more details will come in from the shading (I've only just started a little on that. You'll be able to see the little bits I've started on with the image I'll be showing in a moment). This will stand out a little more, even at a small badge size.

Lastly, as mentioned, was colour.

While I've yet to work on the background (I have a few ideas for that but I need to see how the final image works with the light and dark from the glowing orbs and eyes), the character himself now has more complimentary colours.

Do excuse the white ball. That will be changed to a gleaming ball of different colours when I've finished with the basic shadows and lights of the character. The white circle is a placeholder so I'll be able to work out where the light source is. So, the colours. Before, he looked very white washed, but this time he looks a bit less dead, both with skin colour and the colour of his clothing. What you may notice is his eye colour is currently a bit darker. This is because I've yet to really do the effect on the eye colour to make it have his more signature glow to it. Once done the eye colour should look much lighter ad closer to the original colour choice. As for his clothing, the colours are not only a little more complimentary, but they match the Victorian-esque feel and make it look a little more authentic. Currently it does look a bit dark, admittedly, but once I've started playing with shading, it should fix this problem.

As you can see, I've only really just started on doing the shading basics, that is in the hair and on the face. I'm currently just working on the shadows right now, with proper highlights being added a bit later once I'm absolutely sure how the shadows lay. Because of the particular light source and its proximity, the type of shading will be rather interesting, and may even get darker once I know the intensity of the ball of light. For now, it's mostly about the placement, however. Still, I'm much happier with this version right now.

So, what do you all think? Do you like this version, or prefer the original. I'm always happy to hear from you :)

Until next time!

Tara

Sketching Character Practice!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

First of all, World cup is still going on, so I've still got a lot of work at the bar, especially since it looks like England's qualified for the next round of the 'Cup after their 6-1 win, with the last of the matches (Against Belgium) to decide where they'll be sitting in match ups - at least as far as I can tell. I'll admit, I'm usually working during matches rather than watching them, so I could be wrong outside of the score and the next match up. lol.

That isn't to say I've done nothing, however. Admittedly its only really sketch work so far, but I've been essentially practicing for the project I'll be doing - I made some mention of it last time, in fact, though let me explain.

So, what the project entailed was linked to some of my older pictures involving a character named Kitai. In the storyline the character is in, he was once part of a rebel team, two of the characters being a pare of twins. Now, I've sketched the Yume twins before, but only ever as their child selves, never as their adult forms, so my intent is to do a shot o the twins, back to back, as adults. However, I haven't drawn their adult forms before, and so I was working from their discriptions alone. As such, I sketched them individually at first to get a feel for them before I do a true version of them together. Admittedly they're not the final sketch versions for these two, but are more me practicing them before I do anything else.

So, the first of the twins I sketched was Shiro:

For Shiro, I wanted a slightly wilder appearence, which would eventually include scars including some on the exposed side of the body. The weaponry is gloves that house metal claws in the back (which will need shortening slightly otherwise he would struggle to bend his wrist when they're contracted). 

For his brother, Kuro:

I was considering something a little more refined, standing straighter, not half naked and a little more reserved expression, though for the final version, he would need to look a little more similar to Shiro in his face, considering they are meant to be identical twins. Along with the lack of scars and his clothing, I wanted his hair to also look different as well. Kuro's weapon is one inherited from his father and is his primary form of attack. Since Shiro had his weapon shown, it made sense for Kuro to also have his on view as well.

As you can see, there is a lot to do to get these sketches close to how I imagine them, along with fixing the proportions slightly - Kuro's hand is definitely out of wack, for example. However, considering it's the first time I've put pen to paper in terms of their adult selves, they're just about ready for the tweaking to get them into proper form. Hopefully their final selves, ready for a full digital makeover, will be much better. Watch this space!

Until next time!

Tara

Stream of Chosha-ness!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

While this is a bit belated, Happy Father's Day! I know the actual day was yesterday, but since I always do my blogs on Mondays, I couldn't say it on the day. Though I did personally get to say it to my own dad, so no worries! I did have something funny happen when getting my present for Father's Day, however. I had been a little unsure what to get him until my mum suggested something he had actually wanted - a power station for his car. Now, I know next to nothing about cars, but I wanted to get something dad actually might want rather than some trinket that he might never use, so off I went to the auto shop in town and found the power station pretty easily. so, I took the box with the power station to the counter to buy and I was told with a very serious expression that "I can't use it and bring it back in a few days."

Now, I'm pretty sure that auto shops are not libraries. I was buying it after all. Makes me wonder if someone's actually done that before or if I just look that much like an idiot or newbee where cars are concerned that they needed to point this out, I had no idea, but I still found it kind of funny anyway, if only by how utterly serious they were saying it.

Joking aside they were awesome people and dad was happy with his present.

Anyways, Along with Father's day, I was a bit on the busy side. As you guys likely know, the world cup has started and as someone who works in a bar, we've been showing the matches in the pub itself, meaning we needed to have staff to cover the matches, including yours truely, hence why today is really more a stream of consciousness rather than ay expression of artistry - though some things you see, hear and do at the pub could make for ab entire book/comic series in and of itself. I mentioned it before but I'm making note of all kind of fun tings I've seen of heard, even stupid stuff I've done as well and will one day make a small series on it for fun. Who knows, it might get a laugh :)

One of the biggest matches at the pub so far, of course, was the England game (for those of you who aren't aware, I'm from the UK, FYI) and they were playing Tunisia today and won - great start for the team :) I'm not a big football fan, honestly, but hey, I should at least show some patriotic support! So well done team! When I've not been busy serving customers I've been checking on some of the other matches too and there've been some good ones so far. Here's hoping that the rest of the world cup goes well too!

But anyways, I hope that my 'blah-ing' hasn't been too off putting, beyond the maybe promise of eventual comic series of various spoofs at my bar job, but now we've all started getting into the rhythm of work alongside football, I should be back to work on my projects once again. Along with the badges, I've got a couple request I've got that I'm going to be working on, and I'm also having a little experiment with different styles as well, especially since one of my requests was asked to be in my take of a specific style. So I should have some interesting stuff for you all soon and hope you look forwards to it.

Until next time!

Tara

Badges In Progress!

Hey Everyone! Welcome back!

Last time I showed you guy the seven badge ideas that I came up with that would be related to Tanra Studios. While I'll probebly end up doing full versions of all of them eventually, if only to use later, I have done some progress on two of them. They're not complete, of course, and a lot of tweaking will be needed, but I thought I'd at least give you an update on how things are going.

So first of all, one of the badges I was looking at was the Oneiros skull idea. I was thinking of doing it in a silhouette/icon-esque manner, though I'll admit I'm a little uncertain on colours at the moment. This one is the  one mist subject to change on design. This first version I went for was a more uniformed, almost symmetrical design, though I did have other ideas for one that utilises the initial sketch a little more, making it look more melted and disjointed, thus less symmetrical. That one is one I'll likely play with next, however. Along with being a bit unsure on its final design, I'm also currently a little unsure on colours, thus this version is very much in progress/ experimental stage. Still, what I have so far, unfinished as it is, is this:

The markings on the badge design are to help me work out what will be where. The smallest circle is the 'safe zone' where any design inside will definitely be on the badge. the middle circle is where the badge might bend over to curl around to the back and the dotted circle is where anything might be cut. While experimenting, I was only messing with colour to the middle circle, though. When finalised, I'd do it to the dotted line. 

While I like some aspects of the design, it currently doesn't stand out much. So if I continued with it, I'd need to make the silhouette pop a bit more, either by giving the design light and shading, or by messing with the background. I have some other thoughts as well for the design, such as slash markings similar to some from the comic, however, as said, this is one that needs a lot more work and experimenting on to get it right.

The next one was the chibi version of Somnus. With that one, his colours mostly match those from his initial design, though I'm still contemplating shirt colours. The main problem is that Somnus, as a character, favours blacks, greys and purples, so again, the background might need a bit of work, either by going for an opposing colour, or maybe doing that glittery design from a print idea. Either way, note that the current background colour is not likely to be in its final version - that will be my main experiment for that one.

For now, though, this is what I've done:

Apologies if the picture is a tad blurred for the blog. As you can see, I was working on this to the edges, as I am supposed to be. lol. As you can tell compared to my initial design, its not full body any longer, but rather a closer image. This is because full version would have made him ridiculously small on the badge. While flats are done, minus making the colour stand out a bit more, you may notice the two white 'balls' - the one hovering over his hand, and the one on the staff. There are currently uncoloured, with the white as placeholders, since these are to have mixed, swirling-like colours and will give off some light of their own. So for now, I just needed to be sure I knew where each part world be when I get around to working on them without disrupting line art or pulling on the original sketch too much. It also helps in arranging the placement of the character, as that might also change slightly if I feel it needs shifting, enlarging, etc.

Still, with what I have so far, what do you guys think? Comment below and let me know! :)

Until next time!

Tara

Budding Badges!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

So, I've been working on some ideas for badges. At the moment, these are only rough ideas since I'm not entirely sure of what the badge dimensions are just yet - the problems of not having one's own badge maker and needing to outsource. However, for right now, these are all only sketched ideas, with only two of the seven eventually making the final cut. Those two will then go on to having digital versions completed which will match the dimensions for the badges, since by that time I should have an idea of what might work out best.

So if you like, give me your input on what you might think would work best as a badge design. After all, if eough people like a particular design, it'll be one of the two that'll make it to merchandising stage :)

So, what are the ideas? Well, here's photographs of the sketches - I apologise for my, as usual, fairly abysmal photography skills:

For the first design, it was the most simple, yet probebly the most striking - a stylised version of one of the Oneiros' heads. I found that when I did badges for Susanoo, the one that sold the most was the Orochi's eye badge. Essentially something leaning towards 'cool' rather than based on a particular character. Plus, skull designs are pretty popular when it comes to T-shirts and such. With the right combination of colours, the badge could be quite striking, even if the badge itself ends up being relatively small. Plus with these creatures being the main antagonists of the series, it seemed a fairly fitting thing for merchandise of Dreamwalkers.

The second design was less to do with Dreamwalkers itself, and more my personal mascot that, in Dreamwalkers and generally everything I've been doing since starting has the Luphin character somewhere. If you have the first chapter of Dreamwalkers, it's in there somewhere. :) Plus where 'cool' doesn't pick up interest, cute is its next contender. However, as its not technically a character in the series, but more my mascot, it might not be so fitting for a Dreamwalkers badge. But if it doesn't end up a badge, I might still use the design elsewhere. Luphins always seem to show up in my work somewhere. lol

The next here designs are similar in ideas, leaning towards 'cute'. However, these are significantly less fuzzy and more 'chibi' versions of the three main characters currently introduced in the series: Rem, Somnus and Ashling:

Admittedly, out of the three, while Rem seems the most adorable, Somnus and Ashling's poses might work better for the badges since they'd leave less blank space of nothing. However, it would make more sense for Rem and/or Somnus to get badges with them being the main focus from chapter one. Rem being the main protagonist, while Somnus being the deurangonist. Its always possible, depending on how people take to whatever two make the first cut that the chibi other versions could show up later on.

The last two designs were more leaning towards their actual designs and were actually inspired by the Somnus poster idea I got to digital version for my degree show. That is the character holding a glowing ball - the ball itself representing imagination/dream/potential that can be crafted by the Dreamwalkers while in the dreamscape into whatever they might need via will - something explained in more detain in the course of the story. Considering what I mentioned of the two focus characters, for that idea I only did those two so far - If only because they made for cool mirror images:

I personally like the idea of these designs, however, I'm unsure if others would be interested in them as badges, at least for the first lot of merchandise for Dreamwalkers that weren't prints. These two would make a tad more sense to be done together, but could work solo as well. Still, if they dont get much interest as badges I do have ideas to repurpose them to designs for other things, such as perhaps internet 'banners' or 'icons'. 

Still, I would love to know what you guys think! Any input would be great. After all, not only does it help me to know what you guys like, but it also helps me give you guys things you might want. So let me know your thoughts. Thanks!

Until next time!

Tara