Doodlebug!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

So....I'm still having a few issues with my tablet right now, but I've just been doodling where I can, thinking up things to do once its all back to normal. Some doodles were just ideas to play around with, while others are ones that I'll likely be doing digital versions later on.

So, one thing that I doodled that I know I'll be playing around with and, hopefully, make a digital version of is an avatar/icon of a character related to a previous avatar I did before, Nogitsune. This one is another masked character from that same family, only this one in the process of removing their mask.

Sorry for the bad photo. Admittedly this is a very rough concept, the full version would look much cleaner and a little more in proportion. The hair would also have more detail as well and the background would likely mimic the flame like pattern the previous Nogitsune avatar did. Unlike Nagisa, the other Nogitsune character, I've not drawn this one very often, and I hope to play with the character a little, to do a full body pose for them as well, though, possibly based around this kind of pose?

Though it is only a thought. If I did try for a pose similar, I might add details to it and I'd certainly make the clothes flow better - I'll admit that doodle was done while I had a few moments at work, so its extremely rough, drawn with pen and on a scrap paper. But still, since these are just really basic concepts, and extremely rough versions, the big details can come later.

Beyond that, I was also just playing around with another character idea, once again very rough, but a portrait and a pose, though neither are particually finished, both, yet again, being quick sketches while at work in a free moment on scrap paper, but still, the sketches can lead to far better things digitally once I have a fully working tablet and time. :) 

While certainly no masterpieces, each are merely little seeds to play around with and will hopefully grow into something better with a little time and effort. Considering none of these took me longer than a minute or two at best while having no real idea of what to do in mind, it certainly helped to get some ideas flowing. But hey, even the roughest of things can give birth to something awesome, right?I'll definitely do a comparison of what an end product will look like from these idea sketches though. Hope you look forwards to it! :)

Until next time!

Tara

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

Old Vs New! Part Two!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Firstly, sorry this post is a day later than usual. A friend and co worker of mine was celebrating their birthday yesterday and I was covering their usual shift for them so they could have fun. Here's hoping that she had a great birthday, though! But yes, by the time my shift was done it was a bit late to get the blog written so I decided to post it today.

Still, next week I should be back to posting on Mondays again. But for now, sorry about the shift in schedule.

That said, I'll actually talk about what I've been up to.

So, last week I started playing around with redrawing characters that I had made and drawn ages ago back when I hadn't touched digital artwork before, starting with the character of Huojin, and showed you all the line work I had currently done.

Well, from there, I now have the image completed! Yay!

But before I show it to you, just a quick reminder of what the old version of Huojin actually looked like:

As you can tell, its a little on the amateurish side, though I go into it a bit more in last week's blog post for my full thoughts on this image, looking back on it half a decade or more later. In comparison, this is what Huojin looks like (though admittedly not a full body image) in my current digital art style:

(Please forgive the somewhat lowish quality upload - for some reason the site lowers upload quality and it always looks a bit blurry - and note the actual image was made with 600dpi)

Either way, as you can see, he looks a lot more lively in digital form and happens to closer resemble his age. I'm actually quite happy with my flame, too, especially since I, yet again, used no tutorial for it and was mostly testing it out. I've been having a bit of fun with the shadows on this one as well. After all, with an obvious light source, it does make playing around with light and shadow a little easier to work out where said light is coming from.

I think my favourite parts to do on this was the hair and the undershirt. The former was due to the style itself a nd trying to get the strands right, especially those drawn back into the topknot, and the shirt because cloth folds were a bit awkward for me at one point, but I'm starting to get a bit of a linking for it :) - not to say its perfect, but it at least looks like cloth that is over arms and such and not just something flat. Oh, and I liked doing the eyes. No particular reason for that, just did. lol!

Even so, Huojin looks much more like I imagined now than it does in the original concept, and I'm happy with how it turned out! Though I was almost curious if I should do a background. Thoughts?

I'll admit that I've had a fun doing this old verses new, so I might give it another go sometimes. Believe me I made a ton of characters in the past, so I wouldn't be too shocked to end up with many an old verses new in the future. lol!

Until next time!

Tara

Old Verses New!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

I finally got my tablet fixed. Huzzah! It is no longer 'sticking' or holding onto things longer than it should - at least for now. I'll have to keep an eye on it to make sure I hopefully dont have any repeat performances for a while. If it does happen again, I may have to result in taking the nib out each night, but, for now, I shall be glad to have a functioning tablet back.

And with my functioning tablet I....decided to experiment.

A while ago, I mentioned on this blog about looking at past characters I'd made and re-drawing them, to see how they might look in my current style as apposed to my old one. Admittedly I wasn't always thinking full body, but if nothing else it would just be interesting to see how they might look these days.

First on the list - if one minuses the few full body character designs I did.....oh, a year or so ago - is a character created as a Firebender from Avatar: The Last Airbender named Huojin. Though certainly not a canon to the show character, he was used during a forum in several places, once in a purely ATLA forum, and the other was on a crossover type forum.

Back when I originally created him, I hadn't yet even started any digital art at all and was still just sketching, sometimes with pen, sometimes pencil. While there was occasionally interesting things, looking back, my art style was...well, pretty appalling, pretty generic stuff and, honestly, pretty out of proportion. As such, this was the first drawing I made of Huojin:

I wasn't the worst drawing I had done, of course and, while a little off - especially concerning the hands - it at least looks like he's sitting crossed legged - always a plus. Colour wise....it was really bad though. I hadn't really figured out how to do light and shadow properly, some places went over the lines a bit...There are plenty of 'egh' moments, looking back. However, as a character, I enjoyed playing him. Back then I tended to play more logical characters and Huo was a rather emotional and blunt person, and tended to be (unintentionally on his part) funny at times because of it. As such I thought it'd be fun to see how he would look if I drew him these days.

While I didn't go for a full body shot for this particular drawing - I'll do one of those later - I did a portrait shot of him showing up to around elbow height. Because its been so long since I drew him, I wanted to do some focus on his hair and face before I come up with interesting firebending poses, or reuse the current pose for a more direct old verses new.

Admittedly, it isn't finished just yet but I thought I should show you guys my current progress:

This is Huojin in my current style and, honestly, he looks more like as I envisioned. Huojin is meant to be a younger teenager, around fifteen years old and fairly open as a character. In the old picture he seemed more just overly snarky and maybe a person prone to being suspisious, something Huo really....isn't. As a character he hates lies, whether being told them or telling them, so generally will be extremely open in how he thinks of you. The other picture makes him look a little...perhaps not evil, but certainly not as benign, which Huo generally is when he can get away with it.

As you can tell, its not finished yet. There is no colours here and the fire floating over his finger is certainly not going to remain white - canon wise, only dragons and Azula seem to have fire that are colours other than....well, fire.

So far I'm quite happy with how he's coming out. It makes me interested to try this exercise with other characters in the future too.

Of yours, YMMV. But I'm always happy to hear peoples thoughts!

Until next time!

Tara

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