Undertale Frisk

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Admittedly this past week hasn't been massively productive, though along with my day job, my immune system decided that it was time for me to have yet another bad cold (at least I'm hoping its a cold, but it's irritating either way). While I thankfully rarely get seriously sick, I seem to have half a dozen colds a year. Maybe I need to start having vitamin supplements or something, see if it helps me beat off the colds. I'd love to go for a few months without hacking up a lung, feeling dizzy and yucky or constantly carrying tissues, but for now I suppose I'll be putting up with it and living off cold meds for a little while, all the while fighting off my dog who seems to have some fascination with stealing tissues, used or otherwise. Still puppy.

Oh well....

My winging aside, while I wasn't particually able to summon up the drive to do any focused, detailed work between work and colds, I did decide to at least keep my hand in on drawing and decided to draw something else. Frisk from Undertale, to be exact. I once did a more 'realistic' version once with less cartoony proportions, but that sketch went missing in my house somewhere during a cleaning blitz, much to my annoyance. This one, though, was looking at the sprite of Frisk and working on those kinds of proportions instead.

For those who have played Undertale, this Frisk is likely from a True Pacifist route. It came out a bit too cute to be anything else. Although it does make me want to draw a Chara at some point....Anyways, this is what I came up with (Note it is only in flat colour right now)

I admit that I didn't go with the yellow skin colour, mainly as Frisk started to look more like a Simpson than an Undertale character (That or a racist stereotype, something I certainly wanted to avoid). The slightly more tan look seemed a bit more fitting.

Admittedly, I have no idea what age Frisk is meant to be here, though I would probebly say they've not reached double figures. Or they have a ridiculous case of babyface. Admittedly the more 'realistic' one (that I'm upset went missing) looked around thirteen at the oldest, but ho hum.

Either way, I do hope to finish this off at some point when I'm feeling a bit better and my eyes dont feel like they're about to fall out of my head (Head colds are a pain, have I mentioned that before? :P)

Welp, until next time!

Tara

Character Concepts!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

As you may have seen last week, I had found a few concepts of the characters from Dreamwalkers, although admittedly those were more portrait sketches of the characters in some of there more original forms. On a similar vein, while going through my sketch books I came across some character concepts for the comic that had rivalled Dreamwalkers in what I would do first (and I will eventually get around to doing once I'm done on Dreamwalkers) called Devil Contract. I've shown one of the characters before in a flat colour drawing I had done in the past, and I've actually done a picture of the Hex Doll that's on my DA page a while ago while playing around with different styles. While Damien's appearance has gone through many, many changes in the past (One of his appearances eventually being put aside for another character in another comic idea since it didn't quite match the style of character art I was using for Devil Contract), I found one full body concept that would eventually be the one I would decide to use for the story.

Since I seem to be looking at concepts, I thought I'd look at those today. I have three, the normal mode of Hex Doll (the possessed version is technically done in colour and was my first iteration of it anyway, so just check my DA for that one), Damien and Lucy. There are, of course, other characters, but those three were most predominant, especially since I was sketching ideas for the pilot/prologue/set up chapter. In the prologue, the story revolved around Lucy and her situation, and how and why she would make a contract with the devil known as Damien. The word 'devil' not referring to The Devil, but more like a race, like demons. Admittedly that would have also included scenes with the 'mother' and 'Son/brother' as well, but since I decided on Dreamwalkers first, they didn't get a full design just yet the way these three did.

So, since I mentioned Hex Doll first, I'll start with that. This was its beginning/dormant form, if one considers my DA colour picture to be its recently possessed one.

With Hex Doll, I wanted to make something that would seem somewhat innocent at first glance, but creepy. What I eventually decided on was a mix between a rag doll and a voodoo doll. The purpose of the Hex Doll was to act as the contact keeper, the 'link' between the human and the devil in the deal, hence the voodoo doll aspect. It would be like a portal, allowing the devil in question to get to their contractor when they're ready to strike the deal, but is also possessed, in a way, allowing it to always be able to follow the contractor around so they could stick to their own end of the bargain. In my mind, a possessed rag doll would be somewhat creepy, mostly in how it would move. Unlike, say, a Victorian doll (though those are creepy in their own right), there would be no real stability to the form, so how Hex Doll would move would be extremely unnatural with flopping limbs. Plus you wouldn't really expect a relatively floppy looking thing to be able to move at all.

The above picture is it at its most harmless. Just dont go tearing off those button eyes or you might see hell peak out from the holes left behind....

Next is Damien. I've shown a picture of him before, but this shows his full appearance without him being all curled up and hiding part of himself thanks to his stance.

Damien's outfit was inspired by straight jackets, though obviously he's not actually wearing one. I just wanted to not only have him in a stylised outfit (and experiment in clothing a little more complicated thanks to all the buckles) but just to give off the feeling that all is not quite normal with the character, even when he acts pleasantly. Similar to how I wanted Somnus in Dreamwalkers to have an otherworldly feel about him, so to did I want Damien. He is, after all, a devil. Admittedly, though, the outfit colour is still something I'm unsure about - white with black buckles, or the other way around, for example. But along with the 'this is not a normal person' vibe, I needed something that still fit his character when he is being....ah...less pleasant.

The pilot for this story, at least its idea, gets pretty dark at times, despite the relatively cute appearance of characters. But as we have seen in things like Higurashi, just because a character has a somewhat 'moe' or cute style doesn't mean they can't be creepy. lol

Finally, the last character was Lucy, for a while known to me only as 'the contractor', at least in the pilot before I gave her a name. The character herself is supposed to be a person who is....relatively normal, minus a few difficult home circumstances that becomes tempted by the lure of the contract to deal with her problem, something that would only come to bite her once she had grown up. As such, the appearance of Lucy here is the child version, the one that would have appeared in the pilot/prologue to the story. Also holding the dormant Hex Doll

Admittedly her expression is pretty simplified, but I was mainly looking at her clothing, hair and build when I did the image, though I imagine that she would have wide, somewhat innocent eyes. They do sometimes say that evil can come from good intentions and that there can be evil in innocence, etc. Whether or not its true, the juxtaposition felt like it would work well. Circumstance and temptations can effect people and how they might judge things and people take advantage of that at times, which is pretty much how the pilot plays out. The main story would look into other circumstances as well, not all being 'good people pushed to bad things' or 'manipulations'. The main story could be a little episodic while dealing with different contracts, depending on how the pilot went.

Her older self, of course, would probebly appear somewhat different, of course. After all, no one really wears the same things as a adult. But in the pilot, it only deals with Lucy's child form. As such, her adult self hasn't been fully conceptualised just yet.

Even so, it was great to look at the concepts again. I'd love to do some more neat ones that show full bodies and different angles and expressions. These guys were fun to draw! If nothing else, seeing full versions of Damien and Lucy would be pretty cool.

Anyways, until next time!

Tara

Look What I Found!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

So, before I get started, I want to make a big apology. I've not really been doing all that much online recently and even skipped a blog day, so I thought I should at least explain myself a little bit. I had a slight scare, medically, and I've been to the doctors about it. Thankfully, it looks like its nothing too serious and if all goes well (and it should be since the blood test they want me to do is just precautionary) I should be back to normal soon. But either way, at the time it did have me rather preoccupied. Well that and large amounts of work at my pub job. Either way, I thought it best to just let you guys know why I've been less than active on my blogs of late.

While I've got very little in way of new stuff to really show you guys, I have found a few of my older character concepts that you guys might find interesting. Hey, I've not really done much in way of Dreamwalkers recently, so I thought I'd show off a few of those. I have, in the past, show a few concepts of the main antagonists before, but I don't believe I've ever shown some of the initial concepts of the main cast like Rem, Somnus or Ashling - though I may hold back on concepts of characters I've yet to introduce, of course. At least until they're out in the comic itself.

So, to start us off, Let's look at our main guy, James 'Rem' Remington:

While its not the initial, initial concept for Rem, this was one of the earliest ones I've found from some of my old sketchbooks, though I know that somewhere on a lined pad with my very first bullet points of Dreamwalkers is a pen doodle of Rem with curly hair - a feature that later was inherited by Somnus. Its not the best drawing, of course - my proportions are pretty off here and my style wasn't quite as set as it is these days, so it does look a bit awkward, but beyond that, the hair, at least, has remained very similar. Dunno why, but a Rem without his antenna hair just seemed odd to me, even back then. He just doesn't look like him without it. lol.

Next, we have Somnus:

I don't know about you guys, but this version of Somnus reminds me of a vampire. lol. I believe that while I did keep a few of the features in his current appearance, I did soften them somewhat. I wanted him to have a somewhat supernatural feel without outright stating him to be entirely otherworldly. As you might be able to tell, however, a lot of his design did stay true to his current one. What can I say, I love his wavy/curly hair. lol

The last is one of the concepts for Ashling:

This is one concept I didn't do much to, although I was a bit unsure at the time what age range I was actually going for with her. Initially she was about high school age, but I did eventually bump her up to collage age, if only because if she was in high school it would be difficult for her to really get involved with 'missions', plus some schools can be a bit strict about part time jobs. Not to mention that the SOS team probebly wouldn't be taken too seriously if a high school kid was one of the lead 'assistants'. Still, I had a pretty clear image for her in my head - at least where the hairstyle was concerned, though her outfit choices did change several times over the concept process. Beyond that, however, she's been pretty true to form.
I hope you enjoyed seeing some of my older pictures of Dreamwalkers characters. It might be fun at some point to look at how I used to draw them besides how I draw them now. It could be pretty fun, I think. A future project! Well, when I'm not looking at badge concepts. lol.

Until next time!

Tara

Busy Busy!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Well.....I have a bit of a confession to make this week. I...well, haven't really done all that much in way of art this week. That's mainly due to the fact that we were extremely short staffed at my day job and I only had one day off. Not to say I hadn't done anything this week beyond working the day job however, but most of it was in terms of research gathering, which pretty much was what I did on my day off. So...not much to show for it so far, but it is all important for things such as increased internet presence, crowd funding and looking around for the best kind of card readers to use at conventions. After all, at conventions its not always easy to get to a cash point. Considering we (that is myself and TanraStudios) are also adding to what we sell as well, it makes sense for us to start accepting card payments to. Its easier for us and for our customers as well :)

Even so, I do feel a little bad for having nothing really to show you guys this week.

Thankfully, my schedule does seem to be calming down this week coming up and I do have plans for starting my sketches for ideas for badges, which I've been considering even if I couldn't actually draw any out, so I know that next time I'll have lots of stuff to show you guys!

But for now, forgive me this rather short and somewhat boring post. But I promise to have a few fun things to show you next time!

In the meantime, I can at least explain some badge ideas I have had, at least ones I'm considering.

So, there are character face ones, which include Rem, Somnus and Ashling (at least currently since other characters haven't really shown up yet), an Onreios (though dunno if to do it in its full creepy glory or to 'chibify'), a Luphin (while a personal mascot I do try to add one into each chapter, hidden or otherwise. If you have chapter one of Dreamwalkers, look for the Luphin!) and maybe Somnus' eye, because his eyes are rather interesting to draw if nothing else. But these are currently just ideas I'll be playing with and I may have a ton of different designs just using these as a basis to go from. But yes, those are ones that I'll be sketching first before I shortlist the best six, which will then be shortlisted to the best two which will be part of the TanraStudio sale roster.

Thankfully I have more than just one day off next week so that always helps as well. Yay!

Got tons planned and I'm hoping that you guys will like the end result that'll make up for this particular post. But either way, I thought I'd better at least leave a proper explanation rather than just a twitter post saying 'no post this week because I've been a busy bee, sorry!'

Until next time! (With actual picture content too!)

Tara

New Stuff!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Well, one of my resolutions for the year was to actually do more work on Dreamwalkers, something that I've not really been able to work on the last year as much as I would have liked for various reasons. As I'm not going to a con this year, my main focus, as well as that of TanraStudios in general, is to update our stock. This not only includes new chapter(s) to our comics (in my case, Dreamwalkers) but also providing new posters, keychains and badges, as well as other things related to our comics. As such, I thought I'd give a bit of an update to the plans of what I'd be providing, so to speak.

So, the current plan is to come up with several concepts for badges that are related to Dreamwalkers. I should be doing six sketched badge concepts in total, though only two of these six will make it through a process of elimination into becoming actual badges for sale - only the best will win! Currently, I'm considering what might work best for badges based on past experience when creating limited badges for my past comic Susanoo. The badge based on Orochi's eye sold out much faster than others. Unfortunately, the Oneiros in the first case don't have quite as decorative eyes that would stand out on their own, so its likely that the badge designs will either be a character (Such as Rem, Somnus or Ashling) or something like an Oneiros? This still leaves me with a badge concept and positioning of the people in the picture. Would they look more normal, or Chibi style, that sort of thing.

Similarly, keyrings will also have a similar concept procedure. This means that I'll have six concepts but only two making it to the final cut. I have a couple of ideas for those so far, but nothing yet set in stone. Still, I do think these might be more likely to have a more chibi style to them. I'm sort of looking forwards to seeing a Chibi Oneiros. If its similar to a random doodle I did in the past, it could come across as kind of cute. But that all depends on design and colour.

Finally, new poster designs. I've never actually done a proper poster of Somnus that I've printed out to sell, so that is a consideration, but art styles and colour styles change a bit, so it might be interesting to make all new posters. The posters will likely end up being focused on after the badges and keyrings, however, since those need just that bit more work in terms of making them the right size and shape that would work.

These, of course, will be done alongside the new comic chapter, as well as looking into which cons for next year will be the best for us and a bit of research into other things as well. Oh, and a banner as well. We've been needing one of those for a while.

I'm also considering doing redesigns for my buisness cards for once my current stock runs out. Looking at them they could be a lot better and much more professional (not to mention two sided) so I also have plans in the works for that somewhere along the line this year. Its not a major priority right now as I do have quite a few of my old stock left over thanks to restocking on those just before the last convention I went on, but I do think an updated buisness card for personal use will look much better, especially since TanraStudios should be getting an upgrade for our collective one. It'd fit in much better, I think.

I'll admit, most of this past week has been based around early planning for the year as well as my day job, so I'm sorry I've yet to actually have any interesting designs to show that I'm happy with just yet, but I should at least have some early concepts and sketches next time, though they likely wont be the full short list just yet. Either way, I thought it best to keep you all up to date on what I'm planning for the year, since I kind of....missed the opportunity before with the Mission Commission posts. Whoopsy!

Until next time!

Tara

Mission Commission! Pt 2

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Well, I said I'd be going over both of the commissions that I had been delaying on showing, but wanted them both to have their own blog page dedicated to it, so here we go! This is the second of the two commissions! If you haven't looked at the first one, go check it out, though you don't need to see the first part of this to understand what is going on with the commission here.

For those who are curious though but don't feel like re-reading or checking back on the previous blog post, I was tasked with two commissions that were being bought as Christmas presents for the client's son and daughter. Due to that I delayed talking about them to avoid any spoilers for the kids if they happened to read my blog. Last week was the commission I made for the son. This week is the commission I made for the daughter.

Similar to the first commission, this one also was one that featured two different people. The first being the daughter herself, while the second was a boy I didn't know myself, but I was asked to draw based on a realistic painting of the two of them. My task was to make a manga/anime-esque picture of the same scene as the painting. So, unlike the previous picture I did where I had a lot of reference in the art style, this one would be more applying my art style to something closer to real life. I've done similar things before based on photo references, so it wasn't ridiculously hard, and it also gave me some colour references as well, which helps, especially since I didn't have to estimate hair colour quite as much as I needed to with the previous commission.

Unfortunately, as the picture doesn't belong to me, I don't feel like I can show it here, as much as I'd like to. But essentially its the daughter and a boy listening to music through shared earbuds while on a bus traveling down a road with blossoming trees either side.

With this reference picture in mind, however, I began with a sketch picture first, though I only drew the inside of the bus as the sketch since outside the windows wasn't as clear ad so would be done with minimal line art to keep that vagueness.

As you can see, not much in terms of background details at this point. But, as mentioned, those come a bit later since they were to be indistinct thanks to the bus windows. The main sketch art here was for the people themselves and to help visualise where the windows themselves would be so I would know where the bus ends and windows begins. Since the characters themselves were the main focus, I had to be sure I knew where they would be, details and the like, though this was only the rough sketch. Some slight adjustments were made in the line art, however. For example, fixing a few facial proportions on the male's the ear and hairline felt a little out of place in the initial sketch.

By the time I got to line art, I had adjusted the mistakes that I noticed, so it ended up like this (if you pardon my terrible photography, as usual - I should learn to screenshot on a windows laptop...)

Admittedly, it was only after this was done that I realised I was missing part of the window - one of the upper bars. Whoopsy! I later added that in after I had taken the picture, but before I added the colour. As you can see, the boy no longer looks like his hair is trying to pull back off his head by being too far back. Not much to really say here other than I had a few adjustments requested by the client, such as removing the girl's tie, but beyond that, they were happy to give me the go ahead to start on the colour. As mentioned, the realistic painting gave me plenty of colour references.

With the flat colours, I focused first on the foreground so I knew exactly where everything inside the buss would be. With that done, I could then spend time on the windows to make them seem like they were after the rain, to work out the lighting from the sun etc. After that I could then once again focus on the inside to add the lights and shadows. Once it was done, I was also asked to ad the names of the girl and boy at the bottom.

Much as before, I'm showing the photograph here, though I'll later be adding the actual finished version to my DA page.

As you can see, the lightning is coming from the left window somewhat. The outside of the windows are indistinct as the windows themselves are marked by watermarks and aren't the main focus. The colours are also somewhat muted in comparison to the more brightly coloured previous commission, partly due to the colour references, and partly because the scene here gave me a different feel. Less 'action' manga and more slice of life subtler tones.

Much as the previous picture, the client was happy with the resulting image and I sent the finished product over to them and was paid for the work. 

I'll admit I had a lot of fun with these. I also finished them at a good time as the very evening I finished this one was the evening of my worst battle with gravity and ice that resulted in me almost face-planting off a pavement into a road that pretty much jolted my joins. Not sure my wrists would have appreciated more art after that. 

Would you call that lucky or unlucky, I wonder?

Either way, I hope that you enjoyed my rambles about these two commissions and will look forwards to seeing them both on my DA soon enough :)

Until next time!

Tara

Mission Commission! Pt 1

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

For any of you who might have missed my last post (and for everyone reading them anyway), Happy New Year! I hope that 2018 has been treating everyone well so far :)

I'm still suffering a little from that flu that's been going around, though its mostly just settled on my chest now. Not particularly fun to hack up a lung every half hour or so, but it's a lot better than it was, so I'm not going to complain!

Instead of listening to me going on about my health (since that's not what you're here for, I bet) I'll jump into what today's blog is all about. Well, as you may or may not recall, I had done a couple of paid commissions just before Christmas that were for a gift for a son and daughter. I held off on actually showing anything about it on the off-chance that said son and daughter might see the image before it was given as a gift. Then after that was the welcoming the new year, reflecting on the old post I did last time. But now Christmas and New Year have passed us by and the prezzies have all been given out, its now time that I can actually show you all what I was up to all this time!

Since they were fairly big projects, I thought it might be best to split them into two halves, so I could focus on each of them properly. That said, lets start off with the first of the duo!

So, for this particular piece, I had initially been asked to draw a manga styled version of the client's son. I believe I showed off the sketches of the son that I drew from front view, which ended up acting more as warm up/practice since after this I was instead asked to draw a two character picture based on pre-existing canon art. There was a poster for Accel World vs Sword Art Online that has the characters of Kirito and Kuroyukihime back to back. What I was asked to do was essentially that image, but replacing Kirito for the client's son wearing the same outfit as Kirito. Now, since I'm hardly going to cheat by just copy and pasting a new face onto the poster, this meant that I needed to draw my version of this poster without just tracing most of it. In fact, while my reference was on the computer, I drew the base sketch by hand, as I tend to prefer doing, given the choice, while attempting to blend the style used in the poster with my own art style, resulting in this:

I enjoyed trying to draw Kuroyukihime. If nothing else her outfit is rather different from what I usually draw characters in. The Son was admittedly a little more difficult to draw as I only had a vague picture of him that was showing him from side view which appeared to have been taken while he was distracted by something, so I had to do my best to work with his hair style and try to get it to match the hair types that would match the picture's style. Most of this would be done through the shading process, but I still needed to get my base as close as possible for that to work.

From there, once I got the ok from the client, I began the digital version:

Sorry, once again, for my terrible photography skills. I think I need to work out how to do a proper screen shot for this. Ah well....no use crying over spilt milk. So for here, I needed to work out where certain parts of the foreground would sit, including the flash of light that separated the two halves along with the placement of the butterflies - don't worry, they don't just end up staying white. At that point in time they were placeholders for me so I wouldn't have to confuse myself with the placements. I did, after this point, do some slight edits to Kuroyukihime, mainly because of her stance. As you see here, she does seem to be standing at an odd angle, which sort of made her look pregnant. Whoopsy! So I adjusted how she was standing somewhat so she no longer looked like she had a horrible spine defect. Weirdly, it was easier to see that mistake at the actual line art point than the initial sketch, though it was easier to correct thanks to working on layers and not having to completely erase something to correct it. With that done, I could work on the final piece itself.

I'll eventually be putting the true finished piece on Deviant Art, but for now I do have my photograph of the finished thing that I used as a 'are you happy with this' picture for the client before the finished product made its way into its new owners hands:

As you can see, no more accidentally pregnant Kuroyukihime. lol. Actually, doing her side of the picture was pretty fun, especially experimenting with the background/foreground effects. If nothing else, it's certainly good practice if I ever get around to doing a comic or image based around some kind of computer. Plus it was just fun looking at lighting effects. On the other hand, the lighting effects for the male's side was a little more difficult. Not only was his hair colouring diferent from Kirito's, but getting the light streaks in the background to not just look like I had no idea what I was ddoing rather than them meant to look so fragmented was a bit more difficult and needed a few tries to get right. I wasn't entirely happy with them, but the client was happy. In the end, since lighting effects are still a little newer to me in comparison to other effects, I count it as a win.

Is there room for improvement? Well, yes, of course. There always is! But all in all I was fairly pleased with the image and I had tons of fun with it. Not to mention that my client loved it too, so I think that it went pretty well! Certainly well enough that they asked me for a second commission to be a present for their daughter, too - but more on that one next time.

All in all, if nothing else it certainly helped teach me a lot in experimenting with colour and light, so I thought it was a valuable experience. I do hope you enjoyed this and will look forwards to the second part :)

Until next time!

Tara