Devilish Sketch!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Do you remember that devil boy I did? I showed a few concepts for the comic idea where the characters were concerned and messed around with an idea including possible colours for him. Well, this time I actually have a poster idea for the guy!

Long story short, my devil dude is just kinda fun to draw. lol

But either way, a sketch became a poster idea (though the background for it is still a little up for debate) and thought hey, why not show him? I do hope to get it into full colour at some point as well, after all. So, here's what I got!

It's meant to be a kind of shot of him laying down, though since it only shows his top half and I haven't really put any indication in the background that he actually is lying down, such as creases like on the cloth under the sketchpad, so I suppose it currently looks like he just flung his arms behind his head. lol.

Its possible I put in a few too many straps on the body, too, so on the digital version I may need to play with that a bit too, along with the straps themselves. The current straps don't look particually belt like, but likewise they dont quite have the 'click into place' thing I was going for. Still, the joys of digital means I can experiment without ruining the paper or the base drawing.

I may have mentioned that a few times in other blogs, but hey, bares repeating!

For those of you who work purely with pen, you have my upmost awe to pull off such works of art without messing up, let me tell you! Course, I might just be a bit too heavy handed as well. Still, you people have skill!

Still, if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to let me know! It's always good to see if there's room for improvement (believe me, there is always room for it! I'm always happy to learn new skills!)

Until next time!

Tara

Dreamwalker Sketch!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Well, its been a while since I actually drew anything for Dreamwalkers, honestly, especially where one of the characters is concerned. The character in this case being the first of the female members of SOS, Ashling. Now, Ashling has been mentioned before and even one of her concepts has been shown. However, I never did a full body of her and, as with all the characters in Dreamwalkers, they are a bit more realistic in the fact they dont constantly wear the same outfits either. The outfit she wore on the initial picture is not the one she's wearing when she first shows up in the comic itself.

Today I'm showing the initial outfit, or at least its concept, in a full body sketch (though it doesn't have any facial detail as that wasn't the parts I was focusing on in the sketch. I was mainly working out her clothing).

This start outfit has gone through several versions, simple as it may seem at first glance. The reason for this was because in Ashling's debut, there were several scenes which would have been awkward had she been in, say, a skirt. For example, fighting scenes or dramatic angles might have resulted in unnecessary panty shots. I'll say this now that I usually very much dislike 'fanservice' just for the sake of it in very distracting parts when a scene is meant to be somewhat serious. I had then tried it with shorts underneath to match the dark top that is under her shirt, but the design made her seem more like a younger teen than a mid to older one. That or it looked a bit odd when also adding those boots to the equation. In the end, I wanted to go for a more 'tomboy' feel, and while her clothes could be school uniform-ish, it wouldn't be too difficult to make it more of a simple style rather than a uniform coloured oddly.

With this design, it ended up feeling more practical for action scenes that occur soon after her appearence, and allows her to have a bit more freedom of movement without needing to worry about accidentally flashing someone. Its not to say she'll never wear a skirt or dress, but at least for her first appearence I'd rather her at least get a awesome first showing rather than coming across as 'token girl who's only there for fanservice'.

Believe me, though, she is a fairly fun character to draw in action scenes and I'm really looking forwards to getting those full sized, detailed moments in production phase. But even at the thumbnail phase, she's fun if only because she gets to be sassy even without me adding words. lol!

On another note, I'm now on some sketched idea phase for the badges that TanraStudios hopes to implement. Twelve ideas in total, six being in the usual style, six being in Chibi form. I'm honestly looking forwards to it. All I'm waiting on at the moment is the dimensions to work towards so I know just what room I have to work in. Should be lots of fun to see what I end up coming up with. I've got a few ideas already that I hope will work. In the meantime, though, I'll be having a bit of practice on line weight and some interesting expressions for the characters. After all, I'll want to be sure to get the best sides on their faces if that's the main part of the drawing, right?

Until next time!

Tara

Where Will You Be?

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Do you know when you dig through some of your old things in order to get better organised and get rid of old junk and you end up digging up some interesting things? I dont mean stuff like rubbish that should have been thrown away or old clothing that no longer fits in this case, but rather old work or pictures that you drew when you were younger. The kind that you look at and think 'Did I really do that?' or 'God, what was I thinking?!'

Well, as you can probebly guess from where I started from here, I was, indeed, looking through older stuff. Most of it was because I was looking for specific storyboarding for Dreamwalkers at the time, old notes, plans for later, that kind of thing. While doing so I actually found something I drew a while ago (during University) that was essentially one of those 'Where do you see yourself in ten years' kind of thing. I've done similar things at school, as I recall, although most of those were written things or just a single picture we would have to draw. This one we had 9 panels to essentially draw a 'day in the life story' depicting where you want to be in ten years.

It was only a pencil sketch and pretty rough, but it ended up being me getting ready, working on comics that are part of Tanra Studios and doing the 'handover' to Nadia, my partner in crime. (For those of you unsure, the story of Pandora in its comic form rather than the mini tales and hints given in the blogs that give additional info about the general world of the story, is done between Nadia and I, with the first volume currently being drawn by Nadia and will eventually come to me for volume two, then back to Nadia and so forth). It somewhat amused me, so I thought, hey, why not show it here? Who knows, maybe in ten years I can look back on it and see if what I hoped for is a reality at that point.

Please excuse it as it is a bit crumpled. Apparently old me needed to invest in a better folder. lol

Here's hoping that it isn't too faint. 

To be honest, doing a 'day in a life' comic strip wouldn't be a bad idea. Well, it wouldn't be daily as, honestly, I'm fairly boring, but I do sometimes hear fully stuff at the pub I work at (The amount of stupid questions or overheard conversations is rediculous) and my dog can be funny (And always cute). I also get to see my young niece fairly often too, so who knows, I might do some quick sketches. Maybe one day I can make a compilation of just silly real life scenarios. If nothing else, if I ever ran out of other things to do, I would end up with plenty of material for a short series :) I recall I contemplated doing a kids comic for a uni project once that was likely to be based around my dog Oscar and my late cat Toby (I miss the little fluff....), though in the end, due to page limits I ended up doing a short story who's main character ended up being one of the forerunners (and eventual sibling) for Rem in Dreamwalkers.

Still! More stuff for me in the future :) Still, it is curious to think of where we might be in the future, if we have dreams and/or ambitions we want to achieve, or if we have any plans at all. Where do you all think we'll be then? Well, whatever it is, we'll have to do our best. The future is only what you make of it, as they say (whoever 'they' are. lol)

Anyway, until next time!

Tara

Feeling Moogle-d!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

This week I've been mostly focusing on a bit of self-research about social media. Despite having a bit of an online presence, admittedly it could be a hell of a lot better. I've just never been overly sure of what to write down on witter or Facebook that might be interesting other than maybe boring people to death chatting about what silly antics my pet dog has got up to or what I happened to eat that day.

Really, I'm not that interesting to be honest. Or at least I'm not good at on the spot tweeting because I second guess myself, since my blogs might not be interesting if I already mentioned everything before (Assuming I dont bore everyone to death with my rambling. lol)

Still, I do want to improve myself, and, if I look into it properly, it might also help out TanraStudios as well. Yay!

But either way, I admit I've not done too much this week in terms of my actual art because of that beyond a few silly doodles for badge ideas that really are in no state to be shown just yet.

On the other hand, I did find a doodle I did a little while ago. I remember that I was chatting with some friends on Discord and for whatever reason, we ended up discussing me as a Moogle (As in the little creatures from Final Fantasy games). Deciding to go a step further, I ended up doing a quick five minute sketch on the subject and ended up with this:

I have a bit of a habit of wearing things like hoodies and stuff, so I ended up just drawing the Moogle in the type of clothes I might wear, making its head 'fur' resemble my usual hairstyle (My hair is usually just pulled back like that because it really is a pain to deal with or takes hours to deal with. I honestly would rather be doing anything else than tame my hair. lol) and, if only to drive the point home in the sketch, I wrote the initials of my penname (Chosha Kurenai) on the ball on its head.

For a sketch that barely took a few minutes, I thought it came out pretty good. I might have to do a much more clean version at some point. lol. 

Admittedly, I've never really attempted to draw myself as an animal or something before, even if the Luphin is my mascot. Luphin, after all, is not me. But it is kind of interesting to think about what features you have that you can still transfer over to a non-human and have it still, if only slightly, resemble yourself. 

Of course, I doubt that, if I was an animal, I'd be a Moodle. I doubt I'd be one of my favourite animals either (Fox or Dragon, the latter if one is leaning into mythology). I'd probebly end up as a Sloth. Tara the sloth, what do you think? Might have to try drawing myself as animals at some point. Could be funny! Or a bit too literal? Who knows?

Until next time!

Tara

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