A quick redesign on Feet's "Gentleman Thief" mode. Less gentleman, more urchin in this incarnation.

I'm planning on starting something up pretty soon. I won't give any details just now, but today's sketch is a big clue.

Character design. I've been doing mostly fanart on the blog lately, but I'm working on a project that requires some character design so that's what's getting posted today.

This is a preliminary design of Feet (not her real name), the main character from Anything Under the Sky. We're planning to have her in multiple outfits, one of which is her disguise as a Gentleman Thief.

So as a follow up to my Raven Variation before, I'm doing a variation on Squirrel Girl as she might appear if she were to join the cast of X-Men Evolution. In this hypothetical situation, she would be a member of the X-Men, I assume, since I don't recall the Great Lakes Whatever existing in that universe.

I tried to give her a suit with the "colors on shiny black" look of that show, while still paying homage to her old costume.

I'll probably do one of Squirrel Girl in her civvies next. Then I'll have to figure out my next redesign. I wonder if I can think of one that isn't a comic-to-cartoon situation?

I was thinking about, as a character design exercise, trying to do up some variations on character design seen in professional shows.

In today's case, I'm starting small--a minor variation on Raven from Teen Titans. I tried to recreate in Murakami's style Raven from the DCU Teen Titans comics. Mostly because I saw a picture of her on the web and thought her hair was freakin' adorable. So I figured I'd have a go at that, and that made me think that there were other, similar drawings I could do later in the same sort of mindset.

For example, next I'm thinking of trying to draw Squirrel Girl in the style of X-Men Evolution. We'll see if I get anywhere on that.

So as usual, I've done my mom up a picture for Mother's Day. This time, it's a picture of Amanda (née Janet) Carter of Ballad. It didn't start out that way....it didn't really start out as anything. I sort of let my pencil (or rather, stylus) do what it wanted, and what came out was a girl who looked a bit like Amanda, only with a design I liked a lot more than her old one.

Got some more use out of my Magic Circles, too. That's always fun.

I renamed Amanda because her two friends, Hollyanne and Magdalene, are named for women in songs by Boston. But "Janet" was not. So I decided to take the motif further.

I suppose as long as I'm posting, I'll mention that I've gotten a job recently. I'm doing some tech work for mom's firm. In theory. Mostly it's been organization of tech-related stuff so far, but I don't really mind that. It needs to be done, and something about doing it for someone else (and for pay, I suppose) makes organizing computing paraphernalia much less torturous an activity than it would be at home.

Today I'm adding my favorites among the drawings I've done in my figure drawing class over the semester. When I was talking about my upcoming critique, a friend said he wanted to see the pictures, so I figured "why not?" Anyway, these things are way too big for my tiny scanner, so I've had to use a digital camera....you'll have to forgive the crummy lighting and resolution. I did not post directly here, because this blog is mostly used for my illustration/cartoon-y drawings, plus I'm not one hundred percent sure what Dreamhost's ToS says about artistic nudes. So instead I've got links for anyone who cares to see them. Except for the picture of Tiffany, a girl from class that I'm told is the best of the drawings I've done, all of them are nudes. So fair warning--if you don't want to see naughty bits, don't click the other links. None of them is a very naughty drawing, though.

• Drawing Class - Twisty
• Drawing Class - Resting
• Drawing Class - Pouty
• Drawing Class - Tiffany
• Drawing Class - Curled Over
• Drawing Class - Kanji Tattoo
• Drawing Class - Pensive
• Drawing Class - Thinker Pose
• Drawing Class - Finished Yet?

I never do this, but I'm participating in one fo those Intertube Memes that break out every now and again because it seemed fun. The meme in question is the Draw Supergirl meme started by Dean Trippe. I'm coming to it a bit late, but it still seems to be going strong so I figured "What the heck?"

Of course, the five people who follow my blog probably already know that I prefer Magical Girls to superheroes, so I tried to add a bit of mahoushoujo goodness to the mix. It didn't turn out very magical, instead looking more like a more conservative version of her regular (at least, regular for the DCAU, my preferred version of most DC characters) costume with a frillier skirt, knee socks, and mary janes. I still like my version, though.

I really hope to actually get a lot done this week. As the title suggests, Spring Break starts tomorrow (or depending how you look at it, it started Friday afternoon), and I'm using it as an excuse to advance some of my personal projects.

Unless I end up spending all my time playing Wii. Which is a very real danger. Damn you, Nintendo, keeping me entertained and distracted!

I think the hardest part of learning art isn't the learning of techniques, it's the unlearning of habits. Especially since a lot of them were taught to help in learning the craft.

Terry Pratchett presented the concept in Science of Discworld of "Lies to Children." That is to say, lies that aren't told to mislead, but to help someone who isn't ready for the full truth to understand part of it. Things like "Gravity is when weighty things pull other things to them" instead of that "truth" malarky about mass causing spacetime to warp. Lies to Children are good, because they help children to get closer to understanding something even though they're not really true.

Anyway, here I'm talking about Lies to Children as they apply to art. The biggest problem with these sorts of Lies to Children is that they seem harder to unlearn, at least for me. The one I'm currently trying to unlearn is about telling the truth with lines.

I'm more and more under the impression that the trick to making really memorable, really good looking illustrations is learning how to lie impressively with your pencil. And I don't mean getting it wrong, because that's clearly still a bad thing. I mean learning to take what you've got right, and intentionally change it for effect. The result being exagerrated bodies and faces that stand out in people's memories....but these lies go against all the stuff I've learned about capturing certain situations.

Of course I realize that I still need to get better at capturing the truth, too. That's what Life Drawing classes are for, though. In my illustrations (i.e. the stuff that shows up here) I think I'm going to try to lie more.

Today's picture is of Ty Lee from Avatar, who you've seen me draw before if you've been following my work. I like her, but the more I draw her the less I like her outfit. I hope Season 3 sees her in something different. I've heard a rumor that Season 3 might start in March....I'm not getting my hopes up yet because I'd expect to see commercials on Nick by now if that were true, but a boy can dream!

So Peist, lead supporting character of Ballad, is a fairly powerful fairy. I decided to give him a full-on fairy form in addition to the more humanoid form he spends much of his time in.

I don't know if I've quite got it yet, but I'm getting closer.

Nuclear War? Pfft. I'll take nuclear war any day over the terror that is....THE CATBEAR!

Anyway, I'm working on a BESM 3e campaign set in the Avatar universe, mostly the Spirit World, and while trying to come up with a suitable Spirit-World villain (along the lines of Koh the Face Stealer or that owl guy), had an inspiration: combine the two most evil creatures in existence. Thus, Catbear.

For this picture, I decided to show Aang encountering the Catbear, and the entirely natural reaction he would have to it. He's braver than me--I'd be wetting myself in his situation.

So I'm back in Drawing classes again, which means models, models, models. It's good, though....it's a big help on anatomy, and even on folds at the moment since the heating's been broken since the beginning of the year, so the models have been posing partially-and-fully-clothed. Getting back into the groove helps out my illustrations, too. I think I'm starting to figure out something about composing a figure as a whole rather than just posing the parts separately that really helps.

Which brings us to today's sketch. I started off just trying to draw with wide, sweeping lines to compose this one before I began turning it into a character, and I think that worked out quite well. Actually, I didn't even know who I was drawing until I was nearly done.

Okay, Ballad progress has hit a major snag.

I've had trouble finishing a particular scene in the script, and after reading through the archives of Jane Espenson's excellent blog about writing....which while aimed specifically at television, applies to a lot of different media.

Anyway, I've decided that I basically have to throw out most of what I've got now and start over from the beginning. The fact of the matter is, I wasn't sufficiently prepared before starting this thing, so this was probably inevitable. Now from my perspective, this isn't a postponement (since my workload isn't really going to change), but to anyone who would be reading it (all three of you who read my blog!), it'll probably be at least late February before the first issue is up.

And that's the state of Ballad. There are a few other things that have been on my mind lately relating to my creative projects, and I'll run through them really quickly now. Very few of you will care about the following bits, so I don't recommend reading unless you really care about my projects.

 

Firstly, I'm thinking of scrapping my veteren setting for stories, New Haven, in favor of the Kaguya setting I've used in my last few projects. At this point, there's really only one story still set on New Haven, and it could easily be adapted to Kaguya. New Haven has been my go-to setting since middle school, but the problem is that in a lot of ways, it shows. Taken as a whole, it looks like something a teenaged fan of fantasy would've come up with. Kaguya, at least, feels more like something a twenty-something would've come up with, and hopefully it's slightly more....actualized. This would not affect the Annwyn, alternate Earth, or Quantum Web settings.

I'm thinking of modernizing the Kaguya setting, at least a bit. "Vaguely medieval" fantasy is....I won't say that it's tapped out, but it is heavily saturated. Urban Fantasy is at least a little less so.

I've been thinking a bit about Taret Blade's story lately, and the nature of the Teyah. They're evolving into something between gypsies, Irish Travellers, and American colonial-period Native American cultures. I think I'm going to explore that path a little more. I introduced the Teyah as a subgroup of masterful craftsmen and users of rune magic, and that will continue to be one of their defining traits, though they will no longer be genetically gifted at it so much as practicing traditions that lend themselves well to the life of an artisan.

I'm afraid this blog post sounds way too wordy, maybe even more than I usually do. Sorry for that. Anyway, brain dumped: SAVE AND COMPILE.

Apparently the validation image for comments has been wonking out lately because I forgot to change the base directory when I implemented the new layout. D'oh. Should be working now. Good thing Ashley told me about it or I wouldn't have noticed it.

I've done some last minute character redesign for Peist. I've based him quite a bit more on David Bowie this time around.

I'm trying to vary up head shapes between different characters, because I'd kind of like to be able to change the characters' clothes and hair during the course of Ballad and still have them be recognizable.

Okay, the new layout is go. I stayed up late to make the top image, and I'm posting the linework for it here.

The new Layout is fully ready to host Ballad when the comic goes up at the end of the month. The backbone isn't quite ready yet, but the layout's the hardest part anyway.

No progress on the script I'm afraid. But the top image is technically a Ballad-related image, since it's Janet and Peist in a scene right out of the script I'm working on.

I've made a bit of progress on the script for Ballad, but not as much as I had hoped. I didn't get around to work on any Ballad art today, but I did get to do a sketchbook entry.

I've been working on a new layout for Shining Beam for when Ballad goes up, so that took up a good part of my time today. Maybe I'll make a bit more progress tomorrow, though.

I don't make New Years resolutions, unless you count "stay the course." I'm already pretty great, so why would I want to change myself? Okay, really it's just because they're silly, but whatever.

But the New Year is a time of change, after all, and new beginnings. So I'm announcing the beginning of a new project. I'm starting to work on a comic again. This time around, it's going to be Ballad, which is more of a dramatic adventure story than a comedy. Which is not to say that I intend to make it heavy and dreary and lacking in humor, just that humor's not going to be the focus. Like an Aaron Sorkin thing, although I can't lay claim to writing talent like that.

So anyway, I'll be releasing batches of pages at a time. I haven't finalized my schedule yet (I need to figure out how long it takes me to finish a chapter first), but I'm shooting for monthly updates of something comparable to a chapter of serialized manga. Probably between 20 and 40 pages, give or take.

Hopefully this will fare better than my last one. I'll probably be updating the site's layout soon, if only the front page, to easily highlight the comic, but hopefully still have my sketchbook/blog on the front page.

As of right now, I have written the script for about five of the pages, which means the script is about 1/5th done. I've got a treatment up and know where the story's going, it's just a matter of writing things down and figuring out how to tell the story visually (since comic book scripts include descriptions of the action as well as the number of panels in each page) in a fair amount of detail. I might be done with the script for Chapter 1 tomorrow, or maybe Wednesday. I might start working on drawings before I finish the script, though.

Come to think of it, maybe I should have some sort of progress indicator on the front page, too. Though those things are pretty unreliable.

I was looking at some of Bleedman's work, and trying to figure out what it is about his work that makes it pop. His clean, sure hand is a big part of it, but I think the majority of it comes from the way he constructs the poses with lots of implied motion and long, uninterrupted lines. When I sketched this, I was trying to capture some of that....the finished version didn't show as much of that as I had hoped it would.