So i began sketching. I knew i wanted was flowy things. Flowy hair, a lot of overlaps in the hair, and a general soft image that Eleanor normally emits. And within no time, i ended up with this. It went so well, i decided i would just put in all my effort into making it look good! I decided that to have more freedom in editing and adding finishes, i would work in layers. So i exported them out of Pencil2D and properly painted and edited them in Paint Tool Sai and Photoshop. This proved to be too time consuming, especially when exporting, so this is probably the last time i will attempt this method. Nevertheless, the results proved to be good, so i dont regret going through this route. There were periods of time where i was swamped with work and didn't have any time to touch this project! But finally within this week, i manged to get it done and i'm so happy with the results :) Even though the whole process was time consuming, i did find many ways to get things done more efficiently. Hopefully i'll be able to put these into practice in the future!
Enjoy~
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So recently, i had the time to warm up by sketching some characters from a new anime i've been watching. Houseki no kuni is a 3D anime about gemstones that fight against the enemy called the Lunarians. I really enjoyed this show and thought it was perfect for a warm up. I decided to sketch Diamond, but it turned out really nicely, so i decided to complete it. Here's the progress. As you can see, i had some problems with painting the hair initially because i wanted to replicate the hair colours from the anime, but at the same time, i wanted to give it a very reflective look that a normal diamond has. I had a lot of problems with trying to achieve that look by eyeballing colours from the screenshot because i couldn't get the reflective look i wanted.
So i went to search for images of diamonds. Most were diamonds with grey or blue shadows. Even tutorials teaching you how to paint gems used blue as a base. So i decided to do likewise, but used colours from her hair (green, pink and yellow) to make into diamonds and highlights. It turned out pretty good because it made it look very reflective like a diamond, but after highlighting all the diamonds, the colours were cancelled out and i was left with blue again. Still, i thought it was nice, so i kept it. I did try to make certain parts yellow and others green, but it ended up making the colours very dirty so i scrapped that. I also had some problems with layering geometric shapes on her head to make it look even more reflective. In the end, i just selected geometric shapes and shaded them with white while the layer was on luminosity. By layering them on with different opacity, i could make her hair look very reflective. Overall, this was a very good exercise and i enjoyed painting Dia a lot. Maybe in the future, i may be able to paint Bort and Rutie as well~ So just a quick update! During free time here and there, I've been sketching an old character, Qiu Yu! She's a character I created for the Valiant Force Contest last year! Unfortunately, i did not have enough time to finish painting her, which is a shame because i really like her design! So since i had time to sketch, i decided to redraw her! The right side was the old drawing and the left side was the redraw! It was only a sketch but i thought it turned out a lot nicer than last year's one! The pose is a lot less forced, the cloth flows naturally, and i think the colours match a little better. All in all, i think i improved over the past year! So i'll definitely continue to update my skills in order to produce better and higher quality artwork. I also sketched a group photo for an art club on instagram! It's a magical art club and the charcters in the drawing are actually magicians. Since Qiu Yu too has magical powers, i thought it'd be fitting to draw them together! Also, since the mid autumn festival is drawing closer, i thought it'd be apt to make them carry lanterns for this piece. Enjoy!
Although this was supposed to be a warm up sketch, it turned out to be a fruitful exercise and experiment for colouring technique. Quite glad i cleaned this sketch up~ Would definitely do this again.
So for Advance Drawing, we're working on making hybrid animal. I started off with sketching out some ideas for the hybrid. There were a few i really liked. Namely the Nautilus+Jellyfish, Owl+Lion, and the Giraffe+Ostrich
My lecturer suggested I do the Giraffe+Ostrich one since it looked more seamless. So I chose that. For this week, i'll be working on one of my Drawing class' assignment, which is to gender-bend any game/ cartoon/ animated character, and digitally paint it. It took me a long time to figure out who i wanted to gender-bend. Initially, I wanted to gender-bend some characters from the manga, Deadman Wonderland, namely Senji (Crow) or Nagi (Owl). However, i couldn't find a good pose, so i passed on them. I then started going through all my favourite cartoons and animes, and found Kim Possible. After looking through some of the fan art, i stumbled onto some really nice Shego Fan art, which really made me want to create me own. She's super sarcastic, yet very skilled in fighting. I really liked her as a character. I was rather reluctant to choose a female character to gender-bend because i'm more weak in drawing males than i am to females, but i realized it could be a really good way to improve the way i drew guys, so i went for it. I wanted a cool fighting pose of her jumping towards the camera, so i managed to find a sketch of a jumping Rollerblade artist, and tweaked the pose slightly to make it seem like an offensive pose. I had a bit of trouble with his hair, mainly because in the animated series, when Shego fights, her fringe would not move while the back of her hair would. Because of this, i wasnt sure whether to make her fringe fly up like normal hair would, or just keep it as close to the animated series. After asking a few people about their opinions, i decided to leave it and allow it to fall naturally. So i played around with the colours, lighting and painting, and in the end i got this.
Doing a male character was definitely more challenging than female characters because certain features are more prominent in male than in females. It was difficult to find the right balance, and i think i made him look too feminine, but it's a good improvement from any of my male character drawings, so it was a good exercise to complete. This week, tried doing different colour schemes for Qiu Yu. It was really difficult to find the right balance of colours and shades, as well of cool and warm colours. I also changed some parts of her design as i thought it would suit her better. I changed her shots to have a more water theme, her belt ornaments as well as design, and also her hair, since i felt like it flowed better when it was straight. It seemed more suitable for a autumn based character. In the end, i chose no. 5 as i felt she fit Autumn Rain the best. I was given feedback that her face looked really solemn and it wasn't very ladylike/ friendly (although this was kind of the feel i was going for when i created her). So i tried to experiment with making her look a bit more feminine with more eyeliner and bigger eyes in general, however, it just made her look really perky and spirited, which wasn't the feel i was going for. So i settled in between my original design, and the design i came up with in the sketch. She looked less cold, but also a bit more feminine. I went on to do the sketch, lineart, as well as blocked in the colours for her.
The due date for the valiant forces contest is actually this Sunday. However, I do have FYP to focus on since we have a CA due on Monday. Hence, i won't be able to finish this in time for the contest, but i'll definitely finish it sometime over the holidays, since i find Qiu Yu quite fun to draw and colour. Looking forward to finish colouring her! As for the following few entries for the rest of the month, I'll either be posting Art from my Drawing module that requires us to create hybrid creatures or produce artwork, or be posting Work In Progress pictures/ videos of my Final Year Project. I've been thinking about names for my character, and since her look is heavily influenced by the Chinese, i decided to give her a Chinese name. Although previously, i gave her colours such as blue, that leaned more towards the cool side, my friends and I came up with a name for her. Originally, i was thinking something along the words of Yu/雨 (rain). My friend made a comment that Yu could mean rain, or jade. We scrolled through the list of names and found Qiu/秋 (Autumn), and i though it was perfect. So it was decided that her name be Qiu Yu - 秋雨 (Autumn Rain) So this week, i'll be exploring accessories that my character can use. Since she is a Mystic, her weapon would be a staff, with a large orb orb like gem on the top. I also wanted to add an emblem that represents Autumn, so i played around with the ideas of maple leaves or the moon (Mid-Autumn Festival). After playing around with it, I decided to use these ideas to create bottles to contain different kinds of water from different parts of the world. For example, water from the dead sea deals extra damage when the other party has been injured with cutting weapons by adding salt to their wounds. I also refined some of the clothes, like making the edges rounder, and giving them more detail. I imagined Qiu Yu to be a very laid-back person, very similar to RWBY's Blake Belladonna. But i wanted to add a twist that she's warm and smiles a lot. I wanted a very poise look, but i think the eyes made her look more bubbly instead of cool and warm, so i have to change that. But i did part of the lineart as well. Next time, i'll be looking at the colour scheme, and doing the final illustration.
Recently, a lecturer posted in a Facebook group about Valiant Force Hero Design Competition. The idea is to create a character that would suit their game world, and be creative about it. It looked pretty interesting, and I thought it was a good way to experiment ideas for character design and illustration. It's due 31 July, so let's get to work! The world that the Valiant Force game takes place leans more towards the fantasy-medieval era. So i went with more of that look, and made a mood board for it. I wanted to do a Mystic design since I've always been fascinated by Mages and I've always wanted to create one. I also know i wanted more of a ocean based design, with maybe an oriental look. So i went to search for some designs that other people had made. I realized a lot of the designs reveals more skin, as well as giving a lot of details to clothes and accessories. So i went to try out different designs that showed more legs, and more skin in other areas since I was a bit more conservative about drawing midriffs. The first design was inspired by a Miko (a shrine maiden). I thought it was rather fitting since shrine maidens were mostly trained to perform tasks such as sacred cleansing and sacred Kagura dance. Having her be a mage would be really suitable. I thought of this idea when i was watching this dance called Gokuraku Jodo by GARNiDELiA, which has a beat that's very modern, yet incorporates very traditional sounding instruments. The second was inspired by the manhwa, Girls of the Wild's. The manga revolves around students learning various fighting styles from kick-boxing to Taekwondo. Lee Na, is one of the Wild's Guards, who prevents fights from happening between outsiders and the school's students. The costume was heavily inspired by her uniform, as well as her character. The third one was inspired by general Chinese cheongsams. Some of the inspiration came from Love Live and RWBY's Weiss, mainly for the top half of the dress. The cardigan looking cloth around her arms were inspired by Mola Mola bone structures. The dorsal fins looked looked a lot like sleeves, while the tail looked like it could be the back of the cardigan. Thus i thought of using them in this design. Since some cheongsams were long, i decided to make her have a shorter dress, and a sheer train to keep things looking interesting, and regal looking. In the end, I felt like the Chinese looking one looked the best, so i went with that design. In the following week, i'll be experimenting with accessories, and then start with the final illustration.
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