Value Proposition

UGH. I hate when I forget to change the color settings on Illustrator. It so totally doesn't match up with what gets saved as a JPG. I HATE YOU ILLUSTRATOR. HATE. YOU. The colors are so much more vivid on the file itself. >.>

My Value Prop cover page. I've been working on this since One oclock this afternoon. So... 4 consecutive hours. And I drew the thumbnails for it last night at around One am. haha. WOW. Kismit.

I've been seriously considering (as of last night that is) doing a web-novel version of TSU. The only reason I haven't done the comic is because I cant get the style down. Its a very specific style I have in mind. Crime-Noir. And I cant seem to get what the characters look like. So I think I'll just start writing it and updating it to a web-blog-novel thing instead. With illustrations, of course. What do you think?

Pen Sketches!

I usually say something along the lines of "I like to see how well I know a character by drawing them in ink" but in this case I just didn't have a pencil. And had... FEELINGS.

The return of the "baconator." Except (if you can manage to read my handwriting) its no longer going to be the baconator. Or bacon. Just a rectangular character with BIG EYES. Who may or may not remain wearing that cape. The right side of the drawing was all my feelings in tonights group meeting. It started with the guy above the NO, then became the NO (and stayed there for some time) then became the begrudging acceptance, then slightly confused guy.

I think the expression on this version is better than the one on the page

I have no Idea what I'm doing

I forgot to add this. Probably because I'm still not-working on it. :\

I was just footsying around on Illustrator. I really have no idea what's going on in my own mind... Besides Run Lola Run that is.

Early morning workshop

Thursday and Friday (and Sat. and Sun) I get to sleep in late. Usually at least. But today we had a guest speaker! YAY! And I went to Kim's "Rapid Prototyping" class. SUPER exciting. We were told to workshop a platform game, with the constraints as made up by the class. Our hero was to be "bacon" our villains "hamburgers," "utensils," and "bugs," and our "collectables" to be "oil."

After our first iteration world building exercise, we went on to doing a more refined, aesthetic based shot. Or, well, I did. Rafa drew geckos.

The start of the level. Our aesthetics were to be
"rustic" "earth tones" and "Don Bluth"

I dont think I *quite* got the Don Bluth style yet...

a weeks' worth of sketches

I'm totally out of sketchbook paper guys. Like, 3 sketchbooks POOF! GONE! Just... so much stress. SO MUCH STRESS. I laughed tonight till I was gasping for air. Though I might have been a bit tipsy.

you're going to want to click this too

We're done with Visual Story Project 2!!! WOOO!!! And I think it rocked socks. Even if there were some... eheh... troubleshooting problems. NEXT UP: HTML in one weekend! Ready? SET? NOGO!

I actually have more sketches from this week (from this morning) but I fell asleep while drawing them. Well, not drawing them. I was scratching the pencil across the paper while my face was pressed to it and wondering how I was going to do ANYTHING productive at all because I couldn't keep my eyes open.

Yeah, it was that kinda morning.

notes galore!

hey you can click on this one!

Notes today. Apparently, as my fellow classmates have informed me, I am very entertaining to sit behind. I worry the teachers might begin to notice the class looking at my computer rather than them lecturing... 

My Mantra

I know I tend to get critical of myself (after all, I am my own worst critic!) and complain about the nit-picky things I dont like with my art... but I just wanted to share my mantra. Its something I forget to tell people, so I think they walk away thinking I'm one of those "woe is me I'm a bad artist but please look at my art and re-affirm my self esteem" artists. Not that I've ever heard that. I just, I worry I dont express myself well.

Anyway.

It's quite simple, really, but it goes like this: I am young. I have time to get better. I must get better. I will get better. I will always get better. I will never stop drawing (and in some cases, writing). Never. Stop. Drawing. I may not be there yet, but I'm getting there. I will get there.

So yeah. Thats about it. I mean it too, this stuff I tell myself when looking at other artists. You know, the really super good ones. The ones that are 18 or 19 or 30+ or 50+. I say, I may not be as good as them, I may not have their style, but I have my own style. And it may not be super great or anything, but it will be. One day.

So I may be critical of myself, but I do it so I can get better.

*and by "there" I mean the point when you look back on your art: a week, month, year, or years after drawing it and go "mmm. Not bad. Not bad at all." and stroke your magnificent invisible villain beard.

no joke, colored in MS PAINT and drawn in middle school.

did this tonight to show how far I've come

and just a colored sketch

If this is how far I've come, imagine how far I'll go.

Me Vs Color

... I wish I didn't have such troubles with color. I know, I really do, I should stick to the style I can do (as in: the boy sitting) but still, I branch out. I say, hey, I can color like other artists do.

You know what? I cant. Not right now. Not at my level. I just, I feel like I dont understand color.

I just keep going at it like a semi-blind person in a cave somewhere miles beneath the earth where the only light is coming in from a pinprick in the ceiling. UGH. COLOR. I swing wildly about and hope I hit something good. For the most part, its bat guano. But sometimes (with the help of Kuler - thanks Adobe!) I can get close (but not... not really there). I think its a mixture of color and painting techniques: I'm getting the techniques a lot quicker than I am the color. Just look at my gray scales! I think they're BALLIN. (to me, for me; maybe not to other more professional artists...) but COLOR – UGH.

... which doesn't work as an illustrator who needs to color their images... or a comic artist... UGH. COLOR.

this is me failing at complementary shadows

not necessarily failing, in this case, but its just not doing what I want it to.

and a close up. I really REALLY like the textures the color at the bottom of the jacket gives.

UGH. I just dont know man. BUT! I did discover a ballin pass-through (thats what those things are called, right? the drop down box with "normal, multiply, opacity, etc" right?) called "divide" and when you paint with greys and blacks on a white background does that wicked thing with the hair there. ITS SO WHITE!

Female Doctor Who

So, my facebook friends are fairly aware of an ongoing conversation about who we'd like to see play Doctor Who next. We are in general agreement that Tom Hiddleston should be the 12th, and that Idris Ebla should be the 13th - but a friend suggested that it would be interesting to for there to be a female Doctor Who. As, according to him, nowhere in the cannon does it say he has to be a white male. He just *happens* to be that. Then, kismitly, I stumbled upon this article: Helen Mirren As Doctor Who?

And I got really excited, because I finally had an image of what a Female Doctor Who could look like. Older (as in, over 30), bad-ass, and, in Helen Mirren's case, hellava curvy.

... and then I decided I'd prefer Tilda Swinton as the female Doctor Who, for reasons I cannot explain. I think she'd make a ballin' doctor but its not quite the statement it could be if Helen Mirren were the Doctor. Cause Helen Mirren is CURVY. Tilda Swinton has that androgynous look that I think is FAN-FRICKIN-TASTIC but... if there were to be a woman doctor, shouldn't at least the FIRST one be all curves? I dunno, I really dont. I'm super conflicted.

Anyway, mini-ramble aside: I spent the next two days drawing sketches and looking up reference photos for what I think the Tilda-Swinton Doctor would look like.

Work in progress. I want to color it.

Oh, yeah, and you're not mis-reading anything - I've already started beating away at a basic plot structure for a "mini-series"/ Sir Arthur Canon Doyle Sherlock Holmes styled story involving this not-doctor-who and her not-companion; in which our not-doctor calls herself The Master (which, I am totally aware, is a villain in Doctor Who). Once I'm done with the posters (2, I think, this one, and then one of The Doctor looking right at us) I'll work on her companion.

Some Not-Work and Thoughts

Instead of doing my work this morning (or - rather - in the middle of doing my work this morning) I got to doodling. Which isn't unusual. Some more VOR sketches and a profile view of someone who isn't me but probably, to other people, looks like me. (I dont think it looks like me at all - esp since its not a self/portrait / I've never done a self portrait of myself in profile view as that is rather difficult and requires a bit of mirror placement/setup.)

As for "thoughts" I have really one major thought I've been going over and over again in my head. I dont think I'll ramble on about it right now, but I'll definitely do it sometime soon. It deals with Fanfiction, Copyright law, and Ethics. You might be surprised with my stance. 

ONE MORE THING!

Did I mention Adeline in An Adventure Season 2? YES I DID <-- CLICK TO READ!!!

So... NaNoWriMo

RIGHT. right. So I'm behind. Not by a great deal, fortunately. It'll take a couple of days of writing more than 2500 words to catch up, but I'm not worried.

The problem is: I got two pages into "A Poppyseed Affair" before it all fell apart. Then I spent the very same night after giving up on APA to write 4 pages of "Ash in the Shadows." I wrote that till about 3 in the morning, so I wasn't very lucid at the time of writing. The next morning I was sure that what I wrote was a piece of crap (turns out, after some fine tuning, is actually a fun read AND manages to be fairly poetic at times) so I tossed that one as well.

I ended up writing 2 more pages of a personal project called "Mad Love" and 9 pages of yet another NaNoWriMo possible called "The Murder of Agatha Christie." Which winds up a sum total of 18 pages written in the last 7 days, none of which count towards my NaNoWriMo writing goal. So I guess what I'm trying to say is: I'm so far behind because I've been writing other things. Including a 2 page paper for Visual Story on the movie Tomb Raider. 

Plus I've been drawing. Oh god did I need to draw. Its like an addiction. Go to long without it and I start freaking out.

Instead I wound up deciding, on Monday, to write "The City of Wonder." (One guess as to what its about). So over the past 5 days I've written 18 pages. Not bad if I do say so myself. Yes, I did once write 30 pages in one night but that was over 3 different stories and only one turned out to be any where near half decent. 

ALSO: Listening to Two Steps From Hell while writing might be the best idea EVER. 

Class Notes

and yeah, that also says "poop" because I really messed up that perspective

That I now kinda feel guilty for. I couldn't help myself. Sometimes, when I get too into writing - like, writing non-stop instead of drawing, I just get that "eff it" urge and pick up my pencils or wacom tablet. Unfortunately for me, I'm out of sketchpad paper. Which isn't too surprising, I did buy this sketchpad at the start of the semester. But it is kinda sad because now I have nothing but my wacom tablet to draw on.

Not that I'm complaining. But you dont tend to get the same range of expression in photoshop as you can with 6B or 9B pencils.

Yes, that reads "Super Derpy Eyes". Cause those are. 

VOR

The Voice of Reason really needs his own comic/ book / story. He has one. I initially didn't know what to put him in, but eventually figured he could only function as a super-villain. Specifically, a super villain in a Paranormal Romance book. (Though he generally tends to genre jump between PR and generic Paranormal stories). But what I mean is, I should be drawing his comic/ book / story, right now.

Obviously, however, I need to be writing (for various reasons: one - NaNoWriMo and two - Adeline in an Adventure) so I'll put this off (again, as always). One day, VOR, one day.