Reflection #32 – July 20

I think July now is my most anticipated month of the year. And I say so because it now has been two times, it worked its wonders for me.

While it’s been rather rough on my health (I had some serious allergy attacks and am still sniffing from it), July has been determined by Art Fight. Initially I thought I would spend like half of the month with it and the rest with my personal projects but it was so valuable and fun for me that I went through with it, now I can safely say that I’m finished for this month.

So I went from project to project in rapid succession, taking from 2 to 5 days max. Sketching multiple poses, refining them, colouring, rendering, polishing until I found a habit in doing so. It helped me a lot to have determined a fixed procedure on how to approach these figure drawings so I rarely had to figure out how my next step would look like. It was also very good to have a set of characters to choose from, so I had as most freedom as you can have with these projects.

Artworks

Night Raiser – Cornered [AF]

Starting the event off, I chose a character I had my eyes on for a while. Her expressive posture, the simple design and horn- and mask elements made this an exciting one to try out.

Here, I developed my rendering technique to be more efficient and it’s all about the small decisions. I didn’t stretch myself far out of the window here and the way how to render hair needs some attentive studying on my end.

Still, this was only the beginning of my experimentations and refinements I’d be doing this July.

StarEater – Liquid Thoughts [AF]

Here I attempted a very new approach. I wanted a sketch entirely based of a silhouette. The result was… rather uneasy to manage. It did turn out nice in the end but I’d say the process was rather uncomfortable. I like to have the guideline of a sketch overneath to not leave it all to shapes.

At least I think I picked the right model for this attempt, as some dark lines would only distract from the flowiness of the colour hues in those shapes.

I originally wanted this to be a full body painting but that would have been way too complicated and time consuming. So it’s good to think into it and follow your guts.

Shizame – Seal Rider [Gift]

This was the painting approach all over again. I did start with a sketch this time and stuck to it more detached than ever before. The thing is, the sketch was way too unrefined. I had to choose what details would be where on the painting process and many structures looked off from the get go and had to be carefully painted over. Additionally, I refused to use an abundance of layers to help me with so I had to overuse the selection tool to keep my planes apart. The highlight of this whole thing turned out to be the background. I think that’s the only real way I’d develop my painting techniques and then apply. But of course I’m against clashing styles; I can’t have a beautiful lineless background and a lined figure at the same time so how to tackle this problem? Well I’ll come to that soon but first…

[Animated] Constance – Fish Walk [AF]

My first ever finished animated project. This was… very difficult and easily the most time consuming of the bunch. I remember I started the day and ended it with this project, and all over again. It was only 5 days of work but those 5 days were filled to the brim with work. The most difficult thing was to bring the motion across and have it looped in the end. The legs had to be timed, bent in believable fashion and integrated into the movement of the body. It resulted in a constant back and forth, rewatching, changing, rewatching and a lot of those changes resulted in a lot more work. In the end, I learned a lot about walking cycles though and how they are better approached (not frame by frame mind you) and that I’ll be much more happy with something else for now.

Leander J. Kamau – Dance Off [AF]

As previously mentioned, I had to find a way to make my drawings lineless without having to sacrifice my security. This here is the result of my attempt. And while my sketch could have been more refined in some places, this method worked out very well. I basically just extend my regular method with merging my figure group and paint over the lines afterwards. It is a little time consuming but very simple to do and it gives me much more control over the values and colours I actually want the piece to have.

So yes, this is gonna be a very important step for my future illustrations.

All in all, I have finished 9 projects, more than doubling the amount of last year although I have made one less scenic background piece. Still, a very enriching experience and I’ll see into doing it next year once more, trying to push my productivity and my skillset to their limit even more.

Upcoming stuff & preplanning

What’s up next are my personal projects I have been holding up. Currently I’m working on some designs that will contribute to a new character. I’m very excited about her and I think she’ll make a nice contribution to my roster and hopefully help tying things together a little.

There’s also another character I thought about drawing and designing. It’s an old fantasy I had as my 14 y.o self but I haven’t thought about making an actual character out of him until a few days ago.

In the meantime, I’ll start refining The storyboard. I don’t think I can finish it but at least working more on it can help me expand its story some more.

Also, I still have a promise to fulfill, and that might result in some more designing exercise.

So lots of things have to be taken care of, I’ll see into making it worth your while…

In that regard, see you next month!

~Souvillaine