Reflection #66 – August 23

Hellu again!

I’m writing this one as the first reflection on this stupid windows keyboard that’s so hard to type on. Egh but well, I’ve been having rather frustrating internet problems so I’m using this as as temporary solution.

Whew. Everything heated up this month, and I’m not just talking about the weather, which was drenching hot.

Probably the biggest change of pace for me was that on the very first day of this month, I got accepted to be dealing at this year’s Furvester, which well is my first time. Considering this was a mere impulse. I haven’t actually thought much about what merch to offer at the table, which pushed me in a bit of a panic… and I still am in it when I think about it. If I wanna enter my designs to the printing company of choice, I’ll have until the very beginning of November for my designs to be finished, cinsidering the tight schedule of September, and my usual horror-themed addiction of private projects… I’m sweating again. It will be a tough time but an experience I have been yearning to make.

Another oil barrel that has been thrown into my inner fire of chaos was the accumulation of several invoices to pay, including collage charges and accomodations for the upcoming EF, which left me in the minus on the very first day of the month, heheheeee!

To counter this, I instantly opened commissions and thankfully found two clients very quickly, in addition sold some stuff on ebay to – together – make up for the base expenses during my trip and stay to and from Hamburg to enjoy the convention without many financial worries.

I can say it was a hectic month, although it wouldn’t have been if I wasn’t so focused on spending so much time on Baldur’s Gate 3 <v< Aside from that, I did some trips with family at least, been to a classic car and camping van museum, visited further family, watched some theatre and been to a firework festival. I cannot complain!

Sadly, though the little time I had left couldn’t have been put into my animation project and considering how tight the deadline for my merch designs is, probably won’t be able to make much progress in the following two months.

Agh but that’s then and what metter what’s here now.

Let’s go through the first finished piece this month:

This was a project I had started in the later half of June when I was in the middle of producing that big piece with Zalumnee – of which I have been notified made it to the con book apparently, though the message was so vague, I’ll believe it when I see it, hehe ^v^ – anyway, it took so much time, that I wanted to work on something in the meantime to post here but I underestimated how much longer Zalumnee would take, hence I redirected my focus and left this here at the sketch phase.

Maybe a few words to how I got inspired to it. I’ve been doing daily sketches for animation exercises and was experimenting with differently shaped hyena heads, of which had this beautiful dreadlock hair shape and head tilt. I wondered what to do with it and wanted to explore how Zavi would look like if she stayed on her homeplanet and how that would develop her charcter and social standing. It turned out much different from how I’m used to her. First; very limited clothing. eve Then some actual accessoires which she wouldn’t have worn if not for cultural pride. And a body even buffer than before. Shortly, I had much fun drawing this version of her. Rendering was not much of a big challenge either: Coming straight out of ArtFight, the whole process was practically in my muscle memory. The only difficulty was to stick to a background, environment and therefore colour scheme. Going with blue sky against the orange tones of her body was much too obvious and I have hence grown more accustomed to harmonic colour balances in the same hue range. There was a lot of experimenting involved until I settled with a cave-entrance as backdrop. First struggling greatly with some sort of fire key light but scrapping it as the values were much too extreme. So this much calmer and soothing setting and tone made the final version. And I am happy with it! Not just with the looks of my favourite character… <v<

The first commission I finished was actually getting to draw a friend’s character for the first time. The initial very limited prop was: This character in her mechanic place looking exhausted. There was much room for interpretation, so I figured: this is a badass lady, so she should work on heavy machinery. That – resting on a freakishly long gun barrell – idea came quickly luckily and the decision to implement a mech or ship design was a culmination of the client paying too much for a prop and too little for a fully fleshed out scene – so a very detailed prop it turned out then.

Again, a challenge was to balance the background with the front. My usual approach to lighting is: fill the figure with shadow and erase shapes that make out an interesting light source. But here they looked so awful, no matter what I did (back then this piece had a rather dark background). Went through plenty of iterations, some already with secondary and rim lights but nothing stuck with me, until I browsed for some 50s poster design and tried – again – to go with a much more smooth and fully illuminated rendering with plain background. And it worked wonders. The focus finally stood on the main character, the green stands out beautifully, the yellows don’t stand out so much and the background harmonizes with the props. All in all a good piece, which I am happy so many reacted so positively about the cockpit design even though I so rarely do sci-fi stuff, much less designs. Oddly enough that shape was purely improvised. I just hope I’ll be able to pull that off in the future as well ^v^

The final piece this month was finished just in time today – in a mixed feeling whether to make it in time or not – hehe, it is astounding how much an image can improve in the final couple of hours. Because even two days ago, I couldn’t have told you if I could make it or not. It’s a lot on finding the right direction for a render, then all the details practically make themselves.

The biggest challenge I feared was going to be the huge background. Cathedrals are very complex on their own and even finding the right angle as backdrop for the characters?

Luckily, nowadays, there are countless 3D models you can use as reference, which I did here. After that it was an easy step-by-step from a backgroundless fight scene to a cathedral interior with dark, moody lighting. Although I admit, at times I really sat there, not knowing what to do next. Something I feel more often with these increasing amounts of complicated sceneries 😛

Hmmm apart from that I don’t really know what to talk about with this one. I am very happy how it turned out, especially with the very glowing flames protruding from the axe-blades. Haven’t done fire in a while, who would’ve known it can be so much fun to throa at a scene :3

Okay, last call, it’s getting late here now and I want to relax a bit.

Upcoming things:

Eurofurence, obviously. It creeped in on my slowly but now that it’s here, I’m so happy I get some sort of vacation. Even better that I can enjoy it with friends and a community. I’m planning to do basically the same as last year: attending panels, taking photos of fursuiters and buying stuff at the dealer’s den – with the additional feature of being a fursuit helper for my buddy and even more time to enjoy the con and city surroudning it.

Not even two weeks after it, I’ll also visit family in Italy with my mom, EVEN MORE VACATION! and then will have to very quickly depart and move back to my uni place. It will be a very eventful month… again.

In the emantime, I’ll see that merch designs I can come up with and follow through, big new area, challenging and will see how it will go.

So, I will return soon, hopefully with a very good feeling and I wish the same upon you too!

~Souvillaine