Laundry~

I'm putting my sneakers & pencilcase through the wash.


...they need it.

PS. WIP

Winner of THIS poll [LINK] is a work in progress.
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Thought I would: Practise lines, do a "routine pic". Do cleaner lines quicker, pick an interesting colour system for finished product (Shape vs. Shade...)
Turns out: Spent a surprising, fun few hours redrawing furniture & room structure to adhere to weird bendy intuitive perspective; checking out 18th century furniture for references. Moving stuff around & resizing to make things fit & flow better.


Fun Fact: I wear a scarf to bed. Even on very hot nights. Because I have this tendency to wake up with sore throats / catch mild headcolds thanks to how I sleep... although I'm really resilient in the waking hours.

*SIGH* now time for 1 hour of bedtime kanji writing practise.... '__';

Franny! What a name...

Had fun at the Japanese Matsuri @ Docklands - HUGE lines for food that got even longer as the wind got colder... bad day for a cool change.

 

Franziska is unreferenced. I was going to write "FOOL" on it...

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Got my greedy lil' paws on a (borrowed) copy of AA: Investigations! Edgeworth is cool but, WHY must they always have a perky teenage girl sidekick? He was doing so well too...

Question: If the Von Karmas are German (or at least German-influenced) in the English games and have all these overseas connections... are they actually foreigners in the Japanese games? :/ I'm sure I remembered them having Japanese names though... maybe it's just my imagination (and overanalysing of stylised noses... yes I really do this)

I just don't know anymore

/ :/

I guess it'll all make sense tomorrow after shower & a long sleep. *SIGH*





Raw 100% unadulterated scans D':
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SDFKLWEF SO tired and so lost. What will it all be about tomorrow?

HAAaaaahh

Sometimes you just realise what a long, long way you have to go. *sigh*

~ Postmodern? Maybe. Famous definitely. Also Surreal, very surreal.
Garfield without Garfield
Garfield Frame Randomizer

Either one's been around for a few years, I heard about it originally over here: The Comic Strip Doctor on Garfield (Feb 2006)

Good reason as to why it's so funny to read. Kind of the reason why YGA is fun, too. :>

Oekaki Dump & Some Interesting Info

Interesting Reads for Heta-Fanatics
Confessions of a Football Hooligan (Dec 1985)
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Written in '85, from what I've been able to gather as the end of the decade or so of prevalent, media-hyped football hooliganism in the UK (and just before the rise of something worse?). In reaction to THIS event of the same year.

A lot of other countries do it too, for other reasons.


Love your Football.
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Also while you're at it:
Britain's Mean Streets (Mar 2008)
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Brings you the awesome quote, "Culturally, Britain just doesn't like children much."
Kinda depressing but illuminating all the same.

Adieu!

Heta Dump!

Hmm yeah, ever since that trip to the Blue Mountains I've been filling the one sketchbook with tons of stuff, most of it Hetalia (and most of it B-A-F Bad). Before Uni falls down all around me and I have to snap back into the studying spirit (already starting with my 4-5 level discrepancy between spoken & written Japanese that made placement nearly impossible) I thought I'd dump a whole lotta stuff as a kind of ode to when I was young and carefree.


L to R: Aus Melbourne: Fitzroy mode | Aus & weird US for Aus-Awe comic | Eyebrow Brigade - Multicultural Aus comic | France & Belgium as waitors? :>


Highlights: Cute (or mangled?) Austria & Hungary | UK & Aus ::heart::

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So there you have it.

I MISSED YOU TOO, FREEDOM!! :<

On Methodology

What About Colour?

This is apparently an issue that a lot of people have when they draw anime-ish stuff. You learn how to get the lines right, yes... but how to colour it all in? It never looks finished unless there's some colour slapped on to your particular piece of work. Yet if you finish line in fine liner, what colour CAN look good with it?
Watercolours? Really expensive fancy markers?

I'm stuck at a crossroads here. I got a set of monochrome Prismacolors a long time ago and I've just about got the hang of how to use them, but that's a long way from perfecting the skill of colour use in markers for that really authentic manga-cover look. And I'm not sure it's an investment I'm willing to make (how much CAN you colour anyway, before the ink runs dry and you have to pay another $15 for one new pen?).

So I've always been one for scanning things at whatever sketch stage they're at and colouring them on computer.

As you can probably tell from the way my colours look, my home ground has always been the Oekaki.



Left is done in oekaki, right in SAI. Right clearly imitates the method I've developed in Left.
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However PC colouring, you kinda need to have the lines done digitally as well. Works for a rough sketch that I redraw on PC, but retracing the entire image on the computer (to get smooth, distinctive colour lines with that "digital" feel) after having retraced the picture 2-3 times by hand to get it right just seems like a waste of time.

And, in some cases, a step backward.

I really like the depth of line that happens when I do something in ballpoint pen, which is my native medium really. The shading, thickness of line and the way the picture evolves is pretty much exactly as I want it to, minus things I can easily erase.


Ok this is pencil, but you get the idea about depth & thickness? Maybe I want to fineline it, but I certanly don't want to do the entire thing AGAIN in one flat colour on computer.
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Problem: Digital according to my method, looks good when its lines are done, usually in flat colour, on computer.
Analog lines look good, but how do you apply colour?


The Solutions
One thing I've recently been up to is doing things in (very faint) coloured pencils. This involves taking a pen drawing / fineliner trace, and tracing over THAT with a faint blue pencil. This pencil line is then built up with very gradual layers of faint colours, usually made up of the primary set from my Derwents box.
The result is quite pastelly but has a nice balance to it.

This is the first method I've ever had for getting lines AND colour all done manually. YAYOMG! :> :>

Probably I only have this problem because I have no markers / paint skill or experience to speak of, but at least this is one solution I'm comfortable with.




Pale & Pastelly Coloured Pencils
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This is my coloured pencil look. This is from a semi-secret triptych that is 1 year overdue from being sent (as a bribe) to a connection of mine that lives Stateside and occasionally helps me get my greasy paws on games for half the retail price in this stupid country.

They're all packed and ready, along with Timtams, ANZAC bikkies and a tube of vegemite, and a pleading letter to get him to fix my busted external hard-drive. Ain't I sweet? :> :>

~ Oekaki ~

:> :> :>
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*Listening to William Gibson novels. Just discovered my mp3 player DOES bookmark my place :> thankyou!*

Crash!

Poland & Lithuania - Pilot & Flight Attendant? I think my totally-ordinary-suit fetish is playing up again... XD

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:/ :/ :/ My flash crashed yesterday on my work computer. Or rather it told me to shut down right now... while I was in the process of backing up my flash disk from my desktop. Result is both copies were 0kbed... and the last backup was on the work's server from that morning.

So! Two 10 hour days of playing catch-up and more and more work piling on!

Me, I'm a bit of a "Dou-M" so I enjoy this sort of thing. Gets you on your toes.

ANYWAY! After two more projects completely irrelevant to my assigned job landed on my desk and took up the afternoon I was going to use to finally catch up on the project work I lost, I drew a little something to keep myself company.

:> :> tried 2 things to colour it, 1 is thick lines (unless i "Craft" them they never seem to work {lazy}) and 2 is marker brush in SAI. Seemed to work like a real marker, only more forgiving of dryness... and you could erase it.

One day we'll all be gazing at the brushes in our painting software and wondering what crazy contraptions had originally inspired them. Happened with photoshop and its approximation of analog darkroom editing tools... none of it ever made sense to me. XD

*SIGH* work! The cafeteria lunches are fantastic though.