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.

Many Lines

Scary things happen in the dark :
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Burning sun and a chilly cold wind... that's the way all of summer should be.

I thought I'd do my best to step outside the ole comfort zone and draw something with thin sexy lines... and boy did it fail. Repeatedly.
Then I remembered one time I'd done lineart for one picture in painstaking Opacity-Sensitive pens... you can get a really feathered, delicate effect that way.

Well, yeah, no. And the SAI line vectors weren't my friends today either... so I switched in the end to what I do best, or at least most comfortably. Pixels.

Pixels are so, so so sexy.

And suddenly every line had meaning, and a weight that made sense, an angle that worked. I got bold, let them cross each other and leave shapes unclosed, and it all felt right. I guess it's either bulky thick lines or pixels for me, still. :/

By the way in my spare time, usually to cheer myself up out of ruts, I go on fanart hunts. I collect arts for my art folder that excite me either as a fan or an artist, usually both, and looking at these makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. ...sometimes they're shipping, mostly they're not though. This is a side hobby of mine that extends many years back... and I must say I'm quite the consummate seeker. This is the one thing that makes me as happy as drawing, or close to (when it goes according to plan, anyway).

Since I'm playing the old Ruby so much these days, struggling five steps into Victory Road, I thought I'd put up a list of what's in my PKMN folder at the moment. Of course, Pixiv is also an awesome resource. :>

• Memo
• Hai Aka Murasaki Yes red purple..?
• PTK

Not many eh? Seeing as these old-school gems also have Links pages, I recommend you check those out and flush through them thoroughly for hours of artfix. :>

Self-righteous Suicide

Hmm man. With the turn in cool weather I thought I'd be doing tons of art shiznit... but I haven't felt like anything. It's funny how when you finish some pictures you feel like "Yeah that's right", everything is sweet and you can't wait to chillax basking in the glory of your upleveled skillzors.
And others you feel all empty inside, like it just took a whole lot out of you just to colour & polish off that biatch and then... nothing.

Times like this you pray to the gods of the Internet for some pointless, timewastingly hilarious youtube video or image edit or obscure historical event to keep you occupied until sleep. And the internet shall always provide...
Protest Signs of 2009
Google Autocomplete Fun



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Also I discovered the story of Yume Nikki the other day. It's amazing how people are just MAKING stuff these days... like Vocaloid. Back in 2005 some guy used RPGMaker to make a game about a hikikomori girl stuck in her unexitable room, whose dreams you get to navigate.
I haven't played it but it sounds surreal. I then spent an hour browsing dedicated imageboards and reading mile-long fanwank theories as to all the deep and significant things every smallest aspect of that expansive dreamworld was supposed to stand for in the ruined life of the protagonist.

Read about it here.

Planner Uploads

Better original, or redrawn? :/


Soo! It's a happy new year. For the duration of sailing regattas at the local yacht club, our house and fridge is overrun with sailors and both my bosses are busy getting bruised and salt-pickled every day (and nicely toasted every night.)

So there's no work, the days are hot and long and there's not a single cloud in the sky. Besides perfecting my scrambled eggs on toast and iced coffee, I've decided to go through my old planner of 2009 and upload anything and everything of note that I've drawn there.

...but it feels kind of silly to just dump it all... so I'll do it in pieces.

To start with, currently I'm playing a lot of Pokemon again... as I finished Apollo Justice and Hotel Dusk, and Castlevania Eclessia got too depressing (and hard XD.)
So this is to commemorate.

AND I've finally gotten the blogger CSS to do what I want in terms of post width... so there's no reason to keep trying things with Wordpress. I moved this blog there for a little while but it didn't quite work out... a person that makes a living doing CSS doesn't like to be told they have to pay to edit some.


Is it worth going over them or not? I'm quite fond of pen....
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Also: it seems the entire city of Melbourne is completely fresh out of Moleskine planners. Everybody wants one and the only thing left in 6 separate bookshops I've gone to (for different reasons, of course) are tiny and obscure notebooks like for musical notation or with grid paper.... I've watched less crowd-savvy shoppers whine to the floorstaff about the lack of Moleskine planners specifically. Why must it be this way?
I know they're all fantastically stylish and all the rage, but they also happen to be durable and comfortable to bend at the spine which is why I've loved mine for a good 1.5 years with no problems. So disregarding how allergic I am to wanting what everyone else wants, I'm going to have to track one down. :/

Walkabouts

Bins Behaving Badly Series.

Some of the images for my 2nd photography project. Once I get to scanning the 1st photography projects for my visual diary, you'll get to see those too.

2 more weeks & 4 more projects

...and then I'm home free!

Thanks largely to money issues, I won't be going to Japan this year over summer holidays though I haven't ruled out going SOMEWHERE. Another reason was I thought I'd spend a bit of time getting creative and buffing up my portfolio and skills base.

To that end, ever since the weekend of October 9th (when I went to SemiPermanent) I've tried to draw something each day, and keep that drawing for refinement into a little book which should be filled up in a month's time (I guess.)

I've so far refined 2 drawings and collected 8 that roughly correspond to the output of these past 8 days.


To the left, the final refinement of October 9. To the right, October 15th.

The corner of my desk belonging to crafty things.



Two uni projects in progress.

I got to make a lot of very traditional books these last few weeks and it's been tons of fun. Now there's 2 weeks with 4 deadlines to meet (one of them tomorrow), so we'll see how it all works out. As long as I keep my D average I'm a happy girl. :)

Heroes in Casual Clothes

A bit of red-pen drawing got done. :)

I'm trying to find a really efficient way to drop out red underlines in photoshop... I know selecting colour range isn't the way. Finished that beast of an illustration project with some tacky "deep" linear burn filters for a little extra intensity.... might put the underlying portrait here, providing it doesn't look dreadful on closer examination.

It seems a lot more gets done on all those projects when there aren't silly classes to get in the way.