Ghost

Inspirations - Queen Amidala from Star Wars, Japanese clothing, Blue Dragon (the opening scene with traditional Chinese dance, again, I don't know its name), revenge/death

Sketched a thumbnail version of this last week while in class. Decided I should do a full version; colour is coming along right now, albeit slowly. She started out as an homage to Queen Amidala's hair in the first Star Wars film (i.e. the horrible prequel) and somehow became very Korean looking with a hint of water-bender. Having difficulty with colours since I'm using colours I don't usually use (pale pinks and purples). She looks so washed out, but that's the point. Agh!

More or less a pair to the girl from the previous post.

EDIT: Added the colour version. Not sold on the clasp at her belt. Took far longer than the last girl. This one took about an hour and a half to colour because I kept changing the colours and fiddling around with things. :/

East/West

Inspirations - The Vision of Escaflowne film, Japanese clothing, European clothing

Pencil, ~15 minutes

Just finished watching the Escaflowne movie; it's not much in terms of plot, especially compared to the TV series, but the artistic direction is awesome. I rarely see such wonderful mixing of Western and Eastern styles like those seen in Escaflowne. Of course, like any time I watch/read/see something interesting, I made something new along those lines. Here's a lady rocking a tailed vest inspired by Japanese military jackets (I honestly don't know their names), wearing geta (shoes) with spat pants and big leg-o-mutton sleeves. Fun times.

Just fyi, I love mixing genres/styles. There are few things I like more than deconstructing norms or combining elements from things that aren't normally put together. I don't do it that often, but I love it when either I do or I find someone else who does.
EDIT: Splashed some colour on it with photoshop. One layer on multiply. About 30 minutes.

I'm beginning to hate Rowan's braids

Rowan and the Spider p. 3 of 8

Man, this comic takes a long time to draw. I've only got 3 pages (third is half-way done) thus far, but once it's done I'll post them all up here. For now here's another little excerpt. I'm hoping to have it completely done by the time I need my portfolio. The first four pages will be done by the end of the month (I've promised the guys four pages for the publication). One page takes between 8-15 hours (I can be very slow) but it's so worth it. The only thing I really hate is Rowan's goddamed braids which need to go die in a fire. At very least I'm becoming very good at drawing hair.

Comic day thing

The guys organized a comic event last night where each artist had an hour to draw a page and then hand the story off to the next person. Here's mine (it's page two).

Pencil, about 45 minutes for both story and art

The other artist started it off with a pair of space heroes fighting a monster when suddenly! it turns out to be a pair of kids with epic imaginations. I got really tired by the last panel, if it wasn't obvious. I hope you can read my writing. This is why I always use photoshop for text, my writing is a loopy illegible mess.

Liz

I'm making an effort to post here more often, even if it is only sketches. I hope you like sketches and don't think I'm some sort of crazy person and/or lazy.

Liz - "Heart of the Self"

Inspirations - big headphones, cyberpunk, Tima from Metropolis, Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell, that professor with the robotic legs that Vary likes in Finder, probably every robot/cyborg/mechanically based entity in any sci-fi I've ever fallen in love with (at least the conscious ones)

This afternoon

Red Col-erase

More designs for the robot girl (who I'm now calling "Liz") from last post. She's slowly becoming an homage to every one of my favourite robots/cyborgs - lets hope that EVAs don't make their way into this mix, especially not unit 01. The whole hair like Kusanagi was unintentional, but I will definitely acknowledge it as a subconscious association of one robot girl angsting about the self with another. 

The name Liz is, of course, short for Elizabeth. The girl she's based off of usually went by Liza or Lizzie. That won't ever be mentioned in the story (since the story doesn't have words), but I thought that that bit of information was interesting.

Class doodles

I draw a lot in class (because I am the BEST student). I haven't posted any doodles for a long time. Here's some from today's batch!

Working title "Heart of the Self"

Inspirations - Tima from Metropolis

Pen

Bunch of character designs for a short comic story that I'd like to work on once I finish Rowan; the story is based off a short story written for class in November/December which I couldn't realize despite writing it about 4 times. I eventually realized that the reason why I couldn't get it right was because I thought it in images. Obviously I have to write it in a comic instead! Little tidbit about the story: its about a robot girl built to replace a dead daughter (parents in the middle). No text, completely picture based.

Mostly just one character/versions of the same character. The little pic on the right is, just fyi, not inspired by either the Terminator or Two-Face; she's a bit of an homage to Tima from the animated epic Metropolis based on Tesuka's graphic novel series of the same name and the famous silent film. I think the image on the left describes her the best.

Character designs for "All Hail" backstory

Pen

Designs for Amelia and Rodrigo (both can be seen in earlier posts) when they were much younger (23 and 50 respectively). I've been writing a short story for class about them at this point in their lives and wanted to get a good handle on their visuals (it really helps me to have a visual concept of characters, places, etc. prior to writing anything). The two images flanking both sides are of Amelia's mother, Talia. Her mother never shows up in the story, but, again, I like having a good idea of what she looks like. Her mother died very young, hardly into her thirties, which is why she looks so young here.

Oh look! SOMETHING NEW. Who would have guessed?

Still working away on the dhoti lady. At a bit of an impasse since all that's left is painful detail work. I watched The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert tonight instead of working on comic pages/covers (I intended to do both, but the movie was far more entertaining than I expected). At the very end of the movie Guy Pierce, whose queen performance will haunt me as I try and watch Prometheus in couple months, was wearing these horrible, horrible checkery stripey pants for one shot and this was born.

Inspirations - Guy Pierce's pants in Priscilla, high fashion (been reading "Hello, Tailor" lately), Harlequins, Hamletmachine and her lovely use of checkers

Jan 21st/22nd

2 hours, photoshop CS5

I learned how to use clipping masks about a week or two ago. It's made my life so much easier. There are like 5 or 6 masks on this to do shading and what not. Lots of gradient abuse too. I feel like her face and hair really stick out. Might fiddle with her some more in the morning.

Started out as just a fashion thing and somehow she became a magic user. Balanced the drawing better.

EDIT: Fixed the hair. I've added the new version as well. I'm not sure exactly which I prefer. The new version looks very punk (I worry that it's too cliche even though it works a lot better).