Process of drawing 12F.Ave's lineup

As pasted from my logs on my art Tumblr.

Day 1

Here we have sketches of the first four. (I actually changed French’s pose a little since I took the pic). Maybe I should make everyone’s posture as straight as possible so their heights are more accurate…

Day 2

Sketches of the second four are now here!

Fixed up some of the first four’s poses to have them be standing more straight so their heights are more accurate, too. Also wow, I did not know how actually tall some of these guys were. (The final four of the house actually contain the most middle-heightened people in this group, haha)

Day 3

The sketches of the final four are complete! (Thinking about giving 2.0 & Barley some more height, tho. I dunno, yet)

Here’s how the whole lineup’s looking so far…

Also, here’s some context for the heights (that blue rectangle is a 30cm ruler, btw)

Blaster done!

Again, it's been some time since my last entry. My bad. Anyways -- good news! I finally got that weapon concept art done!

This is the blaster of Kamilla, protagonist of 'Project: Mydan'
If there's anyone who remembers the Spectrobes series,
you might recognise some of the blasters in the third image

This happened somewhere a little over a month ago. I actually quite like its shape and am satisfied with its umbrella disguise. When it comes to how it'll look in colour, I'm not entirely sure yet. But I hope figuring all that out will be easier than designing its overall shape... Like I said before, designing tools & weapons isn't really my strong point (or at least, not yet) but I'm proud of what I've come up with. It makes me want to practice designing these sorts of things more. 

Anyways, with that concept art out of the way, I'm finally able to move on. Originally, I was going to get to working on the comic roughs traditionally, but I figured it would be inconvenient if I was going to sketch the pages again digitally. So I'm planning on just getting to do everything (except thumbnails) digitally. I'll just leave comic roughs to when I work traditionally.

Doodling without sketching

Recently, I've discovered a skill that I want to put in a lot of my time and dedication into. And that skill is being able to draw my characters without there needing to draw a detailed sketch underneath. 

In other words, I want something like a "dumbed down" version of my art style so that I can quickly make little comic strips and shorts. This would especially be useful for if the comic is just a small scenario, usually for some quick laughs or for just to tell a moment.

Here are some of my attempts:

A dynamic pose

I may include "noodle arms" on occasion

This skill of drawing with minimal sketching should also be able to help me in creating strong character design, too. If I have too much detail in a character, I would either forget to include them or I would struggle to add them without having to erase what goes underneath it. This is especially useful because in comics, I would have to keep drawing the same characters over and over. 

It was actually only not too long ago when I realised I could apply drawing without sketching to my art. At the time of writing this post, my current media of interest is the TV series, We Bare Bears. This series was my main motivation to practice the skill.

We Bare Bears by Daniel Chong

I was looking at the art style used to draw the bears themselves and I noticed how simplistic yet strong and memorable they were. Eventually, I doodled them on paper and I loved how easy it was. 

I eventually found the webcomic that inspired We Bare Bears: "The Three Bare Bears" and this was the hammer to the nail. I want to make dumb little comics, but I don't want to have to put as much time and effort into them as my more ambitious projects. This was the inspiration of the motivation.

The Three Bare Bears webcomic by Daniel Chong

I'll wish myself luck!

Drawing backgrounds

For some time, I've been trying to figure out how to draw backgrounds with detail, but at the same time, make them quick and easy to draw. 

There's a technique that I noticed in some cartoons where detailed backgrounds are painted with an "imperfect" sort of feel to it. The lines are mostly loose. The colours focus more in lighting & shadows, sometimes not even in line with the lineart. The main subjects are drawn normally with minimal shading and details. See what I mean, here. 

I kind of took some inspiration from that. I found that painting areas where there would be a lot of detail was a lot quicker and efficient than drawing every detail in the picture. I also found that painting with a more transparent brush that mimics how pain works in real life was quicker than cel shading because I could be looser and more laid-back.

Nearing the end of the semester

If you've seen my last post, then you'd know that I had made the decision to focus mostly on my uni stuff. So far, that's been going well! Two of the major assignments that I've done in the past month are done and submitted, which means I can finally go back to the old routine. The semester is nearly ending and I only have two small assignments left to go, so I'm pretty confident.

However, although I'd just been focusing on uni for the most part, I've managed to find some spare time to really put in extra thoughts on my projects, especially Mydan. In my daydreams, I've really just been polishing some coming scenes and refining characters, mainly just so my future writing on the project won't get too messy.

I've also noticed that recently I've been taking most of my inspiration from video games, one of them being MOTHER or EarthBound Beginnings, as well as the rest of the MOTHER series. I'm not necessarily talking about how Kamilla's got a bit of her inspired by Lloyd and Ruwei by Ninten, but mainly its more game-like elements. For instance, how the protagonists are accompanied by a party that follow an archetype of some sort (although there will only be two main characters: Kamilla & Ruwei). Another, for a more specific example, is Kamilla mending broken machines overnight similarly to how Jeff does in EarthBound. I just thought that would be a nice thing to add.

Being careful with my pacing

As you'd expect, working on a long-term creative project and studying (whether it be uni or high school) is pretty much a bad idea. But, I'm still working on my projects anyway xD Although things have been slow, I've managed to make some progress in Mydan: basically, I've done all the concept art needed for the next scene. I hope to start the first scene of Chapter 1 real soon! If you want to keep up with my progress for Mydan in "real-time", I have a tag on a Tumblr blog for that which can be viewed Here.

Remember Kamilla?

Anyways, moving on to other important things: I've been trying to focus on uni a lot more lately. In the past year, my motivation to do my work has been kind of getting worse, and it sucks. And so, before I hopefully take a break for some time next year, I at least want to make my work before then have at least SOME quality. So! In other words, hopefully in a couple months, progress will start to speed up again. Wishing myself luck in my studies for now :'D

Also, I wanted to quickly mention a book that I've been completely into this year: it's a speculative biology scifi titled All Tomorrows by C.M. Kosemen. To summarise the narrative briefly, it basically follows the future of humanity and involves a lot of body horror, unique civilisations, hope and doom. It has become quite an inspiration for me and my own sci-fi writing, and has especially helped grow my interest in developing the alien civilisations that I've created for my universe. By the way, All Tomorrows is completely free to read, and there's even a nice audiobook reading of it on YouTube!

Starting the Mydan project stuff and more

Huh?! What's this?

Good news everyone! Despite uni kicking my ass again, as always, I've decided to go ahead and begin my Mydan project. In other words, this is it - I'm actually starting my first major comic project, which is pretty crazy to me. I'm really excited to get going with this one and I hope this one's a success. But first, I've got to get all my uni troubles out of the way and then I'll find a way to fit working on the project in my schedule. 

You can read it on ComicFury

Also, due to beating the game Earthbound some couple of months back, as well as reading the game's fan comic The Chosen Four, I've gathered some inspiration for my comic work. Sure, there are aspects that have inspired parts of my Mydan project, but mostly, I've found that my Steel House project has been the one where all this inspiration is going. It makes a lot more sense too, since the elements of Earthbound have more in common with April and her friends than Kamilla and Ruwei xD 

Here's a little screenshot redraw that I did with April and Farqua over the Ness and Titanic Ant.
(Source: pg 35 by Darrow)

I should also mention that, once again, I've been thinking about my Cosmic Loneliness project a little more again. And that's it. That's all I want to say for now.

Project: April and Friends - Log #037

I’m going to stop slacking starting now(?!)

So, if it wasn't obvious enough, I've been slacking a bit with updating these weekly logs without giving any reason. And I'll apologise for that. First off, Winter School. It's doing fine, athough it *has* made me pay less attention to this project and I'm still having some trouble organising the things I want to do during the day. Y'know, especially since I'm still trying to fix up my sleeping schedule n' whatnot... Other than that, there's really not much outside-of-projects stuff stopping me.

Back to this project. So far, I've just been re-focusing the whole central themes and internal challenges so I can confidently continue writing the main scripts. I've recently finished doing that, actually. So, I guess, that means I can continue writing the actual story!

I've also been getting back to reading comics & manga as a hobby, if I hadn't mentioned that on here, already. I've been getting into the action-adventure genre (and/or shounen, if you will), and at this time, specifically Jujutsu Kaisen and Scott Pilgrim. Reading those have really been providing me with some know-how on how to draw up comics, especially in the action genre.

Changing the Layout

I've once again changed the layout of this blog. It's not done, though - there are still some things I want to add, but I don't really have much time for them, right now. 

First off, I'm thinking about drawing up a banner to go up in the header. If I do that, I'm gonna try draw up some more for my other blogs/sites, too. Doing this just to add a touch of nostalgia since I took the idea off some of the old sites and blogs I went on when browsing the links pages on the Cave Story tribute site.

Another thing I want to do for this blog is to draw up a proper background image. Right now, it's just a picture of a drawing I did not too long ago, that's been a bit crappily taken. It's not that great at the moment. But, I'll be sure to get that out the way, soon!

Project: April and friends - Log #033

I need to up my uni game

If there's anything I want to get out of the way, I've been very busy with uni work this week. And that's due to some really, really bad homework habits that need fixing, and fast... But at least recently, I've found out my "golden hour(s)" for homework, which is good.

Now, on to some comic stuff. Because of uni, I've decided to sacrifice some time off my projects. But, I've managed to finally think up another title idea for this project! I'm thinking about titling it "Steel House in the Prairie". 

Sorry the quality’s not very good, but I hope you can see the basic shapes I’m trying to go for.

In my free time, I've been playing around with how it'll look on paper, and it's looking a bit like a rock band's logo. Not that that's a bad thing, though - I do recall saying at one point that (my interpretation of) rock music and its subgeneres has influenced the whole feel, aesthetics and tone of the story. I do feel, however, that I could tone down its edge. The story doesn't go all that hard.

Continuing on with some more uni stuff... I've made a death wish. I've decided I'm going to take on a Winter class for screenwriting. I don't know exactly how this will affect my projects, but I'm sure I'll manage fine. And maybe, it'll teach me a hard lesson on self-organisation. Who knows? It might make or break me. Haha...

Anyways, that's all I have for this week.

Project: Proclo - #027

 Got another person familiar with my stuff!

Recently talked to an old classmate who was interested in my advice when it came to writing and stuff. I also got given some recommendations in exchange, too!

Since that talk, I’ve finally thought it’s about time I got myself into some of the sci-fi cult classics, especially since I’ve been meaning to get into some of them in the past few years. Weird that I never really got round to getting into them, especially since, imagining from a stranger’s perspective, I’d picture myself to be into a bunch of sci-fi cult classics. 

I’ve also launched a couple places relating to this project…

First off’s a just-in-case sort of thing. I’ve made a Blogspot which’ll be the main place I’ll upload more polished comics of the characters featured in the project. Doesn’t matter how big or small, it’s just gotta be polished. You can see it >>Here<<.

The next thing I launched is a blog on newTumbl. I realised I never had a place where I could just talk about the more useless things relating to any of my projects, similarly to the way I do it on Twitter. Except this time, those notes won’t get buried under unrelated things. You can see it >>here<<.

That’s all I’ve got for now!

-Chocco

Project: Clonerion - Log #021

 

I’m writing my first bits of proper action now, I think

I’ve just finished the latest drafts up until the end of the 3rd part of the story which means I’ve already done pretty much my first action scene. Now, I’m up to the 4th part which is the one right behind where I’m up to. Also, I’m pretty close to writing up my first proper fight scene. Pretty hyped! 

I’ve also been rewatching Red Dwarf recently, and I’ve been taking some inspiration from the sci-fi elements of the series, such as the aesthetics, technology, and some of the comedy, too.