Doodling something.

Mm... Paper's from a pile of way old print-outs. Might as well use it for something.
There is a definite weakness when using printer paper, when it comes to rendering with pencil, but it doesn't matter much for my purposes right now. I need to do a bunch of studies, to get some modicum of competence and confidence back.

...

Huh. Went through a lot of my old drawings, and I had the strangest thought:
"I can do better than this."

Uh, I Have a Sketchbook.

I'm trying to stick to the funny title capitalization scheme.

So.... Sketchbooks!

I have one active sketchbook - not a showcase sketchbook, just the one with all sorts of strange scribbles. I haven't scanned anything from it before this, I think.

This is a character. I'm not sure what, but sort of a... post-apocalyptic steampunk thingy. Three-four sketches I've done over the years, this one I chose to scan, just because.

So... and such. On a whim, I purposefully left the spine in.

The blade is some sort of a monster/mecha slaying taser thingy. The character is eithe carrying some sort of a  generator/battery, or have a specialized organ producing the electricity.

Definitely in a drawing mood right now. So, I'll do at least some of that, then.

I want moar sketchbooks. A couple for different purposes.
I'm kinda feeling like wanting to do art for a living right now. I'm sure the feeling will pass.

Blue.... Swimmer?

Insert Smurf Joke Here.

Very doodly. but, I had fun, so that counts. Limbs are kind of long on purpose. Anatomy is correct only accidentally.  Hands are sketchy, feet are... not there, actually.

So... painting in OpenCanvas. Still fun. I had some trouble with the too-thick outline. Also, some things are just problems arising from the fact I was just doodling on a single layer instead of doing something  reasonable. No reference, obviously. It would look better if there were. Also, the composition is crap.
It's essentially an exploratory digipainting, figuring out the textures one gets using different tools in oC.

I may do some sort of a painting timelapse thing at some point, I think that might be interesting.

Rant:
One of the things I'm noticing --- no, what I'm being reminded of, when I look at the pros doing their thing, is that I'm really really lazy. Also, a bit impatient. All  that hand-crafted detail... Well, it might actually be entertaining to do at the time, but I just don't have the patience for it, when I'm trying to get an idea out. Sure, I'll make use of happy accidents, may suggest some detail, but it's all really incidental. Possibly coincidental.
End Rant.

Next... Animation, Pencil or more OpenCanvas. Hm.

This is really random - except it ties into my YouTube watching, but....
Good animation spotted in:

• Bounen No Xam'd
• Soul Eater
• Darker Than Black
• FMA: Brotherhood
• Full Metal Panic

Aaand quite a few other shows. Thing is, though, there's also a lot of bad animation about. 

---ing ---ing ---ing

Yeah, so I'm in a weird head-space right now.

I became fascinated with the Pen tool. in oC, and ended up just doodling in large part. I think the bottom right image has close to the correct arm fold I was looking for.

In upper left, I just wanted to draw thicker arms for some reason, and... when the drawing was otherwise done, I didn't like the background, so I drew a bunch of lines there.

I was somewhat interested in the top-right, bottom-left poses, although I don't think they're all that interesting, but... mm, yeah, poses. something interesting in the armor down-left.

Huh, I think both top characters could be something Burroughsy.

So, the pen thing - or possibly a chiaroscuro thing. I like the, um, strength in using strong black and white. It can, obviously, get rather tricky at spots, but when it works... well, I like it. Frank Miller was doing Sin City when I was at an impressionable age, I guess.

What's next? Maybe something more paint-y. Or maybe it's animation time.

Oh, and this video on youtube was, um, rather badass.

Nnng Posin'

So yeah. 

Mm... Never got this to quite work. I don't think it's tightened enough to count as nude, either. I would have drawn in some gear, if I'd ever gotten it to work the way I wanted to.
Arg.

Anyway, this was bad enough I switched to tinier gesture poses. The, um, rule of the thumb, just the silhouette should be interesting in and as itself. You can see some of that in the earlier GD sequence thumbnails.

1/4th of A5, at 150DPI or so.

I'm watching some of  Sycra's Art Videos on YouTube. Mmdunno. Getting my feet wet with oC + Tablet combo.

A Tiny Pointless Animation.

There are two parts to an animation: The motion, and the image. This is just the motion, clearly. Toolchain was PAP - Export individual frames - Paint.Net with GIF plugin.

A total of 37 frames, which is about 3 seconds in twos. One of my bigger problems is doing consistency and camera pans. My timings are far from perfect, but I can do them, if necessary.

If this doesn't work, I'll have to go and put it up in Youtube, I guess. Or try Blogger's embedded video thingy. AVI created with Virtualdub, although from the GIF. My toolchain is not all the way there, yet.

Youtube has some interesting things, naturally, such as Animator's Survival Kit clips, as well as plenty of Glen Keane clips.

Zero no Tsukaima has god-awful animation, by the way. The character designs are fine and such, but I really noticed the low quality when watching Princess no Rondo.

Early to sleep. Also, I like writing in cafés.

I gotta get to bed early, and I was somewhat satisfied with this, so this is what I'm posting. Um.

I've found out that I can get much more written with a pencil, in a notebook, preferrably in a café somewhere. The output is very first-drafty, but I have to transcribe it to a computer at some point anywhere, so I get a minor edit step at that point. I'm not writing a whole lot, yet - I think I average about a page per day - but it's still something more-or-less consistent.

I have one story idea.
Wait, I lie. I have, um, five-ish, I think, at this point, but there's one in particular that I think has a beginning and an end.

I want to get it written down - it'll be about, ten-ish pages when done, I think. Less than twenty, in any case. Point is getting something done relatively fast - I'll do at least a couple of edit cycles on it, too. Still, it's not my favourite idea. I'll start working on something full-length after I'm done. I'm not entirely sure yet, what... but I'll make it painfully honest. It's the only way an inept writer such as myself can create something compelling.

I was thinking about the parallels between drawing and writing, or the lack thereof... but there is one - an that is coming up with stuff. While writing, you think of an item, character quirk, name, something you want to use. Similarily you come up with things while drawing - outfit, accessory, shape.

So, basically, coming up with story elements has similarities with concept art. So... story concepts to concept art parallels?

No inspiration today.

well, not exactly true. This drawing was basically random lines, which I followed to make forms and trying to end up with something not nonsensical.
Also, I sometimes draw really skinny bodies for characters.

This is pretty much junk, but there IS something I like about this drawing, otherwise I wouldn't have posted it. It has... some  energy and a bit of three-dimensionality which I find somewhat compelling. The silhouette isn't all that strong,though.

I played a bit of Diablo III and then ended up chatting afterwards, so I didn't have much time to draw or write today. I did give OpenCanvas a spin, but that produced nothing I could approve of. I did consider posting some of my old Oekakis, but the point isn't in posting something - It's in working my skills.

So, um. I guess I'm trying to write 'sufficiently' here, too. However, blogging or chatting is very different from storycrafting.

I have this whole big thing about the Silver Millennium I've -- I've actually written, but into a notebook, with a pencil. I do intend to post it at some point. Well, probably.

I may have to rely on drawing some fan arts. In the off chance that I get more than one image done per day, I'll create a backlog so that the images come out in sequential days. I'm trying to use the Seinfield method here. In this blog. Now.

Quick character notes, chain link

My brain can be a pretty funky chicken from time to time. I know this to be true, for one of my blog posts - I actually went through my whole blog yesterday - was completely incomprehensible to myself, even, at least without analysis of some sort.

My work laptop really doesn't have the juice to run Diablo 3 - it's manageable with shadows turned off, but who wants to play like that? Hm.

I almost didn't draw anything today ( it's nine minutes to midnight), but I decided to draw something at least. Not very happy with it, not drawing in the sense of a craftmanship, more of a note on some characters.

Guess which java app I wrote today?

• No layers
• No colors
• No eraser
• No resize
• No flood fill
• No pen size
• No problem XD

Heh. I hope it's enough for a passing grade in my OO class. Load, save and zoom were implemented. Hardcoded resolution at 320x240, I think.

Something of 2010

yeah, no intention to draw per se... as I haven't been able to, but the lines started looking like something, and before I knew it, I'd gotten this far.
It's basically just a small step above junk.
No idea who or what the character is. Looks sorta pumpkin-y

Mangled this one up quite badly

So... yeah. Face was in a strange angle, and wasn't paying too much attention to proportions. Generally, I've had an 'off' day all day long. Lots of relatively interesting coding things circling in my mind right now, but no focus. 

Something is more of the same.

Ah, advertisement. What would I do without you :P

Y'know I've been drawing somethings for four years now. I started after a year of drawing almost nothing, as Ben and I figured, "something's better than nothing". 

Time goes so incredibly fast. 

Something is moar ad spam

Same as before, snailmail spam -> sloppy drawing. Actually looked at values a bit harder, this time.

My 3d OpenGL engine doesn't currently like meshes mixing quads and triangles, at least not in the same mesh. I wonder if that'll be a problem. OTOH, one can just select all faces and say "Turn to triangles" in Blender... 

I tested with some raw data -> copypasta. I'm thinking of writing a raw reader, just to hasten testing. I'm .... but, I'm rambling about something I haven't really talked about before, so nevermind.

Basically, it relates to something like this:

As you can see, I did write a RAW reader. 

Blender .Raw exports everything separately, so I had to load multiple meshes for this output - got to test my GLScene's capability of rendering multiple meshes. Neat.

Oh, and I convert quads to tris on the fly, although not 100% sure if that works.

Something the thirteenth.

Warmup. Referenced from an ad dropped in my mailbox. 

OpenGL is kinda neat. Well, no. But, a 3d API is kinda neat, VS. making one yourself. 

Still gotta do that at some point, just for kicks, but....

Well, that was... colorful. I had this lineart I drew, and started pushing and prodding it in OC, and ended up with this mess.

Now, mind you, I did learn something, perhaps, while doing it, but it sure ain't pretty. Despite all the pretty colors, too. I do like the teef, though.

I think I've told about this before

My planning was unfortunate for that game.

Edited in OpenCanvas, which Ben got me a while back. 

Oh, a quick speed tip: RAMDrives! Modern computers typically have 2-4 GB of RAM, and I generally have over 1TB idling.

So, I created a compressed RAM drive and pointed my Temp files there. This speeds up NWN2 load times, at least, significantly. 

you could even transfer an entire game into a RAM drive for play time, or at least it's resource files, and point the .ini files at them. I'm sure there's plenty of other similar tricks that can be done. Uses for a RAM drive are many.

Whipped up something. 

Probably my favourite chibi. Nice, B&W color scheme, not as complicated as Chibi-GD - who is also quite nice, actually.

Where does the time go?

Bleh bleh bleh. Not all in all that bad, but still bad.

Discovered kumikyouku niconico douga. I've been feeling fannish about Touhou series for a while - and they recently got an animation, too. Some of the most ridiculously overpowered characters there, based on some Troper's  analysis. As we all know, ultimate power is kinda neat.

That's not bad

Sort of fashion-y. I was actually going for fantasy, but, whatever. Had fun with the folds, even though they kinda suck, as I am out of practice.

I was thinking, not strictly speaking of a roleplaying character, but more of a RPG mechanics verse character, in a story idea that's pouncing in my brain.

I like RPG mechanics for a story, as it prevents overt plot-induced idiocies, like superhumans being beaten by random norms... or Buffyverse vampires, with their spongy chests and vapour clothers. (Seriously, a normal human can stake a vampire with a pencil. What's up with that?)

I have several stories bouncing in my brain, most of them bad or underdeveloped, and they'll probably never see the light of day. 

A bit unrelated, but I'm trying something odd involving imagination...

Yeah, vague. 

I shall endeavor to explain that better at some instance in the future.

*edit*

Also, doodles!

Is 'Hope' an emotion or a decision?

I see it referred to as the first, but I feel the second applies better.

Sharpie on paper, 30 seconds or so. I should'a drawn it facing the other way, after finishing the eyes, but draw like this by rote. 

Thousand Shinji, very YMMV. It is probably not a good indicator it gives me the Things Don't Work Like That vibe - not quite a WallBanger, but... I find the other WH40k crossover better, even if both take quite a few liberties with various things. 

Children of an Elder God remains my favourite. Probably. Although, it seems to be abandoned.

My mental health remains... not so good. 

Doodleriffic, 3-5 min?

I almost just hit delete with this, but I decided to put a bit more effort into it, and as it turns out, it has few nice elements in it.

This is not a return to a regular or constant update schedule. 

Srsly.