Hello or Something

Sloppy color - face and hair is ok, though. Wanted to try my hand at another take of my new new Ameixia design.

According to this thingy there, I have 29 followers, most whom I don't recognize. So, a request - could you post a comment, and tell me how you found my little blog?

Character Design

I'm sure I had a spiffier title earlier today, as well as something to tell. Oh well, I'll remember it later. Or not.

This here's Ameixia. She's been following same themes from the start, but I finally have a facial design I'm happy with, including a super simple hairstyle, which should be easy to draw. Her hair's very straight and stubborn, and as we first meet her, she's not at her best, so it might be neater later....

Her hobbies include gemstone enchanting, deadpan snarking and suppressing her inner manic pixie.

This one is... some sort of a arcane trickster in a sword-and-sorcery type setting ( with maybe a touch of steampunk.) So, basically Eberron?

Old, old, old piece

This is still brilliant, in my opinion. All flaws aside, it has this really neat movie-poster thing going for it. I really like it.

To find this... Well, I didn't, outside my old web site, actually. I'm sure it's there somewhere. but... let me put it this way: I've drawn a lot. A LOT. Hoo boy. I found, probably hundreds of pieces I had forgotten whilst digging.

In any case, I may make another attempt at remaking this, with a bit more detail, and, uh, hopefully, skill.

What's going on here, then?



I'm just procrastinating, that's what I'm doing. I have more IMPORTANT things to do....

A million things

Didn't I, like, use to draw something like this?

Lately, there's been much depression and little art. Or, at least, apathy. My particular mental quirks are rather harmful, especially if kept unchecked. Then again, anything without moderation is harmful.

Something for midsummer time.

Midsummer festivities. I'll be away for a few days. While there have been periods of unexpected inactivity before, I'll try and notify you of such periods when I know of them beforehand.

...That doesn't make sense on a very basic level.

In any case, I'll be away 'till Monday, so here's something to tide you over. More character-design type stuff, really. Conceptartsy or something.

Oh, and there's a comic to read, too! It turned out rather light in shade, this time.

The general preference in comic-art is, that the pencils should be as much all there is as possible. We've ended up using quite a bit of CGI on parts, and sometimes details get punched up with ink, but usually that's not the case. Such things as the scanner used, and the monitor used, affect the finished product quite a bit. Looking at it now, I feel I could have been a bit bolder with the light/dark variance. The top frame could use a bit more clarity. But, all in all, it fills it's purpose and we chose to publish now instead of holding it back even longer.

Teaseriffic

This is for all of you five people who read this blog. Large parts of this will be covered by the mighty Bubbles of Speech. No blatant errors for the most part, maybe the bracers could be a bit lighter tone to match the breastplate.

Would'a finished tonight, but Paint Shop Pro 9 crashed as I was editing the file, and I don't feel like redoing the rest tonight. (2:20 AM local time.)

This page is very late, again, and the second page for this year. Hopefully, next one will come out faster. I'm taking steps so that the next page will only be delayed by stuff like studying, socializing and work, and, y'know, productive stuff like that.

Socializing is productive - and difficult - if one's as much of an introverted recluse as I am. Really.

Old Stuff #9: Sometimes, women are from Mars.

Ahh... designing the Elder Senshi.
That... is probably the first take on Elder Mars... or I just named a random sketch as such. Or possibly, Ben went and said "This one looks like Mars."

...He probably didn't, considering who Mars is based on.



In any case, here's some more sketchy. Mars still doesn't have her hair here, but it's the correct length, more or less. I'm already thinking that Mars needs armor, clearly.

As a bonus, we also have Mercury here. nice and dynamic, damn the proportions, full speed ahead!

Poor Mars, her shoulder looks dislocated. Maybe that's why her face is so wide.


And here... the hair is wrong - looks like a mature Terra quite a bit - so maybe Mars always had a somewhat similar look...

Although Terra didn't have spiky hair at this point, I think! So it's Terra mimicing Mars, then!

...Well, copying others is what she does best, actually.

The costume is all wrong, but it's nice and dynamic.


Here's a view from the back. The only reason we know this is Mars, is because she has the shield and the... well, it's supposed to be a Gladius.

I think the arms are bent back a bit too much here, but all in all it's quite nice.

Really!



Yet another picture. This one looks like it has almost the right hair, and has an armored gauntlet. Different than what we went with - maybe because it isn't as obvious that it's armor. Missing the bow from back of the skirt.


And here's all we've seen of her in the line comic. I like the line down her boots.
I constantly need to self-reference for various details, and sometimes I get it wrong. However, I've explicitly denied having any consistency so it's all good! Or maybe not.

I used to habitually draw the bows in front too small, and forget the ones on the back. Maybe the Elder Inner Senshi designs just don't have them?

...Seeing as how Chibi-Saturn -- who isn't the best character to refer to, admittedly -- has one.

Iteration 1 / Making Of #2

No big top image this time. In any case, this is the "official" Monday post, and the previous one is the "Official" Sunday post, so there!

Iteration 1 was my attempt to quickly reach the end of chapter 1 back in 2004. These are the pages created back then. 01-17 and 01-18 were used practically as-is. Parts after that went through some significant changes.



In any case, they do have some good ideas I'm still somewhat fond of, so here they are.

When talking of the Galactic Destroyer, using it requires so much CG-work later on, one might make a joke about blue screens and special effect budget, to continue the metaphor of a live action TV show for the webcomic. But I won't, right now, because I can't think of anything. So there. Urrr....

01-19 was replaced by this version, which isn't that bad, either. Plus, I like how the official version shows a bit more of the Galactic Destroyer's evolution.

Never-the-less, I like the extreme perspective view of QS, and the GD getting blown away --- I was probably watching Fullmetal Alchemist at the time. Also, the GD in the second frame is nice.


You have seen 01-20 before. As I mentioned before, I quite like the chibi-drawings in the middle, and the background action - Saturn chasing the Chibi-GD - in the last one. Beyond that, it's kinda weak.

The last frame has a distinct foreground-background thing going on, though, which is nice.


01-21 is sort-of a new page! Except that it was effectively rolled to 01-20, plus the dialogue is kinda weird there. I like the angry Science-Terra with GD-aura, and the "Final Planet-wide solution" thing. Also, there are older designs for Sailor Kawaii and Sailor Nuke.

I liked the "Free For All!" thing so much I had to put it into the actual page, too -- even if it's practically invisible.

So... What do you think? Is the official version the better one, or did you find this version of our exposition explosion to be the more entertaining one?

Terra's Green Dress / links / pondering

You know, I didn't save once while I was drawing this. Eep. Good thing nothing bad happened...
In any case, as I was going through my old stuff, I noticed there's actually been three different ways I've drawn the dress. The leftmost one is the "most official", considering it's on Ch1 cover.
Some variation of the rightmost one may make an appereance in the distant future.

Random Linkage: Blog from the maker / s of Puffy AmiYumi show - 'twas done in Flash. Keen.
CCC City: at least "Rush II" has pretty good animation.
Cross-linkage: New rant at nettg.com with anoter link I'm too lazy to duplicate here.

*edit* I just had to add this: Shoo Fly.

Concerning the next page, here's something I wrote in an Email, I thought I could show it here, since, it has no spoilers... well, besides the fact that my current layout has six frames for the next page.

I'm tempted to split this page in two. it's better to have two pages with three frames than one page with six frames, IMO... although that does depend on the action.

Frankly, I think we can decompress here a bit, we could have an entire page with just Laios wandering. Ummm... >_<; Four or five frames is usually the optimum. When showing cool stuff, 1-3 frames is best. Part of the reason the previous page turned out as it did, was because due to my slow pace, the script has gotten "compressed" - which doesn't really help. The more stuff is crammed into a page, the harder it's to even _start_ drawing it. On the other hand, decompress too much, and you end with hardly any dialogue and ten pages where hardly anything happens. While this may work for stuff like Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, it doesn't really for a webcomic, especially with my slow pace. There needs to be a POINT to every page. This can basically be solved only by very good storytelling and pacing... demanding, on it's own, that, too.

Old Stuff #5 / Attention-starved. / Making of

Wow. My behavior surprises me. Attention makes me want to draw more - I've even been keeping to a daily schedule, despite the fact I explicitly deny having adopted one. Today, I've been nervously checking if someone's posted comments - as people have been pleasantly active in the forums - considering latest updates. I guess the newness of practically regular updates -even if it's in a blog, is wearing off. Oh, well.

Notice! I have some family over during the weekend, so I can't really guarantee updates after today - not 'til monday, anyway. Let's hope I can get back to it after such a long break, eh?

In any case, today's Old Stuff is... spotlighting, I guess, the second-to-last page of Prologue --- the new page is the nineteenth page - twentieth, counting cover - of chapter ONE, after all.

In any case, crafting chapter zero was quite an interesting experience, and there are some nice arts there - I haven't improved that much since then. Maybe I draw faces a bit less wonky, though. Also, the hair here is still an intermediary one. Still, Terra's hair hasn't gone through as much changes as the galactic destroyer.

...Er, GD's a shapeshifter, after all. Yeah, that's the ticket.

This one eventually became page nine of the prologue. A lot changed, only the bottom one stayed basically the same. I'm not sure how the dialogue was supposed to go, I guess I could ask Ben if he's kept some of the early drafts of the script - I've changed my Email address a couple of times since then, so I've lost most of them.

I often get into the mood of showing all this preliminary stuff, and some of it might make a nice Extra, but I've never really gotten into it. Blogger does make it easy, even if I'm using Good Evil Google servers to store the stuff. Hmm. Somewhat troublesome. Scary, even.

Ahem, got distracted.
Hmm.

You know, I think I like this explaining-thing, so I shall proceed further with it. The critter on your right is the very first "solid" sketch of GD I made. Very skinny, stealing a lot from H.R. Giger's Alien work, and has weird bat-like wings.

Back when I drew this during a warm summer evening, June of 2002, almost ten months before the launch of the website in it's initial nettg.simud.org location, I already knew I was going to do some CGI-fu on the wings. The head had a lot less going towards the five petals style, but it's beginning. Also, four fingers and a generally slim build.

Some time between this image and the start of actual comic-arts, the GD lost a finger and... ate an Oozaru, or something. I do so like the fingers in this image, though. Nice posing.

The wings developed, from initial cloak of darkness in the cover - and, I believe in Ben's original description of the Beast.

Actually, let me quote Ben here, for a bit:

From the shattered front of the vessel flew a dark shape. It swooped toward the Senshi with a loud, enraged screech.

They ducked a snatch of its talons. It flew down and landed in front of them, lashing out with its huge jaws, roaring menacingly.

...Not really that much to go on with. I wonder, where the whole cloak of darkness thing came from, then? Ah, well.



In any case, as can be seen here, the wings start to charge up with dark energy and go from small, bat-like stubs to petals of darkness with... I believe, I was thinking of supernovas captured within. Also, that's where the petal-face comes from. So, the bat-like state is more like... an antenna of some sort? Perhaps.

I was channeling Dark Star from Slayers Try a bit - after all, there we have an actual galactic destroyer. I think this can be best seen in the very first GD-picture - the "Beware, Beware!" one. I like the green glowy-thing and the red eyes there, definitely.

In any case, the wings develop into... essentially a variation of the petal shape - I like sticking to certain visual themes and such. Although, I take no responsibility of how Terra's hair become GD-spike-like. It's due to Ben's influence, completely.

Of course, I really like the energy-blade wings, with Todd McFarlane type scraps of darkness around them, too. I did warn in an early post - possibly before Ammon gave us the current news-post system - that I wouldn't guarantee any sort of consistency between my drawings.

In any case, the fact we completed the prologue before starting the web site - and that was a good decision - we had some content even with a sucky update schedule - also allowed us to do... some revisions. Biggest of them being page six.
Here, let me introduce you to the original:

Horrible, yes?

There isn't a single frame here with decent art in it - even the best ones, numbers three and four, are kind of... sucky. in three, everything is the wrong length, and four... well, the idea isn't so bad, but the angle --- thumb covering QS:s face? C'mon!

I'm telling you, during some of these shots, it's way too obvious when we're using our trusty crossdressing stuntman, Murray.
( By the way, I love the last picture of Terra going nuts on that extra. )

In any case, the actual page that went live, is quite good. Even if some parts of the original artwork suffered weird aliasing effects and whatnot in the transition, the top frame, as well as frames 5-9 are all quite nice. What I don't like anymore is how the puny lightnings interact with the dialogue and the neck-bending GD in frame 3.

I think I was planning to have the GD do a second, more powerful attack there, but, er, that scene got cut in the scripting phase, or something.

Also, the lower torso of GD in the last frame was very sucky, thus the SFX cover-up.
Oh, just because!!:

I have a habit of lining up stuff naturally, or somesuch, which gives an illusion of... something or other. I'm not really sure, but someone mentioned it. Flow, dynamics. Something like that. In any case, this has all sorts of niceness going, so... y'know, just because.

I will probably talk more of the comic later... But I shan't forget drawing, either! In worst case, I hope this will tide you over the weekend.