Here's a glamorous, stylised version of me!



If you're curious as to what I actually look like, here's my current Twitter/LinkedIn pic:

I got fed up of carrying and drawing in the big sketchbook 'cause it's so cumbersome so I've downsized to an A5 hardback and splashed some paint on it:

I'll be attending the Eurogamer Expo this year in attempt to get some crits and exposure of my work, so it wouldn't hurt to dedicate some time to packaging to make it more memorable. Normally, I paint a character, but this will coincide with my portfolio so they'll look better together. All in the name of marketing, baby. ;)

The first sketch inside:
Been watching Tangled and Book of Kells lately (excellent films and they're both on LoveFilm) and I like how both used hair as part of the character's movement and personality, so here's what I would look like if I were an animated character of some sort! Though I don't have the tattoo yet....the rest shall be explained when it's in full colour.


These lot are from the old SB:



These were from the Oxford Meet where we went to Pitt Rivers to look at lots of sharp and pretty things behind glass. Miiiight have spent too much time socialising instead of drawing, though. Still, it was good fun.


1-minute poses.


Rawr, abs!

Something I did for fun. Creative Review are holding a competition to design one's 'perfect hotel room door sign'. Here's mine. ;)



To quote Withnail & I,
"We want the finest wines available to humanity.
And we want them here, and we want them now!"
I forgot to add reflections on the bottle and glasses but....you get the idea. Must get back to normal work. Ciao~

I drew this out yesterday and started painting it today, though my laptop is struggling somewhat......thought I'd post a WIP now just in case!


Generally, I'm going for a fashiony Victorian dress. I used to love designing these types of dresses and haven't done one in ages, so perhaps it's time to rekindle that hobby.

If you have any crits and/or tips on making a MacBook Pro more efficient, drop me a line. I know these things defrag themselves so aside from deleting stuff, I'm not really sure what else to do....

Cheers!

As mentioned before, I joined Twitter a couple of weeks ago and spotted Lady Gaga's tweet requesting a sketch to use as her profile pic for V magazine. I love her music so why the hell not? :)


It was a vague and tight deadline as I didn't catch it 'til a couple of hours afterwards but hopefully I made it in time. Been working on some stuff lately with super tight deadlines (hence lack of blog posts) but hey, it keeps me on my toes!

Here are the WIPs:


And now........time to sleep! Night night~ xxx

.....still need to practice more and play around with custom brushes and textures to speed things up. These took about 30-60 mins each. Too long considering, really. :/

On a side note, I recently made a Twitter account as a means of networking/finding more information to aid my job hunt. I avoided it for aaaaaages, dismissing it as another fad but it's been surprisingly useful so far and I enjoy the daily updates of inspiring photography from the National Geographic folks (all of the enviro speedpaints so far are studies of their photos).

I also designed some new icons for my site, so I'll spam them here too:


^ Clicky clicky ^
Notice how they're the same shape as my logo? ;)

Here are some basic sword silhouettes that started off being for Frog's Masamune but in the end I got some shapes for Chrono, Magus and Marle's weapons too (I've decided to give Marle some daggers for close-range fighting).
This is my first time designing weapons so I can't help but cringe at some of them but it's the same with everything, I guess. Gotta keep plodding along until it starts working. :)

The second silhouette from the left was later roughed out into 3 more designs:

By Sod's Law, the one I like most (far left) doesn't fit the character design! Instead it looks like the one on the far right would be worth developing.....maybe with bits of the middle one chucked in.

Last but not least, a progress shot of Frog so far. I automatically painted him green but may play around with other colours/patterns too.

FROOOOOOOOG!! Epic character. He's a chivalrous Medieval knight whose life is dedicated to protecting the queen and is easily my favourite in the game. Here's hoping I can do him some justice, eh?

Initial concepts:

I quite liked the last one as it shows more charisma so it was developed some more:

My preferences are currently swaying towards the one on the far left....also, the stick is there for placement. I'm looking forward to designing the Masamune!

EDIT: Initial studies before drawing the concepts. They're kind of embarrassing but oh well - it's only a sketchbook! Forgot to post these yesterday:

This took under 2 hours after my boyfriend suggested I draw something other than girly-looking men and women in costumes. xD; It's a little wonky but it was only intended as a rough sketch. Will pay more attention next time....

Some speedy studies of photoshoots from Vogue:


I'm trying to loosen up and get into painting more since I'm normally quite line-based. First one took about 3-4 hours since I was figuring out custom brushes a method but the second took an hour overall. Getting there....hahah.

Sliiiightly unfinished but....



Here's my rendition of the starry-eyed, tomboy teen princess that is Marle (or rather, Princess Nadia). She definitely needs some bling but I haven't finalised her costume design yet so I'll add it on later.

I'm trying to make each portrait reflect their base element (her's being ice, hence the cool lighting).

Here's how Ayla turned out:



I later learned that she's referenced from another fictional character who's meant to be fair-skinned but I didn't like how it looked compared to my original vision of her, so I used Vanessa Williams as a reference in terms of skin tone, since she has naturally blue eyes.
The painting overall has gone through a few changes but I'm leaving it like this for now and will move on to a different one for a break. Been messing about with this one for long enough!

For those who don't know her character: She is a chief of a tribe and is from the prehistoric age. Statistically, she's the strongest human character and fights bare-fisted, so I wanted her to look tough and well-built. There's a rough sketch of her costume a couple of posts down but I wanna focus on mug shots first. :)

Here's where I am with Ayla's face design so far. Once I finish the details on the right, I'll play around with tattoo possibilities and slap on some colour.

I've decided to redesign my favourite game ever~ (besides FFVII) :D It's a good way to work on varied characters and play with different time periods...and add to my portfolio, of course.

I'm dying to have lunch so I'll keep this short, hahah.

Preliminary Sketches:


Marle:


Advert: Ralph Lauren



Lucca:


I've done some more sketches of Lucca but they're in blue pencil and so don't photograph very well....



Ayla:


Advert: Gucci
Proportions are way out of whack but I'll fix that later!

(Ads photographed from Vogue magazine, April 2011 edition).

This is what came out of developing one of the previous thumbnails:



There are still a few unfinished/rough parts but I'll build them in after applying colour. I'm a little unsure about the foreground atm and the inner part of the tree needs a lot of work....if you have any suggestions, feel free to post them. :)

Here's a plait I drew for reference, since I wanted some of the tree roots to be structured plaits/twists to indicate human interference:

Here are some ideas of how the mages might live. Pretty basic so far...


This one on the far right is partly inspired by Axel Erlandson's basket tree.
I bet the lighting inside would look quite interesting!
This one could do with more work in showing scale but it's only a sketch atm.


I'm liking the idea of this one, where the ground would be dug out to expose the
roots and make an entrance. The roots would be woven (somehow?!) to give it
some architectural structure and allow for creative designs.

Aaarrrgghh, I'm having one of those times when everything I draw turns out crap. Will keep plodding along and update this post with whatever else I churn out (and don't mind showing) by tomorrow since I have plans this weekend.


I started some digi paintovers of the previous figures but they were
looking too static so I whipped out the brush pen to loosen up a bit.



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Related Posts:
>> Mage Thumbs
>> Mage Headgear

Here are some ideas for a mage character design. When playing RPGs I rarely favour a mage as a main character because they're often quite [physically] weak and, well, poncy. They're great to have in the background as a healer/long-range damager though.

Anyway, I wanted to break the mould and design a more active mage who could instantly hold their own even at close-combat. Something along the lines of DA (pre-Arcane Warrior) meets District 13, hahah. So far the first variation is the closest to what I've envisioned for this character so I'll develop that one next. I like the last one too but will most likely save it for another design.

The weapons are there for placement more than anything atm.

This is how the portrait turned out after some crits from a friend:


He suggested playing around with overlays to add more tones so I gave it a go. Here's a link to his blog. :) Cheers, Chris!

Lately, I've been feeling the need to take a step back and do some studies and test out some brushes. This is a study of my friend Alena - I liked the way her hair fell in the photo and wanted to paint it. Also, she's actually wearing a hoody but I like to think of it as a medieval cloak. xD Gives it a different feel.

It's a little stylised and I managed to stop myself in time so not to over-work it....which is a minor achievement for me! It's always tricky to know when to stop painting until it's too late, usually - but I guess that's the beauty of painting digitally (not too painful to fix!). ;)

My mind keeps bouncing back to an old painting of a blind mage and wanting to expand on its story more, so I started doing this today. The idea is that all mages are physically blind and instead 'see' in a more spiritual/magical way very similar to sonar technology; perhaps to the extent that they can see within beings to spot weak points, much like how CAT scans work. The more advanced their skills, the more they can see and respond to them. Such abilities can either make them deadly weapons or invaluable tools in medical treatment.

Anyhoo, that's the base idea so far and here's a start on some hat/hair designs.


The whole horn thing is kinda a mix of: a.) I like the shapes they make, b.) I've been playing Dragon Age a lot, where mages are heavily disliked and in a sense, are seen as sins or devil-like....but tbh it's mostly the former. :P Also, where there are big, flat spaces on the hats, I figured it could have a family/clan emblem or something (to indicate they're the leader or said group). It's all very up in the air right now!!

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On a side note, I haven't been a completely lazy bum and not drawing much but have recently designed a tattoo for myself. It's been an enjoyable process to design something so personal and time (i.e. funds, lol) will tell if I wuss out or not! I don't want to post it until it's literally on my back and chances are it'll be in the me/Me. blog.

If you know any really good (and cleeaan) tattoo artists in Newport/Cardiff (Wales, UK) then drop me a line, please! The more recommendations the better. :) If they have a website that would be grand - otherwise I'll contact them closer to the time to see their previous work.


PS: [In terms of all the photos on this blog] Scanned versions of these drawings will be on my website once I get enough done to make a compilation of pages for my portfolio. Apologies for the blurriness!

SO. Getting into the gaming industry is proving to be more difficult to do now with the current environment so I figured my (super-simplified) choices, besides improving my work and understanding in general, are the following:

a.) Man-up my work. Lots of brown....broooowwwnnnn.
b.) Go cutesy for casual gaming.

I've done some vector stuff lately and have loads of stylised shizz so perhaps it's time to switch sides to test the water. I received this really wonderful book by Adrian Smith (Dark Fantasy) as a graduation present and decided to use it (and some Brian Froud books) as a starting point to draw the kind of subjects I don't normally do.

I started this last night and haven't finished yet but wanted to post it now in case I butcher it later. :P




^ Let us not be sexist! Here be a lady.
She started off with longer hair until it looked like some
weird ogre shampoo advert so I gave her a plait instead.

Happy Valentine's Day~! ^_^


^ This is to my wonderful boyfriend but he doesn't mind me sharing the love~

I've recently finished my moleskin sketchbook so I'm now using a big leather one that's an inconvenient size even for an A3 scanner (which I don't have access to anymore, sigh~). It's a nightmare to scan so I'll try my best to take clear photos (which will actually be better since I'm super lazy when it comes to scanning stuff).

Here are some ink hand studies:




^ Playing with le brush pen and different styles.