Sketchdump/Fathoms-worldbuilding

Hey, long time no see! I've been busy working on Fathoms and running around in panicked circles as Christmas bore down on me. But I'm better now.

New character, no name yet;


In other news, Painter's Digital Watercolour tool is neat, and I will be using it more.


Trying to work out the overall look of the Moonface tribe.

Ink warm-ups/sketchdump/worldbuilding

Pretty disparate post today - sketches and ink-practise and a bit of Fathom-worldbuilding (because worldbuilding is the most fun you can have with your pants on, honestly).


Costume-ideas (i.e: visual identity) for the Whalerider-people. The one on the far left is Khazri, the one next to him is a tentative design for a standard soldier's uniform; the next is a random woman's outfit, and the one on the far right is probably a cloth-merchant. As a nomadic people, the Whaleriders tend towards becoming itinerant traders.

They also make a big deal out of concealing their faces (both genders); they think of faces as an important expression of identity - the shape of their soul, if you will - and it is therefore considered intensely private.

Ink-warmups;




A variation on the theme of my most recent digital painting; this one focused more on feelings of protectiveness.

Gesture-practise! (Photo-referenced)

Ink warm-ups, take 2.

More ink-warmups. They're a good habit, since they keep me drawing almost every day (and to be honest, the days when I'm not working on Fathoms, I'm drawing other things).






... Perhaps I ought to clean some of these up and colour them. For practise, or something.

Intermission

Hi! For once, this is an entry without any pictures in it - though one of those will be along within the next few days.

This is just to say I've started a second blog - which has nothing to do with art. It's got to do with baking. Because everyone has to have a hobby, right?.

In other, slightly more relevant news; 16/24 pages of Fathoms are inked (minus spotting the blacks). Serious progress is being made!

Ink warm-ups

I'm currently working on Fathoms pt. 2 - the sketches are all finished, so I'm inking them now - but since I haven't inked anything seriously for months, I've decided to do these ink warm-ups before I start every day, just to get into the flow of things.

Some of them have turned out pretty nice, others unremarkable. But still - it's good practise.

Mini-sketchdump

For reasons of NaNoWriMo, there hasn't been a whole lot of art done these last few weeks. But I'm nearly finished (35352 words!), so hopefully I'll be back with a vengeance.

In the meantime, sketches:


Nila and Blackbird (who can't seem to decide which way that white part of her hair is going - it changes from picture to picture).


Blackbird again, this time to test out Paint Tool Sai's lineart tools. They're pretty neat.


Habashiri Kenji, bit-part character in the mobster-universe.

Watercolour

I was watching the BBC's Human Planet, because it's such a fascinating and inspiring show, and saw these people in India who make bridges out of the roots of living trees.

This is in no way a fair representation of what those beautiful things look like (I'm not happy at all with it, actually), but it was a watercolour sketch I thought was worth posting.

NaNoWriMo 2011 - mood/concept sketches

This year for NaNoWriMo, I'm rewriting my plot from 2009, thus making 2011 the year of It's Raining In Chicago Redux.

To get in the mood and plan a bit (and to avoid panicking and deciding on the spot to write silly Final Fantasy IX-fanfiction instead), I'm doing a couple of sketches.

Abarat-fanart+sketchdump

I've recently read Abarat, and it's two sequels Days of Magic, Nights of War and Absolute Midnight, and got into the fanart-y mood.


First up, the girl from Marapozsa Street, "A woman was studying at an upper window with her hair like a thicket filled with little coloured birds."


Christopher Carrion, Lord of Midnight, whose nightmares escape from his brain and swim around his collar.



Leeman Vol, the Insect Man, whose entire person is home to a multitude of insects. "Sometimes they bit him, in the midst of their terrritorial wars, and often they burrowed into his skin to lay their eggs."


Malingo the Geshrat




Also, two sketched - I need to practise my inking skills; they've fallen into disuse lately.

Daily sketchbook dump Sept. 23 - 26

Lagging a bit behind on the daily sketches, what with Fathoms and 24 Hour Comic Day.

Speaking of 24 Hour Comics, most of today's post is focused on it. Mostly concept-sketches of the main character, and a bit of planning of title typography, though I'm not sure I'm keeping that idea, or running with another one.







And then there's some assorted sketches of golems and Moonfaces and a grouchy-looking man with a huge fuck-off sword. 'Cause sometimes, you just need to draw grouchy men with huge fuck-off swords.

I don't know why, but the thought of Auga playing cat's cradle amuses me. He'd be so dead serious about it.

Daily sketchbook dump - Sept. 10-22

It feels kind of dishonest to label these "Daily sketchbook"-dumps - because there are days when I don't draw anything in my sketchbook. On the other hand, there are days like the 18th, when I draw four pages.

Meh. I'll keep the label.


Those two ladies at the top of this page are my cousins.

Practising Talassa's hairline, which is tricky.

Character-design practise for my Comic Royale-submission:

Daily sketchbook dump Sept. 6-10

Entirely Fathoms-focused! How 'bout that? Warning: babble follows.

I've been worldbuilding lately, because as a world, Fathoms is pretty empty. There was just Talassa and Gale, and that four-armed Whalerider guy who would turn up in chapter three. I've been playing around a bit with the Whalerider people (as evidenced by my earlier sketchdumps), but I decided they needed some more people.

So, I invented the Moonface-tribe.


It started as a doodle, which grew into something more - and it was only after drawing a few of them that I realised they all looked like fat axolotls.

Then I started thinking about the markings on their foreheads.

All of the markings are simplified phases of the moon. Children have crescent moons, adults have half-moons and the ones I've labelled as "Speakers" have full moons. Male Moonfaces have moon-markings that curve to the left, while female Moonfaces' curve to the right, to set them apart. It's definitely easier for non-Moonfaces to identify them that way, since they otherwise have no outward physical traits setting them apart.

The Moonfaces are divided in two main factions - the White Moon and the Black Moon. And no, the Black Moon-faction is NOT evil. They just represent another way of living, the same way an eclipse represents another phase of the moon.

I haven't completely figured out what the different factions stand for, but I'll get there. It's fun to play around with politics and religion and imaginary societies.



I've also been tinkering with the plot, and have decided that in some future chapter, a Seer is going to turn up. Below are my initial ideas for the Seer's design:

Daily sketchbook dump Aug 29-Sept. 3

Daily sketchings, plus some other stuff.







Been working on some character-designs for my submission to Comic Royale #6:



It's going to be a short steampunk adventure/treasure-heist story.


I've also done a commission for the owner of this blog. It was fun to do a proper portrait!



And then there's this - Reddit's IDAP-subreddit has this 24-Hour-Art-Jam going, which will be happening every Thursday. This was this week's challenge: