Punctuation

There are a couple of days remaining in the month and I have yet to post anything for the next episode of The Word Smith which my previous post implied would happen sometime this month.  I expect to get around to this some time over the weekend so as not to perjure myself.

In the meantime, here's some design sketches I did of a very minor character that appears in a flashback in episode 7:

The character is named The Punctuator and is, obviously, punctuation themed.  I was also trying to make his outfit a bit "spikey" because he, well, punctures things, after a fashion.

And that is all for today.  Watch this space for the commencement of the next exciting (exciting!  I say!) episode of... The Word Smith!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Re"mark"able

Freak here, just popping in with another interlude whilst the Word Smith is still on hiatus (hopefully it will resume in February of the new year!)  As with the previous interlude, this one was also inked using marker (hence the horrible, horrible pun in the post title.)  You should go look at it!  And by you, I mean the person reading this sorry excuse for a blog right now!  Don't ask why, just go!  Exclamation mark!  (Anyway, the interlude can be found here.)

And after you've gone and looked at the interlude, here is the original pencil version:

The character in the interlude does not appear anywhere in episode 6.  For the excessively curious (or terminally bored), I suggest checking out episode one to see the previous (and only) appearance of the character (she appears in four panels, plus the title page.)

I've also, as may be apparent, done some tweaking of the original character design for this character:

Anyway, that is all from the Freak.  I don't expect to be posting again until next year which, of course, is not that far away, or thus it would seem.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

End of an Episode

It's a little later than I expected (even though I expected it to be late), but the final page of The Word Smith, Episode 5, is now online for your viewing pleasure.  To read the whole episode from the beginning, start here.

With the One Act that I'm stage managing starting to go into high gear this week combined with the fact that I still have to finalize the script for episode 6, now seems like a good time to take a few weeks hiatus (which I've been doing anyway between episodes, so you know.)  I'll try to aim to start the next episode in late July and there probably won't be any interludes in the mean time, but who knows?  I can't predict the future, after all (unfortunate, that.)

And here's some character design:

I did some redesign of this character over my previous design from a while back.  Nothing too fancy.

Anyway, that's all for now.  Until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC

Naming Conventions

The next page (that being page two) of episode five of The Word Smith is now online.  It reveals the great mystery of just what is The Word Smith's real name?  Read if you dare for you just may go insane from the revelation.  (Most likely not, but I cannot rule out the possibility.)

And I really need to get back to drawing in the sketchbook more often (regardless of how long Word Smithing takes) 'cause I'm running out of stuff.  But for today, I continue with some of the FR character "redesign":

On the left is Katara and on the right is Tirel.  No point saying much else about these character since I'm the only one who knows anything about them to begin with.

In other largely inconsequential news, I've been playing a bit of Magic recently (which I've not done in years) which was fun.  I just have to make sure I don't go spend too much on cards (not likely an issue, I'm generally fairly well self-disciplined about these things).

Anyway, until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC

Not Batman

And verily, the first page of The Word Smith's fifth episode finds its way onto the weeb.  I'll be doing this episode in colour and also currently intend to do all remaining episodes in colour, but no guarantees.  I will also be giving a title to each page for whatever reason.

I've been rather lazy with the sketchbook lately since I've been focused on the comic, but here are a couple of character redesigns of my old FR characters:

Erin and Doran Windermere.  I didn't look back at the original designs though I suspect that these are at least somewhat similar.  I've never entirely decided on the exact relationship between these two characters (siblings, married, something else?), not that I expect it to make a huge difference.  Also, not entirely happy with the way Doran turned out so I'll probably redo that drawing at some point.

Anywho, that's all for this week.  Tune in next week for the exciting, continuing adventures of The Word Smith!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

The Cat's Meow

Hey, look, page 9 of episode 4 of The Word Smith is online.  It may even be a thing, or whatever.  Regardless, it looks like everything is going according to plan.  Hopefully page 10 will be ready for next week, but there's a chance there might be a slight delay or an interlude instead.  I blame FASS (and so should you.)

And now, on to today's sketchbook entry:

This is a bit of a redesign of one of the characters from the occasionally mentioned Kyoujo RPG.  In particular, this is Mirayrl Aiyew Prurrj Trelarrl, who is basically a supporting, though playable, character.  I seem to have been doing some updating/redesign of some of my FR and related characters of late (especially some of the less frequently drawn ones) so there's bound to be some more of them showing up here in the future.

In other news, FASS is over, I have survived it and life returns to some semblance of normality, whatever that is.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

According to Plan

Page 6 of episode 4 of The Word Smith has found its way onto the interweebs revealing the plans of t3h g4m3rz.  This also marks the half-way mark for the episode (it will be twelve pages).  Go marvel at it, or just mar at it, without the vel.

And here is today's exciting sketchbook entry, for some definition of exciting:

It's a slight redesign on a character that has appeared in this blog previously.  I had had some plans for the character, but there's not really been enough time to follow through on them.  Perhaps when FASS has finished up I'll have the chance to revisit things.

In other news, I forgot to mention last week that I saw a license plate that read "LOTR4EVR" which I thought was cool (of course I'm a huge Tolkien geek, so I would think that).  I also had the opportunity to see The Hobbit in 48 FPS mode (I originally saw it in regular 24 FPS).  That is, of course "frames per second" and not "first person shooter".  I thought it was neat!  It didn't take me very long to adjust to the high frame rate and didn't cause any issues for me.

And that is all for this week.  Until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC

Not the Face

So!  More stuff from the sketchbook this week.  To start off, I've drawn another page of the New Adventures of The Freak in the Cape:

Along with this comes the usual disclaimer that more of these will be drawn if and when I have the time, motivation and inspiration to do so.

And to fill the Word Smith void, such as it is, here's some character design for a couple of characters that will be appearing in episode 4:

One of these characters is important, the other less so, but which is which shall become apparant at some undisclosed time in the future.

Until then,
Freak Out
-TFitC

It's Tuesday

Currently working on pencils for episode 3 of The Word Smith (about half done), part of which requires doing some additional character designs.  These are for some background characters that may not really get much notice, but there's a chance they may show up again in the future so I should at least try to be consistent.  All this is to say that today's post is showing some of the design for one of these characters.

These were the two initial design sketches for a mad-scientist type character.  At some point after those, I did the final design sketch:

I apparently decided I preferred the second of the two original sketches.  While his feet got cut off, he's supposed to be wearing flip-flops.  He's eccentric like that.  Eccentrically evil, or evilly eccentric.

Anyway, that's all for today.  Until next time,

Freak Out,
-TFitC

This is a post. It is about some things.

Well hello again internets.  It's time again for a journey of some sort.  Allow your mind to transport you to a fantastical realm where reality is nothing but a figment of your imagination.  Or don't.  It's all up to you, really.  I mean, who am I to say what you should do?  No need to get defensive or anything.  Sheesh.

Um, anywho, how about some drawings of debatable merit?

Some character design for episode 3 of The Word Smith.  I'll probably get rid of (or alter) that jacket for the final version.  At least, that's what I'm currently thinking.  (Well, not currently as in this instant, but, you know, in a more general sense.)

And some potential designs for a character that will be appearing in episode 5.  I may play with the design some more before it's finalized, however.

Anyway, that's today's, uh, stuff.  It seems that I have started working on the thumbnails for episode 3 for The Word Smith so I may not end up doing as much sketchbook drawing whilst I work on that episode.  Not, I'm sure, that the internets are really all that concerned about that.

Whelp, until next time.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Happy Canada Day

It's Canada Day and what better way to celebrate than post some drawings that have nothing to do whatsoever with Canada Day, other than being drawn by a Canadian.

Continuing on with the character design that I started last time with an individual shot of each of the characters.  I went from right-to-left in the order that they appeared in the group picture (for no particular reason) - see previous post.  This is the first of the three g4m3rz.  Yes, that's Saturn-on-a-stick.

The second of the three g4m3rz.  Running with daggers is only slightly less dangerous than running with scissors.

And the last of the three g4m3rz.  Yes that is an oven door being used as a shield and that is a pizza emblazoned on his tabard.  He's a Master Chef, you see.

Anyway, that's all for now.  Have a happy fireworks day.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

g4m3 0n

I've been working on fleshing out the rest of the plotline continuing The Word Smith mini-comics I've done.  So far, it looks like it'll clock in at about 12 episodes, depending a little on how I finalize the break down.  As part of that, I've been doing a bit of work on character design for some of the characters that will be appearing in future episodes.

This shows characters that will be appearing in episode 4.  They are (minus the rightmost one) the in-game characters of the three g4m3rz from episode 1 for the game they play (you can see the characters on their laptop screens on the first page so it should be possible to deduce which is which).  The rightmost character is not one of the g4m3rz but is acquanted with them.  In the actual sketchbook drawing, her legs ended up being too long (I shortened them in photoshop) which is a result of a problem I run in to sometimes - I have a tendancy to focus too much on the details too soon sometimes and don't want to erase something that I've spent a lot of time on when I notice things are a little off.  In this case, that was her armour, which was based off of my favourite piece of armour from Final Fantasy XI.

And here's an individual shot of the rightmost one.  She uses a gladius style sword.  I may not keep the cheek mark as I think it probably makes her look too much like one of my FR characters.

Whelp, that's all for this installment.  Tune in next time when we continue to flog the weeb.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

A Quantum of Something or Other

So, for today, we start of with a little bit of character design for another potential project that I'm pondering pursuing (yes, yes, another one, I really should have learned by now).

This was actually the second piece of character design, but I didn't really like how the first one turned out so I'm not going to bother posting it.

Next up, I decided to do a title page design for the second episode of The Word Smith.

I've also been working on the inking for episode two of The Word Smith and it's almost done, though that doesn't necessarily mean that it'll actually be finished any time soon - whenever I get around to it, really.

And that's all for today.  Stay tuned next time which will be just as exciting!  Or, well, maybe not.  Your excitement levels may vary.  Much like an electron.  Check your orbitals now and be careful of incoming-

PHOTON!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Weekend Whatever

Lets just dive in without any witty (or other) preamble.

It's The Pen (still haven't gotten around to picking these characters' actual names...) working on something or other.  The background is more-or-less drawn in one-point perspective, though I was being rather loose with it and didn't worry too much about some of the details.

Ended up trying another dragon.  Didn't really turn out quite like I was aiming for and I prefered the previous one, but figured I'd upload this anyway.  Make of that what you will.

And finally, a little bit of quick character design:

This is for a (hopefully!) one-off thing that I'm considering doing that's related to the poster I submitted to an upcoming graphics conference (which, incidentally, was accepted).  I do seem to be somewhat predisposed towards being incapable of doing one-off things, however, so we'll see how that goes.

Anyway, that's all for the nonce.
Freak Out,
-TFitC

Oh, Hey, More Pictures

Looks like it's time for another post.  Decided to try my hand at something non-human this time:

It's a dragon, of sorts, which, I hope, is obvious.  Not really much else to say about this one so I'll just move along to the next one.

This is another potential character design for another character for the Word Smith project, if I continue it.  I imagine that I'll probably end up changing the character's outfit as I develop my concept of who the character is and all that, but it's a start, anyway.

That's all for today so until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC

Comic Filler

On the previous meeting for the comics workshop, we talked about panel composition and various considerations (conscious or otherwise) that go into laying out content within a panel. Comic artist Wally Wood came up with "22 Panels That Always Work" (or see video version here) as a sort of visual shorthand - of course, theres more than just 22 ways to compose a panel, but it's a nice reference if one is stuck for ideas.

One of our exercises was to re-design a panel from our mini-comic thumbnails based on our panel composition discussion. Here's the one that I did (from page 6):And the three alternate versions:
We've also been talking about developing characters, both in the literary sense and in regards to approaches and techniques to designing the visual look of a character. Even though I did the character design for my major characters in The Word Smith over the summer, this still gave me the opportunity to design the civilian attire for the hero and his sidekick and the new set of villains.This is a set of concept sketches exploring possible designs for The Word Smith's civilian look (I went with the middle one), with a more detailed model sheet below:For The Pen, I only did a set of concept sketches (because I was being lazy) with the final design that I used being a mix of the first and second sketches.Finally, I did a single sketch for each of the villains (basically fairly closely based on how they were drawn in the thumbnails) and no detailed model sheet since they're just one-offs, basicallyThe fact that there's three of them (like there were in the first mini-comic) is really just coincidental. Three just seems like a good number, though I could probably have cut one of them out without much difficulty.

Anywho! That's all for this time. The next post will probably have the pencils for the first two pages of the mini-comic.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Character Design Part 4

This is the last part of the character design for my mini-comic: one of the waitresses at the Street Meet Cafe (rough sketch below).

I actually ended up putting the character into the first panel of page 1 which was not originally planned so I did the quick rough sketch while in the process of drawing that panel. The more detailed design was not done until more recently. For the purposes of this project, the character is a minor one, but there's an off chance she'll become more important should I decide to continue this project (most certainly not a guarantee or anything) so I did a bit more of a detailed design than my other minor characters.

The "action" pose was meant to be some sort of discus throw type thing, but didn't really turn out how I wanted. That's a problem - I'm not really particularly good at doing action-y poses, but I suppose one of the points of this project is to get some practice at things like this. The above version is actually the second attempt - I erased the original pose and redrew it. The second one turned out better, even if it still wasn't really what I was trying for.

I also ended up doing another quick sketch with another variant on the pose. I think I like this one better (for the most part), even if it still needs work!

Lastly, I also did a quick sketch on an alternate design of The Word Smith's mask (it's actually loosely based on the logo for the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds concerts):

And that's it for character design! Since I don't expect that the process for the remaining pages will be much different from the first page, I'm not likely going to do any in-progress posts like I did for page one and will just post the remaining pages as I finish them. Not having a deadline like I did for the first page, the other pages might take a while, but we'll see!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Character Design Part 3

Continuing work on the character design for the remaining characters for my mini test comic. I've completed the design for the two "heroes", such as they are. Below is the rough sketch for the main hero "The Word Smith".

And below is the detailed version.


This is the rough sketch of his much put upon sidekick, "The Pen":


And, again, the detailed version:

Her costume is loosely based on fencing gear.

Anyway, that is all for now. Just one more character to finish up and then it'll be back to drawing the comic pages.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Character Design Part 2

Here is the second part of the character designs for all of the characters appearing on the first page of my test comic. We start with the third of the three villains.

The action pose on the right was based on the poses of one of the villains in the thumbnails. No particular reason for it, it was just something random I did in the thumbnails which I'm probably going to keep.

The only other characters that will appear on the first page (aside from a small silhouette of the hero seen from a distance) are two extras who appear in two panels. Since they're not particularly important and I don't expect they shall turn up again, I didn't do a separate page for each of them (they're related anyway) and they each only got a single pose.

The above is the rough sketch and below is the finished version.

There is a reason why the close-up is the way it is, but that will have to wait until the actual comic to explain.

Anyway, I'm now more or less ready to tackle drawing the actual page - well, once I track down some reference photos. Tomorrow I am planning on putting together my "studio".

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Character Design Part 1

I've been poking at that comic project periodically (amongst other things) and have progressed into the character design stage. I've got rough sketches of most of the characters (all but a minor character who appears at the end of the comic) and have started working on the "full" character design.

I'll be short circuiting the process a little bit, for the sake of expediency. I've got a "tech talk" for the lab coming up in a few weeks for which I'd like to present the comic creation process so I'm going to be focusing on getting a full page done which means I'm starting by only doing character design for the characters that appear on the first page. Once page one is done, I'll go back and finish the rest of the characters.

Anyway! I've been working on the character design for the three "villains", who are the majority of the characters that appear on the first page. I've got two of them done, so lets take a look!

Scanned in smudged (sigh...) Oh well! This is just a rough sketch of the three villains. There names are never mentioned in the comic so I haven't bothered giving them actual names.

This is the character design page for the "leader" of the villains (the middle one from the sketch). My approach so far has been to do a full body, fairly neutral pose, two close-ups on the face from different angles and with different expressions and an "action" pose. You'll note that here the leader has been given the keyboard which was held by one of the others in the sketch. It seemed to make more sense to me that the leader should have the keyboard, plus that was also the way things appeared to go in the thumbnails (though it was a bit hard to tell which was which in the thumbnails since they're fairly generic in the thumbnails).

Another one of the villains. Not too much to say about this one! Same format as the previous one. The pose on the right was supposed to be a "ridiculous ninja pose", but it didn't really turn out to be all that ninja-y.

Well, that's all for now. With any luck I should have Part 2 in the next day or two.

Freak Out,
-TFitC