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

Food Stuffs

No internal (or external) monologues today so I'll just get straight to the point.

The goal with this drawing, besides more practice drawing what I see, was to practice some shading and shadows.  The knife is there mainly because I felt there needed to be something else in the scene and I was like "hey, I'll just grab a kitchen knife..." and is not a metaphor or anything like that (and I don't tend to be that deep anyway).  Although, if I'd made the jar a jar of peanut butter and put some bread in the background, it could have been a treatise on the perils of sandwich making or something.  Oh well, maybe next time.

Next up is a new set of thumbnails:

I suppose the common theme here is that both of today's pictures involve things that can be found in a kitchen.  The thumbnails are for the one-off thing I mentioned a few posts back in conjunction with some character design.  I think I'm going to try drawing this one digitally on the new cintiq that the lab got recently (which is very nice, by the way).

And that, as they say, is that, at least for today.
Freak Out,
-TFitC

A Bunch of Stuff

So I thought to myself "Hey, Freak!"

"Yeah?"

"You know, you've got a bunch of pencil crayons you never use."

"So?"

"Maybe you shoud, I dunno, use 'em, or something."

"Why?"

"I dunno.  'Cause they're there?  And it'd be fun?"

"Yeah, I guess."

(Note:  conversation may not have happened exactly as depicted.)

Anyway, for a bit of a change of pace I decided to do a drawing in colour:

And of course, I drew Gillin, probably my most-drawn FR character.  I used a set of Prismacolour pencil crayons (yeah, the brand name is spelled without the "u", but as a card-carrying Canadian, I'm physically incapable of spelling it anything other than "colour").  Not sure if I really like working with pencil crayons or not - it's a bit grainy and I'm not sure if that's the nature of pencil crayons, the texture of the paper I'm using or inexperience (or some combination thereof).  Maybe I'll try again at some point with different paper and see if it makes a difference.

Moving on... we come to another of my FR characters, but one that has not previously appeared in this blog.

This is Merv J. - I've never really decided on what the "J" stand for.  He's a merchant, part-time antique collector and fancies himself something of an adventurer (spoiler:  he's not, really).  The orb-like object he's shown holding is one of his prize antiques.

And lastly for today are some design-type sketches of The Word Smith:

The goals here, more than anything, was to try to establish a bit more of a consistent construction for the character so most of the construction lines have been left in.  Not sure how successful I was in that.  Also, a couple of random hands, just because.

That's all for today.  Until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC

About Face

It occured to me that "composing" is one letter away from "composting".

Anyway, today's post is all about faces.  I love punny titles, don't you?  Of course you do.  Trust me.  You.  Do.

Be that as it may, I decided it was time to draw another of my FR characters in a semi-realistic style, this time, Kyoujo:

As with my previous effort in this regard, the hair was kind of interesting since manga-style hair tends to be rather gravity defying and Kyoujo has so much of it.  I probably should have toned down the ponytail for this version.

And for door number two, I also decided it was time to try my hand at another self-portrait attempt:

It seems to be a better approximation of me than my previous attempt, but there's still lots of room for improvement.  For this drawing, I took a picture of myself rather than looking in the mirror for reference and I think having a subject that wasn't constantly moving around helped.  It is also a totally random coincidence that I was wearing the same shirt when I took the picture that I used for the drawing as I was when I did my first self-portrait.

And that is all for the present.  Until next time,
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

Handy

The long weekend was moderately busy, so I didn't get around to posting anything.  Not that there are any negative repercussions of that such as the end of the world or other perhaps less drastic things.  Anywho, without further ado, here's todays stuff (and maybe some things).

I decided it was time to practice hands some more.  This time, taking a crack at drawing hands interacting with props.

If drawing hands is tough, then drawing hands interacting with things is even worse!  These were a bit painful to draw (in some cases actually physically - holding my katana for the top-left pose got a bit tiring!), but I suppose it'll get a bit easier with practice and that is, after all, what this is all about.

For the next one, I don't usually draw fanart, but I decided to take a stab at drawing Celes from Final Fantasy VI:

It's based more on the Yoshitaka Amano art of her rather than her ingame sprite (though obviously not trying to mimic Amano's style).  In particular, I used the artwork that appears in the manual for the GBA version, since that's what I have.  A copy of it can be seen here.

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

Mechinations

On the trend of attempting to draw things that I don't normally draw, I decided to try my hand at something vaguely mechanical:

The design is somewhat loosely inspired by the Magitek Armour from FF6, though this is obviously less steampunk in appearance.

I also decided to do a bit of practice with various facial expressions:

The bottom row turned out better overall than the top row, so I'll just consider the top row to be my warm-up, as it were.

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

Details, Details

Another Tuesday, another post, or that seems to be the habit.  To start off, we're going back in time slightly for the one drawing I skipped over in the previous post.

Trying to practice drawing objects as I see them so I decided to draw my (replica) katana.  The sheath is probably a bit short compared to the blade and the wrappings on the hilt actually have ten "diamonds" rather than the nine that I drew (should have measured things more carefully).  I also kind of fudged all the little details on the hand guard which I didn't feel like dealing with at the time.

For some further practice drawing smallish details, I scoured my apartment for some appropriate object and settled on the following:

One of the Argonath statuettes that came with my collector's edition of the extended edition of the Fellowship of the Ring.  The text is from the book which is different from what Aragorn says in the movies which has something to do with looking on the Kings of old.

Something slightly different for the final piece today.  I decided I wanted to get some practice drawing clothes so I stuck various outfits on some random characters:

Not being a fashion designer, most of the clothes were based on reference photos found via Google's image search (handy thing, that).  The only one that wasn't was the one in the top left which is just the sort of thing I tend to wear during the summer.  If the Word Smith's shirt was not partially covered by his jacket (top right) it would read "Grammar Rules" - pun very much intended.

And with that-
Freak Out,
-TFitC

Under Cover

Lets just jump right into things today with a potential cover design for my first Word Smith mini-comic:This was a fun one to do, though a bit time consuming (took about three hours). All of the characters from the first mini-comic (including the minor ones) are represented, though the titular Word Smith is only represented through his mask and, I suppose, the croquet mallets.

The next one sees the return of the FR characters that have previously appeared in the blog, this time for experimenting with various action-y poses.
The pose for Kyoujo (top one) I actually tried out in front of the mirror - it's doable, but not particularly comfortable. Both Gillin and Mordel have swords because, well, I like swords.

Next up is a close-up portrait of Gillin, which had the goal of trying to pay a bit more attention to detail than usual.
Turned out reasonably well, I think. The text at the bottom is her name - Gillin Eledhwen - written in Tolkien's tengwar script. For any tengwar purists that may stumble upon this, my no doubt idiosyncratic usage of tengwar is, ultimately, derived from my personal adaptation of it for writing english based on my understanding of how the script worked back when I was in high school and, I expect, probably varies somewhat from other more standard usages.

Anyway... for the last drawing today I'm going to deviate somewhat from my thus far standard practice of posting these in chronological order because the next drawing just fits best as a follow-up to the previous one. It should be obvious that my drawing style is heavily influenced by anime/manga. While I'm generally fine with that (I like the general manga-style look), I nevertheless sometimes think that I should try branching out now and then for practice and diversity and what not. So, I decided to try drawing one of my FR characters in a more realistic style. The natural choice was, of course, Gillin, since she's probably the one I've drawn most often:
Since manga hair tends to be rather gravity defying at times, it was interesting rendering her hair in a way that looked like it could be plausible while still recalling her original hair style. I'm not sure how well I succeeded in that, but it didn't turn out too badly. Also I think her eyes are a little too far apart. Overall, though, I was quite pleased with how this turned out. I may have to try this with some of my other characters in the future.

Well, that is all for the moment.
Freak Out,
-TFitC