Robin – arts, ink.

Industrious Illustrating #40 – End of Another Semester!

May 6, 2023May 6, 2023 Robin Leave a comment

Hey everyone! I don’t have as much to share this time, as I’m doing last-minute preparations to table at Anime Park at Canton High School tomorrow. What I will say that I’m really happy about all the progress and work I’ve done as an illustrator and designer this past semester, and I’m feeling good about my trajectory overall.

I’m actually going to be attending the School of Information in the fall semester instead of Stamps for a myriad of reasons, but I absolutely intend to continue working as an art freelancer and hone my skills in my free time hoping that one day I can support myself solely on my art. I will also continue posting on this blog during the school year for the foreseeable future documenting my experiences and journey as an artist for all of you to follow along with.

While I will be working hard this summer on improving my art skills and doing commissions/commercial work, I also intend to take time off for myself and relax as much as I can. I think that’s an important part of truly making summer break into a break and not just another summer of grinding — there’ll be decades of work ahead of me where I don’t get a summer break anymore, so why rush it?

I’m looking forward to another semester of sharing my thoughts and process with you guys, and I hope everyone has a great summer!

Industrious Illustrating #39 – Life Drawing 4

April 30, 2023May 11, 2023 Robin Leave a comment

At this point all my classes are over, so I want to share more of the life drawings I did in ARTDES 269 during the winter semester. I had a lot of fun and learned a decent amount from taking this course and getting to draw human figures from live models using a variety of traditional media and approaches. I’d definitely recommend this course to any Stamps majors or minors who want to learn more about drawing humans.

Warning for depictions of artistic nudity under the cut:

*Edit 5/11/2023: I fixed the image embed issues with this post!

Industrious Illustrating #38 – Sophomore Year Review Project

April 29, 2023May 11, 2023 Robin Leave a comment

*Edit 5/11/2023: Fixed image embeds that weren’t working!

Apologies for not posting in several weeks. I was swamped with finals and finishing up lots of other tasks that hit me all at once.

Now that the winter semester is over, though, I can show my finished sophomore year studio project!

I did my sophomore year studio project with the intent of strengthening the concept art/visual development side of my portfolio. The bulk of my project was creating character turnaround design sheets, both for the Bhairava mech and for three of the characters in my sci-fi story concept “Blade of Seafoam”:

To round out my project, I did create some concept art sketches contextualizing my characters in the post-apocalyptic world they reside in, although I didn’t get a chance to finish painting these before I had to present my project before the review committee.

In the end, my sophomore year review went quite well, and I had a good discussion with the faculty review committee about my work and about my plans for the rest of undergrad. I intend to keep working on my character design and concept art skills over the summer, and I hope to share more “Blade of Seafoam”-related artwork here in the future!

Industrious Illustrating #37 – Concept Art Sketching

April 14, 2023April 14, 2023 Robin Leave a comment

Thank you to everyone who stopped by my table during Con Ja Nai 2023 and made it a successful con for me! I had a great time talking to everyone and supporting my other friends in the Artist Alley as well as Maid Cafe this time around. I’m looking forward to the next Con Ja Nai and the rest of this year’s con season! My next con is Anime Park in Canton, MI on May 6th, so I hope I’ll see you there if you’ll still be in the area!

In other updates, I’ve been working on environmental concept art featuring my visual novel story idea “Blade of Seafoam”‘s main cast for my Sophomore Year Project that I will be presenting at Stamps for my Sophomore Review on the 18th. If you’re a current freshman at Stamps and want to watch to see how Sophomore Review goes for a student focusing on entertainment art and concept art, feel free to come watch!

My preliminary thumbnail sketches:

My current digital sketches for the three environmental concept art pieces, based off of bucket wheel excavators, the “Z Machine” X-ray source, and Gunkanjima Island respectively:

And here’s my current sketch for the cover art of this concept art “pitch bible”:

I will be working more on my “Blade of Seafoam” concepts over the summer both as portfolio work and so that I can proceed further in developing this story idea into a fully fledged visual novel with three story routes to be my next project after “Flamechaser” sees a full release. I’ll also post my entire completed Sophomore Year Project in a week or two.
I’ll be making a few more posts before the end of the winter semester here on arts, ink, so stay tuned for more!

Industrious Illustrating #36 – Con Ja Nai 2023

April 7, 2023April 7, 2023 Robin Leave a comment

Hello again! If you’ve been following this column since last year, you’ll have seen the post I made last year about tabling at Con Ja Nai 2022! Well, now it’s 2023, and that means Con Ja Nai 2023, UMich’s free one-day anime convention, is tomorrow, April 8th, in the MLB from 12 to 10! I’l be at Table B3 selling prints of my art from 12 to 6 (Artist Alley hours)! Here’s my location circled on the map:

And here’s a catalog of the prints I’ll have available:

There’ll also be a computer available at my artist alley table for playing through a demo of “Flamechaser”, the yuri mecha visual novel I’m drawing the art for, so come check it out! I hope to see some of you guys there!

Industrious Illustrating #35 – Mecha Design

March 31, 2023March 30, 2023 Robin Leave a comment

While I’ve posted mecha art and mecha designs here a few times before, I haven’t posted an actual mecha design sheet akin to what would be used on a project such as a video game to guide 3D modelers and other artists further down the production pipeline when replicating the designs that will appear in the final product. As such, I fleshed out and designed Toshiaki Mizushima’s Oyoroi mech “Bhairava” to demonstrate my mecha and character design skills in a portfolio-ready art piece.

While I referenced several different mech design sheets (such as color guides for gunpla and design sheets for fanmade Gundams) to inform what visual information I needed to convey with this design sheet, I took heavy inspiration from the information conveyed by this mech design sheet made for Honkai Impact 3rd.

Also, if you’re on campus on Saturday, April 1st, you can come see me and buy prints from me at the What the F Art Fair in the Kuenzel Room of the Michigan Union from 12:30-4:30. Yes, it’s on the same day as Hash Bash, and no, it’s not an April Fool’s Day joke! You can also come find me tabling at Con Ja Nai in the Modern Languages Building on April 8th from noon to 6pm, so there’s plenty of opportunities to come find me!