Robin – Page 6 – arts, ink.

Industrious Illustrating #33 – Character Turnarounds

March 17, 2023March 14, 2023 Robin Leave a comment

Apologies for the lack of a post last week. I’ll make an extra post to make up for the gap.

Recently I realized that I’m lacking character design work, specifically turnarounds, in my portfolio. As a result, I decided to make more detailed character sheets for my cast of original characters for my cyberpunk/post-apocalyptic story idea “Blade of Seafoam”. If I were to one day make “Blade of Seafoam” into a video game or a comic where I have other artists assisting me (e.g. 3D modelers or character artists on a video game, art assistants on a comic) I would need to have these design sheets to pass along to other artists as a reference for how they should depict the characters. Even if I don’t end up doing anything substantial with the “Blade of Seafoam” story concept, I can still use these in my portfolio to apply for character design jobs with larger companies.

What I want to do next is work on turnarounds/orthographic (internal/detail) views of the mechs in Blade of Seafoam to better establish the world that these characters live in as well as demonstrate my ability to draw mechs when applying to video game art jobs. Stay tuned to see those!

Also, if anyone is interested in seeing me in real life, I’ll be selling my art in the Artist Alley at Con Ja Nai at the MLB on April 8th, and I hope to table at more conventions pending results! (I’m still waiting on artist alley application results from Anime Central and Dokidokon in particular).

Industrious Illustrating #32 – Risograph Printing

March 3, 2023February 28, 2023 Robin Leave a comment

Lately I’ve been playing around with different methods of design and printing, which has led me to make use of the risograph printer available at UMich Stamps. Risograph printing is a type of printing that uses a type of Japanese office printer that layers bright halftone dots of ink, creating a visual effect similar to a screenprint or a retro comic book.

Below are some examples of bicolor and tricolor risograph print designs I recently made or converted into risograph printing format:

Risograph printing is great for creating its signature pixellated texture and intense colors, as well as for mass-producing large print runs nearly instantly — a risograph printer can pump out dozens of identical prints in under a minute once the master copy of the print has been burned into the pigment rolls. The risograph can also print in fluorescent orange, fluorescent pink, and metallic gold — colors that I want to try out once I come up with some good ideas for them. I’m looking forward to bringing more risograph prints with me to conventions as well as for my own personal enjoyment in the future!

Industrious Illustrating #31 – Sticker Designs

February 28, 2023February 28, 2023 Robin Leave a comment

Sorry for the late post — midterms week and the beginning of spring break were a bit chaotic for me. This week I have a few sticker designs to show that I made for the Hong Kong Student Association. I don’t do a lot of sticker or small designs, so trying my hand at them was interesting. I personally really like cute food-themed designs, and my favorite Hong Kong foods are egg waffles, shrimp dumplings (and dim sum in general), and egg tarts, so I made three designs inspired by them.

In the end, HKSA ended up selecting the first two designs, and the tshirt/sweater/sticker order form is currently open to club members! I’m glad that I took the chance to challenge myself by working with something different, and I’m going to consider making more dessert/food-themed designs in the future for my personal enjoyment in the future.

Industrious Illustrating #30 – Self Portraits

February 17, 2023February 16, 2023 Robin Leave a comment

While most of what I post is related to freelance work, commercial art, illustration, etc., I do also enjoy drawing from observation to learn from and reinterpret what I see around myself. Just as I try to find visual solutions to questions and problems (what would a giant military robot engineered from a construction model look like?) through stylization, I also try to find ways to convey information about the real world in the most efficient and expressive ways possible. Which is to say, for the self-portraits I’ve made for class over the past few weeks, I’ve simplified my features and the shadows on my body down to express what I’m seeing and feeling in the moment, rather than committing a photorealistic representation to paper. The self-portraits are shown below, starting from the earliest to the most recent (drawn last week).

Out of all of these, I like the most recent one the most because it looks the most developed and thoughtfully realized. It also helps that it was at the largest scale (18×24″) and on the nicest drawing paper I own (Strathmore 400 series), whereas the others were at 9×12″ at the largest and drawn on mediocre drawing paper or mixed media sketch paper. The quality of materials really does matter for traditional art, which is both a major annoyance (supply costs add up very, very fast) and an interesting limiting factor (making the most of the given materials is immensely satisfying to me).

While I’ve been pretty busy with schoolwork and making game assets for “Flamechaser” lately (we’re releasing the 0.58 build soon with an expanded story and more complete visuals/animation/sound effects), I’m also going to try to find time to make watercolor and oil paintings again, either stylized or observed from life. Having to draw people from life on a regular basis has reawakened my interest in traditional art, and my improvement over a few weeks of study feels promising for what I could do if I practice my traditional painting skills more.

Industrious Illustrating #29 – Early Drafts

February 10, 2023February 10, 2023 Robin Leave a comment

Welcome back to another week of Industrious Illustrating! First off, I’m happy to share that my drawing of Tappan Hall on the upper right of this picture was on display at the art-themed UMix last friday in the Michigan Union. I’m planning on making more illustrations of UMich campus locales in the future in the same style!

Additionally, I’ve been making sketches and drafts for some new sprites that’ll be used in “Flamechaser” when the prologue and additional scenes are added into the game. I also sketched out a new UI design idea (larger sprites) for the game, which will be implemented in the upcoming 0.6 build of the game. Quick concept ideation like this is helpful for getting feedback from other people on the project and figuring out what I want to do with the final drawing before I commit too hard to developing the concept further.

Let me know in the comments if there’s any topics you want me to discuss or expand upon for future Industrious Illustrating posts!

Industrious Illustrating #28 – Character Concept Sketching 2

February 4, 2023February 4, 2023 Robin Leave a comment

Truth be told, I’ve been having a hard time maintaining a regular regimen of drawing at least partially because I feel like I’m clocking in to a day of grueling work every time I sit down to draw. It’s a feeling I have to continuously deal with if I want to continue developing and monetizing my art as an illustrator, but I haven’t found a good remedy aside from drawing self-indulgently and not worrying too much about what the final drawing looks like. As a result, this week I have more quick character concept sketching to share.

The above character, Wenet Tozawa, is another character in “Blade of Seafoam”‘s post-apocalyptic world. I still need to develop her backstory more and draw out her full design, but here’s the character description I currently have written down for her:

“A traveling medic known for her ability to regenerate the sick and injured almost to the point of giving them new life. She’s apparently close friends with Rashida, though the history of their relationship is unclear to outsiders.”

I’m planning on developing and showing off more character designs from “Blade of Seafoam” soon, so look forward to that if you’re interested in seeing my character designs!