Tag: concept art

Industrious Illustrating #38 – Sophomore Year Review Project

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*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

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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 #35 – Mecha Design

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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!

Industrious Illustrating #29 – Early Drafts

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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 #26 – Character Concept Sketching

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While I’ve been trying to get back into a regular artistic workflow by working on more sprites and illustrations for “Flamechaser”, I also feel like I could benefit from exploring new ideas more. Because of that, I found some time this week to sketch out a character design for an original character I’m going to call Rashida Kuromiya. She’s a cybernetically enhanced freedom fighter who dons a helmet shaped like a canine’s head in battle.

While I haven’t gotten around to fleshing out a full backstory for Rashida, I enjoyed drawing her and I want to draw her more in the future. Eventually I want to implement her into a story idea I’m working on called “Blade of Seafoam” that follows an amnesiac super-soldier who’s traveling across a post-apocalyptic archipelago to find clues about his past. I’m not sure yet whether I want to make this idea into a comic or a visual novel, so I may have to adjust the character designs based on whether I’m drawing them just a few times to make sprites and illustrations, or a hundred times for each panel they appear in. I’m working on character turn-arounds for Blade of Seafoam for my ARTDES 220 iterative projects, so I’m looking forward to being able to share them with everyone once I’m done with them.

In other news, I recently sent applications to several conventions happening this year hoping that I’ll be able to get into at least one or two Artist Alleys. I really enjoyed my experiences at Con Ja Nai, Anime Park, and Youmacon, and I’m hoping to make more good memories and sales at future conventions!