Tag: illustration

OTM #22: Perception / Characters

katelynski 2 Comments

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about art. About how much I draw myself. I can give myself any form, and over time this can become more and more abstract.

I’ve been doing OTM for almost two semesters now, and thinking about how I’ve created a sort of persona for myself. I’ve always loved character design; I think comics and cartoons are so amazing at creating relatable characters with simple shapes. I’ve tried to make my own drawings of myself come off that way – I’m most inspired by stuff like Calvin and Hobbes, using simple dot eyes and fun expressions. I don’t really draw myself based on how I look most days anymore, but rather use a recognizable, repeatable, exaggerated version of myself. Truth be told, the blonde streaks I draw on the underside of my hair are barely visible anymore. But over time, I’ve grown really attached to them as a part of my cartoon “persona”, so I continue to draw them. It’s really fun to be able to think about these things, and I’m really grateful I get to reflect upon how I see myself through art. That’s always been my favorite aspect of art – being able to see how people view the world through their work. I’ve been thinking about characters and character designs a lot because of this, practicing making my own interpretations more.

These are a few of my results from my drawing exercises; characters from one of my favorite childhood games, “Ib.” The original sprites are above, my drawings are below. The original sprites are pretty vague and simple, so it was super fun to be able to draw out fun colors and interpret what kind of outfit each character was wearing. My result is very different than the original, but that, to me, is what makes it so fun. Fans of “Ib” could still recognize them as characters from the game, but I’ve given my own personal touch of love. Character design is so amazing!!!

A Day In Our Lives #13

rissaw Leave a comment

Hey guys!

 

This week I thought that I would show a comic that I worked on last semester. I really like incorporating science and science fiction into my work. I like dinosaurs and wanted to pursue a minor in Paleontology but didn’t have room on my schedule. It has a little bit of humor at the end. This comic took roughly half the semester to work on all of the individual panels. I used a mix of colored pencil, Copic markers, pen, and procreate on my iPad in order to get all of the different textures.  It was convenient to be able to use procreate last in order to use it for the final editing and coloring.

 

See you guys next week! 

Industrious Illustrating #25 – A Year of Progress

Robin Leave a comment

This month I’ve been working a lot on “Flamechaser” behind the scenes as the team develops the 0.6 demo build that we hope to post on Itch (https://jarojakd.itch.io/flamechaser) early this year. It’s been nearly a year since I joined the team, and as a result of foraying into game art and mecha design for the project, I’ve developed a lot of new techniques and built upon old ones.

I drew the new illustration of the Penguin and the Phoenix Heart clashing in hand-to-hand combat this year on the 11th, while I drew the old illustration of the 3rd of February last year. When I put these two images side by side, I’m pretty satisfied with how much progress I’ve made over the past year! I’m motivated to keep working on my art to see what new heights I can reach artistically in the future.

If you’re an artist, I encourage you to try redrawing an old piece of art that’s a year old or older and compare them side by side to see all the places where you’ve improved and where you can still continue to improve. I promise it’s a good exercise and also motivational!

OTM #21: Scary Movie

katelynski 2 Comments

Welcome back, everyone! Hope you’re having a great start to the new year. I certainly am – my roommates and I have been trying to watch a lot of new stuff during our downtime. I’m a fan of all sorts of genres, but I’m particularly partial to horror, so we’ve been watching a lot of scary stuff. I’m to a point where horror doesn’t really affect me anymore – I won’t get scared but I will be intrigued – yet for the first time in a long while, I was actually scared watching a horror film. We watched Parker Finn’s “Smile”, a movie that was well known on platforms like TikTok for making users cry in fear. I was always curious about it when it released, but never assumed I would be one of those fearful viewers. But oh my god, this film was insane. It follows a woman who is cursed by a malignant presence, taking the form of any random stranger who just stands there, smiling. I never realized a person simply standing and smiling could be so unnerving, yet once the film ended, I nervously laughed to my roommate – only to be met with a strained response of “Don’t smile at me right now!!” We had to turn all the lights on, turn on a silly cartoon and sit on the floor trying to distract ourselves long after the film ended. It felt like we were little kids at a sleepover. There’s a lot of joy there, despite the discomfort we felt. I missed that feeling of being scared.

LOG-017: Hammerhead Strider

Traveler Leave a comment

KHEPRI-1B

CATEGORY [ XENOBIOLOGY ]

ARTICLE ARVHIVED FROM [ MARIAH BERGGREN ]

ARTICLE NOTES:

[ The hammerhead strider is a large, terrestrial strider native to Khepri-1b. Two distinct species have been thus far identified: the common hammerhead strider and the marsh hammerhead strider. The former lives in a broad range of grasslands and shrublands, while the latter live in swamps and other vegetation-rich wetlands. They are often spotted travelling in small groups. ]

Letters by Lydia: All About Brush Pens

lydnas Leave a comment

Welcome back everyone! Hopefully you all enjoyed the holiday break and are settling into the new semester smoothly 🙂

Today we’re gonna take a bit of a deep dive into brush pens. I’ve talked about them a lot before, but I’ve never fully gone into all the different types and variations, so let’s get into it!

First and foremost, there are three major materials brush pens can be made from: hair or bristles, felt, and plastic.

   

For beginners, felt or plastic is definitely the way to go–these are firmer, less flexible, and generally easier to work with.  Personally, I prefer plastic nibs, because they don’t really fray, they last a long time, and they’re usually a bit juicier.  The one I have pictured above is unusually large and clunky–usually these are small and very easy to work with. Felt tips are probably the most common, but they fray pretty quickly if you don’t use a certain kind of paper, and dry out more easily than plastic. Brush pens with bristles are the most difficult to handle, as they’re the most flexible.  That said, if you’re good at it, you can get incredibly results with these.

From there, size is the other important factor to consider, and it kind of goes hand in hand with elasticity.  Brush pens that are more elastic will be more flexible, which means you can get thicker strokes with them in addition to the thin strokes.  Below you can see some different types of brush pens, from super small and firm–you may recognize the monami plus pen 3000 here, which I reviewed a while ago–to really big and flexible.

In terms of major categories, there’s essentially just super small pens (as in, monami plus size), medium sized (I don’t have a lot of these, but the faber-castell is probably the closest bet), and then large (ecoline, marvy uchida, tombow, and karin are all good examples of this).  Hopefully you found this interesting and learned a bit about brush pens, and have a lovely first week of classes!