I bought materials for the life drawing class I enrolled in. @_@ Hell but they were expensive for a pad and some sticks of charcoal/graphite. :| Pushed me over $400 for the total cost of this course, argh. This better be good! Now that it is getting closer, I'm getting a bit anxious/intimidated, which is dumb. I'm sort of worried all the other artists will pwn me and then I'll feel all inferior etc D: I guess that would be a good learning opportunity though. Hopefully no one decides to be all crazy at me because I like cartooning because REALISM IS THE TRUE ARTZ WHY ARE YOU WASTING YOUR LIFE or something.

A'ight, after two weeks of nothing here is some art! :D





My DnD character when she was younger I guess. Lemme just say: Shy DnD character = really bad idea. The only RP I ever get to do is her stuttering and cringing and occasionally trying to worm her way out of battle (druid neutrality GO).


Some sort of brainfart. I don't know where I was going with it and it certainly wasn't planned. Argh, why those rabbit ears, brain?? I feel like such a furry. :(


Oh no, now an animal person with exposed breasts! Next I will come to the realisation that garurumon has a hot bod or something, arrrgh.


Oh thank god, something that is not animal people. Old character that I sketched to show Joey when we were talking about world creation. Relevant because Mr. Turtlewhale there is a planet (not in the Discworld turtle sense) also AWESOME.




I also spent a page sketching headshots of old old character from high school today. Fun times! They are really showing their age and I feel like redesigning them but there's not much point, really. Maybe I will anyway. Then I can have cool comparisons to show. :D

Crescent being a pretentious douche because I was at a bar at the time and it seemed a bit like the kind of bar a pretentious douche might hang out in. But I think that of all bars, really, since I'm not much of a drinker and they are all the same to me. :B




Joey's new DnD character, a warlock. THANKYOU, Pentel, for your retarded non-waterproof ink that turned out to be perfect for this shading technique I just invented a couple days ago! :D


Sweet Treats by *Mamath on deviantART
And one thing up at DevArt if you haven't seen it already. Wow, look at that embedding go. @_@ That's really quite over the top.



I really need to start thinking what I want to enter into the Supanova art competition this year! Fanart again? I could try for something Ouran High School Host Club again, since that failed last year... And either the Sandman or Invincible in the American/European section? :D Oooh, Phoenix Wright for the anime section! Pokemon! So many choices. @_@

One art today: inked and everything! I won't bother with the cut since it's just the one b/w. ALSO I HAVE NO MERCY.



Crowley - A man of the Navy and Crescent's lifelong rival. He's smart, arrogant, ambitious and, in his own words/opinion, has a dashing haircut (or, perhaps, lack thereof seeing as he lets it turn into dreads while he's at sea).

So many things wrongggggg. He's a little short?, the perspective seems off... I gave up on his hand and just inked 'cause I just wanted this out of the way. 8D C&C/redlining pls?

Sketches from this week! :D Lots of pirates stuff! I guess that means things are finally moving on the pirate comic front, wow.





Here is Crescent thinking because, uh, he is totally my favourite character at the moment lol. He's not that handsome for a main character which could be a problem but I really like him. He's charismatic! And, uh, compelling! I SWEARS.


Some first attempts at Crescent's overcoats. Vests and shirts? Easy! But coats are a bitch. That first one (on the left) got scrapped before I even finished drawing it (pyjamas, amirite?) but I think the other two are usable. Argh, 17th century, wtf.


Doctor William Slaughter. He's been getting a lot of development lately. The slits in the coat sleeves are similar to the ones in academic robes, which was the fashion for doctors/scholars of the time.


And here's a sketch from somewhere in chapter...5? Pretty much the only scene I've ever liked enough to start sketching for well ahead of time!




Finally paid my library fines after, like, a year of having to use other people's library cards to avoid the fines, haha! So I borrowed an arseload of figure drawing books and some other relevant to the comic non-fictions. Hopefully I remember to return things on time this time, hurrhurr.

Sourcing cheap printing / Planning for Smash! is hard. It's pretty amazing how much prices fluctuate though... I don't know what kinds of people pay $30 to get a single poster printed. :| Businesses, I guess. Woo, tax writeoffs! Maybe we should start a business just for tax reasons, lol. @_@ I would call it Trainsquare and it would be a collective of comics artists or something. :B

bargainprint Brisbane sounds promising... It looks like it's just one guy and his trusty printer or something though. No website, just a hotmail address and a mobile phone number. Hm... His target market is indie bands, I think. A3 posters for $1 each is hard to pass up though! Might send him an email after I give it some thought. He does postcards too.

Anyway, I was thinking about sticker designs all through DnD yesterday (boring combat intensive session) and punched out a couple of possible stickers! Inked and everything, wow. I know I'll have to offer fanart and obviously our ultimate goal is to draw attention to the pirate comic (whose title keeps changing) but I'd also like to offer other original things. Like a series of Japanese demon/monster stickers or something? I think that would be cute and has selling potential to a large audience.




A tanuki! I'll probably redraw this one if I intend to use the idea when the time comes. Joey likes this better than the next one. He is a sucker for mischevious little kids. Tanukiboy looks too much like Randomly Generated Furry Character #0950-6439 at the moment though. :/ Gotta read up on Japanese mythology to make this work, I think!


I like this one. Sort of circular composition going on there. I would buy it purely for that rockin' umbrella demon though. Ugh, now that I think about it, the umbrella should end in a foot. Another redraw, lolwell. Demonchick there is just some demonchick because people like demonchicks, yes they do. In retrospect, she's probably a nekomata (split-tailed cat demon).

Other ideas include: Kitsune (obviously), fudog (yey!), that demon that is a chick with a mouth in the back of her head (how cool is that, but it wouldn't sell :( ), kappa, tengu (hell yeah), kirin(?), yuki-onna (snow woman), kodama (but not the Ghibli version)... list goes on. Obviously I'm going to have to narrow down the list and pick out the ones that'll have the most mass appeal. I can always build on the series later as the years go by...

Of course, printing oversized stickers (I'm thinking about 10x10cm... :\) is hella expensive. T_T



I'm also planning fanart postcards and buttons for Smash! I'm going to have to check Supanova's fanart guidelines too thought as I'm not sure if I'd be able to reuse the stock there next year...? I guess it'd be okay...

Possible fanarts:
Final Fantasy (VII, VIII, IX, X, XII)
Naruto
Bleach
Fullmetal Alchemist
Death Note
Ouran High School Host Club
Cowboy Bebop
Kingdom Hearts
Zelda

All of those would do well, I suspect. Ugh, so much anime. I'd like to do some Sandman or Batman stuff too but they probably wouldn't sell as well and I think DC is somewhat more touchy about its intellectual property. >_> I'd LOVE to throw in the Violinist of Hameln but I'd sell about five cards and four of those would be to myself, lol. :B I guess I could do the more obscure/copyright protected ones as just original pieces. $20 upwards for an original piece of art, OPAC sized. Sounds reasonable to me!

Buttons are a pain in the arse to source too. Does anyone know a button/1" badge making machine rental place? The UQ union doesn't seem to have one, the losers. Honestly, what group of self-respecting left wing nuts DOESN'T own a machine with which to produce millions of hippy campaign badges with??? I know my old primary school must have got one from somewhere that one time... :/ Maybe I should ask the dudes who sell buttons at the UQ markets every Wednesday about it...

Otherwise I can buy one for $300 dollars, including the shipping and 500 sets of parts. I suppose it would pay for itself after a fashion and I could rent it to other artists in Brisbane but, guh, my poor $300. T_T