More art, I've been busy not studying today, hooray! At least I've cleaned the office and cleared 1.5 owed arts off my list. ALSO a little while ago I resolved to enter at least one competition a month and hey I'm totally doing it so far! I didn't think it would hold but I've entered three in the last two months, woo.




Aaawright, three ATCs for lemurkat:









Work In Progress on that competition entry from last month ahaha. I think I'm going in the right direction colour-wise but we'll see if I don't overdo it.



Yay it's Halloween time in Guild Wars (and, er, elsewhere). omg I feel so guilty about the progressively terrible inking on this thing. I TOTALLY APOLOGISE (but I am not fixing it). I'm hoping to score an honourable mention or something maybe 'cause I just want a set of skill pins and every prize pack includes them! Cooome ooooon lowest place, let's go.




Yes, that's right, no DnD sketches for once. Craziness!

Does anyone else hate PITT artist pens? God I hate them. I mean, I love them, for about the first ten minutes of inking and then the tips break down like the absolute mofos they are and I am filled with this hideous rage toward Faber Castell for manufacturing such a cruelly short-lived product. GRUAOARRGH.

So, what's up, peeps?

Art as promised. I am not like politicians! I deliver on my promises sometimes! Having said that I still owe...7 people art. I think. I hope! It better not be more than that, far out. Plus a couple sketch meme things I have to do/finish. Nnggg.





Lilly Clarentine, ship's quatermaster, doing something or other with rope. Apparently I never posted this but it's a few months old. Huh. Maybe I was keeping it for something?


Getting a hang on a friend's DnD character. The character promptly died a horrible death, I don't know why I bother sometimes.


I guess all these DnD characters is good practice. Inbetween getting a feel for different characters, trying to be creative with armour/clothing and trying to keep up with players' requests/whims, hey, I am probably learning something!


The dragon dude is my character, ,Paragon Paladine (rofl). We made the jump to DnD4 rules so of course the first thing I did was make a character from the most inhuman race available. He can breathe fire!

My favourite thing about the dragonkin is probably this one line of their race description in the DND4 rulebook. "Play a Dragonkin if you want to ...look like a dragon!" WOW REALLY???


Okay, something that is not DnD! BUT still roleplaying games, ahaha. A preliminary sketch/concept for a painting of one of my Guild Wars characters. It's meant to be really dark and gorey, pools of blood, that sort of thing. A bit of a departure from my usual.

I've got a super cute a shiny idea for a GW character portrait partly sketched out too so it balances. :P


Monsters, yay. That little kappa dude is pretty cute, I think I'll do something with him in future.




IRLs I totally bought 18 drinking glasses for $5 yesterday! Hot deal! I think I'll go back and get some more some time during the week. Gonna get in on that hot glass etching action, as soon as I can get some etching cream. Apparently some Australian legislation was passed that makes it difficult to get (some brands?) here and also it's a hazardous material and technically shouldn't be sent through Auspost. What a pain!

I'm getting sick! AWESOME!

I felt so on track with art and uni but if I get worse...waugh. You know what sucks? Music. And food. They all suck. Well, I guess music is okay except for that one track before that made me feel MORE sick. wtf, music can do that?

Right before the website launch too. Screw you, too, universe!

Oh well.

For The Many Worlds Contest:


I won a prize! Now I just have to finish the thing. Can't decide if I should go digital or traditional colouring.

And here's 3 Pokemon ATCs that I'm trading to Lemurkat

Huntail



Lileep



Magcargo



I think Lileep will come out the best.



I know I shouldn't skip the tute tomorrow but it's so tempting. D:

Waugh, spent too much time today finishing my Project Rooftop Vampirella ReVamp thing. T_T

Spore is really cool btw but probably lacks replayability for a great majority of people.



Or, hell, drawing any "hawt chick" makes me feel totally gay. What kind of girl draws girls with huge boobs and teeny waists and these mile high legs and STILETTOS, bygod the stilletos? THE OBVIOUS ANSWER WOULD BE: a girl who likes girls *wiggly eyebrows*.


Here's a prelim sketch just for the hell of it:

I took a lot of cues from traditional male vampire attire. Slicked back hair, widow's peak, tuxedo, that sort of thing. Traditonal female vampires are dead boring with totally impractical long flowing gowns and bathing in virgin's blood. Sooooo last century.


I almost gave her long sleeves but then it looked like she was wearing this strange business jacket miniskirt combo and it was kind of weird. 80s BUSINESS ATTIRE = HOT STUFF AMIRITE?


The real problem with giving her clothes at all is what happens when she turns into a bat? Obviously I haven't ever read a Vamirella comic so maybe that is dealt with already but really if she lost the clothes she currently wears in the comics who would even notice?


Okay I am so sick of vampires for months now, ty.

LET'S TALK PIRATES, ARRRRRR!

Actually I have almost 0 new piratey things to show. I have HALF a piratey thing to show. Here it is!



Enthalpien and Fleance! These two are too fun to draw. If I get around to doing a little graphics like this for the rest of the pirates they'll all go up on a cast page on the website.




It's Talk Like A Pirate Day in a couple weeks! I'm aiming to have the site up by then. That'd be awesomesauce. It'll be pretty rudimentary though since inbetween midsemester assessment and, er, regular assessment I am pretty slow at getting things done. Also CSS is freakin' hard, what the hell.

Posting those comic pages, as promised to the curious. There's only three pages and they don't really go anywhere. :D







I had to reink that first page a second time when my computer crashed just as I was finishing it. :| Also, man, look at that lack of line variation. Really going to have to do these over with more attention.



Waugh.

There is totally something I am meant to be doing right now and I can't quite put my finger on it. Hate that feeling!

MOO stickerbook :D

Yay, stickerbook from MOO arrived. :D





So I ordered one of these cool looking little stickerbooks from MOO.com a little while ago. You get 90 1" square stickers in the book divided into 15 pages of 6 stickers each. You can choose to have your stickers distributed however you want (90 different designs or 15 sets of 6 designs, etc). They're about $10 and then an extra couple dollars for shipping international (MOO is based in the UK).

I just uploaded that old button art to see how they'd do with it. It printed pretty well actually! I'm happy with them. So mini sticker sheets are definitely on the list for my next con. Each mini sheet of stickers is perforated so it can tear right off. Even selling them for $1 each you make your money back.



Here's a clumsy photo of my hand and a single sticker so you can get an idea of size or something.



I'm surprised at how happy I am with the printing. Colours look good, the gradients aren't screwed up, good resolution... Totoro maybe is a tad dark from memory but still looks good so someone over there is paying attention, or they've got a neat algorithm set up that's keeping things in check. Or both. Extra bonus: The gloss finish is waaaay shiny, oh mans.



Iiiiin conclusion, MOO stickerbooks: Awesome. Here's hoping they eventually come out with larger sticker options and stuff as well. Maybe some more shapes too - circles and whatnot.

Printer Colourhouse

The postcards I ordered arrived today! I'm sort of on a crusade to find good cheap printers and eventually compile some sort of database for other artists. Haven't worked out a rating system yet but these guys are probably, like, a 5/10?



Ordered from Colourhouse at $50 for 100 cards and prices go downwards from there. Their site would like you to think they are based in Australia but even the samples I requested a while ago came from China so that explains the low prices and such. :P Proofing is only available as a PDF (a fairly accurate one, admittedly, the colour discrepancy was pretty true and I just didn't bother to make them fix it) and uploading files to them is a bitch. They're *trying* to do the whole customer service thing but given the distance, dodgy website and language barrier it's actually pretty hard to communicate with them. It doesn't help that they have some crazy email system whereby the listed emails don't actually work (save for one NZ one?), and the on-site message system is hella buggy.



They're about the quality that I expected so I'm not disappointed. Actual printing quality is kinda low considering the printing facilities the printer apparently has but the cardstock is decent (whether it is actually 350gsm I'm not sure yet). No printing errors (besides some colour inaccuracy that I was too lazy to upload a new file to correct), no cutting errors, no markings from grubby hands or ink spills, etc. Probably going to use them as promo items or inserts. :D

And here's the back:



Yeah, 50c per card for full colour both sides. That's an okay price for such a small quantity. Slightly bent corner there is my bad, been manhandling this one. The rest are safe in the package though. Coooouuuuld have been packed better - the external package was quite beat up and there was no bubble wrap or scrap paper protecting the block of cards.

My one unexpected annoyance is that there's a laminate finish on both sides. Who laminates the back side of a postcard? lol. Still write-able on with a pen though so w/e.




Conclusion:
Despite the hilariously engrish-y website and free shipping mostlikely won't use these guys again. The only thing I might consider them for would be cheap business cards or more promo material (simple images will give best results, probably. Something to keep in mind) and I reckon I'll run across a better (local!) printer with similar prices sooner or later...