Fun_BigLittle

This is MTGinktober's day 21 post, "Big," starring my absolute favorite monogreen creature, one of the very first rares I ever opened back when I started, Silvos, Rogue Elemental. Going into this piece, I didn't realize how nondescript he looks--I'm not sure he has a face--so he ended up being pretty challenging to capture...

But anyway, I knew I wanted someone smaller in the foreground to contrast with his size, but who? Well, if I'm including my all-time favorite greenybopper heartthrob, then I had to include Mortivore, my all-time favorite creature, period (and perhaps the absolute first rareature I ever opened). But this was the Silvos show today, so I needed to sneak Morti in there, especially since it wouldn't be a clear comparison. Regardless, I did want to push Silvos's size anyway, so a human would be best, but how could I sneak Mortivore in there? Tie him in thematically. Thus the foregrounder had to be fellow green legend, Saffi Eriksdotter, of Lhurgoyphobic fame. So if you look at her boots and bracers, I incorporated all 8 type-named Lhurgoyfs (as of Kaladesh), including the Ice Age and 8E versions of the namesake star/star. Her knee pads are the Ice Age expansion symbol, of course.

The story I came up with in my head about this image is that Saffi was fleeing the Lhurgoyf, yelled back to Hans to run, too, but he ended up getting caught and eaten. Stricken with survivor's remorse, Saffi eventually decides to jump off a great cliff in the forest to atone for her cowardice in not staying back to help Hans. Her sorrow and pain are so great that in the middle of her fall, her spark ignites and she planeswalks to safety. She eventually teams up with Silvos and they decide to protect the deep forest from poachers and to assist anyone lost or in danger. Silvos will never be tamed, but he will obediently take command from Saffi, in whom he sees a hungry, honed power greater than his own.

I am super wiped out from these MTGinktobers, so when I found out (kinda expected, after "Big") that Day 22 was "little," I was relieved cuz it meant I might be able to do a smaller piece. This Metropolis Sprite got out of hand and while I had just wanted to draw her huge next to a d6 or something for a reality-check scale, I kept seeing more fun stuff we could incorporate at bite size.

For instance, there's an M15-bordered Japanese Mortivore (doesn't exist), a Champions of Kamigawa d20 (which doesn't exist, to my knowledge), and a From the Vault: Lore Dark Depths, curled to kingdom come, in reference to the famously horrendous and dangerous foiling process they use for these supposedly extremely special edition printings. Since college, I've enjoyed hiding my signature into my art so that it adds to, rather than detracts from a piece (and it's harder to remove or notice by nefarious people)--this was heavily inspired by studying Will Eisner's designs--so I did have to puzzle over how to hide it in the wing. The d20 hosts my favorite number at top, 13, using the old dice font.

Oh, I also recorded myself inking some of the wing, by the way. The full video ended up going for 15 minutes, but Instagram has a 1 minute version. Wish I knew how to time lapse...I'd like to do some video stuff, including streaming when we return to digital...kinda want to color a couple of these...

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AV_anp.Med00s

Here's a spot illo from our secondary January ALT poster. It's based on the first one, but I decided to make it a little more interesting than just any old guy and girl eye-locking. It's Medusa and some poor sap. Much later I adapted it for a hee-hawlarious slide in a youtube video:


It pops up at round two minutes in.

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Fun_Snowmz

Here's another Christmas card I made for a jKid who mailed me a Christmas card of her own. I didn't know what to draw so I went with a US-style snowman. In Japan snowmen are only made of two snowballs, two buttons for eyes and a bucket for a hat. They get a thrill out of how we deck ours out.

Speaking of decking things out for Christmas but not really but kinda anyway...

It's our Christmas Special for youchoob. It's only about a third Duel Masters-related, but there's plenty of other content including some looks at obscure manga. A lot of art in this video, too, including stuff we hadn't even debuted on this site yet.

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Fun_YummyYomiuri

If you can't get enough food lately, we've got a giant treat for you today. What is it? Here's a hint:

No, it's not some kinda basebally thing--I'm an A's fan, anyway (see if you can spot the Oaklander in the final capture below, below the Shield-Trigger eyes, that is...)

That's right, it's our latest Duel Masters video, currently kinda exploding on Youtube!



See, the giants in this 大決戦オールスター12 set are usually food-themed. So.

It all makes sense.

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AV_SumoAGoGo

I came up with a new game. The jKids are split into two teams, a sumo wearing black and a sumo wearing gray. They must create original "Must" sentences in order to pimpslap the opposing students' sumo. Slap em twice and they fall over and lose. But the opposing sumo can respond with a Must sentence based on the attacker's Must sentence to regain balance. Then the defending sumo can give a fresh Must sentence to initiate a counter attack.

Each sentence-speaker can only speak a sentence once and then they must sit down, so it naturally gets harder as weaker or more timid students remain, to the panic, peril, and peregrine of the loudly whispering advice-giving sitting students. All the while I update the board with a print-out of each sumo's status, based on some brainstorming sketches I made in my handy-dandy noto. No one unlocked the super slam, though...

Speaking of unlocking something Japanese, how about an old yoochoob vidja for the peoples? This one used to be our most recent selection until it wasn't. Go figure.

This one was the first in my efforts to branch out towards sharing more of JP culture at large--today's guest spot goes to Radwimps. Who knows what the future holds? Well, I can tell you what the next video will be about, but then I'd have to thrill you.

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Fun_Katta

Depending on where you live, today or yesterday, Duel Masters' non-Japanese reboot, Kaijudo just launched. So here's a sketchbook scrawling of red aficionado Kirifuda Katta to kirikick things off. Who is Kirifuda Katta? Let's let this masked weirdo explain more:



Did that help at all? NO? Good.

Fun Facts: two of our videos have now broken 1000+ views! What a plot fist!

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Fun_LuffWafting

I visited me mateys at that tharr elementarry school, yarr?  Too much fun 'twas, yaarrrr.  Drew many a pirate, used many a medium, all for me mini-hearties...YARR!

We spoke many a tell of Duel Masters...er, um, Duel Mastaarrrrrrrs!!

YAAAAAARRRRR!!!

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Fun_Tanoox

I was playing some Duel Masters with some students at the liberry one day, finding my once-humble Hunter deck to be a solid contender now. After the sesh, the non-playing spectators asked me to draw them something, so I rattled off a quick little Tanooki. Kinda disturbing how some kids demanded I include the Tanooki's signature...characteristics. Wouldn't be the first time children have demanded I draw some decidedly non-G-rated stuff...

Oh, and speaking of Duel Masters, did you see this?



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Fun_TitleAndRegistration

I designed some bumpers for some videos I made. The one above was pulled and tweaked from this old draw, to back my byline page. The cards only start showing up at the end of our second video here, though:


This next bumper was designed for our main credits, pulled from an old sketch I did almost a year ago! It was meant to be the least invasive since the information scrolling there actually deserves to be read (as opposed to my credit, which can just be safely assumed or extrapolated).

My first video only had a title card, no end cards, which was a nice start, but I definitely want to get more design practice in, as well as editing, cuz I'm finding this an interesting little new art universe I've stepped into.


So there are my first two Duel Masters videos live from Japan. I kinda like this film stuff, but man, it's time consuming...I feel the power though. I feel the power.

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AV_anp.MarchOff

This is the last ALT News poster for one of my schools. The Japanese school year ends in March, so it's quite that's-all-folks-y. This month's features include my favorite quote from the most unlikely life-coach slash underdog, Harvard millionaire comedian Conan O'Brien. Who saw that coming?

We've also got a recap of the stuff the jKids like that I also like (including Duel Masters, pizza, and Obata Takeshi!) but also stuff they like that I can't stand, such as AKB48. Haha. I wish Bill Burr would rant about them, but unfortunately no one outside of Japan, Indonesia, or overzealous Otaku fanclubs in the US, gives a flying fart about them!

Here's a breakdown of this month's anchor image, powered by my newly unleashed Copic Ciaos (still use my Zebras and Midliners, though). Which came first, this or that? This. I had this art penciled already so I traced it onto a new sheet to speed up that other sooner-deadlined drawing.

Here's this month's doodad art. It's a breakdown of the wretch known as the graduate, followed by an innovative, interactive move-the-tassel-to-graduate-this-sad-sack display game, which is in turn followed by a hastily sketched, inked, and colored Duel Masters card back and pizza.

Who meets deadlines? I do! Speaking of which, here's a new, postmodern art-video-collage from my AV department.

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Fun_Jive

Instead of a comic this week, we have a video of how to draw a turkey in one stroke. I came up with this design while working on a poster for school and thought it would lend itself to a quick and easy Youtube video. I also tried testing out some stuff for future videos, like an intro sequence and some more music (intro music is by The Ivy League and main music is by 403). I went with my Doonesbury piece as the title card, but I might change it for future videos.

I didn't want to mess up while recording this, so I did a practice run through on a layer below the final work in Photoshop, dulled it to be as light as possible, and then basically inked it. But the design is pretty easy and simple to do.

But this is what he looked like on the first go around, along with some of his postery cohorts. More on this next week (a preview is underneath the four main attractions, though).

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Com_Chill

 

An icy commission.

Also! I recorded a video of me painting the eyes:


The music in the video was made available by the artist here. Trippy stuff!

While painting this guy, I listened to the Big Illustration Party Time Podcast, which is an incredible resource of inspiration and knowledge that I cannot recommend highly enough. If you do freelance illustration or comics, you really, really should listen to them. They manage to cover a lot of businessy topics without ever drifting into monotony.

The episodes on contracts, copyright, payment, and all the non-arty parts of art are especially important to listen to in addition to the usual important subjects of portfolio arrangement and all that. They revamped their site, so a ton of the archives aren't on the site yet, so you have to subscribe through iTunes to get all the episodes, but it's well worth it. Listen while you work!

Anyway, for more process (in addition to the video) I as always keep close track of the updated versions of the art I send to clients, so we consequently also have a nice little process gallery to look through, too.

You can see the Photoshop paints without the pencils at top, and the paints themselves look pretty close to a finished portrait, actually, but for now I still cling to traditional pencils, for the most part, as my security blanket. I like working traditionally and lament the pressure to go totally digital.

The other shot is the shaded lines, and below that are the pure pencil lines. And that's how we make a portrait (and mangle grammar). I really like seeing process stuff, so hopefully this was enjoyable.

I'm going to be uploading some more process videos I recorded, including a hair-painting demo and a digital inking demo, so there's at least two more process videos coming up, plus a super secret project I'm excited about. But more on that later!

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ZLM_Boo-Irthday

She was saying boo-irthday.

Zero Like Me #154:
Boo-Irthday

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Video making-of:

ZLM_ThatTime

Hate it when that happens.
Zero Like Me #152:
That Time

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Trying something new: