Esa concepts

So, yesterday I made a new warlock character on World of Warcraft, and caught myself trying to create a character for her. It all started by trying to decide what talent spec I wanted to make her - affliction or destruction. I didn't really want to go the typical "leveling spec" route of demonology with her. I wanted to have fun and just run quests with her.

I started formulating a personality - she was wearing an heirloom headpiece, so I decided that as a worgen, she was ashamed of her face and didn't like people looking at it. Depsite her implied meek, sweet personality, I thought it would be funny that she actually had a bleak outlook on the world, and just wanted to set it all on fire. So, I went with Destruction.

Something clicked in the back of my brain. One of the things I've really been struggling with lately for August Rye is that I needed a female character that could fit somewhat into the circle of August's 'friends', or rather a loose collection of people August can somewhat get along with. The only female August's age was a girl who she hated, plus was dating the boy that she was smitten with. This creates a bit of a sterotyping problem, because on the surface it looks like 'two females who can't get along because they like the same man.' I'm not too big on that kind of cliche, so I've been trying to think of a suitable female character to fit into the narrative. The problem is that the main character, August, is not exactly a friendly little ball of sunshine, so the trick was finding someone that was not so like everyone else that she'd get shot down by August as just another peasant. No, this girl had to be someone special.

So yesterday, Esa was born. Roughly around the same age as August and Billy, Esa roams around the demon world, keeping only undead and a few other demons as company. She's absolutely erratic and eccentric when compared to the main cast, which may be part due to her upbringing with other demons in the demon realm. She absolutely hates when people look at her actual human face, to the point of being ashamed of it. Instead, she always wears a hood, or a mask that resembles the face of the species of one of her closest undead companions. Her main powers are lighting things on fire and necromancy on Thursdays. When it comes to her outlook on life, she sees no problem with her rampant acts of destruction - as far as she's concerned, everywhere you look is something that needs to be destroyed, so you might as well watch it all burn. Despite her bleak outlook on life, she's very pleasant and polite, if you can get past her cultural quirks.

Commissions

Got a couple more commissions done recently, a Furcadia portrait and a full digital artwork.

 A portrait commissioned by Banish. When I showed the final product to a friend as a way of getting some extra feedback, they remarked that they could really tell how much better I've gotten at portraying the male form. I have to admit - they're right. I'm rather proud of what I did here. I usually tend to avoid drawing shirtless men because I simply cannot do them justice, but I'm glad I got a commission for one and was brave enough to take it on. It came out well.

This picture is a rendering of an avatar, from one of the avatar sites similar in function to Gaia Online, or at least that was my impression anyway. I'm a sucker for the kind of dress-up factor these kind of games offer, but I find little patience for the endless gold farming to buy items. It just kinda rubs me the wrong way nowadays, which is why I 'officially' quit Gaia a year or so back. Still, actually giving life and personality to avatars is still always fun, so I was more than happy to do this commission for an old friend, who was more than generous with her offer for it. I kinda shuffled my feet a bit on this one, but it did come out quite well overall. I'm just fussy about details I can never get quite right - it's something I need to work on.

Two very enjoyable commissions that I think have shown some of the progress I've made over the past year. An interesting starting point for my summer!

The Demon Lords cards

For August Rye, there's a huge backstory and world behind the "demons" that inhabit the story. The Demon Lords are not actually particularly in leagues with one another, but a select number of highly powerful and influential creatures and characters in the demon realm. In the story's present day canon, there are currently eleven lords, with several old relevant ones either deceased, defeated, or missing.


Since I picked up some small 2.5x3.5" bristol cards, I've been drawing these demon lords (and some other characters) onto individual cards. I plan on coloring them eventually, but I want to get them all drawn and inked first. The twelve I have in progress so far are nowhere near close to the actual number of characters, but maybe a little over halfway.

In order: Helvizar, Sangri, Ymara, Cheshiredame, Lilith, Galeo Cavier, The Songstress, The Reaper, Snuggles, Billy Bay, August Rye, and Ravenfang.

I'll post more when these are finished and when I have the rest drawn as well. August Rye's been on my mind lately again, which is good. I'm getting inspired to get back to work on the story, just in time for the summer. :)

Things to keep busy with

School has a lot of them, don't you know.

The spring semester of Foundations is split into three workshops, and I was in a couple called Figure Drawing, Color Abstraction, and my current and final workshop is Shrinkstallation. I think my work's generally improved since the fall.

Three pieces from my Figure Drawing class, from January through February.

 Figure Drawing involved a lot of steady work and practice. I felt pretty good about it towards the end, and apparently I got one of the higher grades in the class.

Having some fun with my feet.

The three paintings in the center and the scales and spectrum next to it are my work.

My color abstraction final - a palette and painting based on a particular 4-part sound.

Color Abstraction was an interesting one, and I learned a lot about mixing colors and paints. Unfortunately it's not something I want to experience again, because it burned a huge hole in my funds for paint supplies.

My building model, in progress.

My final workshop involves making a to-scale model of an actual location, and then creating a public artwork proposal to place in it. I chose the abandoned Michigan Central Station as my location, and it's still in progress. The artwork proposal will involve some figures inside.

Semester ends on May 11th and it's been quite an interesting year. All of my professors have been really awesome and I'm looking forward to start working with my specific major in the fall. Plus, apartment hunting. Woo!

A little pixel project

Well.. okay, it's a bit bigger than little. Sort of.

I got the idea for a friend of mine's Furcadia dream to add in some first-person sprites to go with a couple non-player characters that were mainly there to explain game rules and tips. I thought the sprites would make it a bit more lively and feel a bit more whole. I also decided to take on the challenge of having them animate speech. On the surface, it doesn't look hard, but I can be very particular in how well done I want them to look. When I want the characters to speak, I want the face to respond to that speech!

Unfortunately, my little project had to go to the back burner temporarily for two reasons: I was still waiting for my tablet pen nibs so I could actually use it, and I've been busy with school work. Though I have my tablet in use again, I've still been pretty busy. Hopefully next weekend I'll scrape together some time to work on it.

I did make a fair amount of progress, though. I used my mouse to piece together some bases for the characters and even fully animated one shot of the first character. All she needs is a bit of shading, which will come last, after I've finished all the rest of the shots, which are about five total poses and about 6 frames.

 They still need some work, and some consistency kinks to smooth over, but for entire mouse work (which I haven't done in years!) I'm pretty proud of how they've turned out.

Recent Commissions

Due to my extremely poor advertising skills, I usually don't get a lot of commissions. However, there was an awfully strange weekend earlier this month where I was bombarded with about four different requests at once, on top of a commissioned larger work that I was making for my aunt, and had been slacking a bit on. Very unprofessional, but there was no rush.

This is the commissioned picture in question... albeit it's an unfinished scan of it. The finished picture still only has red bits colored in, as she requested. I think the red cape had more of an impact on the first attempt I did at this piece - but I did not care for the picture (plus I realized I had misread the cape requirements!)

I also got three Furcadia portrait commissions from two different people. Zuko came back for a couple more portraits, while an old friend commissioned a portrait as well. I'm extremely proud of how these came out. I do wish the portrait of Ewickly could have had a bit more details in the clothing design, though.

I also got a quick and dirty digital lineart commission. I feel... okay about it. Rather wish I had put more effort into it (or started over), but the commissioner loved it anyway. It's always a sad dissonance, when you feel like you didn't put your all into a paid work, but the person who paid for it sees absolutely nothing wrong. It makes for a rather awkward exchange, especially when you have to send them more final copies because you were fixing your mistakes.

A Secret Santa gift

I've been trying to keep the two worlds seperate - keep my deviantArt stuff to my deviantArt, and keep the other stuff here. But I really do feel like this deserves a post here.

The picture is of a Raichu character, Roxy, from a deviantArt group called Pokemon Crossing, a crossover between Animal Crossing and Pokemon. I participated in a Secret Santa exchange organized by one of the members, and being myself, I like to put a lot of effort into gifts; I guess I also like to go the extra mile for strangers. I used my precious new Prismacolors for this, and I'm glad I did, it turned out very well!

I just mailed the physical copy of this to the character's owner this afternoon, along with an extra little drawing to go with it, which I didn't scan. I didn't feel I had to. I feel I have a need to get over this idea that I need to share every single thing I've done, or to keep it all. That picture will be like a precious secret, between me and this girl half a continent away, from a deviantArt group and with whom I've barely even spoken with. A secret between me, her, and whomever she wishes to share it with.

I will go as far to describe it, though: it was an ink drawing of my own Pokemon Crossing character, a Froslass named Lycie, holding up the wrapped present and drink mug to the viewer. There was a little note I wrote in the corner, nothing special, just wishing her a happy Christmas. I hope she has a wonderful holiday season, along with everybody else, too!

Volcarona Portrait

I still like to do remappable Furcadia portraits, and I did this as a spontaneous favor to a friend. I tried to push myself to play with the lighting a bit more... I usually default to a generic top-left light source, which is a big no-no. So I tried a bit more of a dramatic top lighting along with an interesting perspective angle.

The character depicted is a Pokemon named Volcarona, one of my favorites from the fifth generation. This portrait is actually made to go with an avatar I made for the same friend back in August.

I'm pretty happy with both of them, all things considered!

End of Fall Foundations

Well, we finally got our foundations class exhibit up and running! It's running all weekend, and we're all displaying pieces from our finals - an exploration of transforming the human body.

My final project, a series showing different parts of the body transformed with pop bottles and labels, and three studies from beforehand.

Myself next to my final project display.

A fair number of people showed up for the first exhibition night!

The various studies we did before the final project, displayed on the front panel of the entrance.

30 Characters Challenge completed!

Here's a link to the thumbnail post linking to all thirty characters!

It's been a lot of fun! Not much else to say, I mostly say it all in the post. I did kind of barely make it, but I did it! Some of the characters were old ones, dragged up to be polished and re-made, or some very recent ones that weren't quite as developed or even designed.

An Altered Reality

Just a little snippet from my Foundations final. This was one of my favorite images out of a set of six I did - each showing a transformation of a different part of the body. Yes, it was as annoying to set up as it looks. I had to settle to do it in parts, as pop bottles are really hard to work with to get to stay together. I'm really happy with how these turned out, though!

30 characters - Regine the High Valkyrie

Thought I'd post this here, as I thought she turned out pretty great.

She's made to fit in the August Rye universe, hence all the runes. The Valkyries in this universe are more along the lines of humanesque women training them to defend themselves from demons. They practically gave birth to the Protectors faction, which is a loosely-linked group of independent demon hunters all over the globe who are more interested in defending themselves from rather than attacking demons, like the D.O.

Chell falling; incomplete

I'm not too happy with how Chell's face came out in this picture, so I think I gave up on it several weeks ago. It's worth sharing though, I'm still pretty proud of some of the color experimenting I did.

We're a way the universe expresses itself.

A little spin on the quote by Carl Sagan in Cosmos, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."

A project about a writing we made on "creativity," the idea was to condense the message and fit it on a large slab of cardboard. Most people spray-painted, I covered the cardboard in paper and used colored pencils and India ink. It was tedious, but the results were worth it, and nobody's banner really looked like mine. Whether or not that's a good thing... well, that's up to the viewer, I guess.


I took the pictures on top of my bed... yeah, classy!

If you find it hard to read, it says "We are human. We are a way the universe expresses itself."

Some artwork from the past year

While I procrastinate a bit on updating the Samples page, here's some examples of my work from over the past year, in chronological order.

An image summarizing the first arc of August Rye.

 

This was a collaboration - Heather drew the sketch, and I did the rest.

This was for a small contest, which I won first place in.

What is August Rye?

August Rye is the title of a comic world and story that I've been building for the past several years. While it's not off the ground yet, it's getting fairly close. The story has a fairly well-grounded world built for it and has central characters and themes... now I just have to find the time to sit down and do it!

The story is in a modern, American setting, starting in a fictional metropolis called Finn City. It also explores another realm attached to ours, named, affectionately, the demon world. The demon realm holds many monsters - some from our legends, and some that have never been heard of before. Demons come in all sorts of species, with strange powers and ridiculously long lives.

Though there may have been a time where the demons were indifferent to humans, after the disastrous vampire wars, the demon world has become a much more dangerous place for them. Some demons even come into our world to wreak havoc, and so many humans took up the tradition of demon hunting centuries ago to defend themselves and their homes. In the modern day, the Dreamland Operation, based in Finn City, boasts themselves as the most effective demon hunting organization in existence. Two years prior to the comic storyline, they began training a young girl named August Rye, and she's set to become one of the most notorious demon hunters in history.

Not much else I can say rather that that, because that would take forever, and I have to keep some secrets, right? For now, have a peek at the bios of some of the characters, along with their design sheets:

Commission info posted!

I now have a commissions information page posted at the top. Most of it's copy and pasted from my LiveJournal commissions entry, but with a few modifications. Feel free to check it out! I'll get the Samples page up tonight as well.

The Wall and Garden Leader

I drew this picture for my 30 characters challenge, but as the rest have been mostly sketches, I figured this picture needs a bit more of a formal location. I'm trying to avoid using my deviantArt at the moment, so I'll post it here!

Some sketches from my pocket sketchbook

So, to start off, here's a few tiny things that I've been doodling in a little 3x4" sketchbook that I carry around in my pocket... everywhere. I've actually had to start a new one!  They're pretty cheap, though, so I don't mind.

Haltenti, the Wizard in Pink... or pink and yellow marker-pens, at least.

Cheshiredame, posing for a poster?

This was an arc 2 cover image idea that didn't turn out too well.

An apple or two I drew from scratch with my new colored pencils.

I had a brief flirtation with using ball-point pen. Then I lost the pen I was using...

Hello!

Hopefully the emptiness won't be a distraction. Got a little bit of construction to do!

This blog will be used as a sort of semi-portfolio and contact information for my art and commission work. I'm Lisa, 20 years old and currently a foundations student at Kansas City Art Institute. I've been practicing both digital and traditional art for several years.

I do have a deviantArt account, ~melodicpixels, but it's rather informal. I'd rather keep it separate from this blog.

Hope you enjoy!

-Lisa