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.