Look What I Drew Today! 10/23/2013

Well, it's not so much just what I drew, but also that it's a redraw of a previous piece.

The first drawing was done back in...oh, I'm not sure: 2008-2009? It comes from the second sketchbook I've ever owned. Back in high school, I spent so much time doodling on the pages of my classwork that I finally decided to buy a sketchbook. I took it with me to my first ever convention, the Big Apple Anime Fest, back in 2002. It wouldn't be until years later that I bought another sketchbook that holds the drawing you see here. Well, I was flipping through the pages, saw this old picture and decided to redraw it.

My, the difference a few years makes. Oh, and increasing skills and experience. Can't forget those. I probably could have moved the photo on the right more, but you get the gist of the drawing.

This was also in the sketchbook, and I've actually redrawn the photo on the left a couple more times but it's never come out the way I wanted it to. Problems with anatomy, foreshortening, and overall balance have plagued me for years. I'm happy to say that I've gotten much better at it~

Look What I Drew! 10/15/2013

Luffy D. Monkey - One Piece (New World outfit)

I posted the traditional piece a while back and I really wanted to color it in. The only problem was that  I couldn't think up a good background so I went for something that might match his expression. I need to start working on more dynamic poses for my characters, though...you can only have people staring seriously in angles for so long.

Anybody watching Kill La Kill? It has the same director/writer from Gurren Lagaan so it's immediately top notch stuff. The animation is crazy, with such fluidity in majority of the episodes, yet for comedic effect in some scenes they lowered the frame rate. The art style itself is right up my alley: I'm a huge fan of a less detailed character in a more fleshed out world. The angles they use in some shots are what you'd expect from the company that produces this anime: very dynamic and sharp. The main character, Ryuko, has the typical badass personality but it gets switched up with very funny scenes. Also, she's really hot. Like...really hot. 

I love the enemies she faces, as well. Crazy designs and personalities...I can't wait for episode 3.

Look What I Drew! 10/12/2013

Lance Corporal Levi - Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin)

Wuddup, my snack packs! I've been quite busy today, taking care of some drawings I've done recently that I wanted to color in because I like the way they turned out. This one, in particular, was fun: The original sketch was done in my sketchbook and I loved how it came out. I did a bit of shading, finalized some lines, and then moved on to inks.

I botched it.

I use a sharpie to outline the drawing, and I went over Levi's face and kinda ruined it.

I had lost control of my life.

The eyes were also too small and seemingly far apart from each other, and the mouth also looks too low. To fix this, I scanned it in and began reparations. I think he looks much better in the colored, final image. What do you guys think?

Look what I drew today! 10/10/2013

Eren Jaeger from the really popular anime this year: Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin). 

I did a quick sketch and really liked the way it came out, so I decided to scan it in and color it up. Oh, and I added a background digitally because I need to do more backgrounds in my pieces. 

The art jam finished, and I'm sorry to say that I haven't uploaded the rest of the pieces save for the first subject. Don't you worry, though: I'll post them up tomorrow~

Look What I Drew Today!

THE ART JAM HAS BEGUN!

Day One: Any character from Futurama. 

I chose Fry and the Planet Express ship. The subject included multiple characters but Fry is my only favorite and I wanted to make a dynamic picture. The first draft was only Fry but he was in a very boring pose and the more I looked at the piece, the more I hated it. I think this one came out great~

I also started working on SOMA again, and I'm going to try to pump out 5 pages by next week, in between the Art Jam pieces. Keep your eyes peeled~

Look What I Drew! 9/18/2013

Luffy D. Monkey in his New World outfit~

He had a legs but I decided not to add them. I don't quite know why...laziness, I guess. The shadow is from my phone, by the way.

The second chapter of my story, The Fallen Prince, has been finished. Each chapter takes on a different character's point of view, ala A Song of Ice and Fire, and the character I had written has ended up being my favorite so far. Writing from different perspectives has been pretty easy, I feel. You're not constrained to following one story throughout the entire book, even though every character in this book will eventually cross paths. It's exciting, and I hope that anyone who's reading them likes how it's going.

In the meantime, I'm playing Grand Theft Auto V and it's sucking up all of my time because, well...it's bloody awesome. IV was pretty good, though it definitely had its faults, but V has gone and fine tuned these problems and made a solid game that's been very, very enjoyable.

I'll keep trying to post pieces, but if you don't hear from me...you know why. Oh! and there's an art jam coming up soon so keep your eyes peeled!

Look at what I drew! 9/15/2013

Uzumaki Naruto! He's wearing the Toad Sage costume. I drew him too close to another drawing and got its arm in the way...

I like the inks a lot. The foreshortening on the forward arm came out well, too, but the hand could use some work. The hands always need work. I'll remove floating arm near his leg and color him in soon, then post the final product for you all to see.

Truth be told, this was drawn last week but I didn't plan on uploading any of my pieces until recently. I haven't gotten around to fixing any of the drawings up as of late since I've been busy writing, but I promise I'll get to everything I've done. It's been a very artistic month, I have to say, and I'm happy with how everything has been turning out.

I'm enjoying writing again. I've been spending a lot of my time thinking up plots and characters, and even though I'm revamping an old story it really feels like something new. It's been such a long time since I've even attempted writing a story (at least, in novel form) but the results are awesome.

RE-RE-RE-REVAAAAAMP!

Yes, well I've decided what I should do with this blog.

I wanted to keep this blog as an update into my progress as a freelance illustrator/comic maker, but nothing has come from either of those two things. Don't get me wrong, my comic is still going strong, there's just nothing of interest to talk about on it. Instead, I'm going to post whatever I've been drawing lately and talk about it for a bit. I've been getting back into drawing traditionally and having fun with it and I figured, what the hell, lemme go ahead and post it up here for everyone to see.

Now, I just have to remember to post here...

Look What I Drew: 9/12/2013

A character design for a story I'm writing. It's a fantasy story...truth be told, I've been writing it for years. I actually had it finished a few years back but it didn't really make much sense and was too cartoonish (Dragon Ball Z was a huge influence at the time). Now that I'm older, I really want to give this story another chance, and so far it's been coming out pretty well. 

Anyway, this character is a Cleric. He's, uh...unconventional, to say the least: he's lecherous and is fond of drink, but he's got talent with a sword and is very highly respected in the Chantry (A religious organization that is very integral to the story). I really like the way he came out! He's got a young model look to him, the arrogance of a man who knows his skills and really, really good hair. I think he's going to become one of my favorites.

Manga Studio & Techniques

I love Manga Studio. I was primarily a Photoshop artist ever since I started drawing digitally, but the program pales in comparison to MS's abilities. I used it for my comic but I love it so much, I'm using it for everything I do. The inking is second to none, and the coloring ability, while good in MS 4EX, is much better in MS 5. In short, it's crazy good and the best program you can use as a comic artist. Now, coloring has never been my strong suit. I've always spent more time on drawing, and only so much on inking, so it's no surprise that my skills in the area are weak. I've been trying various techniques as of late and I think I may have found my sweet spot:

I'm very proud of the way this page came out. Ever since I was told that I should color in my comic if I want it to be successful I've done everything I could to make it look good...and it's been difficult. It's an amazing feeling to finally hit it on the head and it makes me want to keep working on, like...everything. Old pieces, new work coming up, pushing my comic pages out faster until I finish the next chapter - I'm in a good place to keep working and I hope it can keep going. By the way, if you want to check out my comic you can see the 4 chapters here: . I'd love the support!

Man of Steel Trailer

This looks like it's going to be amazing. I'm not the biggest fan of Supes, but you can never go wrong with Chris Nolan producing, helping with the writing, and Zack Snyder directing. He may not have done well recently, at least in my opinion (Watchmen felt like a best of clips for fanboys and we don't talk about Sucker Punch...), but his visuals are always stunning. This movie proves he still has that going for him, and it seems we're getting the Superman movie we've been waiting for. I think it'll be movie of the year, or at least a tie with Iron Man 3. Agree/Disagree?

SOMA coloring

I've been busy lately colorizing my comic. I haven't heard back from the company that gave me the advice to do this such thing, and in all honesty that's fine; I feel like this piece of gold they gave me is what I needed to really make things happen and I'm very grateful to them regardless of what may happen. In the meantime, I have to say that I'm happy with how the comic is coming along.

I never thought such a simple thing as coloring would make all the difference in the world when it came to my comic, but now that I know this I'm pretty upset with myself for never doing it before. It's great learning new techniques and trying them out, as well. Manga Studio doesn't give me a whole range of skills like Photoshop does, but it does enough for my comic and that's really all I need. I'm getting comfortable with coloring, finally~

I feel like drawing some fan art again. I have more pages to work on for chapter 4 though, so I suppose the other drawings can wait...we'll see.

A comic company got back to me today.

I submitted SOMA to a comic company, G.M.I. Manga, a while back and today they finally replied. 

The general consensus was good~

They loved the concept of the comic, and the art style was compared to Jet Set Radio. I love JSR! I used to play it nonstop on my Dreamcast back in the day, so to have my style compared to that is quite the compliment. The one issue they had, and it was more of a high recommendation, was that it should be colorized. They went on to say that the black and white tone makes the wacky story of SOMA not pop as it should. 

I told them that coloring isn't an issue for me, and I'd be glad to do it (Manga Studio makes it very easy to color comics). It's a completely understandable choice to make: we're in the digital world now, which means we can easily read comics through our mobile devices/computers/tablets and such. It makes sense that we'd all want to read comics in color now.


What do you guys think? Would you like to see Short Order Mobile Action as a colorized comic?

You can read it here. It's up to the beginning of Chapter 4, so there's plenty to read~

Art Jam: April 2013

The art jam finished tonight. It was a lot of fun, as was the last time, and really good for updating my skills. There were a couple of subjects that I probably never would have drawn, but it's all about stepping out of your comfort zone, right? Without further delay, here's the results of the art jam! Also, you can check out my fellow artists's work here      That's all of them! All the pieces were done in Manga Studio, and a couple were finished in Photoshop CS3. Next month will be yet another art jam, but in the meantime I'll be posting more of my artwork for you guys to see to sate yourselves.

Day One: Nightcrawler (X-Men)

 Day Two: Jon Snow (Game of Thrones)

Day Three: Otto Man (The Simpsons)

Day Five: Beetlejuice 

Day Six: Daniel the Bull (Where the Wild Things Are)

Day Seven: Lucy/Kaede (Elfen Lied)

Art Jam - April 2013 News

I'm participating in an art jam for the first week of April, meaning it's ending tomorrow and I'll be posting up my finished pieces then. I had a lot of fun with this jam! The last one went on for over 2 weeks and it was exhausting since I was also working on my comic and a few art trades with people on deviantArt. Needless to say, I was burned out. It got to the point that I couldn't even look at my pen and tablet; I was that tired of drawing. Putting the past aside, this week's art jam was refreshing and really made me proud of my abilities as an artist. I wanted to try a few new things, such as colors, poses, even inking, and I think everyone reading this will be surprised at the progress I've made. I also switched from Photoshop to Manga Studio EX 4, which is a much superior program when it comes to inking. I'm trying to get used to coloring with MS, but it's proving not to be as complicated as I initially thought it was. I can't wait to show everyone what I've been up to.

Pencil sketches.

I sketched with pencil for the first time in months. I switched to digital at the later part of last year. I wanted to work on my comics from my bed (I'm lazy, sue me), and I already owned a tablet so I figured I'd work at using it until it became natural. I never ditched traditional drawing, but it became less and less important to me since I could do everything from my laptop. It felt good to get a sketch out on paper, and it makes me want to learn how to finalize sketches in a professional manner. There's so much I need to learn, such as finalizing sketches and adding detail for inking, inking in particular, and shading. I'm good at it, but I'm not great and that's what I want to get to. I'm trying my best to make my comic stand out, and I'm gaining a pretty good fanbase. I wish I was better at promoting, but I never really know what to do besides plugging the comic on websites. I'm sure in time it'll come, but until then I'll keep learning how to make it better and better.

Short Order Mobile Action Update & Other News

I'm going into the 4th chapter of SOMA! Last time I uploaded any of it here I believe I was on chapter 2, but time has been flying by and I've kept pretty busy. I've been hosting it at this nifty site known as Manga Magazine, as I feel it's easier to get my story out there until I get a proper website. you can check it out here I've also entered a contest with a group known as Manga Tokyo Style. They choose a winner monthly, and they receive $1,000 and recognition, which I think is just great. They've also translated my first chapter of SOMA into Japanese, so my comic is being read overseas... ...how cool is that? I hope I win. I won't find out until the end of April, so this month is going to be stressful. In other news, I've joined another Art Jam for this month: it's only 7 days this time around (the last one in January was 16 and it was grueling), and it's been going well so far. The subjects are very cool and I know I'm going to have fun. They are as follows: Monday - Nightcrawler from X-Men Tuesday - Jon Snow from Game of Thrones (I picked this one XD) Wednesday - Any secondary character from The Simpsons Thursday - Connor Kenway from Assassin's Creed Friday - Beetlejuice Saturday - Daniel the bull from Where the Wild Things Are Sunday - Nightwolf from Mortal Kombat It's going to be interesting. I'll be out of my comfort zone again, but it's pretty surprising to see what comes out of it.

Art Jam: January 2013!

Sorry for the lack of updates! I've been busy with my comic and drawings and completely neglected this blog. My bad! Well, I was part of an Art Jam a while back and it was a lot of fun. 16 consecutive days of drawing, and between that and my comic I burned myself out pretty bad. I'm back to normal now, so I'll show you the fruits of my labor.