In with the New

Some recent Christmas present projects. :)

First, for Mom,

Menolly (from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong trilogy) is her favorite character, so I decided to make her a bookmark featuring Menolly and her fire lizard Beauty.  I was a little unsure about the quality since I tried for a touch more realism than my usual style and went for really saturated colors, but Mom really loved it! She not only printed it as a bookmark, but she asked me to adjust the resolution so she could print it big.  She framed it and hung it over her desk! <3

Resources:
Texture 12 by JadedReality

For my brother Drew, who loves both World of Warcraft and The Legend of Zelda: the Windwaker,

His WoW gnome, Windwaker style!  This was lots of fun to draw, I really like drawing WoW characters even though their armor is always stupid-complicated.  I always have to end up simplifying it.

The fonts I used to mimic the Zelda logo can be found here: zeldauniverse.net

Fluttershy

Watercolor for a kind friend. :) The character is Fluttershy from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Creativity Project

For one of my classes I had to make something--anything I wanted, as long as it fell within the school's honor code.  This is by far the best hour I've spent on homework yet. :D

My scanner is not great and this came out of a thick sketchbook, so I apologize for the quality~

Mistborn

I just finished reading Brandon Sanderson's novel Mistborn: The Final Empire and...um. I still haven't decided whether I liked it or not. I don't generally read adult fiction/fantasy because it seems to be excessively violent, smutty, and/or just plain grueling to read, but this particular book came to me highly recommended, and written by a Creative Writing professor at BYU (land of the prudes, and I say that very lovingly), so, I thought, "how bad could it be?"

...I...I have never read of so much carnage. @_@ The writing was wonderful, and many elements of the story so compelling that I couldn't put it down, but there was at least one night that I lay awake unable to sleep for fear of nightmares. By the time the 500th character was horrifically mutilated I was wondering "WHY AM I STILL READING THIS?" But I finished, and it had a very satisfying ending.

Now I'm torn.  It's the first book of a series, and I have an intense curiosity to know what happens next, but I'm not sure if it's worth stomaching the possibility of seeing more characters get dismembered or flayed or turned inside out or whatever morbidity awaits. I took the second book with me to work today, and I almost picked it up during my long expanse of downtime proctoring Custodial Core--but I lost the nerve and instead drew sketches of some stuff from the first book. I didn't have the book with me for reference, so I just drew from what I could remember of my impressions while reading.

Watercolor Talent, I ain't.

I decided to draw Spark as a Disney Fairy today (ala Tinkerbell and friends) and tried to emulate the style of the storybook illustrations, which called for large, widely set almond-shaped eyes, a pixie nose, wide hips, and watercolor over graceful pencil lines. So I dusted off the watercolor set that's been languishing in my cabinet and my Disney Fairies artbook and took on the challenge! Unfortunately I'm not thrilled with the result, but it was a welcome way to spend the day.

 Spark is a Fire Talent fairy, tasked with overseeing natural wildfires that help to rejuvenate forests and grasslands. Her job is chaotic and dangerous, just as she likes it.

I wanted to make Spark look right at home in Pixie Hollow so I also gave her a new leaf-and-flower outfit for her new Fairy body.

While I was working on this, I took a couple of photos to document the process. The quality isn't great because the photos are from my phone, but if you're curious, take a gander: Process!

I drew Vahaadi as a Fairy too (ahem, "Sparrowman") much to his dismay. Poor guy, how many ways can I think of to emasculate you? Ahaha anyway, I decided not to bother with watercolors and just slapped some Photoshop flats onto the pencil sketch. I like the results a lot better.

Vahaadi is a Dust-Talent, responsible for delivering the freshly ground pixie dust to fellow denizens of Pixie Hollow. While he generally ensures that everyone gets their serving, he's certainly not above pilfering more than his fair share of dust from the mill and has amassed quite an avaricious hoard, which he uses to get into all sorts of hedonistic mischief.

Like Spark, I changed his proportions to try and match the style of the story illustrations. His angular "Fairy" face cracks me up. I promise, Vahaadi, the next thing I draw of you will be manly! DX (well, after I draw you as a pony that is, haha)

Since I'm posting Disney Fairy stuff I thought I'd toss this up, too--it's a quick simple CG of Rani, a Water Talent Fairy. I drew her for a collaborative project with my sister LC on Gaia last year, thus it's signed with my username "Inkdust."

The style was supposed to be chibi, but it turned out sort of odd...I thought about just throwing this away, but, eh. Even though I don't like it, maybe somebody does.

...In conclusion I'm pretty "ehhhhh" about all of this art. >\ I need to draw a Disney Fairies piece I actually LIKE!

"How do I look, Minion? Do I look 'Bad'?"

So, Megamind is kind of my new favorite movie.  I've watched it 5+ times in the last week, including watching it all the way through with the commentary. Usually there's at least one thing in any movie I see or story I read where I think "I wish they'd done this differently" but Megamind I LOVED LOVED LOVED.  The plot, the characters, the humor, the pacing--it all just sat so perfectly with me.  I find myself replaying it in my head while I'm at work and grinning like an idiot.  Never have I wanted to just plop myself down in front of a movie and attempt drawing its characters, and yet, for this movie, I deliberately cleared time in my schedule for it.  That's huge, guys, take it from me.  Or should I say, MEGA.

This is the face Megamind makes when he's toying with the warden.  The top of his head was cut off in this scene so I just guessed, but as I watched further I realized that I still drew it too small!

This is my attempt at drawing the warden, although this is actually Megamind masquerading as him.  Of all of my sketches I'm the least pleased with this one, and I think it's because I'm better at more angular faces.  That's why this drawing is so smudgy--I had to keep fixing it!  I might have given up if I didn't love this part in the movie so much.  The warden is a great character, and he reminds me forcibly of the captain from Monk.

LOL, Metroman.  His face is fun to draw.  His hand in that pose? Not so much.

This is the expression he makes right before leaping into his evil swivel-chair.  Spiky leather armor! Although I think I left out his collar somehow.  I love how his collar gets more and more dramatic with each new costume.

I originally just planned on doing some quick sketches of specific favorite scenes, but I soon realized that most of the movie is my favorite scene.  Unfortunately I only had time to do these four sketches that are all from the second and third scenes of the movie, but later --after I actually purchase the movie instead of just racking up days on the redbox-- I really want to do more! I didn't even get to some of Megamind's best expressions, (the ones he makes when he's confronting "Tighten" are the ones I'm thinking of) and I simply MUST DRAW BERNARD. <3 <3 <3

One reason I don't do fanart is because I get frustrated when I can't recreate the character accurately to the source.  I know I didn't manage to make true renditions of these characters here, but I think I'm actually ok with that--in fact, I'm rather pleased that my style still comes through.  I think I could learn a lot from doing more studies like these.