Working on a crowd scene for my comic Spidersilk. I've been wanting to do one for some time, but the comic takes up most of my illustration time and it is important to put out story content. However ... and yes this does explain my hiatus from the WIP blog ... I got and beat Dragon Age Inquisitions. I was so blown away by story aspects, so wrapped up in it, and so pleased at the little character and world details. A particular cut scene made me really want to do a big tavern scene, so I did this. All kinds of inspiration built up as I played, so when I beat it I let loose with illustrations (though most are of my Inquisitor -- I'll share those later)! When I play great games, watch good movies, etc, it just makes me want to make stories that hit as hard.
After working on that large Dragon Age II fan art, I felt a bit more confident about drawing such a thing. This is the first time I've done an image with so many characters AND a background, and I'm actually looking forward to the long inking process.
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Turns out the poster contest came with a kit, which I'd somehow missed on my first visit to the site. I decided to use the images provided as a challenge to see what I could create. I did a lot of moving things around. The first image, below right, was based on the initial concept I had of a poster when I thought I would have to draw it. The second was just to try something new. At that point I was convinced poster1 was it. Good thing I did some more. They just got better! While my poster did not make the final cut, I did enjoy it. The process was fun and strangely relaxing. By the last poster I had decided to break away from centering everything and I'd tried out several filters, background, and effects along the way. I voted on my favorites on the Dragonage facebook.
This is seriously happening! My current fan project is a Dragon Age 2 movie poster-esque image because I want to do a lovely fan art to farewell that DA2 era for myself and welcome the new game, coming out in November. Then Bioware launches this Dragon Age Inquisitions poster contest a couple days ago, and I am so on it. So I will be deriving the DA2 image of further updates for the week while I work like mad around comics and my job to get a dang good poster idea finished in time for November third (the contest deadline).
I've dug up my favorite movie covers and posters, asked friends for theirs, and researched online for the "best" movie posters. Given that images for DAI won't be nearly as plentiful as those for DA2, I am foreseeing a bit of a snag. A lot of images reside in video teasers and trailers, and without actual internet (phone data is low) I'm afraid I won't have good references for a few days. In the meantime, I'll simply lay out color schemes, shapes, and composition. The rest will be filled in later. Because it is a contest, I will not be posting my ideations, top picks, and lineworks until the deadline has passed. Just a quick update! Here's the fully lined second draft of the DA2 fan art. It's getting harder to see the details very clearly with the references I have, and my internet went down halfway through doing this. I will likely stylize and embellish as I do the final lines, though I do see some problems that go beyond costuming! Anders' arm is weird. Bethany looks spacy. And I cannot get Sebastian to look like he is supposed to.... All in good time though.
As usual, been keeping up with the comic, and have laid out a document in InDesign to estimate how many pages and chapters will be included in the first Spidersilk volume, as well as trying to figure out what bonus content will be included. I found some more detailed reference pictures and though it is still somewhat difficult to see what's really going on with some of the armor, I forged ahead. It does seem to be getting that movie poster feel I was going for! Excellent.
I will fill in the details of the remaining four characters. Thankfully I have drawn Aveline before so her armor is a bit less daunting. Well, I am finally doing a big group fan art! You might've noticed I don't do fan art much, or when I do, it's in the form of design challenges, where I design alternate looks and armors for characters. What happens is that playing games spurs me into action for my own work. I play through a game one or two times before that sets in -- at first completing the game is more interesting to me. But I replay games several times, so during those replays of Dragon Age (for example) I get weirdly motivated to work on my comic. (It is also one of the three games that inspired me to work on a new fantasy comic, but that's another story.) When a game has a story that good, with characters that compelling (some that you love, some that you want to punch through a wall), it just makes me want to work really hard on my own work and hope that my readers are connecting with my story, world, and characters like I connected with Dragon Age and other games. Since that love is kind of intangible, I decided I should try and show it through fan art. I'm treating them as though they might appear in my comic. No small feat, but that's the charm of fan art! You get to see your work in another's style, and I was missing that, often trying to replicate exactly what I was seeing. Not this time. Behold! Dragon Age characters as if they were to appear in Spidersilk. Note: Below is the second sketch. I am not using default Hawke, I am using my first Hawke. Composition may change slightly yet. Some weapon placements will move. One more character will be added in the blank space in front, but I was unable to study her garment closely in the game. Next, lining! In other news, the mage hats from the previous post (a design challenge), are getting a lot of commentary and votes -- much more than round 1! It's exciting to see, and I will be working on round 3, using critique and votes, when able.
Below are the mage hats from Round 1. To refresh your memory, this is a challenge I decided on since it seems so many Dragon Age fans are unhappy with the mage hats. I have a sneaking suspicion the artists just decided to run with goofy mage hats at some point, since the ones in upcoming Inquisition are just fabulously over the top (from what I can tell). Although the hood seems to be the favored mage gear, I initially went with magic and ritualism as it has existed throughout history -- the idea that certain plants, animals, or even colors hold properties or symbolize protection, strength, etc. Here are the hats from Round 1. I asked friends, many of them artists and designers, and fans of games, to vote and comment on the hats. Non-gamers tended to favor the aesthetics of the green hat with the horns, while gamers (who already had a bias towards what mage hats "should" look like) preferred instead the purple and orange hats, often citing that they looked more like the traditional mage hat (though they did seem to like mage hat 1 a lot as well). I took the feathers from hat 2, the excess of gold adornment from all three, and the general shape of the twin gold pieces in hat 3. These were the favored elements of each hat. There are mini horns on the green hat below to honor hat 1 from round 1 since so many people had liked them (myself included)! I created three new hats, which will undergo more voting and commentary. Each hat below took 15 - 20 minutes to design and create. Personally I think these are a lot stronger, and I imagine they'll get better. I will do at least one more round after the voting. The Mage Hat challenge model is Morrigan, of the Dragon Age games.
It just occurred to me that I ought to make a male face to pop into the hats to see if it is as successful as some of these ideations. Next time I update on the Mage Hat design challenge, we'll see that as well! I downloaded Twine yesterday. I learned about it from a blogger a couple of years ago, but I had heard it could be buggy, especially on mac. I am pleased to say that so far there are no problems!
One of the first games I ever played was Zork. I'm not a technical person, but it was one of those black screened computers with the bright green writing. There was no mouse. I am not sure what it was. Zork intrigued me, and I remember playing it quite a lot, though I am not sure if I ever beat it. I read a few series of those choose-your-own-adventure tales, including Dungeons & Dragons. Ten years later when I learned about video games that let me make more choices, which may impact the ending or even change it, was I ever on board! Dragon Age is one of the games that pulled me back into the world of games. At that time I still played games but was not very excited about many. I also was opened up to other genres -- I had previously played mostly fighting and RPG (which were usually linear, though some had puzzle aspects). With my horizons expanded, I wanted more than ever to work in games and contribute to the great variety. I may not know how to code, but I can write. I script and write all my comics and I really enjoy the process. Besides getting the comic into black and white (the inking), editing the script is my favorite part. I took an older story of mine, about twenty pages in length, and began converting it into a choose-your-own-adventure sort of story. And not only can I write, but I can draw. I will be dropping in illustrations every few pages, depending on how heavy the text blocks become. It will be a way for me to work in the initial plans for this story, which was to be a sort of illuminated manuscript storybook. Here is a screenshot below from Twine. It's on my computer that is still on Japanese time, so it thinks it is October first already. On September 26th, my comic turned three years old. It was launched in 2011 on that date, though under a different name. The first half year for Spidersilk was tumultuous due to the steep learning curve of using a tablet (as well as other issues). I renamed it and doubled efforts on updating after half a year. I threw myself into networking and advertising as well. It built slowly, and after it became featured on Inkblazers.com things have been gliding along. It picks up on average 30 new readers a month and ranks in the top half of all featured comics on inkblazers quite consistently. The comic must come first, above other projects (as fun as they are!) and I have been spending much time on it.
For the third anniversary I initially thought I could get the copy ready for print, and that is still in the works, but I haven't completed the necessary work for that yet. So ... I decided to do a promotional event, for whatever I can manage at my moment. I am reading "Console Wars" and it makes me want to aggressively market something, anything -- good thing I have a comic! It made me think for quite some time on what I could do with what I had, and what was going to be the most beneficial for the comic. So, I basically asked fans to share the comic, and add why they liked it. Simple, takes little time, is fairly easy for me to track entries, and will give me a really good idea from otherwise silent fans what it is about Spidersilk that is interesting, unique, and catches attention to better help me promote it in the future. (Tumblr post details) A week ago I began drawing this to put up as a thank you to readers. Clothes-swapping is always good, though I don't know what the heck Prentice (far right) is doing. He is either not a very good fashion model or an exceptional one. I can't really tell! Here are the promised (per the previous post) mage hats on the unimpressed Morrigan (of Dragon Age).
I sat down to design mage hats and was stumped. There are already a lot of colorful hoods in Dragon Age, with about half of them being a bit too goofy for me to want to wear.... So I decided to throw caution to the wind and went colorful and flamboyant to see what would happen. I often practice in extremes before I settle when working with something new. Process: First I attempted some speed painting for Morrigan. I don't quite have the hang of it yet, but I am now enjoying it. Then it came to actually making the hats. I drew silhouettes first, then layered colors on top of that. As for the designs themselves, I began to think what is it that makes a mage hat a mage hat. A simple cowl or hood would probably look best for a game character, but in terms of practiced actual magic, items hold meaning, embody certain gods and goddesses or their traits (ie protection, war, archery). I thought about items people have worn in the past, sewn into clothes, to avert the evil eye, call luck, etc. Colors are also associated with certain traits, magical or not -- red with passion, aggression, etc for instance. I chose bright colors. For decoration, I decided natural items were best: antlers, pearls, feathers, gems, etc. Particular patterns, visible in the far right mage hat, might evoke some sort of magic or ritual casting. The hats are still undergoing critiques on my social media. It seems like favor is swinging between one and two. Inspirations: The first hat was done on thinking about the "Green Man," the god of the hunt, present in much of Celtic paganism. He is often depicted as wearing green and with antlers of some sort. The second was a lot simpler -- it was based on an owl. The cowl was initially a rich purple as I'd decided on bright colors, but it made the overall hat look a bit like the Shredder (TMNT). Finally the orange one quite literally has a hat brim, and was based on some of the Jaffa helmets from Stargate SG-1 (Horus guards, I believe, with the bird sort of appearance), though it's not too evident it seems. |
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