The Making of "Valkyrur"

For this week's painting, I decided to do a painting on an awesome tactical strategy video game turned into an equally awesome anime, Valkyria Chronicles. I have ideas for more complicated pieces based on the series, but for this one, I'm just focusing on my character skills.

Step 1: Rough (1 hour)
This week, I'm trying out a new process. For the first step, I set up the digital rough for where my colors will go in the next step. I used Poser 8 as the anatomy reference, and watched some pieces of the anime again to get references for her costume and gear.

Council Cup

I managed to get a panorama on a trip to Council Cup in Pennsylvania, before my camera's battery died on the unexpected outing.

Quickie- "The Bureau is AWESOME fanart"

Bloodline

Designed from August 12 to August 16
Total Time: 10 hours
Materials/Programs: Poser 8, Photoshop CS6, Wacom Cintiq 15x

Mid-"Bloodline" distractions

So, when I finished the color flats, I took a break from my current painting of the DC comics character Raven, and decided to see if I've improved at all. So I decided to draw a different perspective without any references. I'd say I have, and now I have a reference for how I'm likely going to shade Raven's face in the painting. As opposed to the 6 hours so far in that painting, this took me a total of 15 minutes. As it turns out, doing these paintings weekly is definitely helping me improve.

Making of "Bloodline"

For this week's painting, I decided to paint Raven, one of my favorite characters in any medium, as well as her father Trigon. This is the first piece I'm planning to have as little line in as possible, by the end. Once I get to the color flats stage, I'll be using the lineart as a guideline and will be making it more painterly than the rest of the pieces thus far have been.

Step 1: Digital Rough (1.5 hours)
I created a quick guideline render in Poser 8 and proceeded to rough out the musculature of Raven and Trigon, using the round brush with flow set to pen pressure control. While I grew up on the 2000 cartoon rather than the comics, I'm going with the less waifish comic character design, using elements both from the older comics as well as the New 52. At this stage, the bird behind Raven and Trigon's musculature seem to be in most need of improvement, though everything is rather rough at the moment. Far less so than my previous digital roughs, though, so I count it as an accomplishment.

Week of August 5

I decided that, at present, my level is not where it needs to be at to complete the Yuki-Onna painting I worked on this week. Instead, I will be shelving it for a time later in the year, most likely some time during the Winter season.

Blog Update (8/3/13)

I've added several ways for people to subscribe to the blog, should they so choose, though I'm not entirely sure that you will get email updates from following me, as you will by signing up with your email. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that.

After several hours working on coding forms for the blog, organizing things better, and looking into the scripts and coding I need to make contact forms that will email me without forcing open peoples' email client, I've rediscovered why I switched from the web design program to computer graphics.

I've updated my schedule page so that it's better organized, and not so much of a scroll.  I decided

Wiñay Marka

For this week's painting, I decided to make another ensemble painting similar to Alice, focusing on the landscape and anatomy skills. Also, I figured out how to make design at least semi-believable fire, which is definitely an accomplishment for me.

Made between July 29 and August 2
Completion time: 20 hours
Materials: Poser 8, Photoshop CS6