Monday, January 30, 2017

Attack On Titan Spoilers Follow

For any fans of Attack on Titan who aren't caught up with the manga, turn back now if you don't want spoilers. The spoiler drawing will be the last one.


Levi and Hanji cuddling. Part of a birthday gift for a friend last July.


Levi walking a female Even down the aisle to give her away. Note the implied threat in his eyes for the groom.



Attack on Titan Spoilers Below








The manga spent a lot of chapters hinting that Erwin Smith would die before the end of the series. But that didn't make it any less sad when it happened. He's a character that I love, so I had to draw at least somethingin his memory. It's not bad for a quick digital sketch.

This entry took much longer to finish than planned. It's been sitting in my drafts for a while. But the deed is finally done and I  can brainstorm was to post next.



Monday, January 16, 2017

Visual Representation

Art isn't always for fun. Sometimes it's because you can't scream.

(March 20 2016)


Friday, January 13, 2017

Wow, This Is A Lot

Once in a while fandom communities will come together on Tumblr to organize a week of prompts dedicated to said fandom. It's unofficial and always just for fun. Last March there was such an event for my favorite Attack on Titan pairing, Levi and Hanji.  It's crazy to think that this was the last major art project I did before starting my full time job.

Technically there were seven days' worth but I don't like all of them enough to share. What I do feel like sharing I'll put up with the prompt that inspired it and how I chose to fill it.


Prompt: Service Men/Women
Fill: Levi and Hanji as police officers


Prompt: Fantasy
Levi is a shape-shifting dragon and Hanji is his human mate.


Prompt: College
Fill: ...self explanatory

Prompt: Iconic Movie
Fill: Levi and Hanji as members of the MIB



Going back through these I realize that I couldn't seem to choose a consistent color palette for Hanji other than "darker skin than Levi". Lately I've been more consistent with that.

Monday, January 9, 2017

Color is Also Over-Rated

I don't really color traditionally anymore. There's a long list of reasons, but to summarize it comes down to not much free time, how messy I color on paper, and the cost of replacing supplies. With the exception of sometimes slapping some color on with a sharpie, I tend to color anything digitally after scanning it.

Anyway, to the art. More Attack on Titan to the shock of absolutely no one.

Last Valentine's Day I drew up a couple of gifts for some fellow single ladies. Armin in the bunny outfit he wears in the Attack! Jr High spin-off, and a sexy but still gentlemanly Erwin Smith.

 

Early last year when I was still desperately hunting for a job, I decided I'd try making and selling some art prints. Sadly not long after I finished them Society6 took down all the Attack on Titan prints at the request of Funimation. Just as well I suppose, since they weren't selling anyway.

First up was is Levi but as the lead singer in a metal band. I still like the drawing even though I never did anything with it. It would have made a neat phone cover or something.

This drawing of Mikasa was for the same purpose but also never actually sold or used. I also still like it and these were both good practice for drawing more "contained" designs.


So far book-ending the week in blog entries seems to be working best, for the catch-up phase at least. Once I'm actually posting entries as I draw we'll see how that goes.



Friday, January 6, 2017

Feeling Like A Time Traveller

The last entry was miscellaneous artwork that didn't fall into one of two fan art categories, so from here on it's going to mostly fan art going back to the earlier I have for 2016 up until the most recent. It's going to be an experience looking through my folders and finding things from roughly a year ago and thinking back to my motivations and my mental state when I made them.

This entry will be all Attack on Titan fan arts of varying crossover or Alternate Reality setting. 


The first is from a Role Play with a friend where Levi is a shark merman and Hanji is a marine biologist. She rescues him from a tide pool one day and they hit it off from there.

I now remember how difficult it was to make Hanji look right after Levi turned out exactly how I wanted. She still doesn't look totally how I want, but it's been a year and the original drawing is now hanging on someone's wall. 


In 2015 I discovered and fell in love with Steven Universe. A friend turned me onto it and I grew to love these strange characters that were aliens made of gems (Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, etc.) 

Considering my obsession with Attack on Titan, it was only a matter of time before a friend and I did a crossover of the two. For my part, I decided to try designing Levi as a gem and settled on an Obsidian. My first design in 2015 was... bad. But early 2016 I tried again with far better results.


Role-playing with this version of Levi even inspired me to try digitally painting a background for the first time in... forever. And reminded me why I hate plants so much. Let me just say I'm glad plants are edible so I can eat them out of spite/revenge.



Although looking at it now I'm also acutely aware that I should try a complex background again sometime soon. Having the motivation will be much easier without trying to hastily throw one together for a webcomic page each week.

I haven't yet decided what intervals I'll post blog entries at. Weekly? Twice a week? Who knows. I'm just rolling with it for now.

See you next time!

Monday, January 2, 2017

Titles Are Over-Rated, Right?


Ah yes now I remember one reason that running a blog was a hassle. Titles are a great weakness of mine. I draw, I write, I create, but I cannot for the life of me title things well. Almost every story I have in my mind that I want to tell has absolutely nothing resembling even a working title.

But I think you're all entitled (thank you) to some actual artwork. So here's a few miscellaneous things I did over the past year. Very few, actually, because most things were based on one of two fandoms. These kinda fell in between.

This first batch is some computer game characters re-imagined. More specifically they're (some of) the characters from the hit indie game Five Nights at Freddy's. Pictured are Bonnie, Chica, and Freddy Fazbear. I did not get around to Foxy but he was just going to be a huge fox beast of some sort. Maybe eventually... But if it makes him feel any better only Bonnie got the color treatment.




The other is also related to animals but actually as animals. A friend of mine really loves Zootopia, so I drew him the main characters for his birthday. He was thrilled and I'm pleased with how they turned out. I haven't drawn many animal characters in the last few years so I've fallen out of practice.
Even though it's been over seven months since the above drawing, I am trying to get back into drawing cartoon animals. We'll see how that goes.

And I'll see you all next entry! 


Sunday, January 1, 2017

The Great Come Back (I Hope)

Barring the "under construction" post I made on December 22nd 2016, this blog has not been updated in over a year. There are a lot of reasons, but I'll try to keep them at summary length.

#1: I finally started a full-time job after being unemployed for seven months. And yes, I spent that entire seven months searching. I love my job, but it is full time. This cuts into art-making hours.

#2: I stopped doing the webcomic that I had been posting various pages and other content for on this blog. The labor of love became labor without love. In fact it became labor of near contempt, so I stopped. But I personally think that carrying on with a weekly comic for almost a year and a half is impressive. I'm not at all sad to stop working on it either.

#3: While I was still doing said webcomic, I had no time or energy to draw anything else. I stopped last July-ish, and having done that is so, so freeing. My inspiration, style, and even my skill level were suffering greatly. Now that I'm back to sketching on paper and doing whatever I want, I'm improving again.

#4: Other dampers on my creativity were the numerous mood disorders I'd been dealing with for years that were coming to an ugly head. But I finally found the medical help I needed, and after months of trial and error I am (mostly) on a blend of medication that works properly.

#5: Lastly I just plain forgot I had this. But since I've remembered it and finally have myself and my creativity back, I decided that I should have this back, too. It's the only way a lot of people see my drawings since my other social media do not intersect where this one does and I want to keep it that way.

Thanks for sitting through all that with me! The art will return next post, which will be tomorrow.