sketchdump

 

So hey.  School starts tomorrow, so I'm going to say here and now, don't expect a boatload of posts.  I mean, I hate it when people say that, but it's true, it's just not summer anymore and I just won't have as much time.  So here's something to keep you mildly busy: a small sampling of the stuff I've sketched recently.  This is by no means everything, but just a bit of it.  After all, some of what I do has spoilers for my book and such.  

 

These two are from when I attempted to manga-ize a scene in my book.  It fell through, but hey, HL turned out looking pretty good.  Or, at least better than that atrocity that was my colored painting...  

Some random vampire boy.  I was going to shade his hair in, but he looked so pretty that I figured, why mess with perfection?  He's part of my practice in drawing boys---I can draw girls, but not boys.  I'm trying to get better.  

   

Yes, I know Peter's name is hard to read.  That's because you aren't really supposed to know what his last name is, yet.  Not that it's important or anything, I just don't want to give away too much about the book yet.  So, if you can read it, great, if you can't, I'm not explaining, sorry!   

There's lots of things going on in this drawing that quite frankly would be spoilers for the whole series if I told you what they are. You can try to figure them out yourself, though.

  

Close-up.  I love all five of these guys so much it hurts.  They're just like that.  It's funny how fictional characters can mess with a person's head, huh?  

  

Yes, HL lying on the grass again.  Note the same drawings as the one above, though.

  

Haha, Matty and Peter.  The only thing really going here is that I learned that I like all the dangly bandages.  Must draw those again sometime.

  

I dunno exactly what HL's doing with his hand, and you might be able to recognize the girl (my brother could, at least...)

  

And again, HL, on some small, very grainy paper.  It feels much different to draw on a rough paper as opposed to a smooth one.  This is what I get for not checking my paper when I was still in the store.  I decided to keep with the notebook though, because I should learn how to draw on different surfaces.  

 

Also, a practice in perspective, which quite frankly I'm hoooorible at.  I've never really taken a class for stuff like that, so I'm teaching myself.  It's kind of interesting, but I don't always get great results.  (read: never.) 

So in review, lotsa sketches, leaving for school and maybe less posts.  

happier stuff

...cuz that previous post was really depressing.

Also: I know this isn't my best work.  I did it in like eight straight hours and just got bored.  So basically, Peter looks good and everyone else looks a little flat.  I think it's because Peter has a darker skin tone than anyone else, so his shading looks way more noticeable:

HL's skin has just as many tones as anyone else's, but his skin is so pale that you can just barely see his shading: (ignore Leah and Lex, who both look pretty flat)

A few words on what HL looks like right now.  You're probably wondering "what happened?!?" 

Uh, that's a pretty good question.  We know all about HL, of course, and you're going... but casey, he looks ugly and NOTHING like HL! 

Yeaaaaah.  I know all about that, and I can tell you with absolute truth that he has NOT become all weird-looking in the actual draft---it's just my picture.  I'm experimenting with new styles for Goth Elf Boy, and this was one that didn't make it. 

The obvious is he looks too tired, too big cheeks, and just not old enough.  Less obvious is that his hair is coming down weird with a really unflattering cut, and he's not jazzed out enough for his character. 


On second thought, though, nobody really made it in this drawing:

I mean, if we go from right to left, Peter's looking annoyed (but that was on purpose) and there's a bit too much glow on his cheeks, Matt's looking younger, Leah looks not entirely there (and we all know that's my job to be out there, not hers), we've already gone over that HL looks weird, and Lex is really the only one who turned out halfway like herself, but her lineart and coloring are bad.

Luckily, I do have sketches of what they SHOULD look like, and Peter's shirt turned out awesome.


 Lots of GIMP practice, yes? 

thoughts on mockingjay

SPOILERS.

and if you didn't get that the first time, SPOILERS again.

Okay, in case you haven't read it, we'll start with something general in case you're still reading even after there were two spoiler warnings:

I sort of noticed that the story deteriorated as it went along.  Not as in this book, but the series.  The Hunger Games was incredibly strong, but Catching Fire was weaker, as well as Mockingjay.  I personally think that's because the author could not have all the time she needed to write three novels of the caliber of The Hunger Games, and she did amazingly well for having only a year between books. 

Like with Catching Fire, Mockingjay was confusing at times.  I guess what we all wanted to happen happened---no more Capitol, and no more Hunger Games. 

This was the first book when I realized just how dangerous Katniss was---from wanting a Capitol-children Hunger Games to shooting President Coin, she was frightening.  In some ways, she was much, much madder than Peeta, who was hallucinating for half the book.

While we're on the topic of Peeta, he plays damsel in distress far too often, I thought, wouldn't Katniss get bored of him? 

Uh, I was slightly 'Team Gale' as I read this, and am a little bitter, not that he didn't end up with Katniss, but because his story had no conclusion beyond Katniss supposing that he's off snogging someone else in District Two.  Really, Katniss?

I'm also confused about Gale setting off some bomb somewhere or something? 

Anyway, Katniss, Gale, and Peeta, but especially Katniss and Peeta, sort of lost personality during this final installment.  It was mostly because they both went unpredictable and mad, which is completely understandable in their horrific conditions, but it made things a little annoying for the reader.  We saw a lot more of Gale in this book than in the two previous, but he's become generic too---he's lost some of his cocky attitude, and has become slightly "Peeta---book 1" in personality. 

My only frustration with this is that I wanted to know the characters so much better, and after three books, I'm still not sure what exactly they are like, despite the strong ideas presented.  It's very confusing.

I'm not trying to totally slam the book, of course, I'm just confused!   

warning---this is really depressing

Don't say I didn't warn you.  You know, next time I even THINK about illustrating a scene like this, someone needs to hit me hard in the head.  It was going along swimmingly until I decided to tear up Matt's eyes, whereinthen I wanted to curl up in a corner and cry for a few hours. 

My writings affects me waaaaaaaaay too much. 

changes yes/no (second choice invalid!)

Okay, so it's all about changing right now.  I'm sixteen, getting my driver's license, going to Real School (tm) for the First Time Ever, being the only girl on an all-guys cross country team, all that. 

So, with all that, I'm probably going to change my blog's URL shortly, just because it's SO HARD TO FIND. 

Seriously, what was I thinking?  In FRENCH?  I mean, I'm taking spanish, not FRENCH. 

Yo esta loca. 

So it'll change pretty soon, and if that messes up the people who are following this thing, I'm really sorry! 

But just like with all those other changes, it hasn't happened just quite yet. 

GIMP practice

further thoughts on digitally coloring manga, including what might be an answer

You probably remember yesterday's post on the problems I was having digitally coloring my artwork.

I think I've solved it, with a little help.


So in case anybody else who's trying to digitally color with GIMP runs across my blog, let's go through what exactly I did wrong, and how we can fix it:

Note before we start: aren't you glad I chose a character pretty enough that we won't be sick of him yet?

1.  Okay, so my first, and greatest problem was the size of file I was trying to work with.  I was using a tiny 800x600 file, and it was too grainy to draw with to start.  I tried a much larger 2112x2816 file, and it worked so much better.  (I didn't take any photographic evidence, but trust me, it was great.)

2.  Second, I was using a 'paintbrush' application when I should have been using a pressure-sensitive 'ink' application to draw my lines.  In the drawing above, I have almost no variety in line weight.  

3.  As I said in my last post, my line weights were too thick.  This was a huge part of my problem, though not as much as the tiny file size.

4.  Also as said in my previous post, the skin shading was too detailed for the heavy line weight and the chunky hairstyle.  

Now that we've got that list over with, more on the hairstyle, while it is undeniably too chunky for the skin-shading style, it isn't as bad as I thought it was---it's just that awful thick line weight that I was forced to do because of my tiny file size!  

So really, long story short, I totally used a too-small file, and that caused most of my problems, as my dad pointed out to me.  

Incidentally, I should have been able to figure that out ages ago, because of an incident where my mom and aunt were going crazy trying to find a large-file size photo of our family all together. 

The good that came out of it was that I learned so so so much stuff along the way, which I wouldn't have found so soon if I had used a large file size from the beginning.

And didn't you just love meeting another character? 

thoughts on digitally coloring manga

Remember this guy? 

I decided to give him a little color in GIMP.

Big mistake.

Important note: this is not a finished drawing!  

Concentrate on his skin for a minute.  It looks okay, right?  A little choppy, but generally all right.  

Now look at his hair.  If you just look at it, it seems okay.  

Now look at the whole drawing.  The skin and hair just don't work together!  

At first I thought that his hair just wasn't detailed enough to match with his somewhat-realistic skin, but looking at him again, I think it's my line weight.  

I'm not saying that the non-detailed hair isn't part of it, but the heavy line weight, while fine in the original drawing, which had very little shading or detail:

Just doesn't work in a drawing with lots of realistic detail:

Also, all the lines for interior detail (excluding his nose, which I did in a lighter line weight) looked a bit heavy, awkward, from his eyebrows to his mouth to his collarbone, though the hair is by far the worst.  I think this is because regular, human, hair is very light compared to the sharp contrast displayed by, say, jawbone to neck:

See how light the 'outline' of my hair is in contrast to that of the shadow cast by my jawline against my neck?  My angel boy has lines just as heavy for his hairline as for his jawline, and the result is that he just looks awkward.  His lines are even a bit thick around his shoulders and the jawline itself.

Uh, I think I need to reduce my line weight?

However, I don't think line weight is the only culprit, as I briefly mentioned before, I was thinking that his hair wasn't detailed enough for his skin, and that might be adding to my problem. 

Notice how choppy and non-strandy his hair is:

Then compare it to this picture of Renton from Eureka Seven:

Well, Renton's hair is just as choppy as my angel boy's, but it looks fine on Renton.  

What's up?

Okay, notice how Renton and Eureka are shaded: cell shading, while my angel boy is all soft shading.  I'm thinking that the choppy, undetailed hair can't go with soft shading; it has to go with hard cell shading if you want it to go at all.  So if I had cell shaded my angel boy instead of soft shading him, he wouldn't have looked so strange.  

I still would have had to reduce my line weight, as shown by Renton and Eureka: even though they're cell shaded, their lines are not that heavy, like my angel boy's are.  

Which brings me to YET ANOTHER POINT:

I use GIMP to color in my artwork.  (I say the word 'use' lightly, as I'm just beginning to dabble in digitally coloring my artwork, as opposed to watercolor.  This probably comes from the fact that I've switched to manga as my art style.)

Anyway, the point is that I don't know how to get smooth, even lines in any program, which is why I'm making them so thick, because they will be more even that way.  

In Paint.net and GIMP, which are the two programs I've used so far, the fine lines are pixtel-y and generally choppy and ugly looking:

   

Ew, grainy! Especially note HL's jawline---it's totally choppy, and I have no idea how to fix it short of majorly blurring it, which results in my line art being, well, blurry and wide, which doesn't really solve the problem.

So what do I need to do?  Get Photoshop?  Does that do fine, non-pixtel-y lines?  Or do I need to do something like make huge, huge files which will be so enormous that you can't see the grainy lines when the file is being viewed at a size lower than full size?  

I don't even know if that's possible without killing my computer/sanity, whichever comes first.  

Should I just grit my teeth and get a good version of Photoshop?

Any input appreciated! 

Thirteen

1. Today is Friday
2. The thirteenth
3.  So I'm doing a 13 list a la Emily the Strange
4.  Who, by the way, is totally awesome, like Hello Kitty for junior highers or something
5.  Especially in her YA book series
6. Speaking of literature, I can't stand fanfiction but I love fanart
7. Something must be wrong with me
8. Further testimony to this fact is that I love getting vocabulary in school since it gives me words to use in my novel---really good ones
9. Which is going pretty well, by the way
10. Though draft six will not be done this summer because school starts in TWO WEEKS
11.  Eeeeeeps!
12.  So scary!
13.  Wish me luck, because Emily sure won't be:

again with the manga

 

Yes, I did warn you that I'm obsessed, so you can't complain.

  

Notice that I gave Gannon fangs, even though his fangs do not stick out in the book.  That's the beauty of this style---I can accentuate whatever I want, and change things around (the most notable of this changing is the bangs on Leah.)

 

Craven also is quite different looking... less sassy, which isn't that Cravenish, but at least she looks cute.   

Also... sword.

  

Another change is that you can fully illustrate their personality in very odd ways, such as putting a little heart above Zach's head!  

 

Then there's the old golden method of writing on the T-shirt.  That always works well.  Clothing says a huge amount about the character.

 

Gareth is a good example of the clothing rule, too.

  

...And now, my favorite, for last, because he's just that good...

  

Don't you love the eyes?  I love the eyes.

  

(I had to edit out Gareth's head *smirk*)

  

...And his bare feet.

 

...how he fits the wings inside his uniform for school, I do not know.  Magic, maybe?