Catra (She-Ra and the Princesses of power) WIP 1

Catra (She-Ra and the Princesses of power) WIP 1

The last time I did a piece of a character from She-Ra I wasn’t’ doing these blog posts so I haven’t talk about the show. Mostly because I stopped watching after season one. I didn’t dislike it by any means, but it didn’t enthrall me. Don’t know exactly why it dint click for me but I know that one thing at least is the visual style of the show. It’s just too soft for me, too clean. I get that it probably helps for animation but I wonder what a Studio Bones version of the show would look like. It’s almost like the show wasn’t made for my specific visual and narrative tastes.

Bah, anyway. Of the characters in the show Catra was one of the ones that stood out to me as being genuinely interesting. She makes a conscious choice to walk a darker path and that’s just awesome to me. I know that the show is going to take her down some bullshit redemption arc but that’s where I want to leave her in my head. “I choose this path not because there’s comfort in it or love but because there is power here and I want it for myself.” That’s a character choice that always get punished in this kind of narrative but I don’t care.

#catra #shera #adora #sheraandtheprincessesofpower #catradora #procreate

Luxray (Pokémon) WIP 5

Luxray (Pokémon) WIP 5

For the styling of the dress I’m going to go with something semi-classic. A full-length blue that’s going to have a lot of shimmer to it, I want to sell as silk. The center cutout is classic enough an aspect of this that I’m good leaving it in, though I many do a test to see what it looks like with the cutout filled it for contrast.

The golden bits of this outfit are going to have to be rendered carefully. The belt isn’t supposed to be solid gold but threat of gold so the texture needs to read as both having structure but also still being flexible. The torque around her shoulder and neck, that’s what that thing is called, I think, needs to have more structure and weight, this isn’t solid gold because then it wouldn’t fit over her head but it’s going to be segmented gold pieces linked together to form a single structure. Jewelry is not my forte but I’ll certainly be giving it my best.

#luxray #gijinka #pokemon #pokemongo #anime #pokemonswordshield #procreate

Luxray (Pokémon) WIP 4

Luxray (Pokémon) WIP 4

Ok, so yeah, I’m really happy with where this is right now. I don’t know if it’s the idea coming together well, if I lucked out into picking a really good atmosphere that’s conducive to what I want to do, if Pokémon I just my thing, but this is coming out really well so far. Needless to say, since we’re doing Egyptian monarchy I went with more of bronzed skin tone. I may do a blue as an alternate.

I’m a little sad that since the headdress is there you won’t be able to see most of the hair but I’m really happy with how the headdress has turned out over all. 

Initially I had it as one big four-pointed star at the front but par way through rendering it I decided that it would be better if the stars hung down from the golden links of the headdress instead. I went with a four-pointed star with cutouts just because I wanted something different. I may go back in and play with them a little to give them more motion but I don’t think they’re bad as they are. The stone of the headdress was a little tricky. I wanted to render it with a bit of an obsidian shine initially but I needed a bit more blue represented in the NSFW so I decided to make the crown of the headdress this starry blue shiny stone.

The other elements added on top of the skin layer have turned out really well too. The golden inlaid tattoos look almost but not quite contiguous with her skin, which is what they should look like. Or at least what I intended for them to look like. The hair has the right level of shine to look like smooth black hair. I may go back and lay with it some. As nice as it is I want to be a little less neat. Needs more flyaway hairs and randomness.

The eyes were always going to be a little weird on this one I knew that I wanted yellow eyes on red sclera but now that I’m stepping back and looking at it I’m concerned they don’t read well enough the yellow of the eyes might not be bright enough to sell with the eyes in profile. I may have to go back in and either brighten up the yellow or alternatively shift her focus she’s looking so more towards the camera and you can see more of the iris of the eye. 

And MAKEUP! Dammit! I just realized if forgot to do her makeup! One of the most iconic aspects of the Cleopatra design and I go and forget it like a dummy. Well, at least I caught it. 

Lots of work still to do.

#luxray #gijinka #pokemon #pokemongo #anime #pokemonswordshield #procreate

Luxray (Pokémon) WIP 3

Luxray (Pokémon) WIP 3

I’m genuinely surprised at how well and easily the basic anatomy and shading on this piece has gone. It’s certainly helped to start with good reference and a strong idea of what I wanted it to be but this has truly gone swimmingly. I’m especially happy with how the right side of the image has come out. It looks like actual musculature and human form. I know that I still have a way to go in doing defined abs and neck but as it stands I’m happy with the progress.

Even though it looks like the piece is done in grayscale, I’ve given up working in pure grayscale. I hate what that does to me later on in the process when I’m trying to color in the skin and I go nuts because it’s just not good enough. But what’s that you say? I’m working in grayscale right now? Ah! that would be the workaround that I’ve found. 

I first I did a tonal map to make sure I was only getting the contrast that I wanted. Then I overlaid that with a color layer I then color picked those colors and adjusted them for saturation and tonal value to add warmth to the shadow colors. And boom, perfectly graduated skin tones. However, there’s still another step. In order to make absolutely sure I’m getting the values I want, I set a clipping mask over the body flat layer, set it to saturate and fill the lair with black, rendering everything underneath in grayscale. Then I just paint on a layer clipped between the body flat layer and the saturation layer. And done. I’m working in grayscale for the skin. 

Sound complicated, because it is, but I’ve found it really effective at giving me the best of both worlds. My values are on point and underneath the saturation layer it’s going to look really good. I’ve taken a peak and it might well be the best skin job I’ve ever done.

#luxray #gijinka #pokemon #pokemongo #anime #pokemonswordshield #procreate

Luxray (Pokémon) WIP 2

Luxray (Pokémon) WIP 2

So, I must confess that the idea for this piece did not come wholly from me. I had planned to do my first Pokémon gijinka in December and put up the options I was considering along with possible themes and motifs on a poll in the Smash Fiction Fan Faction. Then someone, she knows who she is, decided to start adding Pokémon to the list I hadn’t put up there. I dug it, so I offered to do a piece on my off week in November if she could come up with a Pokémon and an idea for the gijinka. She came back to me with Luxray in the style of Cleopatra. Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, this immediately clicked in my head and the idea stared coming together.

I want a mixture of soft and powerful the composition is of pharaoh Luxray on a balcony of her palace looking down on her domain. Her positioning is quiet and contemplative. A cat on a windowsill. This is a morning scene. She got up a little late, there’s not much to do today so she hasn’t even fully pinned up her hair. The crown is there of course, not leaving that laying around. In the NSFW she’s hasn’t even bothered to get fully dressed. She also has a few features that are decidedly not human, claws and fangs and her eyes are going to be the red on yellow Luxray eyes. And those tattoos are going to be inlaid and shining gold. This is going to be fun.

#luxray #gijinka #pokemon #pokemongo #anime #pokemonswordshield #procreate

Luxray (Pokémon) WIP 1

Luxray (Pokémon) WIP 1

I’m old enough that I played the first Pokémon game when it first came out and I was just the right kind of nerd for it to hit me hard. I knew the names, types, and weaknesses of every one of the first one hundred and fifty Pokémon. “Gotta catch em all” is definitely something that my brain understands and is made happy by. I even kept it up in generation 2. After that though, nah. I’m not even going to try to catch them all at this point. I’m just going to catch the ones I like or are useful or are legendary and if I’m bored maybe I’ll wander around and catch a few more.

The Shinx - Luxio – Luxray line definitely made it onto the list of Pokémon that were so cool that I had to have them. The design of it is just so good! Starting out with a cute big eared cat and going all the way up to a black and blue lion. *Chef’s kiss* I’m not a huge Pikachu fan so if they were going to replace one of the starters with an eclectic type, I’d want it to be this line. Even better they appeared early enough in the game that they were going to be in my party pretty much through the whole of the game. It became my go to electric type to fill that slot in my party. 

And no, I will not be getting Sword and Shield. I cannot possibly justify getting a whole new game console just to play one game…not again. But Breath of the Wild does look really good and Breath of the Wild 2 is coming out too…but that’s not till 2021…dammit.

#luxray #gijinka #pokemon #pokemongo #anime #pokemonswordshield #procreate

Saeko Busujima (HighSchool of the Dead) WIP 5

Saeko Busujima (HighSchool of the Dead) WIP 5

So, apparently, I didn’t mess up the hair, huzzah! I re-watched a couple of episodes and realized I was just insane. Most of the time she has her hair down and long and its loose. The only time she has her air up is in the episodes In the Dead of the Night. Ya know, the apron episode. So, I’m not going to have to re do her hair, I’m just going to have to do an NSFW variant of this with her in the apron, problem solved.

For her outfit here, I’m going with something a little more medievalish than her classic costume. I doubt a school uniform would have survived this long out in the world. It’s going to be leather but I’m doing a few cool cutouts like the back leg and a panel on the forward leg. The top is going to be sort of a cross between a leather breastplate and a corset which may just be what a bustier is. This is of course just the silhouette for the outfit so I’m still going to be adding elements of her signature colors of green and purple to complete the look.

#saeko #busujima #HOTD #saekobusujima #highschoolofthedead #anime #procreate

Saeko Busujima (HighSchool of the Dead) WIP 4

Saeko Busujima (HighSchool of the Dead) WIP 4

Ok, so I forgot to fix the hair. Lol. This was a case of me getting way too into one part of the project and forgetting that there was something else I was supposed to do and here we are. I got way into working on the fixes for the skin and doing her face and forgot that I was supposed to change the silhouette and wound up just working on it as it was. To be fair, I really like where it is right now. It’s on model for the color and it has a good weight to it. Feels like it’s falling from her head in sheets. What I’m going to have to do now thought is make two separate hair options for her. One with her hair like this and an altered one once I change it up and up her hair in a pony tail.

As for the body, I couldn’t be happier, ask me in a few months and I’ll hate it. That said, for now, I really like where this is, her skin has variance and richness and it’s believable in and of itself. It might not be perfectly realistic but it’s not falling into uncanny valley territory. 

Still a lot of work to do before I can even get to the SFW layer and her costuming, I’ve got to do her nails and fix her hair and do her sword but it’s all prey much within striking distance. I should be able to knock that out and get to the silhouettes for the costuming layer by tomorrow night.

#saeko #busujima #HOTD #saekobusujima #highschoolofthedead #anime #procreate

Saeko Busujima (HighSchool of the Dead) WIP 3

Saeko Busujima (HighSchool of the Dead) WIP 3

Posture and positioning are really important in this piece. Since I’m going with an extreme angel getting those things right becomes simultaneously harder and more important. From the point of view of the camera there is a lot of anatomy on display, the musculature of her arm, legs and abs, the weight of her breasts. Getting that right involves using a lot or reference and a lot of redoing things and really trying to think about how light affects the forms of the character. I think it’s come out ok but I’ll have to wait and see what it looks like once I get rid of the saturation layer making it look like it’s a black and white image. 

I’ll have to take a look at her hair as well. Long hair like this with bangs does interesting things at this angle, only some of them having anything to do with actual hair, and also, now that I look at the silhouette I realize that I’ve changed the hair. Saeko has bangs and a set of super long bangs that comes down to her waist but she also got her hair up in a ponytail. I’ll either have to explain that as a change in character model over time or I’m going to have to fix it. 

#saeko #busujima #HOTD #saekobusujima #highschoolofthedead #anime #procreate

Saeko Busujima (HighSchool of the Dead) WIP 2

Saeko Busujima (HighSchool of the Dead) WIP 2

Compositionally I wanted to go with a very perspective shot for this piece. It’s from a low angle and close up which is going to give the piece a really interesting viewpoint and serve to make Saeko look larger than life and imposing. I want her to have the power to her.

Since I’m aging the character up I’ve skipped ahead a few years to whenever the characters are a little more stable and have something stead going. I this world I imagine that they’ve moved out into the forest so that they’re somewhere just a tad roe isolated. On top of that they have the ability to grow food and secure supplied in a way that would be impossible in a city like Tokyo. Saeko’s also put on a fair bit of muscle since she’s been living hard so I want to emphasize the musculature of that forward leg and the structure of her abs.

#saeko #busujima #HOTD #saekobusujima #highschoolofthedead #anime #procreate

Saeko Busujima (HighSchool of the Dead) WIP 1

Saeko Busujima (HighSchool of the Dead) WIP 1

Saeko Busujima (HighSchool of the Dead) WIP 1

Let’s all be honest here, HighSchool of the Dead is one of those anime we’ve all seen but we’re ashamed of admitting that we’ve seen it. It had this crazy mix of earnest emotion and ridiculous cheesecake scenarios. Bullets fired through a woman’s boobs anyone? What about, our relationship has changed because I purposely got myself left back because my teacher was sexually harassing me? Whatever else you can say about the show, it was interesting.

Saeko was a big part of that for me. Do I love badass women with swords? Yup, absolutely. And Saeko definitely fits the bill, wasting zombies by the score with nothing but a wooden sword to start out with and then a katana for the rest. But more than that she’s a conflicted character who wouldn’t have felt right in the normal world. She likes violence and combat and if the apocalypse had never happened she would have gone through her life hating herself for what she feels. Instead she gets to feel guilty about how comfortable she is the zombie apocalypse. That kid of conflict in a character is what makes me love them.

#saeko #busujima #HOTD #saekobusujima #highschoolofthedead #anime #procreate

Liara T’Soni (Mass Effect) WIP 5

Liara’s outfit is going t be pain in the ass for a couple of different reasons. For starters tech is kind of hard to draw all on its own, let alone render in any hind of realistic fashion. And on top of that trying to hold it over a person’s body is an even bigger challenge. This is like half of why I avoid drawing sci-fi characters or I draw them in different circumstances. 

The other side of the problem is that Liara’s main color is white, which is a bitch to render all on its own. It requires a lot of control over light and shadow and how to form those when the thing your render something with a high level of gloss, which this material is. 

It’s a good thing I like a challenge and I love Liara enough to put myself through that. It’s also a good thing that I’m doing a completely different variant version that’s way more my speed. It’s also a little Dragon Age.

#masseffect #liaratsoni #commandershepard #bioware #asari #procreate #Dragonage

Liara T’Soni (Mass Effect) WIP 4

The color adjustments to this piece have turned out very well Liara’s skin is looking lively without looking oversaturated or rubbery. I don’t know why but working with non-human skin tones is a little easier than human skin tones. It might be the uncanny valley of it all. 

Liara’s face has been an exercise in restraint for me on a lot of levels. For one, there is no hair here to play with, and you all know how much I love to play with hair. Liara has the head tentacles things and hey have their own interesting texture and pattern but it’s just not the same. I’ll have to see if I go overboard in the next piece to compensate. Next is her eyes and eyebrows. I don’t think asari have any body hair at all so those eyebrows may well just be marking she put on her head to make her more relatable to human beings. I’ve looked close and she definitely has thing that look like eyelashes but they could be something else so again I have to hold back. The way I’ve compensated for this is b playing with her makeup. Normally I use eye lashes to make the eyes seem bigger but this time I’m leaning way more heavily on the makeup to do that job for me.

One new thing I’m doing is breaking up the eyes so that they’re on separate layers. That way I can shift the positions of the eye’s later on to create different effects. Here Liara looks like she’s looking at Shepard who is walking in from the right. Still a few adjustments to be made but I’m happy with the track it’s on right now.

#masseffect #liaratsoni #commandershepard #bioware #asari #procreate

Liara T’Soni (Mass Effect) WIP 3

I’m of two minds on this one. On the one hand, I love how much definition there is here to the forms and the anatomy. The cast shadows are really working for me as well and that’s a new thing I’m trying to do better. On the other hand, it’s come out so well that I have hard time holding back and not going overboard with how much definition I want to add. This might well be a less is more situation. It doesn’t stop me from wanting to add more but there it is anyway.

Attitude and body language are king of key here. I have Liara in a position where she’s kind of pulling into herself but also looking outward. She’s surprised, but not shocked. And she’s definitely about to use it for her advantage. Shepard, I wasn’t expecting you so early. Oh, you’re not early. I must have lost track of time. Well, since we’re here, what do you intend to do.

#masseffect #liaratsoni #commandershepard #bioware #asari #procreate

Liara T’Soni (Mass Effect) WIP 2

Compositionally I wanted to go for something that might be just a little vulnerable for Liara. And also, maybe just a tad goofy and awkward. So, Liara is waiting for Shepard in a hotel room in Illium. It’s the first “break” either of them has gotten in a while and she really looking forward to it. Maybe a little too much. Enough That she’s feeling anxious. Getting there early was a mistake, she doesn’t have anything to distract herself with. Crap, is she wearing the right outfit? Maybe Shepard would like something else? No that’s silly Shepard Loves her. Maybe getting a little “relaxed” would help yeah, that’s it. So, she takes out an edible and stars to suck on it to calm down. 

And that’s how Shepard finds her. Relaxed, sexy as hell and sucking on something. Shepard doesn’t need to know what went on in her head before that point. Just take in the visual and shut up. It might go away if you don’t. There’s my little story to give the scene some context. It’s not at all like it was playing around with the body, this was something I came to and I built a story around it. Not at all.

#masseffect #liaratsoni #commandershepard #bioware #asari #procreate

Liara T’Soni (Mass Effect) WIP 1

Liara T’Soni (Mass Effect) WIP 1

I got into Mass Effect at a weird moment. I never had an xbox so I didn’t play the series until Mass Effect 2 came out on the Playstation. Now, fortunately Mass Effect 2 is the greatest videogame of all time and the fact that Liara is not part of the regular crew does not detract from that in any way. I went into the game knowing that the Lira FemShep thing was a thing but I didn’t necessarily have strong feeling about Liara to start with. I’d heard good things, and the artwork told me I might be interesting but since I didn’t play Mass Effect 1 I didn’t come in with a deep well of love for the character. 

Then I met her. She had me “I'll make this simple: either you pay me, or I'll flay you alive - with my mind!” What can I say? I like a girl who goes after what she wants. 

Liara’s arc as the ever so awkward nerd to the keeper of all information you wish you had access to is one of the highlights of the series. I did a sketch of Liara way back in the day when I was just doing black and white roughs and the less said about that piece the better. It was about time I did something new with her.

#masseffect #liaratsoni #commandershepard #bioware #asari #procreate

Batwoman (DC Comics) WIP 5

Batwoman (DC Comics) WIP 5

I know it’s a little hard to tell just from the silhouette of the costume, as it’s blending into the background, but I’m going with a slightly different design for the Batwoman outfit. I want to keep it slim and almost like leather but I want to add a couple of elements. I’ swapping out the belt for a side skirt and changing up the way the cap is connected. What it might wind up being is a one shoulder number that goes under her left arm pit so that her right hand is free. The only problem with that is going to be the symbol underneath and getting to be visible. I honestly wouldn’t hate it if it were a little more hidden if I can get the flow of the cape and right. 

The idea behind the redesigned costume is that I want the style to be a lot more flowy. The whole “no capes” has always annoyed me because it ignores that there are fighting styles that specifically integrate capes for use and distraction and to throw off an opponent’s understanding for a user’s body. I want to empazise this fighting style by giving her Kate even more tools in that arsenal.

#batwoman #rubyrose #katekane #dccomics #art #procreate

Batwoman (DC Comics) WIP 4

I don’t know if I’m actually getting better at hair or what but this is working for me so far. In the comics Kat often has a buzz cut but I wanted something more to play with and I really do like how Ruby Rose styles Kate’s hair in the TV show. What’s going to be interesting is seeing what I can do on the SFW layers to support the hair there. As part of her costume Batwoman wears a long wig, which means I need to add that in as a secondary layer after I add the mask. I’ll get two bites at the apple at working on hair for this one.

The skin here I think might be falling into the uncanny valley. It’s just a little too real for fake and a little to fake for real. It looks rubbery. I’m going to have to touch it up more before it’s done. What I think needs to happen in that I need to add more variances to the skin, give it different reflective qualities I think that in trying to not go overboard with my typical exposure lighting I may have gone underboard and not lit it enough. Of course that answer could just be as simple as, I still need to add the final lighting layer to show that she exists in space, But I’m just not sure that’s the only problem.

#batwoman #rubyrose #katekane #dccomics #art #procreate

Batwoman (DC Comics) WIP 3

Getting Kate right in this stage of the process is all about making sure that I don’t go overboard with any one element. While the scene is at night she’s not in particularly harsh lighting. On top of that I don’t want to make the forms of her stand out too much. This isn’t one of my full on muscle girl pieces so more nuance in required. I do like how the as look right now. They’re clear, but they’re not so raised that its crazy. 

One thing I may go back in to do a little tweaking on I the boob that’s under the arm with the baton. I think I need to give it a little more squish in order to show that they’re interacting with one another. That’s how you show the interaction between two objects their distortions of one another. There could be a metaphor in there somewhere but I’m not going to look at it too closely.

#batwoman #rubyrose #katekane #dccomics #art #procreate

Batwoman (DC Comics) WIP 2

Batwoman (DC Comics) WIP 2

Since this is Gotham it had to be a night scene. The background is going to be saturated with lights from skyscrapers and from the Bat Signal. Gotham has a really interesting almost gothic skyline, at least going as far back as the animated series, and I wanted to have some of that here. I don’t know how much of it is going to survive the process but I like the aesthetic. 

And, of course, the background will have to do double duty. It will have to be in cool tones to set it against the warmer tones of Kate’s skin but it will have to be bright enough to contrast against the black tones of the suit once that goes on. 

Body composition here is something I want to get right. I want to give Kate some attitude and personality, the cocked shoulders the baton against her face, the outthrust hip and what I’m planning to do with the costume and that lower hand. I’m going to have fun with this piece.

#batwoman #rubyrose #katekane #dccomics #art #procreate