It's still relatively early in the evening while i write this. Tomorrow sees the coming of two horrifying midterms (well, one horrifying...the other merely....imposing) which stirs me to waste time blogging again.  It's been a while, as predicted, since i posted last, but i am nothing if not consistent.

 

The subject(s) of this post exist somewhat as a purging of my art file.  See, i rarely, if ever, finish a piece of art.  Most lie in various states of graphite undress, forever waiting in vain to be finished.  I'm not really sure what it is, but if i walk away from a drawing, i will never sit down again and conclude it. It's like if i didn't finish it the first time, it didn't deserve my full love and respect. Actually, the real reason i don't is because i can't.  When i get in the groove of drawing a piece, i hold my pencil a certain way and have a 'touch' of a certain weight and once i walk away, it's lost.  I've tried going back and adding to an unfinished work but it just blares of oil and water.  The depths too deep and the lights too sharp. 

 

It never really used to be much of a problem, but as the level of detail in my pictures increased by exponential proportions, so in turn did the length of time to completion.  As such, i started drawing pictures that simply segments of portions of features of details of closeups. As a notion of 'art', they were works unto themselves, especially when they focused on subjects of superlative rarity...say...Fiona's lips (Chad, you can post the digi-pic if you have it). But otherwise they were glaring examples of how i can never finish what i start.  Now, with half my art scanned into digital bits and nibbles, waiting for a second shot at tender care and attention, the format has granted me both a boon and hindrance to overcoming this flaw.

 

As boon, the shiny new tools have granted me renewed initiative to revisit the pieces again. As hindrance, the tools offer me another opportunity to half finish a half finished work in an entirely new way, introducing a new level of pathetic-ness previously unseen. I mean, i don't even have an excuse anymore because there is no weight to a mouse click (and, yes, i'm back to a mouse. A tablet tool is for tools on tablets). So here they are; the unfinished works, half coloured, waiting to be finished. I guess by posting them here, i'm essentially expunging my soul of any connection i had to the ideal of completing them when deep down, i knew i probably never would. Enjoy.

 

 

Here is one of the very few pictures of Jiin outside of his stitched leather garb.  Essentially a production design piece, it showcases how Jiin looks just after breaking out of the ungodly containment forced upon him.  Yeah, he looks a little rough, but so would you after being sadistically tortured for 10 years.  I was happy to save this pic from a life of ridicule. See, when i originally drew it, i made his legs way too short. For some reason i looked at the length of his body and decided to try and squish the rest on the page, trading aesthetic appeal for completeness. Unfortunately, it looked either completely rediculous or like was trying to coerce some impossible forced perspective. Regardless, through the magic of Photoshop, i was able to stretch the bottom half of the image making him a solid 9 heads tall. Due to the lack of detail, the stretching is almost invisible, with drawn, swooping lines and a nicely blocked out form. Actually, i thought the added height gave Jiin both a nice imposing frame and extra thinness of emaciation.

 

As for the actual colour job, i was trying out a technique i read about somewhere online, where you colour a block out in black and white, then use the colourize tool in the Hue/Saturation menu to give it life.  The author stated that further manipulation afterwards is necessary because colourize gives deepest saturation to the shadows, rather than the highlights, giving the skin a plastic, dead feel. I actually thought that would be grand for this pic, giving Jiin that "i just had slices of lemon sewn under my skin" look. I added a blue low light/fill light to decrease the temperature of the shadows and increased the contrast to deepen the lines in the face, and Hazza, near-dead Jiin.

 

Unfortunately, it took hours and hours to get that textured look, and as such, i walked away after finishing the neck. Coming back to it a week later, i tried implementing the right shoulder to no avail. Oil and water. So here he stands as just a face. Too bad. Could have been a killer pic.

 

 

Hell Puppy's original name was Neo Rollobot. This means absolutely nothing to you (unless you are Chad. Or Vice), but his origin has roots in the XX-bot mythos.  Back when we were creating Omega Response (the game after NeoMyth but before Ninja Stars...it was the one we spent the most time on), we had grand visions/delusions of grandeur to the viability of our product, so the powers that be (aka- the committed 2/3) at Crestfallen proposed that to ensure our game wouldn't receive an M rating, all enemies had to be robots or of robotic nature. This followed the old skool Nintendo mantra that it's ok that you die as long as you don't bleed. It's ok to beat the hell out of someone as long as they pour sweat. And it's ok to shoot things as long as they aren't living. I mean, it made sense not to want an M rating, as there was some chart in some book from some author stating how an M rating would restrict the audience, and therefore sales and hence, saleability of the product. Oh how the times have changed.

 

Regardless, i created a giant collection of robotic baddies ripe to eat lead and spew gasoline all with preliminary names based on either their appearance, function, or (non)hilarious in-joke, all with the suffix 'bot'. There was Polarbot (appearance), gruntobot (function), and grantobot (hilarious in-joke) among others, but the first pic ever modelled was a spider-like robot with two legs dubbed 'rollobot' for his ability to bundle up into a ball and roll at the player. Anyway, very long story shorter, Omega Response failed horribly with the critics (our loving  friends and family members), especially the aesthetic of the robot enemies. They had garish colours and metal panels that screamed "I don't fit with anything!" so Chad sort of told me to maybe look into drawing up more hardcore (read: gothmaster) incarnations of each baddy that would follow the mechanics already laid out for each 'bot.

 

So i drew up this thing. Three legs. No head. Some swinging blade-thing floppin' about in front. Honestly, the stress must have been getting to me because this thing is wack. Regardless, i loved this little beast. Unfortunately, in the scant week it took me to redo all the baddies, Crestfallen went through one of its many upheavals and the entire project was scrapped (good-bye 2 years of evenings and weekends).

 

Looking for something to spend some serious time with i grabbed this pic and started colouring him up. He came together really quick, so i started colour manipulating him early and he exists at this point as you see him.

 

Truthfully, i did up this pic a couple of days ago, so i may still do some more. But i doubt it.

 

 

This is a minorly altered version of the horrible colour job i did on this pic. I've posted it only as further evidence to my abandonment of her.

 

I shall say no more. Please excuse me while i weep.

 

 

I spent a lot of time with this picture. Now, to be sure, Spawn is, honestly, the lamest superhero of all time, but there was a fairly lengthy period of my life where i thought everything Todd McFarlane did was solid gold regardless of its quality (or lack thereof), so i both originally drew this picture and coloured it up as more of an homage to that time period than of the character itself. There are an ungodly amount of layers at work here, slowly laying on colour after colour, building depth and detail.  I really tried to keep the level of detail high here, without overworking the image and i only kind of succeeded.  Some of the original detail in the drawing i'm pretty sure i added simply for the sake of filling space and it kind of made colouring this difficult.

 

I tried a few different subtle techniques on this drawing that were relatively successfull, and i'll probably implement them in some other drawings. I kept the highlights of the lines between the details really bright, which creates a craggy nature on his face. Added to this, i applied a spackle-like layer of green around the bumpier parts giving texture and resonance to the skin surface. It looks good, but sometimes i get the feeling i may have over worked it, as his face sometimes resembles a coral reef. Some of the jutting pieces have incredible contrast, giving them a sharp, angular appearance.

 

Regardless, he looks good both close and far and i may finish him in the future.

 

But probably not.

 

 

This is the Xu pic i posted about over half a year ago. I've not worked on it since and probably never will.

 

There are portions of this picture that i really do love. This was the first, and probably best, time i ever implemented a fill/low light. It probably has more to do with the underlying pencil composition, but it just works like it never has since. The musculature just pops on Xu and it really adds an awesome dynamic to the image. Additionally, the cape colour job is something i'm really proud of. I did the blue trim in Illustrator to keep the lines perfect and applied it in Photoshop and added the texture.  The colours on the bottom side of the cape have a unbelievably subtle glow that came about in the colour balancing of the image, and i've used the macro in pretty well every picture since.

 

As i type about it now, i'm beginning to realize that i probably love this image so much because i learned the most on it, and have successfully implemented the techniques i learned on it on the most pictures. You can see the fill/low light additions on the Jiin and Hell Puppy pics and the glow is heavily prevalent on the Ashley pic from last posting.

 

Regardless, this one i know i will never finish mainly because the hair colouring would be a nightmare i would never want to even attempt.

 

But i will forever remember it.

 

Even if i could never commit.