Notice something unusual about the title? Yep, it's nearly a fan-art! It's been a rule of mine not to do any fan art until I think I've become sufficiently good enough. After that, my first fan art must be of a Cosmic Fantasy character. Until then, no fan art. This, let's say, is themed. The title was done with fine point pen and various sizes of airbrush, all defaults. When making the darker lines, I increased the size to 2.5 but that's it. Sadly, this is the second time I did the picture because the first time, I encountered error type 2, which caused Painter Classic to close abruptly, before I had a chance to save. I know, I know. We're supposed to save early and often but the darn computer I use has a flaky Zip drive, so that if I write to the same file too many times, it'll corrupt it! :( I have to be exceptionally careful.

Originally, I was going to have Dusk face the camera but then the shadow would look like it was coming from her, since it would be coming from behind. And then, I would have had to make the picture taller. As it is, I get to put the "logo" on her jacket and it's a nice, compact design. The execution isn't quite as good as I'd hope but still...

As for this week's CG, well, I actually sat down at the computer without having much of an idea in my head. I knew I wanted to draw Dawn in that particular set of clothes (which I saw someone else wearing... ;) ). What that means of course, is that this picture was entirely drawn on the Mac, no handy sketch or anything. Sure, it's a bit rough but not bad, not bad at all! It's done with 2B pencil and Broad Chisel Tip (watercolour). I didn't change the default sizes. That's why there's some weirdness with colours going over the lines but doesn't that make it look more like a real painting?

As with last week's, this is 2B pencil + default Broad Chisel Tip. Because of the way I sketched this digitally, her..."lower torso?" isn't quite right, is it? I think if I connected the lines, it wouldn't work, would it? Hmm.

Somehow, my art style looks different again..?

This week's picture of Kain hopefully marks the boundary of a new stage. No, it's not that my art style has suddenly gotten elongated (although I was rather pleased that I finally drew in such a fashion; I've been trying randomly for years. The change is...well, we'll see next week. When I'll suddenly have an entirely new learning curve to go over...

Anyway...this week's picture is rather usual. I really drew a paper picture, so it has that kind of 'forced' feel again, yet with a hint of purpose. I've once again decided that the background ought to be purely watercoloured (other than yon squirrel, which wouldn't have worked at all otherwise). The shrubs are squiggly as a result. I realize Kain's backpack looks deformed. It's still better than my original pencil of it. See what I get for adding elements at the last second? BTW, I did plot the BG out, or else it would have been an utter mess. I wonder if we'll keep having backgrounds..? They're an awful lot of work and in my case, they're definitely not a strength. I suppose working on them would help, huh?

Weird...Kain's eyes are completely hollow. Why? Simply because I randomly felt like it. I didn't fill them in on my pencil sketch and when I CGed, I skipped it again. I thought it would be an interesting test. Maybe if I HAD scaled it back to 100% of its original size. (As it is, it's 200% of original size and 100% of its working size.

The light source moved from normal (yes...I have been cheating too, too much with "light from the right.") So, light from above and perhaps the shadows at least slightly pretend to reflect that. At least for that concrete bench (that fails to look anything like concrete...too uniform. The sketch had flecks in it but they didn't quite look right, either.

What's up with the sky? Apparently, there's a BIG hill. Hmm...

Ah, and yes, I'll admit here: Kain's off-centre and there's a background since I couldn't figure out what to do with her legs.

I know; I'll do a new Title for next week!

Happy April Fool's Day! Dusk dresses up as Dawn and severely confuses Atéo! :)

OK! So, what's special about this picture? It's the best picture I've ever done completely on a PC. It's the fist time I've tried sketching a picture with multiple characters (on the tablet), so the layout's really boring. I actually started to sketch on paper but never finished, opting to go straight to digital. I instead spent my energy on the Title picture that I won't get done until next week. I also fought really hard with the colours. Somehow, they're harder to pic on the PC. (Not as if I've had wild successes with on my Mac tries...) I'm not so sure about Atéo's colour scheme there...ugly! The skin colours are at least slightly different...I realize Dawn's shirt (Dusk really is wearing Dawn's shirt. That's why it's short on her arm.) is way too light-coloured but much darker and the lines would really disappear.

"The Argh." As I was merrily working along, I accidentally opened the custom toolbar (whatever) in an attempt to drag various sizes of erasers in. (After that, I found that the medium works pretty well by itself. :\ ) And there, I accidentally ran the script I'd saved way long ago that colours the picture of Tæro! That was very bad. I spent about an hour going crazy and trying to erase that mistake. As you can imagine, it took a lot of strokes to colour that picture. So, I really over-ran the undo buffer. :\ I ended up erasing much of the picture and needing to redo it, especially Dusk's head. This version isn't nearly as good as the original. See Dawn and how sketchy she looks? That's about how the entire picture was. Sigh. At least I saved most of Dawn's face. Although her ears aren't so wonderful, I thought her expression was truly good. I also differentiated their face styles, as I ought to. Dusk's more vertical than Dawn.

Well, I can now spend way more time on my pictures, since I don't have to rely on Macs elsewhere. So, hopefully I will, rather than think the tablet can improve my art better than practice can. It's sad that I'm not going to be using the Macs anymore because the Painter Classic software is MUCH better on Macs and the Graphire disc came with a slightly newer version! (Somehow, the PC version is still at 1.0...)

This week, I've decided to draw Chance, whom I haven't drawn since 1996. Needless to say, he really looks different nowadays. I was originally going to do Kenneth Vanderzelt but happened by chance to find Chance first, so that's that. It's an ordinary 2B pencil (supposedly, other than being brown) and watercolour affair. Rather monochrome but then, he is. I think my line-handing is much better this time around and I seem more certain. (Or it's just a fluke.) I think I'll go start on the CF manga page for the week.

The title is based off of some other game this time. I think I did a pretty good job with it, considering I didn't know what to do with a pencil sketch. It's very hard to draw solid lines with a tablet, since it's freer than a mouse. So, instead of making distinct lines, I went with a much sketchier style. It looks nice, doesn't it? This is 50% of its working size, so you can't see just how cool her hair colouring is. One benefit is that you can't really tell that I had to digitally scale her head down to 90% of its original size. '_' Yes, I drew it too large...

Anyway, it's traditional 2B pencil + watercolour. I was going to lengthen the sword hilt but that wasn't until after I'd coloured it and everything, so I decided it was too much trouble. Whoops! I just noticed that I'd forgotten to colour the gold pieces on her wrists. So, I just did that and re-uploaded the picture. I've never found a good gold colour...The picture overall has a nice, smooth feel to it, thanks to the mellow blue. I spent a long while, trying to get the costume to look proper and noticed that Tecmo really has careful character designs! I was going to try simulating real-time lights on a polygonal model by having lots of gradient steps but since that would have taken longer than forever, simply tried a 2 step (more or less) in order to get her as 3D-looking as possible. Sadly, I messed up on the belt, as it's more of a sash than a belt. :\ And her braid? Not too braid-like, is it? And too straight...

But still, the title is worlds better than my CG. 100% of its working size, this picture took A VERY LONG time to scribble out. Place elements, resize, reposition, adjust, tweak. That's how the picture went. At 50% size, it was too tiny to discern anything and at 100% size, it's not quite worth the download. There are some positive points about the picture, like I'm mostly pleased with Crys' body but there are too many minuses. For one thing, I'm not used to coloured pencils and so, this is rather bumpy. I didn't have a clear idea for the picture for a long time, so it doesn't quite gel. I forgot to flip it horizontally to check if it was done correctly until I was finished, so it's not quite right in that respect, either. Crys' skin is a bit dark. In fact, all the colours are off. The background didn't work. Hands. And of course, 2 bodies interacting? Help! I originally placed the camera somewhat above them but in the course of working...it tilted. Oops. At least I gave it a nice, generic title. And I have that black-white contrast and Jess' blue belt adds a bit of colour to the middle of the picture. Other than that...Hmm...

I can't believe that in all this time, I haven't managed to put the next CF manga page up! The server goes down in about 3 weeks!

This week's CG was supposed to be just of Melanie but well, I thought it would make a dull picture, so I simply made her the focus of the picture instead of the sole topic. I even spent a bit of time and sketched out a background. That's where I ran into problems. Not paying close attention, I originally made the figures in the background about half the height they are now. After noticing that would make the shop fronts way too big, I simply drew on top of the old figures. Unlike usual, I put the 2B pencil colour all the way to black and that made it very messy. I also consciously worked on trying not to emphasize...exaggerated body figures too much and made Melanie too chunky as a result. ^_^; Oops. What's with the colouring? I have my reasons but it's also a cheap way to draw attention to Melanie.

Ouch...must sleep.

Technical notes:
It's 2B pencil and watercolour, sure. But the lines were originally VERY light grey, so I equalized the picture before colouring. That made the lines very uneven but that's okay.

No background, just colours. Why those colours? I know! (That's good, isn't it? :} )

This is a larger picture; it was originally 1000 x 700 and 300 DPI but since there was too much dead space, I cut it down to 820 x 630. I cleaned up the lines for the most part but missed a few. I even flipped it horizontally to check the lines!

There's a sense of nothing happening but there's some minor symbolism going on. Since it's not so happy, I'm not going to explain it.

This is one of the few pictures here that's put up full-size; the paper texture is very visible as a result. It's just Basic Paper. Some of the previous pictures were actually done with Watercolor Paper.

I actually looked at my own shirt to see where wrinkles tend to fall, so at least one shirt looks closer to proper than usual.

Yellow? :} I suppose that fits... Ah! yellow + blue = green. That's accidental! Or subconscious?
 
 
 
 

There's a strong chance that I might take some time off from doing art after this picture. I wish it had turned out better. I really wish everything had turned out much, much better.

Regards,
Fred Duck
4/28/00

Pen and Ink + watercolour. I used a reddish-brown colour for the lines, then increased the brightness. After that, I applied the colour and that's it. Will I be back next week? Perhaps. If so, I'd better make up my mind sooner than this week! :\

Skip looks a bit younger than usual...then again, I haven't drawn him since '97. :}

Too similar to Ywain? Well...

(2B pencil + watercolour.)

Anyway, it's not so interesting, as one can tell.

I'll definitely spend more time next week.

Actually, I drew 4 pictures of Tiff and was going to collage them but I couldn't put them together in a suitable manner. So...none of you will ever see the other three pictures...ha ha ha...

Ah, well. It's not such a big deal. You know, it's been quite a while since I drew a nice picture of Tiff. I tried a while back but to no avail. Finally, just randomly reading some snippets I wrote about her way back '94-5 inspired me to sketch some pictures. This was the second of them. Not too bad, I guess. Her pose is the shows some of the haughtiness that she occasionally displays. The version available here is 100% of its working size.