FDN: CGA Notes 9

Page Notes 9
Previous Page Notes

June 2.2000

New Titles seem to be killing the quality of the actual picture of the week. Perhaps if I only draw a Title on these days, rather than trying to do double duty..? Hmm. Anyway, this week's CG is in crayon, for a change (Out of time! Had to hurry!). I couldn't think of a good idea because I spent it all trying to figure out the Title! :\

As for the Title, I think it's OK. For the amount of time I sank into it, I was hoping for a better result but a lot of that time was looking up references for her costume. The previous Title was much easier to do because I just loaded DOA2 and sketched the character design. Actually, that's another reason why it might not have turned out as planned: I didn't do a pencil-and-paper drawing of it. I normally do. Of course, it's a lot easier to figure out a character design from DOA2 than it is from Resident Evil. After all, you don't have to hunt for good cameras in DOA2. ^_^.

June 9.2000
This week's CG took FOREVER! I've been feeling that some of my latest art is a bit small and for the amount of time I put into them, it's almost a complete waste of time working on them so large and then shrinking them down to 50% size. So, I thought that if I made the pictures bigger, I would end up with slightly more detailed work. And as we can see, that is the result. What I did was raised the DPI from 72 to 144, which means that 50% of my picture's working size is over my normal limit of 100kb. So, I made it 40% and it looks okay. I suppose one problem with my sense of size is that I'm running around in 1024 x 768, so everything's gonna look small to me. ;) Well, a big problem with this is that not only did I make the picture bigger but I also saved more incremental steps. (5 vs my usual 2.) This means this week's CG in its raw form eats up 15MB of my HD...

I'm beginning to dread Fridays...I started the week off by doing a nice sketch of a proposed Atéo/Dawn CG and decided yesterday that it just wasn't going to work. I also increased the amount of time the picture took by 1) upping the resolution 2) randomly changing the style to cute and back 3) using Poser 4 for a model 4) pencilling it and then inking it. As you might guess, I drew Dawn first, which is why her lines seem so calm and composed compared to Dusk's wild and fuzzy lines (especially her hair!). I wanted to make them more interactive, rather than just having Dusk overjoyed at the fact that school's out. I considered having her hug Dawn but by the time THAT thought rolled out, I'd already drawn Dawn (looking rather unusually stiff...), so I couldn't alter the focus without having to practically redo it from scratch! So, the next problem to address is that perpetual stiltedness.

Okay...another activity that I've been blowing my time on is sitting around the whiteboard on Pendako. Ouch...time up! ;)

June 16.2000
Running around. That's what I did today. So, the picture failed to get done in a timely matter. I wanted to do a picture of Opal but you know what, I couldn't find my character design for her! Then, I decided to draw Rita (who has never been up here before) but last week was also elves. So...I thought about it a bit more and chose Amy, who I haven't really drawn much of. It's a quickie. I wonder if it's even worth posting pictures each week if every other week's gonna be not-so-good....

I was having incredible problems with size and proportion today. The pose is okay; it's slightly on the cool side. Amy's a confident kind of girl. Not so sure about the colours, though. This is the first time I've ever coloured a picture of her but now that I think about it, she would never wear red like that. Whoops.

I made a small picture, so it's 100% of working size.

Current time-wasters: Jagged Alliance 2 (PC), Crazy Taxi (DC).

June 23.2000
I spent this morning looking for Opal's reference sheets but they seem to have disappeared. O_o I suppose I have to look upstairs. So, again, I substituted someone else. This time, it's No and Michelle out for the exercise. I pretty much drew the whole thing, then felt it really looked too bizarre, so I mocked it up in Poser 4 and fixed some things. It's still not quite what I wanted but that's all I could do. I'd intended to have Michelle easily running along as No struggles to keep up. That was an idea doomed to failure...Thankfully, Poser 4 also helped with my shading, so that looks a bit better this time around and what's this? Shadows on the ground? Will wonders never cease? This picture is presented at 50% of its working size, since I'm not satisfied with the finer details. Therefore, you can't really make them out. ;) Again, typical watercolour and 2B pencil. In order to do the background, I dried the characters' colouring first, then erased the overlaying colour. It's not too special of a background anyway. But you notice, they're running in sand. Ouch.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the thunder rumbling outside. I suppose that's my cue to hurry up but I still have a lot of things to do on the computer tonight. :\

Current time wasters: Jagged Alliance 2 (PC), The Curse of Monkey Island (PC), The King of Fighters: Dream Match '99 (DC), Metal Slug: 1st Mission (NGPC). And if I hear "Psycho Ball!" during the next week, someone's gonna die.

June 30.2000

July 7.2000
This week's a big test! I started out with the usual 1000 x 700 but turned it sideways. I noticed while I was working on last week's picture (last week), that if I bump the DPI up to 144 from my normal 72, it results in much sharper pictures. So...I tried this at 144, which doubled the canvas size, tripled the file size, and quadrupled the amount of time it took. The result is technically great. These are the best lines I've ever done. The problem is that even though I'd had an Opal idea for 3 weeks, I started the picture and 20 seconds in, realized I couldn't draw it. So, we have Ultra-Boring Pose. :\

For this picture, I also layered lots of colours. For example, her hair. Dark grey, then dark brown, darker brown, and black. Ooh...Well, other than that, 2-step colouring. :}

Current time wasters: The Sims (PC), Princess Maker 2 (PC), Bushido Blade 2 (PSX).

July 14.2000
Actually on-time for a change...

Since the entire world has been conspiring to prevent me from doing CG, I hastily put this together, again at 144 DPI! Initially, it was to be a Strider look-alike Contest but that was too unlikely. So, I scrapped Cheese-dressed-as-Strider.

I used two tricks in this picture. One was a mask and soften to make the background out-of-focus and the other was merely a drawing trick. I used Cheese's hand to cover up Strider's chest, since I really couldn't figure out the best way to write the character 'Hi' (Fly). Capcom has it in a particular font which I cannot find a good picture of to imitate.

Anyway...from now on, I'll have to work on the CGs for a week instead of a day. But first, I have to catch up and do the CG for two weeks ago. ~_~

Current time wasters: Air Mogul/Airplane Tycoon (PC), Silent Hill (PSX), Rising Zan (PSX), Marvel VS Capcom 2 (DC), Industrial Spy (DC), and DEFINITELY Pendako.

July 21.2000
Well, I started working on the 20th and finished it on the 24th. No, it didn't take 5 days, I only worked on it twice. I sat around much of Thursday trying to come up with an idea. This was one of them. I knew it was hard going in and as I worked on it, it got more difficult. Struggling, I finished it. Sounds like a heroic effort and that's what it is, an effort. A different method of colouring would probably have worked better but after seeing beautiful results from real coloured pencils, I tried to use them here, too. Not too good, is it?

Okay. Three steps. The three steps are very, very rough, cleaned-up pencils, and coloured. That's pretty much how I do it nowadays, scribbling on a blank canvas, then adding detail until I'm done. Here, it might not have been such a bad idea if there was a bigger difference between finished and rough pencils. Also, I completely leave certain things out in my hyper-scribbly (see hand!) mode, such as the entire rest of the sword handle (whatever it's called, I dunno). The canvas started at 1000 x 1000 and the steps are smaller than the previous step by 100 pixels on each side and they ought to be lined up properly in the middle. This was finally scaled to 60% of its working size to hide some of the ugliness.

I was never quite sure what kind of mood to put Dawn in when I was drawing this but I ended up putting her in a pleasant mood, even though the 2B pencil-colouring is awfully inconsistent. That's correct; I used 2B pencil instead of coloured pencils because coloured pencils just act weird. Perhaps I ought to get that new Painter 6 now...

Gosh, this is rather rambly. Current time-wasters: Railroad Tycoon 2 (PC), Silent Hill (PSX), Marvel VS Capcom 2 (DC), real life.

July 28.2000
This week's CG...something not so new as last week's. It originally started out as Kim exploring some ruins but with the current angle and all, it's entirely unrecognizable what she's got her hand on. I wanted to make it a colouring exercise; let's see if I can get 100% of the page coloured but it turned out that I'd used entirely too light of colours. The fix: play with the brightness/contrast. The catch: due to me colouring her skin like 4 times, doing so made the colour variations very obvious and ugly...So, these are the original overly-bright colours. ~_~ I'm also still working on trying to figure out how to draw Kim's arms.

And eventually, I'll get that 6/30/00 pic done...

August 4.2000
Hmm. Somehow, when I do other people's characters, I come up with better ideas... ~_~ Really! The pose is 60% more dynamic that usual (thus causing all sorts of headaches as I can't get any of the limbs to go where I'd like them to...) and Lian has such a nice colour scheme. :} I would never come up with anything like that, partially because I don't like using brown. :} Of course, it would make sense that those bits are brown as they'd likely be some kind of dead animal hide. I think it's nice. Now, I just have to track Lian down to give her a gift copy. ;)

Strangely, this was partially done with Fine Point Pen and 2B pencil. All along, I was going for a sketchy pen-drawing but as I worked, I cleaned it up and consistently forgot to use pen. ^_^; Also, my colouring is way too solid and heavy...I can't get it to that simplicity that Lian has.

Time is going to: Marvel VS Capcom 2 (DC) and a big paper art project.

August 11.2000
Actually, it's the 15th. After doing a lot of CGing on Thursday and Friday of last week (22+ hours), I decided to take a break from it for a bit. So, this last week's CG is a bit late; it's only 2 days away from this week's CG!

Nothing interesting going on here. It's done in a rather interesting way. I used smooth ink pen and sketched out Crys' pic in the back, faded it 50%, drew the foreground pic, faded it 50%, re-drew the background pic, faded it 50%, coloured it (watercolour), dried it, faded it 50%, redrew the foreground pic, faded it 50%, coloured it (watercolour), and redrew most of the foreground pic. After that, I took the lines and using Alchemy Mindworks' Graphic Workshop for Windows, embossed the picture, then reversed it. After that, I put the picture back into Painter Classic and dropped it into the file, letting the watercolouring sit on top of the picture. Finally, it was scaled 50% to hide some more of the ugliness.

Yes, this is a very rough picture. Maybe 30 min total. I consciously tried to draw rougher than normal but it didn't end up being a good rough. Oh, yes. This is Crys' 2nd CD. Instead of a jean jacket and sweats, it's jeans and a light jacket. I suppose it's useful that the picture was played around with in this manner because I don't actually know what colour her jacket ought to be.

August 18.2000
A picture of Will again. Apparently he's only ever in forests. :} Well, not really. I just try to draw him and the pleasant green-brown background wraps around him.

I've been through a few forest preserves recently, so that's where I got the idea for the leafy green plants at the base of the trees, the random new saplings, and the beams of light shining into the woods. It was a very quick pic, pen and ink and watercolour. It's 100% of its working size.

August 25.2000
An amazingly simple pic of Terry, this time with the light source on the left, as I usually don't have it. Again, pen and ink and watercolour. 50% of working size. Really, there's not much else to see in it.