Dwarf Masquerade

Who says dwarves don't know how to have fun?

Erzulie

A quickie WIP for CHOW:

If I Was a Vampire

This week on CHOW it's vampires vs werewolves and your alter ego has to choose a side!

Not only would I totally be a vampire, but I used to LARP one and my last surviving character was a Malkavian.

Titania

Last time I posted a half-finished CHOW redesign, and this one is an old CHOW I never finished, Titania the Fairy Queen:

I think I'm going to be working on this one for a while, I'm in no rush to finish and I'd like to try for detail

Harajuku Warrior Redux

I've been noodling around on some old CHOW entries. Here was one of my other designs for the Harajuku Warrior:

CHOW - Warrior Alice

Redesigning Alice in Wonderland as a roller derby girl.

CHOW T-Shirt Rough

Found a rough sketch for the t-shirt design at the bottom of my bag. I like this version better, it's got a certain rakish hair-band rocker look to it.

Tweaked CHOW T-shirt

Removed the earrings and added shoulders:

CHOW T-shirt Design

Chow is running a t-shirt contest and since I came up with something quick and easy I decided to toss it in the pot.

Currently working on a couple illustrations and the usual suspects.

Myconids

Well, I've always claimed my coworkers are a pack of mushrooms and now I get a chance to show it:

For CHOW 237, Fantasy Modern.

Snowmancer Final

This is doing really badly over at CHOW right now but looking at it again in the clear light of day it doesn't look so terrible.

I was really depressed about it yesterday but apart from the foreground not matching the background (which was a last-minute hack) and the pose being static and a bit fucked up, it doesn't look so bad. I was planning to do one "standing around" pose to show off the costume and a little illo to show the guy in action but I ran out of time and had to throw the monster in the background, which didn't work so well. I was aiming for a watercolour-ish look to the guy which I think I achieved and the texture on the monster looks okay. It's just too bad that everything didn't come together. Also, nobody appreciates a really good set of wizard clothes. Nobody. :P

I was also looking back at my abandoned graphic novel in progress and you know what? I did a good job on some of those pages. I even made myself laugh a few times. I should get back into it. I wasn't a terrible comic artist, only lazy and prone to depression. I'm going to finish that fucker up this next year. Because Lord knows I can't get anybody excited about my illustration and there's at least a chance I can support myself doing comics. :P

Snowmancer Rough 3

I did a better sketch of my design and decided I wanted to try inking it traditionally. Now that I've moved my drawing board into the new office it was fairly easy to set it up for inking again. Apparently I missed the crow quills! I enjoyed working with them again. But man -- I have to do something to solve my tilt problems when doing traditional work. I may have to start sketching on tracing paper.

I also tried the transfer technique where you cover the back of your sketch in graphite and then trace it on top of a sheet of Bristol for the first time. I was like "It worked! It worked!" and called my husband up to look. He said "Huh. You know, I have actual carbon paper. Quite a lot of it." That was a bit funny. I guess I could have saved myself some trouble but at least I have found a use for my black col-erase pencil.

Anyway. I thought I'd try to do something bluefooted-ish with the colour and texture so I spent some time looking at her dA gallery yesterday. And of course right after I post this rough the next person who posts is bluefooted herself. I'm like "Shit! My textures are going to look like crap beside hers!" but it was so funny. But I think I'll just continue with my plan, my stuff ends up looking more like itself than anyone else's stuff anyway.

CHOW Snowmancer Rough 2

Workin' on the Snowmancer. Not sure about how he's rendering up. I liked the sketch better.

CHOW Snowmancer Rough 1

A design for a wizard who controls creatures made of snow.

CHOW 224 - Harajuku Warrior

The final for the Harajuku Warrior.

Ah, well. Could have pushed this a bit further with a few more days but isn't that the way it always goes?

Harajuku Warrior CHOW

Chow 224 - design a Harajuku-style teen who street-fights at night! (Harajuku's the area of Tokyo where teenagers go to show off crazy fashion.) This is my rough (about an hour's worth of pushing pixels around):

I've been on CA for 2 years now and sometimes I'm amazed at how much I've improved. Compare this with my first CHOW entry.

Final should be up on Sunday!

Barbarella Final

I knew when I first saw you on the showroom floor
You were made for me
I took you home and dressed you up in polyester
Princess of my dreams

Now that this is done maybe I can stop listening to Electric Barbarella on repeat.

Firebrand the Gargoyle

Final pic for CHOW 213:

Ended up with a mashup of Coyote from Gunnerkrigg Court and Wind Waker. I think I'm pretty happy with this guy, though.

Gargoyle Designs

Rejected gargoyle designs for CHOW 213 (8-bit character redesign):

I picked Firebrand the Gargoyle from an 8-bit character lineup. I thought I'd redesign him as a kiddie-game character but eventually went with another approach.

Fighting Milkmaid

For CHOW 202 - the challenge was to design a fighting-game character for a world tournament that was based on some nationality.

I tried to do something Hyungtae Kim-esque because that's who I associate with fighting game characters -- even though I'm not sure he ever did a single fighting game concept.