Porcelain

The Cold Ruins of a Once Great City

  

I have to draw more.

Nezra is a new d&d character I made up months ago for a new campaigne that started and soon died. Because she is only the second d&d character I've ever created, I grew attached to her, and wanted to complete a design of her.

My drawing ability is circling the drain at the moment. I really have to kick back into gear or I think I'm going to fall into a ditch and not be able to claw myself out of it. 

I have to draw more. Even if it's shit things like what today's DD looks like. It's something! I've been up and down with my depression but it's time I tried. At least, right now, I want to try.

So Nezra, originally when I created her she had an acid breath ability, so I figured she'd be like the black dragon you see in Baldur's Gate 2 - it's the first dragon to ever encounter in the Baldur's Gate games. That dragon left an impression on me, so with that dragon in mind (it has a name, cbf finding it. It's a stupidly dragon-ly name) so the colouration flowed from what colours I remember of that dragon onto Nezra. The sketch I used is something I have had in my sketchbook when I was planning her design. I wanted to draw a body base to act as a mannequin so I can design an outfit for her. 

For her body design I was thinking Wonder Woman, with muscles but retaining a powerful feminine vibe. I also want to incorporate plates and scales into her skin. Idk how that's going to work yet. Eh.

I want to get her head right, so if I revisit this picture I want to come up with variations for the head scales (this has given me grief in my sketch book) as well as change her colouration. Since her original design conception, at some point during the play of the d&d campaigne she was part of she switched her breath type to radiant, so I want her design to possibly reflect that - to either retain the acid dragon roots with holy accents, or to scrub the acid dragon roots from her appearance and just make her radiant. I dunno. I look forward to playing around with the ideas - so I SHOULD.

When I draw something, especially when I use a sketch I've scanned that needs fixing, I make variations of the one picture which result in multiple save files. Most of the time when I am about to "drastically" change the appearance of some aspect to a picture, I make a save png of the current progress before continuing - just incase I don't like the new direction I've taken and want to back track. 

But sometimes I don't save variations for everything I do, so tonight I decided to record myself as I draw to see what I look like. I'll edit the footage and upload it somewhere to laugh at later. This is something I've sort of wanted to do for a while to post on this blog. The way I colour and process of creating illustrations always changes for me. So I've meant to do this to document how the fuck I did something two years ago, or something.

Sigh. 

Upcoming experiment is to do colour something from greyscale to full colour. It's a technique I've watched only a few times, once by Zhu Zhu and another recently by Artgerm (Arthero), so I'd really like to try my hand at that sometime. It looks like a handy technique.

Video I started watching. Adding it for viewing reference later.

少年ナイフ

Felix - "Despite how fucked you feel, don't abandon your passions."

Televators

Prom Night

Insteaad of doing my assignments I redrew a sketch I had of Alsoomse.

Run Boy Run

It has been a very long time since I last posted.
Brafkgh. Today's song

I wish I could be bothered to list all the changes that have happened since my last post, but I'm still that lazy sack of shit that I've always been. Aww yeah!
But for real, I haven't done much drawing. I haven't been enjoying my graphic design course. I feel like I'm wasting my time that I could be investing into improving my art and begin projects I'd really like to fulfil.
One of them is to make Hybrid into a comic and publish it. I'd print it through a website that has affordable prices, and then go from there. I still really want to get Venus out too. And get back to Starbits/ibbits! I haven't touched that for 5 months now.

Recently I had an art theft on dA. They reposted my Alsoomse picture and pretended that they drew it.
It was a lesson in copyrighting and signing my images. I didn't think this crap was worthy but it just goes to show, I can't be too careful. Ssssssso. Look! I signed today's DD!

Yesterday I made a facebook page for my art. I'm going under the name Oni Odyssey, the name of my very first art blog. Will heavily feature the new Oni character I came up with today. Like Artgerm's Project Pepper (I think that's what it's called) he uses his OC as the subject of his study picutres. Oni is going to serve the same purpose for me.

I watched an interview of Woodkid where he explained the creative purpose of The Golden Age, and the narrative behind the songs. I liked the concept of it. He's a cool guy.

DA:O

Today I began designing another DA character: a female Tal-Vashoth.
I don't know what exactly inspired me to design this character, but I'm having fun!

As a creative exercise I want to create potential DA3 party characters.
I'm going to resurrect the Deep Roads elf design I had from last year. I worked on her (I don't think I ever gave her a name) class build, I'm thinking she'd be an arcane thief-type character. So far there aren't any thiefy mage class types in Dragon Age. I want to make a fan character with a new class for the Deep Roads elf. I'll have to research into how to build her story. Basically, she started out as a gender-bent Fenris, but then I wanted to shape her into something unique and different from Fenris. So far she hasn't strayed far, but visually I want her different. She relies on augmenting her armor and skin with lyrium in order to perform magic, which is part of the Fenris influence. But she's a work in progress.

Today's DD is for the female Tal-Vashoth. She was born into the Qun but discontent with her role, she left the Qun to pursue the warrior life. So she'd be a warrior class, either wields two weapons or one two-handed weapon, but I haven't gotten much farther than that. I want to research qunari lore more to come up with a unique class for her.
When Dragon Age 3 was first announced at the begining of the year, I immediately started thinking about what characters we'd be introduced to with this new story. I understand that it's going to be set in Orlais, but hopefully there will still be a qunari presence. I think it would be cool if a Tal-Vashoth will be available as a party character, because we haven't had one yet. We had Sten, but he was Qunari. I'm also especially interested in female qunari. Concept art of them exists for DA2, but there wasn't any present in the game.
I lost my shit a little bit when Nyreen was announced for Mass Effect, introducing us to the first female turian we got to see in the game. She has a stunning design. I'd like to see something similar for DA3!

So, hmm. Yep. This yet-to-be-named female tal-vashoth character I want to design brings me satisfaction in that aspect. xD
(Also because for the longest time I've wanted to design my own powerful-looking character!)

I want to be able to draw muscular women. Hopefully this character will give me some practice.
Today I used 2 refs:
- DA2 female qunari concept art (linked above)
- Artgerm's Wonder Woman