Zombie Snake Punch

 

Battle Damage

 

Priestess

 

 

 

 

More Sketches

 

Girl with Sword

 

Vamp Hunter

   

 
I still have this pack of colored pencils from 35 years ago, so as I try out different analogue mediums, I thought I'd give 'em a try again! I used to be fairly decent with colored pencils; I like how you can stretch your color options by using different pressure and layering tricks. But after this, it's not something I feel compelled to keep trying at. Funny enough, I notice a couple pencils aren't even the same brand. I must have replenished missing or used up colors from other packs. :B

As I was taking pics with my iPad, I decided to go ahead and do a digital version, too, because I figured it would make an interesting comparison. Certainly, you can see where I was able to make some adjustments to fix the "art typos" I had to commit to in analogue. (I am constantly making the head disproportionate to the body in my drawings, and I don't know why. It's just one of those visual misreads I can't seem to shake.)

Markers

Decided to buy some watercolor markers on whim today. Watercolor is a style I've gotten a little enchanted with, but I haven't gotten around to committing to yet. I figure these markers wouldn't really be the same thing, but close enough to try out some analogue coloring. As with ink, its a lot less forgiving than digital! Even more so with markers and actual watercolor paints, you basically can't erase or cover up mistakes at all. There wasn't a "flesh tone" color in the pack, so I had to compromise just not filling out the pale skin, and using pink for shading. Inking was done with a micron pen. 

 

Happy America Day! 2025

Blindfold Lady

 

The Blindfolded Warrior Woman seen in Exharks #2, member of the Brixity Troubleshooters. Made up on the spot as I was writing the episode, I purposefully kept her mysterious. I don't think she'll be reappearing again, but she was fun to write for the brief time she was featured. Possibly, I may reuse her concept elsewhere. For now, though, I have yet to even come up with a name for her. Her outfit is supposed to be pitch-black, but that made it too difficult to render the folds of her outfit, so I lightened it to gray.

Sleepy Sustra and Dogoro the Blanket

 

Sustra and Dogoro again

 

Christmas 2024

 

I don't give much thought to the holidays throughout most of the season. The excitement of youth wore off decades ago, of course, but even my previous ba-humbug-ery towards the hyper-commodification of the holiday has largely worn off. It's just a busy season to my eyes. I don't actually celebrate on the day, either. Most years, I intentionally isolate myself, staying cozy in my home.

However, I'm not anti-holiday. On the day itself, I've come to find a zen-like peace, as the world slows down, and the expectations of the daily grind come to a halt, and I can just fully chill out. I do pretty much the same things I always do any other given day I'm stuck at home, but without the nagging anxieties of life's many burdens. I do the same for Thanksgiving. Between the storms of insane pile-on at work, media blitzing, social frenzy, and the erratic shifts of weather, these two holidays are bookends of calm that I've come to appreciate all the more in my older years. For right now, in this time and place, everything is alright.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Poppy and Margot in the Caves

 

More Demis and Dresses

 

Playing around with alternative outfit designs, but I'm terrible with costuming, so I mainly just keep falling back on the same elements.

 Possible work-in-progress, but we'll see.

Demi-Ladies and Talking Hats

 

Sustra & Dogoro with Nemo & Rae. Although coming from radically different backgrounds, these dimension-hopping, multi-talented adventurers and their textile companions find they may have much in common.

New Litlins Unlocked!

 

Finally came up with some more simplified character designs for Poppy to interact with. Margot, the Golden Ant, and Phiz, the Skink. Not sure when I'll get back to actually animating, though. I think if I do follow through on this, I will perhaps go with the Litlin idea (small critter-sized characters in a world left behind by the larger species).

Poppy Update

 

Decided Poppy looked a little too much like Mickey Mouse, so I decided to update her model a bit to resemble more of a jerboa. Still not totally sure what her deal is, and I've been trying, and not really succeeding, to design similar doodle-critter-characters to have her interact with. I have a vague idea she could be a "Litlin", one of several species of diminuitive demihumans who live in a world where "giants" (normal people) once ruled the Earth, but had mysteriously vanished years ago, leaving Litlins to navigate a suddenly vast and empty world. Or maybe she's a human-sized knight errant. Or maybe just a farmer caught up in shenanigans. Who knows? Likely, if I don't come up with something specific for her soon, she'll join the massive pile of other characters I came up with for something, then never followed through.

Update: More Poppys

Poppy

 

Attempting to design some simplistic toons for more animating. So here's a new adventurer demihuman girl. No idea what's up with her yet. We shall see as her escapades unfold!

(first version)

(slight FPS edit)

And here's a little animation of her! Putting up two versions, as I can't decide which speed works best for the final moment of the clip. Meant to do something longer, but I got distracted by other things. Definitely need a lot of work on model consistency, but some of that is me rushin' to get some proof of concept done today. Not sold on her color pallet yet, or general design, but maybe I can tweak it more.

I find myself already hitting hard technical limitations on Fresco; pathing is way less useful than I thought it might be for little background elements, and moreover, there's a hard FPS cap; I wanted to have the clouds slowly and consistently move across the sky, but they kept going too fast and I couldn't line up the loop consistently. Looping the ground was also a tremendous pain to line up properly and still couldn't help but get glitched.

Fresco and Procreate are good for cute little looping gifs, but I think I'm going to have to upgrade to Krita or Blender sooner rather than later. Assuming my interest actually stick around longer than another week.

More Rabbit Ladies and Talking Dresses

Pirate Lady