Karate is really kicking my butt this week – in a good way. Shredded my abs because sensei decided to do some High Intensity Training yesterday. I’ll be yellow belt on Monday probably! This has nothing to do with noir crime and trench-coated and fedora’d detectives, I’m just excited about it.
All right let’s launch this ridiculous idea! Dragon Age as a 40’s noir murder mystery! Huzzah for NaNoWriMo! I watched the Maltese Falcon as reference for this. Chapters are quite a bit shorter than they usually are but that just means I’ll be done sooner? And if you’re a classic rock fan, you’ve already recognized the title and chapter titles. Those were what gave me the inspiration for this in the first place! Continue reading
Click for larger. Decided it was high time to turn the temporary header into a slightly more detailed header. I tweaked the anatomy a little bit but Esgalwen’s nose is still blurp. I mostly did this to procrastinate on the last Transistor fanart which is the most ambitious one. I may tweak this further but it’s a lot shinier than it was before.
This week I found out that front break-falls in karate have been messing up my neck so not going to do those anymore.
CLICK FOR LARGER
SO GUYS I think I figured out what the Spine is about. At least for me. It’s another love song for [John], as in: he is the backbone of her world…? Anyway I made a visual representation of the two verses and refrain. At first I was just going to do John, when I realized that verse 1 is entirely about Red. The interlude is still incomprehensible but I thought this was kind of neat.
Also, references: frame is from Tigers-stock, John’s hands are referenced from a random Shutterstock photo. I’m not 100% happy with his head but I’m not sure how to fix it so I’m not. For Red, I was going to use Night’s Rest by Mucha of course, but then it turns out that the reason I wanted to use it was because I was subconsciously thinking of the Transistor album cover! So I didn’t. : P
Another scene from my fanfic, the first kiss. It was surprisingly difficult to find image references of kissing couples with a big height difference. I also looked up art nouveau kitchens, and the pattern around the edge is based on that one picture of Red eating pizza with the sink in the background. I’m not sure my ‘art nouveau’ fits into what we see of her apartment there, but I tried, guys, I tried.
Two more Transistor images to go! One based on The Spine (I think I finally figured out an interpretation I like) and one based on the Delain song Stardust. Those ones will be more paint-intensive, so will take longer.
Red and [John] slow dancing <3 Not because John is necessarily any good at dancing but because it’s wonderful to imagine them together. Also to put Red in more fabulous clothes. : D
Transistor fanart!!! Red and [John], whom she’s dragged along to participate in Fashion Week with her, as happens in my fanfic. Lazy shading but don’t care. Did you know that there is NO avant garde male art nouveau fashion AT ALL? Kind of a snag in designing this picture! And period male art nouveau fashion is… suits. Not exactly what I need…
I love these two darlings! More to come…!
Selyn in her blue Zeison Sha armour. I probably didn’t keep it all through the actual game (it’s been a while since I played, I don’t remember) but I do know it’s my favourite armour, and goes with the theme of being a Jedi without being a Jedi – wearing actual armour instead of monkish robes, wearing the armour of an anti-Jedi people, but still being completely devoted to helping and serving the people of the galaxy. That you don’t have to follow the traditional rules to be a good person, and maybe you can even be a better person for not following the rules (since those rules may not make sense and in fact harm more than they help, though they are based on good intentions), as long as you’re responsible about what you’re doing and think about why you’re really doing what you’re doing.
Another sumi-e experiment. Still not really sure what I’m doing. Will keep practicing. There’s a very specific project I want to use this style for.
Decided I needed to paint something. Painted Selyn as in the past; worked up an armour design that looks reasonable for that of a Jedi serving in the Old Republic’s Armed Forces. Also tried something TOTALLY new and WAY outside my comfort zone: the sumi-e brushes in Corel Painter 12. Sumi-e is so incredibly gestural that it’s the complete antithesis of my normal ultra-controlled style. I think I’m starting to understand them; I’m not supposed to draw a whole picture using one brush, but combine them to achieve the effect of using different real-life brushes, strokes, and techniques. This might seem obvious, but it wasn’t obvious to me a couple hours ago. I don’t think it turned out too bad for my first attempt! Selyn the Exile coming later.
