Christmas Sweater Round-Up!

Ah once again long time no post, I've been on break since about mid-December and, trust me, I've been using that time to almost full advantage (I had a day or two that I just had to sleep, eat, and doodle minimally to be honest ;w; ).  I started an OC sweater project where I designed an ugly Christmas sweater for as many of my original characters as I could, the idea being 1) to have fun and celebrate the holidays, but 2) to design an outfit that says something about the character's personality.  Closer to Christmas, I decided to make it my annual/official big friend gift art too!  It became a photo finish, literally doing the last touches early Christmas day (you know, that 1-4 am time of day that I just love to work the most xD ).  Without further ado, the results!

It was a fun character-exploring project and it always feels wonderful to give back to all my amazing friends this time of year <3  Since I finished this, and a little before actually, I've been working on comic pages for Ritzkrieg chapter 7!  As I type this, I have started page 5, I'm really happy the comic is still going... 

Happy New Year's!  Here's to a year full of art and experience in 2015!

Holly Jolly Silkie

Apologies for the long time with no posting!  It was my intention to make a big 'ole CTN post, probably still will, but school also happened and it was busy... but now I'm off for break so I'll likely be drawing tons and tons more!  First, the illustration this post is titled for:

Because nothing quite says "Merry Christmas" like a silkie chicken right?  Actually, as much as I love chickens myself and might do this anyway, my reason for making this was because my mom is feeling a bit under the weather and she loves silkie chickens, so I thought this might be a nice surprise.

Since the season hit and school started to let up bit by bit, I've been drawing tons, and especially tons of holiday things... Here's a few of those doodles:

If you want to see more recent doodles, head on over to my tumblr http://www.spiffychickenart.tumblr.com or my twitter https://twitter.com/SpiffyChicken1

Happy Holidays!

Hollywood Baby!

Well, CTN sure is getting close!  As I work to build my portfolio up more, I've been working on more concept art for Ritzkrieg.  I may be 6 chapters in, but it's never too late to do visual development!  A lot of the pages were done under a rush and in black and white, so there's a lot of potential for further development and design, which I'm quite excited to explore!

This is the Ritz Theater!  This is the location where our star players, Fredrich and Evalyn, first meet!  It's also a part of the title, so as you can guess, it's a significant location!  The theater itself isn't the biggest in 'ole Hollywood, but it's still a popular choice for premieres.  Its limited seating makes it exclusive for big events, but they happily welcome in 'all the little folks' for regular screenings!  

I got my inspiration from the actual Ritz Theater in Hollywood.  It first opened in 1939 as a newsreel theater (but it wasn't called the "Ritz" until the 80s)!  The version of the Ritz Theater that appears in Ritzkrieg is fictional, so my Ritz is much older, but it just so happens that the story begins in 1939!  Other inspirations for my Ritz come from the Chicago theater and other old movie houses around Los Angeles!  

Next, this is Eva's suitcase and all the non-clothing contents.  This suitcase first appears on the second page of chapter 1, and acts as the physical manifestation of Eva's past.  She hasn't had a consistent home in a long time, so her whole life is right here!  She keeps a frame that holds a picture of her parents, a mysterious locked metal box and key (it looks pretty old too!), and her favorite book that she's had since she was a little girl.  Eva absolutely loves stories, and so she also loves to read!  This particular book is her favorite and was also a gift from her father before he left for Germany.

So that's all for this post!  I have quite a few more environments I want to work through (the bridge, the park, Fredrich's apartment) as well as costume designs (reworking and showing Fred and Eva's outfits from each chapter).  That stuff should be up... soon! :D

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!  Try to avoid Gilda though, she's a prankster and you might end up getting your candy stolen or a pumpkin thrown at you!

I've got one more Inktober drawing, then I'll be working to get them scanned in and put together in some form over the following week!

Looks like Chicken!

Whoo, school has been a whirlwind this semester!  Certainly hasn't been much time for those polished digital illustrations, but it's okay because I've been learning a bunch!  First, I'm in a painting class that I absolutely lovee.  I've always wanted to take painting, and I've always needed to!  I'm really learning how to loosen up my art and pay attention to colors and lighting, it's fantastic.  Also, I'm in an advanced computer animation course, so I'm learning to model the characters I make, rig them, then animate 'em.  Also motion graphics!  And outside of classes, a group of us students are still working on the 5 minute animated short we started at the beginning of summer and we hope to have it out there early spring!  Annnddd... Inktober!  I've been keeping up, which makes 21 drawings as of today!  It's been challenging at times because I'm using predetermined themes, some of which push me outside of my comfort zone! This is very, very good, I need that.

The real reason I'm making this blog post is because I wanted to share one of my newest character designs!  This character is potentially for my "senior project" (thankfully still a year away), but I may choose to pursue this project outside of school (in all my free time yanno, hahahaha... ha...)

This is mah girl... She's not really a human, not really a chicken, but based on both things.  Actually, she's a sun drop!  For this short story, the sun sends her to the Earth on a cloudy day to wake up the flowers!  That being said, her personality is bright, cheery, and sweet.  She loves the flowers and everything else the sun touches!  I wanted her design to be like a triangle, so she ended up being an upside down sun ray of sorts!  Everything in the design comes from an abstracted chicken and an abstracted sun!

Here's the full model sheet:

So that's that~  I'll continue to design around this story and we'll see where it goes!

Fairy Tales

It's been a long time, but for good reason!  I have been drawing in all this time, but of course not everything is worthy of one of these schnazzy Blogspot posts!  Without further ado, my latest work:

There's a long story behind this piece haha, but the gist of it is that I really wanted to draw something fairy tale inspired, I've been especially keen on my 'ole Rogers and Hammerstein Cinderella OCR lately, I didn't get to do anything related for school, so I did my own illustration for Ritzkrieg!  This was a strong influence for this work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfh-F3nSE_c

I did another Ritzkrieg piece the other day, not quite as much effort as the one above there, but it's still something I was really excited to work on!  The sketch was about a year old, I was very interested in the concept, so I finally completed it!

Welp, that's that!  Literally just moved into a new place yesterday, so I've been quite busy hah!  Big things are also happening around campus lately, especially something that's coming up this weekend and then CTN in November!!

Chicken Noodle!

So classes have indeed started and it's taken me a bit of time and some whining to get used to my schedule again.  Truly, it is a busy semester, but in the best ways for the most part!  So much is happening and will be happening that I can't even begin to contain my excitement!  Anyway, above is my most recent finished illustration, which isn't anything too fancy but I'm happy to have been able to fully color something for the first time in a few days~  I love chickens and I love noodles!

But one more quick update, I'm 100% for-sure going to CTN for the very first time this year!  I'm extremely excited for that and I saw that some of my most favorite artists in the whole world will be exhibiting!!  It's going to be quite a journey, and I'm taking it with a bunch of friends, what could be better than that?

My Pet Shisaaa!

Alright, I've hinted at this project a couple times in previous posts, and now I've decided to finally 'officially' announce it!  Coming in Spring 2015, I'll be posting up a brand-new one-shot webcomic called "My Pet Shisa" about a young man and his ill-behaved pet Shisa!  I have been working on developing this one on and off all summer, I'll really be focusing on it between now and the release date!

Here's some concept work from earlier in the summer:

School starting tomorrow, here goes =w=

Back from Vacation!

Sorry for the long delay in posts!  I was on a magical Disney vacation for the past week~  First, an illustration I completed last night:

Giselle, from Enchanted.  I love this movie so much, I'd love to draw it more often.  It's such a lovely film, it has everything I like: romance, humor, beautiful animation, and grand musical numbers!  In this illustration, I used my own photo there in the background.  Last summer I went to NYC and I got to see the fountain that the finale of "That's How You Know" takes place in front of!  

School starts again Monday, so there'll likely be another delay in art production as I get used to my new semester schedule and all that.  I always get really tired during school, so unfortunately that means less art, but I will do my best!  I have a portfolio to add to, a comic, etc, etc., so I have to stay busy!

Just a Quick Work in Progress!

Sorry for the lack of posts!  I knew August was going to be busy from the very day I was born... Well, okay, only since last May, but still!  August has arrived, I couldn't be more excited, but also so busy with artwork! (which is the BEST kind of busy!)

It'll be a few more days until I can post something that would normally be worthy of an entire Blogspot post, but I wanted to stop by and say I'm still around!  Here's a quick pic of what I've been working on the past few days:

These are pages for round three of this wonderful original character tournament called the Technicolor OCT!  I can't believe I made it to round 3 >w>;  Anyway, for the very first time I am attempting to ink traditionally and color digitally, mostly for time purposes but also because I feel I have better line control traditionally and thus can be more expressive!  I'm so excited to try this out and see what happens!

Rev it Up!

With every new chapter of Ritzkrieg comes the requirement to create a new chapter cover!  Well here's the one for chapter 7.  This piece is dedicated to my friend who helped to create the story with me originally.  I really had a lot of fun working on this, just something kinda different!  Plus I've always thought these kinds of posters were so graphically beautiful.  Probably won't be the last time I try this!

And for fun, here's the characters without the poster/background:

More Disney-z

A Flounder and a dragon Maleficent that I doodled tonight!  Flounder was a thank you for a friend who bought me the art book Lovely (which is beyond lovely, by the way *A* ).  Maleficient is just because... well I've been trying to do a completed drawing of her since I was a little kid, I really dig dragon Maleficent!

Here's something from the other day!  Tiana is another favorite Disney princess and I especially LOVE this dress.  It's so well designed and it looks so pretty!!  I love costuming *w*

Sleepwalk

My newest little illustration, titled Sleepwalk after the musical piece it was inspired by!  The particular version I created this "for" is this one, by Renee Olstead.  The cinematography is gorgeous.  I've been a fan of her music for years, when this video came out I was enamored, it was perfectly in line with everything I love in art and music!  At last I created a work for it.  Technically this is still a doodle, because I designed the composition to be really simple, but I wanted to go further with the shading...

Here's another version without textures.  I'm still not sure if the above version is the best, but I wanna think so...

Gilda!

Introducing Gilda!  I've been working on her for about two weeks now and I'm now proud to present her to the internet haha!  She's a baby griffin as well as a witch!  Her wings are too small to fly with, she she uses an enchanted broomstick for now~  Griffins age very slowly, she's a few hundred years old but mentally a child that would be roughly 8-10 in human years. 

Griffins, naturally prone to magic, make it not so unusual that she is a witch, however she seems to be exceptionally talented in the craft.  She was set to have her own show in the late '20s, but the Depression came and swept away the funds necessary to actually produce the series.  She hasn't really taken anything serious since; Gilda only wants to have fun and play!  She's very mischievous and often has her fun at the expense of others (mean little magic tricks and such...)

Above are a few of her important items.  First is the enchanted broomstick mentioned earlier, which allows her to fly in place of her embarrassingly small wings.  Second is her cat, Thirteen, who is truly as dumb as he looks!  Finally, her magic wand, which isn't always necessary for her to preform magic, but she likes the way it looks, so she'll use it quite often.  

So that's Gilda, thanks for reading!  I'm excited to develop her story out some more along side Benny! (though their stories are not related, they live in the same cartoon world)

Fresh, Healthy, and Local!

A poster I designed for my mom, still subject to change, but in general, here it is!  She let me do whatever I wanted for the design, so my brain started leaning towards a 50s/60s look, and thus this was created.  I used the 50s/60s design elements for my business cards and I had so much fun, this was also just a blast.  I love working in this time period hehe!

I've got a couple projects in the work that I can't share just yet, but they're coming!  One is a brand new comic which I'll be ready to start posting about very, very soon, and the other is a new Benny Bantam environment with some new characters as well!  Actually there's a couple more things, but it's all in the future~

The Many Faces of Benny Bantam

A fun little exercise from the OCT that prompted me to create Benny Bantam in the first place!  I know I need to start doing this for all my characters, being able to draw their expressions is useful in understanding how the character works.  After all, no two characters can be angry or happy in the exact same way!  

I'm working on a couple of new 'concept art' type of things right now.  Benny Bantam's project is no secret, so you'll be seeing more of that for sure.  Ritzkrieg will also continue to develop... But now there is one more new project which is a secret for now!  I'll be posting things about it soon!  It's a lot of fun so far, can't wait to show you guys!

Meanwhile, some older arts of Benny (probably need some updating hehe)

Giveaway!

I did a Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire themed giveaway on my art blog at tumblr!  The prize was a set of stickers featuring the starters and a print of their favorite third generation Pokemon!  Here was the art I did (picked two winners)

Just today I got the art printed and packaged up along with the stickers!  I used a cream colored cardstock instead of white and I LOVE the way it looks, kind of has an old paper feel, in a good way?  I hope the winners will be alright with it too, tryin' something new!

Now back to Ritzkrieg comic pages (having tons of trouble focusing tonight haha...)

Arendelle's Coolest Fashions

Never get tired of that pun B)

So it's likely well-known at this point how obsessed I am with Frozen haha.  Well in any case, I completely adore the costuming, literally every costume in the movie is wonderful.  I love the colors, the patterns, everything.  My top favorite?  It'd be a very, very close tie between Elsa's coronation gown and Anna's traveling outfit, with Elsa's ice gown in second place.  I guess I have a thing for capes!

On top of inspiring so many other things in my own art, Frozen has made me think about my own character's costumes a LOT more.  I re-read/re-watched all the stuff about the research that the team did to create these outfits and I was crazy inspired.  Costuming says a lot about a character so it should be given a lot of consideration!  I never mindlessly threw clothes on characters, but I certainly do a lot more research and decide on details much more intricately than ever before!  Thank you Frozen and everyone involved for your wonderfully amazing and inspiring film!!

Also, I drew Elsa and Anna separately, so I now think it's rather amusing that it looks like Anna's about to nail Elsa with a snowball haha!

Process of a Ritzkrieg Page

Step 1 - Thumbnailing

Step 2 - Pencil sketch

Step 3 - Transfer of sketch to printed template (still a pencil sketch)

Step 4 - Lineart

Step 5 - Shades

This is pretty much how I've been doing Ritzkrieg pages since day 1 a little over a year ago, roughly 100 pages ago too.  Inks are a rather unpredictable medium... some days my hands are shakier with the lines and often the markers will bleed where I don't expect. Still, I love working traditionally, I feel like I have so much more control over what I'm drawing than if I were working digitally, even though digital would be much cleaner (and it would be easier to fix mistakes @w@ )

Compared to the earlier pages of Ritzkrieg, I think improvement is coming very slowly, but surely!  At least I can say I've learned a lot since then and I'm just gradually learning to apply things I read about and see in other comics.  There is so much to making a successful comic, it makes my head spin, so I take it slow!  Luckily this is a nice long comic that I have to work with, so by the end I should be leagues ahead of where I was when I started.  It's truly a hands-on learning experience!