Quickie

Did this as a quick demo for a friend of mine. He wanted to know how I went about doing a greyscale painting before the finished product. So this happened. I actually like it okay. I might do some sort of livestream/video demo some time if anyone cares to see how.

Lineart and Character: Christy Lijewski/nyanko-chan.

Birthday gift for Grace! I'm pretty sure she liked it. Guess who the lyrics are by Bet you can't. Here's a hint, I really like them. A lot. And they make you fall apart to half-time. Anyways, I really liked doing this. Ink on watercolor paper was pretty fun to try. Going to try adding some watercolor to the mix soon. We'll see how that goes.

Really long time, no post so you get a massive dumb that defies logic. ... Enjoy! :D Ask and ye shall receive answers about these. Promise.

Stuff from my short!

Working on an animated short so I'm uploading stuff, mostly for my teacher. But you can look too, it's okay. Two backgrounds in progress (still working on the greyscale on one and the other needs cleanup) and a quick style shot to visualize what the end product should look like. The animatic (essentially, my storyboards) is being in queue on vimeo right now, but my page is here. Should be available for viewing forthwith.

New Art, New Merch!

Today was, apparently, Arts & Crafts Day. I decided, once it wasn't quite so hot as balls, to print and test out some shrinky dink I snagged at Blick (art store chain). So I did. I took the Fall Out Boy chibis that seemed so well received (admittedly, by friends & fans so maybe it doesn't count) and the Plaguey concept, along with my logos to fill some space. The results are what you see above. They should be in my store soon but I'm doing an unofficial pre-order type thing now for them. Let me know in a comment or Twitter @reply or DM or (if you're privvy to such things) an IM or email that you want one and your name & order shall be added to my magical list. They'll be $4 shipped (and by shipped, I mean sent in an envelope with some stickers and a business card). If you want some extra special treatment, for an extra $1, I'll add a tiny bit of chainmaille to it (see second picture). Why is it extra? Those are goddamned tiny rings, okay? Tiny. They make my fingers hurt after a while.

Post-Otakon Art Wrap Up

Otakon was... a bit disappointing, sales-wise. Though it was great if you love the drama. Anyways, above are my two marker chibi examples. Pretty much all I did. I did get a $30 full body ink commission that I still haven't finished because I suffered some serious art fail on Sunday morning. I'll upload when I finish though. Planning to do more examples for my book soon though. Cutting down on examples and switching to the 11x17 book threw people off, I think. Also, need to apply some psych to my set up. Sharing because I'm awesome (and no one reads this).

1. Guys look up, girls look down. If a guy spots a half-naked man, he's more likely not to look further.
2. My originals are fairly gender neutral. Though apparently the smoke heart in Smoke Rings looks like a set of tits?! What the fuck, chick, you're just jealous that mine look better than yours...
3. Neonvom, it's what's for dinner (and short attention spans).
4. If it's there, people will keep looking.
5. Small merch will probably help sales. So will actually popular series and animu shits.
6. I should pass out at the table more often. People are less intimidated if I'm asleep. =_=
7. Music makes the world go 'round. Doesn't matter what it is so long as it has a good beat.

That's all I got fo now. Free things kicked ass, as did my trades with Dan, Ally, and Emi. Grace and Khel shall have trades next con. I'll make sure I have ones for you guys. Ummm, are you both going to NYAF or just Grace? Hmmm, must remember to ask...

Two Cups Into My Coffee Break...

Lots of stuff this time around, and mostly finished too! Amazing, right?
These are two Gurren Lagann prints I've been working on for Otakon. Yoko is done. Adiane should be finished soon but I'm taking a break so that I can work on my other prints. Namely, Gambit. I sort of want to get those flats done as soon as possible. Why?






This is the progress on my business card design/logo. I'm done now. It goes from bottom to top because I'm slow and didn't realize that it would upload this way. Oops? Whatevs.


What else, what else...? I'm plotting more sketch cards. For now though, I just have A Case Of The Mondays, Angie, and a Deer Boy that I'll be painting soon. I sort of want to make a cute little Deer Boy Munny because I'm a total fan, okay? Okay.

Finished Sketch Cards

Finished Emo Boy and Audrey II. Just scanned. Need sleep now. Will maybe post more thought-out things later. Couch-crashing time.

Emma Frost Portrait

Oh, hey, look, this has absolutely nothing to do with vinyl toys! What a shock! Anyways, this is a portrait of Emma Frost, also know as the White Queen, of X-Men fame. Now, you may be wondering why on Earth I did a portrait of Emma instead of, say, finishing my Gambit print. Quite simply. As Grace so loving put it, I am a fangirl. This is a (belated) birthday gift for Andy Hurley, the drummer of Fall Out Boy. Sad? Maybe. Still pretty nice, all things considered? I like to think so. Now to plot for Pete's birthday... XD Comment on it either here or on deviantART.

Edit: (from a tweet of mine) "OH MY FUCKING GOD, HE LIKES IT! I IS DEAD NAO, OKAY!? OKAY!" By the way, really tempted to tweet the following: "Hey, @mikeyway, he likes it! :D"

In case you were wondering...

I have a flickr account for my photography, which can be found here.

Also, I've mostly finished the first 20DNB print (at least, to the point I'll show online) and that can be found here

I also have another quick thing I threw together here.

Video (hopefully) and photos of my Fall Out Boy zoetrope are soon to come. And maybe animatics of my theses. Maybe. I'll at least upload stills eventually.

If you really want to keep up with me, it'll be easier on Twitter. Seriously, I update, like, every ten seconds. Well, not really but still a lot. I also upload works in progress because it's the cool thing to do (and I'm lazy as hell). Plus you'll get to see halves of conversations I have with celebs/musicians, the tour crew/awesome friends of said celebs/musicians, awesome vinyl artists/customizers, designers, (mostly) indie clothing labels, friends, and... well, that's really it. Oh, and my saying thanks for things like unexpected retweets and Follow Fridays. I've still never properly thanked Victoria Asher for retweeting my explanation of TTTYG Day... If you see this somehow (and I hope it wasn't by googling yourself), thanks for, like, a handful of other retweets and some new followers! Anyways, my twitter is here for you to follow.

Fwoosh!

Quick color test! ... Okay, bye.

Quickie WiP: Queen of Apology

Like the title says, this one's just a quickie painting to get myself used to Painter a bit more. I've been having problems getting colors to look right, but I'm getting better. It's shiny on the highlights (which does make some sense considering the skin tone) so I'm going to go back and tint that pink when I finish up everything else. Actually... now that I look at it, it's too lopsided. >.< So I'm thinking I'll be going back and re-sketching first. But that's the first pass! If this turns out okay, it'll be the first of the portraits of my Bastille characters.

Random Note: I was listening to "Queen of Apology (Patrick Stump Remix)" by The Sounds from the Snakes on a Plane soundtrack.

Long Time, No Post

Ack! Sorry it's been so long since I've posted anything! I completely forgot about this place. Hopefully, I won't for much longer. I've just updated my commission prices (in general, they've dropped from the I-really-don't-want-any-right-now-kthxbai level they were at). You can find them here.
I actually haven't been all that productive lately. But here's some of the stuff I've done or am working on.
Over Alkaline Lake (Wolverine from the X-Men Fanart)
Untitled (Misa Amane from DeathNote fanart)
Unravel (Original)
Yeah, really, disgustingly unproductive...

Yet Another Dump!

This ones from dA soooooooo...
Storyboarding Final:
http://sometimesusually.deviantart.com/art/CD-2129-Turnaround-85424013
http://sometimesusually.deviantart.com/art/CD-Larry-Turnaround-85424379 http://sometimesusually.deviantart.com/art/SB-Story-Illustration-1-85425110 http://sometimesusually.deviantart.com/art/SB-Story-Illustration-2-85425831 http://sometimesusually.deviantart.com/art/SB-Story-Illustration-3-85426431 http://sometimesusually.deviantart.com/art/SB-Story-Illustration-4-85427015 http://sometimesusually.deviantart.com/art/SB-Story-Illustration-5-85427287 http://sometimesusually.deviantart.com/art/SB-Story-Illustration-6-85427695 http://sometimesusually.deviantart.com/art/SB-Story-Illustration-7-85428109

Other Stuffs!
http://sometimesusually.deviantart.com/art/Cel-Annette-in-Operation-TART-85195375 http://sometimesusually.deviantart.com/art/qXc-Yokiko-81645112

Yeah, nothin' but a whole bunch o' links. I'm sorry. I'll be working on stuff for cons in the coming weeks then heading to A-Kon in Dallas. Yeah, I'm going to fucking TEXAS. It's crazy.

Dump: Sometimes, I Do Things

So, I've actually sketched quite a lot since my last update. First up, a "quick" portrait of Gaia's krunkkid's character, Meshi. It was fun but I have SOOOOOOO far to go on painting skin. Second is an adorable little chibi of Grace/fongmingyun's character Rivek, done for chibi practice and because I owe Con Mommy. Lastly, a finished(?) background from the PFF trailer project. We... placed last. T.T And you can't even see most of the work we put in. But, well, we did our best and went with
something we knew would most likely not win... We tried. This is depressing, MOAR HAPPY!

As for things on DA, we've got qXc Round 3, The Drow Queen (finished), Karudaberi Jam, qXc Round 2.

Mini-Dump

I've been picking diligently away at various projects: con prep, a liberal arts project I'm using as a print making front (>.<), animation project (which I might also make prints from, since I'm painting things for it), and whatever other homework I have. So, here's a quick sketch dump.

The first is an Avatar: the Last Airbender style sketch of my character Annette. She'd definitely be Fire Nation, but I'm not sure if she'd be a bender. Her job would probably upgrade to personal bodyguard though. Maybe for Zuko? XD Personality and trigger-happiness would remain unchanged.

Second is a quick little Photoshop doodle done with Grace's tablet. I'm waiting for my new one to arrive, since the old one died.

Third is the last page of a storyboarding assignment to make a cereal commercial. There's this ridiculous milk tidal wave sequence that any animator would kill me for making. >.<

Fourth is a WiP of a painting I'm working on. Hoping to have it done as a print very soon. Hooray for elven queens?

Lastly is some pchat crap done on the Cintiq at school. Honestly, given a choice between a Cintiq and an Intuos, I'd probably pick the Intuos. The Cintiq is just too big and nowhere near portable. There's also a discrepancy between where you physically have the point and where the cursor is on screen. But doing the colors was so, so, so easy! Ah well, there's one at school so I'm set if I ever feel the need to use it again.

Pchat~!

So I've been pchatting again. Thought I'd share what I've done. Not much to say about them. One started as a sketch chibi that I took around the world into a few different programs, ending in Flash. These are the flats. I've done more but I don't feel like opening Flash to save a copy. >.

Original: Ameir Portrait

Just a link to the dA page this time, because I'm lazy. Click the title of the post for the link. It's a portrait of my Watcher character, Donovan Ameir Forrellis, otherwise simply known as Ameir. For randomness' sake, I'll post some bits of an IM with Grace, the owner of a certain Aidan, who is also a Watcher. If you want to know what went down, you'll have to join the forums here: http://www.miumu.com/boards/index.php

Grace: Ameir: *walks about from showers*
Grace: Aidan: "DEAR LORD, WHAT THE FUCK...?!!"
Grace: Beccah: "..."
Allie: Ameir: "... What...?"
Grace: Aidan: "... my .... eyes..."
Grace: Beccah: "..."
Allie: Ameir: "Are adorable. Point?"
Grace: Beccah: "Put some clothes on, or I will put you out on the street in the exact same state you are in now."
Grace: "That's right. Pantless."
Allie: Ameir: *sigh* "Yes, ma'am."
(Because I said the only way Ameir will let me draw him is naked. >.<;)


Grace: lol. It occurs to me.
Grace: Aidan is a virgin.
Allie: XD
Allie: As far as I know, Ameir is not. Unless he's been lying.
Grace: Not because he wants to be. But simply out of there having never been anyone.
Grace: ...
Grace: Ameir is so not.


Allie: Okay, I've gotten to the point where Ameir's considering either letting Aidan sleep, waking him up and maybe getting him to spar or something, or doing naughty things... and then asking him to spar.
Grace: doing naughty things to Aidan..>?!?!? DX<
Allie: Hahahaha! The reaction was totally worth it!
Allie: He was going to maybe give him a little kiss.
Allie: Because he's a hopeless romantic.
Allie: By which I mean I'm a hopeless romantic.
Grace: Or
Grace: A hopeless yaoi fangirl
Allie: Or that.
Allie: But so are you.
Grace: And btw, between those two
Grace: Aidan is so top
Allie: Uhhh, yeah!
Grace: lol
(Note: I don't think I could properly create and play a top. My male characters [at least as far as RPs go] all tend to be very go-with-the-flow.)


Grace: And yeah, lol. Aidan's a little homophobic.
Grace: But I think that's Ameir's fault.
(Note: Ehn, what can I say? Ameir's a very tactless uke.)


Grace: lol. I just always kinda pretend I'm Aidan and go with whatever is in my gut
Grace: Otherwise, I'd be playing me not Aidan
Grace: lol
Grace: 'Cuz if it were me
Grace: They'd be fucking on a training mat right now
Grace: >.>
Grace: XD
Allie: I have the urge to say "Your MOM dyes her hair like a girl!"
Allie: But, ummm, yeah. Ameir might actually not be okay with that. It'd ruin the chase.
Allie: Or, well, the purpose.
Grace: LOL
Allie: He might have to turn bi and go after someone else.
(This came from me saying how hard it was to come up with a reaction for Ameir. You'd know where it comes if you joined the forums and the RPG... >.>)

Masssive Art Dump!

Here's a fairly large dump of everything I've worked on since my last update. More or less.

First up, we have the finished, full version of this bookmark (titled Innocence Invocation), along with a random dynamic sketch of a conjurer in the middle of a jump (?!), and a quick paint test of the CG method I used for Innocence Invocation. I need to work on the technique and clean it up a lot, but I'll hopefully have it all worked out pretty soon.
Next is the sketch of Innocence Invocation and an WiP of the face. Yeah, I used color layers over a greyscale underpainting. Because... I'm cheap?
After that are the sketches if the pieces that will go to the winner of the Gaia group auction I did that Death card for way back in the summer. I'm hoping to finish those off within the week. Hoping...
Next is a little sampling of my chibis in the form of Tyki Mikk from D.Gray-man and my original character, Ameir, for the Shards of Aleysa RP I plan to get back into very shortly. Maybe within the week? Depends on how long it takes for the current goings-on to make it to the next day. XD
After that is a simple pose sketch. I never draw seated figures because I have so much trouble making them look natural. That still doesn't look entirely natural, but I think it's partly my color choice and heavily drawing through the figure...