Now and Then

As I was working on Slipping Through I pulled up an old piece for color reference. Struck by the changes time and practice has wrought, I thought I'd post the pieces for comparison.
Here we have Benedict, a magician, drawn just around a year ago.

His hat is so . . . squashed? It is supposed to be a top hat, but it looks more like . . . nothing humankind has ever seen before. And his face is funky. All the proportions all wrong and a year ago I couldn't tell, no matter how much I studied it. Also, he was supposed to have curly hair, but it was beyond my skills. His body lacks any sort of definition, he's just a blocky suit. What is his hair even doing?

Here his is as of a few minutes ago, a work in progress,

I notice I'm less afraid of darker coloring. Also, he's not so stiff and awkward. Necks are something I've been trying to give all my characters nowadays. As well, I've got a bit better about hands, not so much hit and miss as it was.

And a glimpse of his redesigned cane.

A lot has changed in a year. I know, in my heart, that a year from now I will be making a similar post pointing out the weakness of the pieces I made today. For the moment, his original hat will haunt my dreams.

Slipping Through 3.0

The hardest part of learning is that when you start a project, two weeks later the work you've already done is nowhere near the quality of what you're doing presently. Twice I have started Slipping Through and now I'm going for three.

The summer I am dedicating my time to the epic tale of Slipping Through, the tale of a world quite like ours. Expect, here, magic is practiced openly and one might become a Magician the same way one might become a doctor, an attorney or insurance salesman.
The story takes place after a time when the world almost ended, but was repaired in time to save it, though not without cost. The world does not remember how the sky cracked open and other worlds began to slip through into theirs. They do not remember the brave Magicians who made terrible sacrifices to save everyone. It as if none of it ever happened.
The world, however, was imperfectly repaired and there are a few people who remember what happened. Maggie, our hero, remembers. She remembers the magicians who sacrificed themselves so completely that their very existences were destroyed, making so it is as if they were never even born.
Now Maggie's worse fears are being realized: the cracks are reopening and her warnings fall on deaf ears.
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Maggie is not our only hero, there will be at least six different story lines that converge for the final quest to save the world from cracking apart once more.

This summer I will begin the final version of Slipping Through (No more restarts!) and you will meet everyone from Ting the shape-shifter to the Gray Prince, an exile from another world.

It has been too long since I've posted

So here are a couple pictures of a character of mine. His name is Matthew and he's been floating around in my head for about six years. It's only within the last month that I've figured out exactly what he looks like and drawn a satisfactory picture of him.
Nice shades, yes?




This is what he looked like when I drew him two years ago.

Quite a change. The only constants seem to be his earrings and wings. His personality, cheerful and snarky, has never changed, though.

His origins are quite interesting: I dreamed of him one night. A winged man with dark red skin and bright red hair. He seemed interesting and I used him as a character in a story I was working on. The story no longer exists, but within it he lived in the mountains fighting monsters all day, being extremely cheerful. I changed his hair to black and gave him silver claws that froze whatever they slashed.
Nowadays he can't do that, his claws are black, and he can shift back and forth between his human and winged forms.

He probably owes his existence to the fact I adored the show Gargoyles as a child. But by the time I dreamed him up it had been five years since I had last seen the show and had pretty much forgotten it existed. In fact, Matthew eventually reminded me of the show and I ended up watching episodes of it on youtube and getting hooked on it again. Except for the third season. There was never a third season. Never, do you hear me? NEVER.

Slipping Through (new): Part 3

I have been told I draw quite the adorable penguin.

Hm. I drew these pages this summer and altered them quite a bit since then. And already my art has progressed to the point where I want to redraw all these pages from scratch. However, I would never get anything done that way since I would be starting over every month. So I'm finishing up three more pages I drew this summer before I start to bring in my more recent work.

In the next installment we shall go to Maggie's place of work and meet her fellow employees. Needless to say, they are an interesting bunch.

Pretzel and the Princess: Part 5

Just a brief update. We meet the other sister! I don't think it was mentioned, but her name is Regan. She is the middle child. Goneril the oldest. Our heroine the youngest.

Slipping Through (new): Part 2

Woohoo! Part two! I think there is a definite improvement in the art. Learned a few new tricks in photoshop. Upcoming: penguins and quirky co-workers.

Lord of the Masque

The villain for "Slipping Through" is this fine gentleman. Lord of the Masque. There is meaning to that name, which will become clear in time. He is still under development, but I do know that he is arrogant and probably is tearing holes in the fabric of time and space. The jerk.

I posted this elsewhere and submitted it to be featured in an art group on this site. It was declined so I asked why, hoping for some helpful advice. They answered thusly,

"it was declined because of quality. The work is good, how you caught the movement and their facial expressions are great and but a little more work could be done with coloring. The colors are too flat and a little dull in my opinion.
if you thin out the lines a little bit and put more effort in coloring the piece would look different, the shading was okay but again, a little more detailed coloring would make it a better piece.
wish you luck next time"

A very nice reply which would be helpful except . . . most of the problems they list were deliberate choices on my part. I am deliberately cultivating a thick-lined style because it is a cartoon, the same with the semi-flat coloring. As for the colors being dull, that was intentional because I wanted the character to be understated aside from his bright red mask. In essence, for my work to be approved of I would have to adopt a completely different style.

Just my little complaint of the day.

Pretzel and the Princess: Part 3

Another installment in our thrilling and action packed adventure! Ahem. By the way, there are cellphones in this world. Actually, I'm pretty sure at least one of the castle's towers is a cellphone tower.

Coming up next: Vague parenting and sibling rivalry!

New Project: Slipping Through

This is my new project, a comic called "Slipping Through". The main characters are Maggie the Magician and Ting the shape-shifter. Together they fight crime! Uh, Monsters. They fight monsters. They come from broken homes, too. Keep checking for updates!

Pretzel and the Princess: Part 2

The Princess has rescued Pretzel, but what's going on at the castle?

My Newest Venture

Are you familiar with the story of the Frog Prince? Well, too bad. This is almost nothing like that. There is a princess, she has a golden ball and she's friends with a frog named pretzel. Similarity ends there. Pretzel isn't even sure if he is just an enchanted frog or an actual enchanted prince.


There's also that little matter of reclaiming Princess Jean's stolen kingdom . . .

And There Was Much Rejoicing

What once was lost is now found!
My laptop has returned unto me! It returned to me this afternoon and now sits on the kitchen table, eager for its hard drive to be reinstalled so it can once again join me in my varied and amusing Internet adventures.
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In other news, I return to school on Sunday. I'm ready to head back and see my friends, plan a meal for everyone, and threaten them with knives. I'll pop in the fireplace DVD and we'll all gather around the flickering digital flames and discuss what has come to pass since we last gathered.
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What's with the picture accompanying this post, you ask? Not sure. I'm feeling cheerful and that picture just made me feel satisfied, contented and all warm and fuzzy inside. Looking at it, I realize that I now need to mark any new pictures as copyrighted in 2010, rather than 2009, as I have been doing. Now, to the bat cave! I must prepare for my next glorious, action-packed adventure!

Meet My Friends

The imaginary ones, anyway. I've been doing some drawings of characters from the stories I write, and I thought they're turning out rather well. Keep in mind, these are all works in progress and not yet completed.

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First off, this is Vanessa Lynn.

She's friendly, I swear! Sixteen years old and a powerful sorceress, she is a supporting character in one of my stories. The story is going through a big overhaul right now, so it doesn't have a title at this time. Obviously a fantasy, hopefully an original one.

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This guy is called Matthew from the story, "Overdue". Which, by the way, exists in the same world as Vanessa's story.

Man, he doesn't look very friendly either. He's usually much more cheerful and snarky, and lots of fun to be around. He lives in the mountains and has a fascinating back story which I won't tell you about because it would give away all the twists.

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Now, for someone who actually looks cheerful, Andrew Furlen.

He's a wizard in my story, "Silent Stone". He has a rather deadpan sense of humor and usually pretends to be vague and unfocused so people won't bother him.

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Meet Gray, The Gatekeeper,

Also from "Silent Stone", he is a personification of the magical protection of the palace. He was created centuries ago and then someone lost the user manual, apparently, so not much is know about him or how he works. He is programed to intervene if the royal family or the other palace inhabitants are in immediate danger, but not until then.

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He's not Asian, by the way, I'm just trying out a kimono sort of outfit, trying to get a balance between them and the usual wizard's robes. And maybe give him a hat.

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So, how am I doing?