Greenery

Here are some concept images for a thing I was working on and now am not working on but may return to some incarnation of it in the future.

Wasting time.

Was meant to be drawing something else but I was at a lecture by Brenda Chapman yesterday and something she was talking about made me want to draw a lady based on a swan. An idea that's been done but too often with long hair and generally giving some delicate, whispy sort of impression. I hate that so here's my version. I dunno about you but in my experience swans are badass and kind of scary. If you've got some bread, you better hand that shit over bro.

Speedpainting

Some speedpainting I did yesterday. The characters in the top picture are Niamh's lovely pirate couple. They're a lot of fun to draw.
COLOUR ♡♡♡♡♡

Newsprint parade

 

I scanned a bunch of pages from my sketchbooks for my portfolio this week. Here's a few plus a Yanappu/Pansage. Happy Pokemon Week.

X-2:R

Happy Birthday Niamh!
I was going to draw all three Final Fantasy X-2 girls but I ran out of time ;; So here's just Rikku. I'll try to get them done eventually...

Oldies.

 Hello. Mid-break. Haven't been drawing anything. I have been doing a bit of tidying up of my folders though and I found these two drawings which I ended up not using for anything. They were meant for the Yanmama project I was doing last year. That's right, happy 2011. It'll be lovely, don't worry.

Charatypes .01

During the summer I had a go at the 20 favourite characters meme. I found it really difficult because I realised, rather than have an affinity for a specific characters of specific shows, I just have a tendency to like character types; certain habits or idiosyncrasies or behaviours that I enjoy when they are apparent in any character in any setting. I don't think I could make an exhaustive list, and anyway sometimes these are only any good when combined with other characteristics. The other problem was that often I only liked characters as part of a pair. In the end, for the meme I ended up drawing characters that either stood out to me because they didn't fit inside my set perimeters of interest or characters that totally defined them.
The point of this post is to start to archive some of these character types.

01: Ridiculous, over the top villains who have a high opinion of themselves, are prone to dressing pompously and have a silly villain laugh. Often in series they 'happen' to show up wherever the heroes find themselves to compete with them. The cornier and more extravagant, the better.

A perfect example is Elena-san from Teppan-Shojo Akane. A daft drama about a girl traveling around Japan taking part in cook-offs in search of her father. Elena-san, her corporation people and fleet of five-star chefs would always be there attempting to buy out some poor cuisine-based family business. Of course, we all grew up on cartoon villains like this. The silliness just has more impact live-action, I think.

02: Bat-shit insane screaming monkeys. I don't mean the kind that spout meaningless garbage like say, GIR in Invader ZIM. Just characters that somehow seem to be oblivious to what is acceptable behaviour, a bit socially retarded and end up screaming their feelings out at everyone. Like above, ridiculous and silly. I know there are plenty of characters like this I have loved but they are all eclipsed in my mind by the one character who personified it down to a T.

Delicious Gakuin's Nangou-sempai. Most of his dialogue is screamed, he is over-dramatic, prone to cheesy posing, and half-assaulting people he wants to talk to but somehow still manages to guide his four kouhais through the mad cookery school. The whole school (drama) was mental. It was run by four teachers who called themselves the Delicious Kings. I still can't type that with a straight face. Incidentally, it was written by the same guy who wrote Teppan Shojo Akane. I admire him for sticking to what he knows: overblown nutter characters and cooking.

03: Smug, pretentious overzealous twats. The kind of character who has grand illusions about themselves and who or what they aspire to be though it is apparent to everyone else that their desired status is comically out of reach. They can never manage to hold the act.

Favourite examples (of different flavours of) this character would be Hidari Shoutarou of Kamen Rider W and Basil Fawlty. Shoutarou inherited a small P.I. agency and fancies himself as a hard-boiled detective like someone out of American 1930s crime fiction, dressing and posing the part, spouting silly monologues that are interrupted by other characters, typing up his exploits on an old-fashioned typewriter at the end of each episode filled with hackneyed phrases and drinking innumerable cups of black coffee. A running gag of the series is other characters 'mistakenly' calling him a 'half-boiled detective'. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As you've noticed, there's a certain amount of overlap and variety. In addition to which there's an over-arching comedic theme going here. I'm definitely much more susceptible to comedic characters than tragic characters.

So weak for pokemon

So I watched some Pokemon Best Wishes cause I'm all done with pre-Christmas work \o/ I... I. really like Dento ;; I was never one of those girls to have a Brock crush but FFFFF this guy dresses as a waiter (with a bowtie), has a grass type monkey pokemon (Yanappu is adorable and does backflips when he's happy) AND having Mamoru Miyano's voice helps A LOT.

I'm so easy and predictable with the kind of characters I like. I will do a post about this soon.

Brown Bag Lecture

 Today I attended a guest lecture in college by Darragh O'Connell of Brown Bag Films. I like listening to lectures but I'm bad at watching them because something about listening to someone speak into a microphone from a podium generates a powerful urge to draw and I become too absorbed in drawing to look up. Sometimes I can't actually manage to draw anything and then I suffer through the lecture in a state of artistic constipation but today was a good day and I filled five pages of my pocket notebook which you can see here along with my coherent and relevant notes! Wow, it's like you were there too ですね。I was watching pokemon last night. Can you tell?

普通

 

Some fanart today. Watching Gainax's Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt. These are Panty(R) and Stocking(L). Really generic looking. Hurts my eyes.

Small change.

Sketches of my main character from my film project. Got all stiff with my drawing. Trying to loosen them up again. Also, a picture of a Drifblim that I did for Pokemon week.

FSF*03

Characters. On top is a very early incarnation of the main character. The bottom is the refined version. I'm not sure if I should have stuck closer to the one on top. Last night I assured it'd be easier to draw expression out of the newer one but now I'm not so sure. The dress might have been a better idea too and I liked the rougher feel of that design. Uuughh I don't know. So little time.

moar pokemons

I have a long history of naming pokemon after people/characters. Can you guess who my Roseila-soon-to-be-Roserade is named after?
[It's Holiday after Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's]

Quagsire is one of my favourite pokemon ever. I've used one in every game they've been catchable in since GS. My current one is called Odhran; one of my favourite names ever. I first heard it when I met a kid called Odhran Hayes-Brennan; I think he has an amazing name. I'm a bit jealous, even still. So I named a pokemon after him.

Back to Business

 

Thinking of doing something like this for the bulk of the animation. PupeGirl has made me want to do the simple, no-outlines flash but with girly-detail look for a while. I like drawing with lasso.