A Mess! A Scrambled Mess!

It's been a long time.

Too long.

I've spent too much time being discouraged about drawing, feeling like I've become incapable and focusless. I'd attempt to draw, then immediately stop because I hated what wound-up on the sketchbook paper.

I barely drew, and it's shameful. It's embarrassing.
I felt discouraged by how bad my drawings turned out, and stopped myself from continuing, even though continuing to draw would be the only way to make any improvement. There were several nights over the past few months where I would start drawing, only to end the night in a depressed and anxious mess because I was so disappointed in my self.

But...I guess I'm slowly coming out of that slump.
I picked my pencil up again one day, and started drawing without caring about what I was doing. I started drawing a skeleton and a diagram of the musculature of the human body from reference images, then slowly began picking up speed from there.

As it stands now, I've begun drawing a little more each day.
In this past week, I've managed almost one sketchbook page a day, missing the mark by 2 or 3 pages/days.

What am I doing?
I'm spending too much time thinking. Too much time wondering about what I'm doing instead of just running ahead and letting my pencils and pens hit the paper.

Who cares if I draw something retarded, something terribly-disproportionate, something off-angle or porly-designed? If someone does care, I'll take their criticisms and critiques along with my own self-criticism and learn from it all.

Only a moron would stop themselves with the thought that their work wouldn't be perfect, right?


SO YEAH. ENOUGH RAMBLING.
Let's see some of the slightly-not-trash drawings from my time away from this blog!

I drew a lot of weird things. Have I mentioned I like llamas and alpacas? Alpacas especially.

This is Catherine. Zebra Catherine. I assure you that it made sense at the time of its conception.

And this page is the Red Light District rendered in grayscale.

Rose Hero characters doodled doing things.
And this was the last page from...about mid or late November that was decent.

Just some free doodles from the last week of January, I think. Vyse from Skies of Arcadia, and some Ghost Trick characters, make appearances here. It was about this page that I started feeling more confident again.

I had written up a script for a potential comic using an old character I'd crafted, named Glyde (check the tail-end of this post for the script and other details). As a result of that, I started drawing him in a variety of other scenes, brainstorming uses I could have for him.

Fan art of Moses, from Tales of Legendia. His hands look a little weird, and his legs seem too small and too short, but...ignoring that, he looks pretty nice, I think.

More ideas that came as a result of the creative high born from finishing that script, and from playing too much Solatorobo in the night and morning.

The Volkswagen Weeabeetle, and a four panel fight scene's worth of Tales of Legendia fan art.

There were some instances where I'd draw from reference photos of nude models, but this was the most recent of them, and arguably the best I can offer right now.

I'd also started writing notes to myself as I drew, hoping that somehow, it would spur some positive changes to my drawing.
...I don't really know what to make of this page, really.

At some point, I wanted to try draw some dragons. I'd always had trouble trying to figure out how to draw a typical dragon, being confused with the head shape as well as leg and neck placement, so I started sketching some lizards, then tried my hand at drawing a dragon.

And that's it for stuff from my sketchbook.

The other two images here were used to illustrate parts of a script for a comic that I'd written up earlier in January. Feel free to give it a read if you're very bored and have a lot of time on your hands.




Anyway.
I'm started to get bored with just drawing in my sketchbook.
Not bored in the "this is tedious and draining, it's so pointless," way, but in that the material from my sketchbook doesn't yield any finished, polished work.

And the scanner I have access to right now is absolute garbage when it comes to trying to scan my sketchbook.

One Longest Way

Title pulled from the lyrics to "Distance" by Long Shot Party. (Give the music video a watch. It's entertaining, to say the least.)

Anyway. Not too much to show off this time around, but I've been doing some more playing around with sharpies and some pens that my brother brought home with him from Hawaii. Eight drawings total in today's update.


This was drawn...sometime last week. A week from today, actually. I wanted to draw something to cheer up my girlfriend while she was at work, so I drew the three most important Oresoren from Tales of Legendia. What better way could there have been? The drawing itself has nice, bold lines. I liked using the sharpie for this.

Then, earlier today, I was just doodling in the bottom half of the page, but...got lazy halfway through.

Sarah from my Rose Hero storyline. I played with the sharpie again when I drew her here. I'm pretty satisfied with how she looks in this page, except...something about the way I drew her leg and hips in the drawing of her running just seems off. Like the perspective and alignment of her legs is wrong.

This was just...well, pointless doodling. Toying with the sharpie more.

More sharpie play. I just gave up on this before too much time passed - it was starting to look terrible. The first panel does look very nice, though. I feel like I managed a good sense of action in it.

Aruna from my Rose Hero storyline. I rarely draw largely, and I also rarely draw close-ups of any characters. I gave it a shot here, using the sharpie for a lot of the lines, and...it seems like it turned out okay. Nothing too stellar, especially with the shape of the hair and the proportions of the head/face, but for once, it doesn't look like something that makes me want to die on the inside.

Also, colored Aruna looks waaaay too motherly, for some reason.

Rosa, also from Rose Hero. Playing with her design and drawing large(r) again. Something seems off about her proportions, and her hands also seem kind of wonky.


Richard, also from Rose Hero. Tried the same thing with Aruna, this time with arguably better results. The sharpie is amazing.

The drawing of him standing looks particularly impressive, I think. I stared at him and thought, "Wow, this looks really good."

This was...well, this was just for fun. So many things bother me about Aruna in this drawing - her back looks like it stretches backwards too far, her arm is a bit too long, and her hair looks like a mess.

But that aside, I did have fun drawing this. I play with ideas about Sarah and Aruna in my head.

Anyhow. I seem to be getting back into drawing more regularly. It's starting to feel a lot better, somehow.

You Are My Only Shooting Star

Today's post title has been pulled from the ending song to Star Driver, "Cross Over."

ANYHOW. Eight drawings tonight. That's two or three less than I wanted, but...well, I dunno. Might have to do with me using color in almost everything. May have taken up more time...

So anyway. First three drawings are from photos pulled off of Flickr. The last color pair came out of a Nordstroms catalogue I'd been carrying with me for a long while.


And then I kept using the Nordstrom's catalogue, and bastardized proportions and the female form. The only drawing I like on this page is the one on the far right. The rest look like horrible monsters.
Oh, right. Remember the guy I talked about in my last post, who requested the WAR PENGUIN? He requested a garden gnome riding a chocobo last...wednesday, I think. This one turned out nicely. I should draw larger more often.

And then this. You know the Giga Drill Break attack from Gurren Lagann? I wanted to draw a parody of it using Mega Man for a while, and...then this. Only thing I don't like is the placement of the second speech bubble. It should be closer to panel 3, I think.

This was mostly drawing from photos off of Flickr, although I kind of screwed both drawings up, anyway...Gave me a chance to play with colors, too.

This page started with me asking myself, "How do the faces I draw faces look if I try to draw them larger?" And then it quickly turned into, "Oh God, this is horrifying, I'm going to draw a tiny night scene and play with colored pencils."

AND THE ONLY COMPLETELY BLACK AND WHITE IMAGE. This was mostly used for brainstorming designs for "Gods." That, and trying out different faces.


And this was for brainstorming a story idea I had tonight. I leave it chronicled in my sketchbook and this blog for future reference. I also marveled at the semi-passable "snowy mountain at night" in at the top of the page.

So...eight drawings. Last I checked, we were at 302 drawings.

We have now reached 310 drawings total.

I should have 332 by today, though. I'm behind by 22.

...There's only so much time until the end of December. ._.

And you will find the trust, only if we walk as one

Post title pulled from the lyrics to the track, "Joey and Heroman," from...well, Heroman.

I'm making progress with this update. Three drawings ahead of the daily quota, which means three more towards not being behind!

Although, haha, I actually posted this, then as I'm editing it right now, I'm typing the usual text in. I just wanted the original post time to be kept in the post.

Anyway, the first two drawings, this one and the next, involve a contest Capcom's running for Mega Man Legends 3. Essentially, it's designing a mech that'll be used by the game's antagonists, the Bonne family, as they fight Mega Man. They even provided some context for the mech, too: It'll drill into the area where it's fought, there'll be water in that area...and some other bits.

So I got caught-up on the drill part. The first one I drew is that caterpillar-looking mech up top. I'm not entirely sure how it would attack, unless it can stand on its hind legs and have its drill feet pop forward into you as you run around it.

The second one that resembles a pirate monkey with a gun-pacifier and drill wolverine claws...well, I got stuck thinking of how it would move, and it lacks feet/wheels.

And the next two I drew up had more drills. They don't feel very Bonne family-ish, though. The one up top came second, and had a snake-like body that it moved with. A giant drill backpack is on its back.

The one below moves on treads and has two giant drills that can open up to act as cannons. The frog mouth at the front raises up to reveal a place where the Bonne family can taunt Mega Man.

This was drawn before either of the mecha designs: They're just design and expression practice for Rose Hero's cast. Rosa's design is still kind of up in the air, since I don't know what to do with her hair or face.

And this was...just doodling and practicing. I brought my brush back out, but its bristles kept fraying as I inked my sketches. As a result, the line quality in a lot of places is much different from what I had desired.

But then when I used the brush later, it started to behave the way I wanted it to. Under the influence of certain sequences from Panty Stocking and Garterbelt, I felt compelled to try draw the female form stylistically. The results are...somewhat chaotic.

And that was supposed to be a swimsuit. Not some...weird dominatrix outfit. Ugh, oh God.

This was sketched up after I'd drawn the robots from my last post on the blog, but I never inked it until last night, and finished it this morning. I wanted to try a falling/flying action sequence several times in the past, and I finally re-attempted it here.

Mixed results. The last "panel" with Red Adonis and Rosa, in the bottom-right, wasn't planned too well, what with Rosa's legs being cut off by the panels preceding it...

And this started as doodles of Akumetsu. However, after being influenced by Bartender's ending song, I started drawing that bar scene. Used the brush again, and...I think it looks pretty good.

Seven drawings in tonight's update.

That bumps us up to 288 drawings total.

But I should have 317 drawings by today.

I'm behind by 29. I'm getting there.

Under The Radar, I'm Reaching For the Sky

Title pulled from the lyrics to Sengoku Basara's opening theme.

Homework getting in my way. Homework stopping me from drawing more and catching up.

OH WELL.
Scene brainstorming and comic practice. Despite the building not exactly being...clean in terms of line quality, I like the way it looks. Also, multiple angles! I'm getting somewhere.

Just scribbles and doodles. There's more Capcom in this page than there is Sega. I've never been good at fanart, as I've said before, and Sonic is...kind of tough to draw. I can't figure his eyes out, and I keep giving him wonky expressions half the time. So much blue, though.

Quick sketches and brainstorming for villain designs. I should take a look at military uniforms, or something, and revisit these ideas.


More scene brainstorming and practice. I have a really hard time trying to depict action, which is what started me on drawing this page up...then the quality goes right down to Hell. That aside, I like the way the first panel turned out. I think the impact of the lead pipe comes across well.

I was listening to the final boss track from No More Heroes, "We Are Finally Cowboys," when I drew the first part of this page. That particular track always made me envision a scene like that - everything painted orange from the sunset, the hero riding valiantly atop a motorcycle...

Anyway, my head was still stuck on depicting action, so that birthed the rest of the page.

Brainstorming and design sketches for Rose Hero's villain. His hands look kind of weird in the bottom-center sketch.


Design ideas for the cowboy I'd drawn up several times before. The two bottom poses were drawn with loose, undetailed pencilwork, so they're...kind of off.

Many of these poses were drawn with the same procedure.

This was penciled weeks ago, and the page actually had a full sequence of panels on it before. Wanting to fill this sketchbook up completely, and not wanting to go with what I penciled before, I erased most of the panels and filled the rest of the space with doodles...only the bottom-right one being what I felt satisfied with.

This was penciled a week or so back, too. The strange thing about it is that as I was penciling it, I was instant messaged by a Knives cosplayer.

...I think it's safe not to ask anything about this one.

SO YEAH. That's ten drawings in today's update.


That bumps us up to 274 drawings total.

I'm supposed to have 306 by today.

I'm behind by 32. I could be making larger jumps in how much I'm catching up.

More Metal Than Flesh

It's true. There are more robots than there are humans in this update.

I think. Maybe.

But hey, look at that, I'm updating.

More character designs. It's Glyde again, from the Requiem storyline.
...I feel really iffy about the proportions. My brain apparently wasn't working when I drew those arms and hands.

More material for Requiem - designs for a mobile Artificial Intelligence unit. I'd scribbled up ideas for them before, and they were cylindrical, but the spherical design just seems more fun.

Even if the spherical design looks a lot like those black Pokeballs that Mewtwo creates in Mewtwo Strikes Back. Oh well. I can live with that. Especially when I have a robot with a metal sombrero in the upper right of that page.

CELEBRATING THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF SOMETHING AMAZING. MegaMan Legends 3 celebrations all around.

And subsequently screwing up proportions when I whine about Namco-Bandai making stupid localization choices regarding certain franchises.

Material for Rose Hero. Not sure if it really counts as brainstorming. This was more of just practice: drawing up a comic page for the sake of...drawing up a comic page. The dialogue's pretty bad, too.

I should really write some stuff out before I do this. It might turn out a lot better.

I CAN ONLY WONDER WHAT THIS IS FOR.
It's bothered me that when I picture grandiose, printed graphic novels of my work in the future, I don't have a concrete concept of title artwork. So I started playing around. The first logo at the top is more-or-less the same as the one that appeared on my senior project. The other two are totally new.

Meanwhile, I drew up the main cast on the left of the page. I think they look...pretty nice, actually. I'm proud. :D


SO THAT'S ALL FOR THIS UPDATE.

5 drawings. 234 drawings total, tonight.

I should have273 drawings by today, though.

Behind by 39 drawings. Not bad. I'm...I'm catching up. >_>