A Lil Bit Of Progress!

At the beginning of this summer I basically had the inability to draw anything from my head proper but decided to work on it, hence the figure sketches I posted in an earlier blog! I have no pictures to upload as I am quite comfy where I'm sitting at the moment and plugging my phone into my PC to upload pics would involve moving. After a unanimous 'no' vote from every part of my body it was decided I would stay put while I write this post!

I can currently draw almost any body pose I can think of of both the male and female forms and have made alot of progress on hands after combining several other peoples methods into a way which works best for me! I am quite pleased with myself and hope to get the last piece of the puzzle down this week: faces!

Once I get faces down I should in theory be able to draw most rough figures and expressions I can imagine and from there it should be a case of refining details. While this might not seem a huge deal for most people, and I might not be very good compared to most I have progress alot from where I was at the start of the holidays so I am quite happy with my progress currently!

I have alot more I want to write about other plans and stuff in relation to digital art but I have the attention span of a goldfish lately so I am going to do something else. (I've literally been bouncing between different things constantly and have trouble concentrating, I blame holidays going on too long!) I may post a second post tonight with pictures and other things but I shall leave this post as it is for now! ^_^ (wow i said 'post' alot in that last sentence!!)

Summer Rantings!

So in between drawing and playing games I've been pretty bored lately! And when I get bored or go for a long period of time without communicating with another human being I tend rant! So I have decided to do a quick post on one of my most recent rants for you the viewers of my blog! Granted the viewers of my blog are mostly some weird Russian bot thing but that's another story entirely!

So basically in WoW certain groups of Swe's and Dane's get fascinated when they encounter an Irish person! Probably because they are sick of talking to other Swe's and Dane's the whooooooooole time so I don't really blame them! If that came across racist then you are reading into it too much!! ^_^

So this is the third paragraph in a row I've started with 'so' and I usually try and avoid repetition but its nearly 8 in the morning and I havn't slept yet, (doing an all nighter to try fix my sleeping, been going to bed at 6 or 7 in the morning for the last ages!). This paragraph is a PRIME example of a rant, not the most fantastic of rants but it is a rant none-the-less! This paragraph has gone so off topic that I am going to create a new paragraph to discuss the topic that this paragraph was initially meant to be about!

So (4th!!) they (one in particular, a Swe!) always wanted to hear me say via Ventrillo, "I'll crush you like a worm"! Even though the accent they used to say it was Scottish and not Irish but then Danes and Swes sound the same to me too so I let that slip! Anyway, long story short, after maybe three years of this the Swe who kept asking me to say it eventually heard me say it!

That's basically a bit of required back story needed to understand the upcoming rant! I shall post some  a screenie with the chat log of said rant then retype it in the blog as I made lots of spelling mistakes as I was typing and sending the messages very fast!! It is probably also difficult to follow the conversation in the screenshot for anyone unfamiliar with using Warcraft chat :)

Clicky for full size :) Or just skip down to the easy to read version below ^_^ Also my mage says hi =D

Basically I was up all night at this point and Cid was the first person to log. I got overexcited when I saw signs of life and this is what ensued ^_^

Me: they call him Cid
Me: dunu nununu
Me: the guy with a kid
Me: duno nunununu
Me: and he biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid
Me: ba badibaba
Cid: im naked (thats like his catchphrase)
Me: on the AH (auction house) for a couple of quid
Me: doo doo doo doo donuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Me: yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah *deep bass voice*
Cid: are you on mushrooms?
Me: if I was there would be more colors
Me: only grey here
Cid: xD
Me: fucking Ireland
Cid: the crushing worm land
Me: we crushed the worms
Me: then the worms crushed us
Cid: indeed
Me: we were a peaceful folk once
Cid: now you're just a liability to the world
Cid: lies!
Me: legend has it that some Swe provoked one of our kind via an internet communication device to begin our assault on the worms
Me: it took many months for the Irish to oblige but eventually he crushed that worm
Me: and so it begun
Me: days, weeks, months passed. the worms had no retaliated
Me: we thought it had blown over, that they had already forgotten
Cid: hahah wtf
Me: we were wrong.....
Me: the worms were gathering their numbers, slowly biding their time waiting to strike
Cid: very wrong.....
Me: then it happened, the worms unleashed their fury and we, yes US the Irish, we were the ones being crushed
Me: there was an old saying once
Me: told to me by a retarded old man
Me: "I'll crush you like a worm"
Me: with recent events that saying has changed
Me: "I'll crush you like you're Irish"
Me: and so we come to this day
Me: where I am talking to you
Me: and you are wondering what the fuck is going on
Me: and quite frankly I have no idea
Me: =D
Cid: hahah
Cid: amazing
Cid: you should write a book Tom
Me: I've been getting that alot lately actually xD been randomly ranting alot, fucking summer....
Cid: hehe it was an amazing story I must say
Me: :3

Thats just one of numerous rants that I've had this week that I'm quite proud of! The most recent one being above! Also had a rant at Cleverbot yesterday that which involved a Pikachu and ended in a cup of tea and a light sabre battle, and was involved in a collaborative rant about why you shouldn't piss off a grapefruit, both of which were quite fun! ^_^

Fan Art in Progress!

I've gone a bit slack at updating this lately as I've either been doodling or doing musical! It's  a little after 3 in the morning now and I've just arrived home from the musical which I left for sometime after 6 this evening! That should give a bit of an idea of the time it takes up when its on =D Last night of it tomorrow though so I hope to keep this more up to date for the rest of the summer! ^_^

WARNING!!: From this point onwards the post gets very nerdy! Continue reading at own risk!!!

I am currently working on some fan art in an attempt to get better at drawing and painting and such! It will be a World of Warcraft themed fan art and it will be base on one of my very own characters in the game! My Forsaken undead mage!

This is what said forsaken mage looks like in game :)

I want to try and theme the picture around the class itself and the history of the forsaken. So what is there to know about both of those things?

A mage is a spellcaster and master of 3 schools of magic. Arcane, Frost and Fire! In game you choose to specialize in one of these 3 schools but you have access to the spells from the others aswell. A mage deals high amounts of damage while controlling its enemies from a distance! It even has spells to turn its enemies into sheep/rabbits/penguins for a short period of time!

I'd like to get a sense of the elements it controls in my picture, however what I'd most like to get across is a sense of the Forsaken's history as a people!

A Brief Lore Lesson!

In their former lives, before the grasps of undeath, the Forsaken were the living breathing residents of the human kingdom of Lordaeron. This was until they were betrayed by a prince of their kingdom which resulted in their deaths. They were then risen into undeath and bound to serve the will of the very ones responsible for slaying them. This was to be their eternal destiny were it not for another being who shared a similar fate to them.

The ruins of the Lordaeron. The Forsaken now live in the sewers beneath their former home.

Lady Sylvanas, the Banshee Queen, once a high elf in life, was also bound to serve the same master's as the Forsaken. In a moment of weakness, Sylvanas was able to break free of his will and managed to free the forsaken also. Doing this returned many memories the Forsaken had about their past lives and granted them their free will. This however would not be the end of their torment.

A statue of Sylvanas and an example of a Forsaken style building.

Their bodies were now rotten and decayed. Bones often protruded from their abdomens and some of them were even missing limbs (which some would replace with the limbs off corpses). Humans saw them as nothing more then the mindless undead they once were during their slavery, it mattered not that they retained their memories or free will or that they had died in defence of their human kingdom. They were shunned by a race they died protecting, cast out by loved ones, forsaken by society.

The Forsaken pledged themselves to their saviour, Lady Sylvanas. With her, they worked to create an existence free from the living who would have them destroyed. 

"Forsaken culture is strange, a perverse combination of the lives they once knew as mortals and the mindless slavery they experience in the Scourge, colored by white-hot rage towards the Lich King and an almost equally intense devotion to their queen. Never sleeping, eating or falling ill, abandoned by those they once loved, the Forsaken have a brutal set of priorities."   - http://www.wowwiki.com/Forsaken

I love how tragic their history is and how misunderstood the origins of the race are. At first glance they seem like mindless undead but there is much more to them then that.

And lastly to end this post I have two quick photoshops I did with a model editor and some screen shots in game to try get some ideas from. This is literally just cutting and pasting images together and adding effects as a quick way of trying to get some concepts! All credits for the below (and above) images goes to the Blizzard artist's who work on World of Warcraft!

My mage over a forest effected by arcane magic.

Same model of my mage used again. Corpse of Sylvaas is at his feet (she isnt dead by lore however!) and the floor shows the  designs on the ground of Lordaeron throne room!

And for anyone wondering, yes this is another cookie post ^_^ And no you will never see said cookies but at least you have the pleasure of knowing you deserve cookies!

Character Development

I've gotten big into Marvel lately, though I imagine with the Avengers and whatnot I'm probably not the only one! Was sick most of the week so I watched nearly every film with a Marvel tag on it and have even started reading some of their online comics and admiring the artwork. Some of them are really amazing!

I always wanted to bring my own ideas and characters I have made up to some sort of life for my own amusement so I have decided to do so with the spare time the summer has given me! Below are a series of figure sketches I have done to try and get good at drawing a human figure in a variety of poses!

My first attempt at sketching figures, keeping the poses fairly simple.

A later attempt at figure sketching, making the poses a little more diverse and playing a little with perspective. I also made the shape of the figure less bulky as I wanted it to look more athletic and agile.

I also redrew a pose I liked in particular and and doodled with it. Added a bit of a cape just to practice drawing material draped off a figure and add some effects. The character I have in mind has contorl over the air so thats the direction i was going when I was doodling! ^_^

Added some effects and a cape. The design of my character will not have a cape but he may wear a cloak (similar to the ones in Lord of the Rings) from time to time. I also tried to ass effects to seem like hes controlling the air or at teh very least has power of some sort coming from him xD

I am hoping to get good enough to create any pose I can think of and then work on building proper details and costumes etc. when I am happy with my progress on the figures poses and dimensions. I have plenty of stories and such in my head already so I'm just trying to develop my drawing to a point where I'm happy I can illustrate them proper ^_^

Just Bob!

So I have recently discovered you can make additional pages other then the main home one! Considering I've been following and reading blogs on this that also have multiple pages it is probably something I should have discovered ages ago but whatever ^_^

I have decided to add a gallery page which will be comprised purely of sketches that appear in my blog, along with the link to each sketches corresponding biog post!

Below is a sketch I started last night as a bit of an exercise  purely for the sake of getting used to drawing faces again. Its been over a year since I have tried to accurately draw someones features and I haven't done so before with a mechanical pencil.

For the exercise I asked Robert (he lets me call him Bob as we are close) to do a quick pose for me. As he had his Iron Man facial hair on as hes currently filming Iron Man 3 I thought it appropriate to also do a sketch of the Iron Man mask alongside him.

Bob isn't smiling as he was a little upset that he could only visit for one night due to my hectic schedule. He even offered to put filming Iron Man 3 on hold but I couldn't free any time slots =(

Also this is not fan art. I am not a fan, Bob just happens to be a very close friend of mine....

Unfinished Drawing and Giant Cookies!

I was working on a drawing so I'd have something to upload onto this that was mine! I was going to wait till it was finished to upload it but I've got asked to do stuff today which will take up any drawing time I do so i probably wont get it done for a few weeks so I shall upload what I have done so far! ^_^

Clicking on it should make it bigger! Might try to get a better quality upload tomorrow! 

Thats my progress so far! Not sure what else will be put in it as I'm making it up as I go along but it is quite fun ^_^

Theres a flying city (probably put into my head from Final Fantasy!) in the top left, and a grounded city with hellfire(or something more lethal then rain) raining down on it.

I'm not 100% happy with the quality of the picture so I will probably try again in the daylight. This yellow light in my room was not made for taking pictures in!

In a few weeks I hope to have lots of concept sketches, and a rather large painting (will be about 8 feet wide)! I shall also have lots of little random stories from my painting ventures in the hall also! Not much happens in the house so its hard to think of things to post sometimes =D

Also I have become aware that there has not been a cookie offer in any of my recent posts! So just this once a GIANT COOKIE will be given to one person! So the 1 millionth person to read this post will get said cookie... unless I get hungry in the meantime.... or bored.... or both! ^_^

Edit:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuBMSTmjFBshEC7dlSos_ZZoe5zZpgF0KR3Pw0UX8kBZ1NneyIzLGmRpOjgEVLNthac3YQFj9KoHkRYIL2HRX-EnDowoBDetTgx7OoMRSXj3h2zFX6neW8bhqct1kgG-nyqZTv9EosRXQ/s1600/IMG_0637.JPG

Link to the full sized version of the image :) (still horrid quality!)

An Unexpected Guest!

Time for a quick update ^_^

Alot harder keeping this up to date then I had thought, even when I'm on and off a pc all day and on one for most of the night! I have however been trying to keep myself mostly occupied =D

I cut the grass the other day! Usually a boring tedious task with little to no news or adventures however while I was cutting said grass a visitor arrived! Sure he was a bit smelly and walked around like he owned the place but he was an awesome visitor none-the less!

Before we get into the details of the visitor I would like to mention that at this point I stopped writting to try kill what i thought was a bug on my screen. It turned out it was merely the down arrow on the post editor. If any official blogger person happens to pass by I'd like to request this arrow be made less bug-like to save others from the same humiliating faith as I.

Anyway as I was saying, we had a totally awesome smelly visitor the other day! Introducing....

Percy the Pug!!

Percy the Pug! Or he looks like a Percy anyway, or maybe a Patrick I'm not quite sure. That said I do believe he was actually a she but thats irrelevant, she's a Percy now!

Not the most interesting thing ever but I've never actually seen a pug before (not including television!) so I found it quite cool! Totally made my day anyway ^_^