Let's Send More Fan Art!

    Someday I would like to live in South Korea and still be able to work as a storyboard artist.  I also enjoy music videos, and Kpop.  To be able to do that someday requires connections and knowledge of the industry.  In that case the fan art idea is a good way to try find some information really quickly, like who is in charge of the ideas for the music videos, are storyboards used, etc.  Therefore this fan art thing is going to be a continuing project.  In fact, it is really no different than what I am doing with the Joss Whedon networking attempt, but for South Korea Kpop.

       To start off with I am choosing artist I really like, because it is easier for me to come up with an idea that could connect with them.  For a project like this,  having something that connects with them means they will like it a lot more and be more eager to respond.   Otherwise it will just be another random piece of fan mail.  So, when it comes time to send stuff to artist that I don't follow often, I will have to do a lot of research on them.

       An example is the drawing that I am going to send to Ailee.

and of course this image apparently still needs to be cleaned up more.

        I have followed Ailee's career a little so I had a little bit of an idea of what to add. First off being that she is known for having a very powerful voice.  So my first idea is to show her voice being very powerful.  I then added things relating to her videos, and pet pomeranion,  to make the image seem more impressive.  Basically it is the idea of easter eggs in video games.  Like the others this is still a quicker image that I did the final pencil and inking for in a few hours.  Basically something that can be worked on at the end of the day, or with a couple of free hours.  Now I just need to package it up, and have it wait to be shipped along with the drawings for Miryo and Narsha.

 The critque:

        -  The composition is okay.  It would look better if I put a background on there and added some random things, but that would take a lot more time.  The perspective is solid and everything is readable.  Also the line work looks better than the other ones I did.  That is because I used pencil blue line for the line work and pen blue line for the perspective grid.  Best idea yet!

        -  I used a Zebra brush pen for the first time on this.  I like the fact that there is less jitter with my strokes, but there is not much flexibility with the line width.  

Let's Send Fan Art!

      A long time ago before this post, two members of my favorite Kpop group formed a sub unit called M&N.  These two artists happen to be Miryo and Narsha.  Needless to say, the fan girl in me squealed to very high lengths.  Even better, was when I found out that they had released an English remix of their song.   This made me very happy.  So I decided to send them a drawing as a way of saying thank you, and try to turn it into an attempt to found out information about making Music Videos in South Korea.

So first off I did some practice drawings and sketched out some ideas.

Afterwards I did a "working version" then I scanned and printed off a final version.  In the end I decided to send both versions to them since I would just wind up throwing it away to save space.

 I wrote letters, explaining the images, and asking questions that hopefully they will answer.

Then they got wrapped up and ready to be shipped.  Pretty much in the same way I did the Korra fan art that I sent, to Mike, Bryan, and Bill Rinaldi. So now it is just sitting under my bed waiting until the day that I can afford international shipping charges.

I had to wrap the images in old pillow cases because I had run out of newsprint.

The Critique:

- The idea is to create a cute image that will stand out form all the fan mail the artist already get and makr them want to answer the questions that I asked them.  In which case, I believe that it has the potential. to be successful.

- Artwork:  

            - In one of the images, it looks like I broke on e of the chibi's neck. Even with these being completely unrealistic, that will still look off.  However, I do believe I managed to get a likeness for each artist so that when they see it, they will know who each chibi is supposed to be,

            -  My attempt at hand lettering these was horrible.  It seems that I still haven't learned my lesson about that.

            -  My biggest issue is with the line work.  It is scratchy, and just looks bad.  That is actually because of a tool issue, 

                      These are non-photo blue pens, and boy do I love them!  I started using them while working on assignments while finishing up my degree. I love the fact that they don't erase, because I would always lose all of my structure line when trying to fish an image.  However the also indent the paper, and this causes a big issue with inking over top of them.  They are the reason that my final line art looks so bad.  Therefore they are now delegated to perspective grids and sketching.

                 - Overall I am not entirely dissatisfied with the outcome of this project, except for the inevitable long wait for shipping it.  These are meant to be quick drawings, that are still cute and well-done.  Despite the issues, I can easily live with how these turned out.  Will they reach them? Probably.  Bill Rinaldi got his artwork form and he even posted it on his tumbler page.

A Creepy Story for Stlaking pt.1

My next assignment for my Seqa class is a creepy stalker horror story.   So of course I brainstormed first.

It is a toss up between a space, Lovecraftian horror stalking a ship, and a monster stalking a guy and a prostitute only for the prostitute to eat the male before he does.

The difficulty in the space idea is showing the horror stalking the ship with very little objects to hide behind.  So I am going to catch my professor after class with some quick thumbnails to try and figure it out and get his opinion on it.

        Here are the thumbnails for the Space horror idea.  Now I just need to wait for his class to be finished for me to talk to hum about it.

My Very Own Odd Couple pt.2

So in the end, this is how my pages turned out.

   

I don't have time to go int too much about the process but these were a huge mess to deal with as alway.  Also never let the fact that you are working digitally let yo think you can messily place your spot blacks.  You still have to go in and clean that shit up.

                     The top image is inked traditionally.  It did not go as smoothly as I had hoped.  Also, at 3 a.m. I went back to my room to print out the blue line for the second page and my printer ran out of ink.  This was a poor decision process wise.  I had planned on messing with the figure in the second page before inking and ran out of time.  So in the end I had to ink the second  page digitally.  While these provides an interesting comparison, it doesn't really do well when submitting the assignment.

My Very Own Odd Couple pt.1

So for a class assignment, we had to create our very own odd couple and a two page comic that shows what their life is like.  I chose a straight bishounen character and a manly, gay man.   Here are the pencilled pages.

I had to really rush these pages.  They were mostly done over the course of  24 hours, and it really shows.  The story is that the gay man's mother is visiting, and the bishounen character is constantly hitting on her.  The mother eventually leaves and the bishounen character's younger brother is suddenly entranced by the gay man.


   

These are the error corrections I want to make.  However these also need to be fully inked by Teusday, and I have to work Saturday.

The Class Assignment that is Two Pages Pt.6

So the pages got finished and this is how they turned out.

The critique:

           - I am not very happy with how these turned out in the end.  Storytelling wise it's fine.  But there are many things that could have been better.

           -  The silhouettes get lost and were confused some of my class mates.  

           -  I completely forgot to change the panel borders for the flashback sequence. which really confused some people.  Also it was completely unnecessary to do a flashback sequence to begin with.  It would have been simpler to just do the meatball crash first.  I was making things too complicated and you always keep things simple to tell a good story.

            - I used a digital pencil brush to pencil it to save time, and I do not like how it looks at all.  

            - I was too focused in having the cool looking brain panel and lost the silhouette of the alien in it.  Which is pretty much focusing more on a coll looking panel versus storytelling.  that is something that I have gotten frustrated with a number of people for.  Rookie mistake basically.

            -  Also as it was brought up in class, I have no textures in this.  So I definitely need to work on that..

            - The biggest issue was time management.  I spent so much time on the preliminary stages that I got behind and had to rush the pages.  I could have easily saved time by just sketching out the alien silhouettes,  or not obsessing so much on that one part of it. 

             

            

The Class Assignment that is Two Pages Pt.5

       To get started, I need to create the panel layout for my pages.  To do this, I like to use Illustrator.  I have always found Illustrator much easier for working and manipulating things like text and border, as well as quickly changing the size of whatever I am working on.  I am going with the second run of thumbnails.

 The first thing I do is import the image into Illustrator.  I made sure the art board was the same size as the image, and locked it.

From there I used the rectangle tool to create the panels that I needed.  There are in red so that I can see them easier among the scribbles, but it is easy enough to change to black.

I wanted standard, even, 1/4" gutters throughout the page. To help me with this, I created a 1/4 in by 1/4 in box.

This is a trick that I picked up while making my resume in InDesign.  It makes it really for managing even spaces without having to use a ruler.  Like so.

Simple, easy, and no math required.  Then I just save it as an Illustrator file, and copy and paste it to the page in Photoshop as a vector smart object.  

Now on to the drawing.