[ Small note: Most entries to this journal are now friends-locked. I know I said I wasn't going to lock it, but I changed my mind for several reasons. So if you want to read it, please add this journal as a friend and I'll add you back. :D ]

Because I've had a few people ask me about my page-making process, I thought I'd toss this together as I was working this morning. Uh, it's not really a tutorial so much as "here is how I do stuff", but if anyone has any questions about any of these steps I'll be happy to try to go into more detail.

Cut for obnoxious length and many pictures. :D

( Click for pictures~ )

-click on the thumbnail to see the full image-

Art

Remember the chickadee gryphons I mentioned in my last post? That got me thinking about them, so I decided to sit down and draw one.. except I got distracted halfway through drawing the head, and when I came back to finish it, somehow it ended up transforming into...this monstrosity, which I have dubbed the "chickasquirrel". Mostly because "chickasquirrel" is really fun to say.

I really think I need more sleep.

Total Time: 1 hour
Tools: Tablet, Photoshop
Finished?: Yuh

Rambling

I got nothin' today. Have a few links that may be of interest to a couple of you? =D

FreeRice - Everyone and their grandma has linked to this one, but it's still a good site to visit if you have some spare time on your hands (or you're trying to avoid doing the work that's keeping you from having spare time on your hands, like me).

Cheap Eats - A really cool blog about uh.. cheap food. If you're like me and you're on a massive food budget, you're probably really tired of rice and ramen noodles. :] There's a lot of good, inexpensive recipes here, along with some pretty fun to read reviews of foods.

Ugly Overload - I'm sure you've all seen or at least heard of Cute Overload - this site is like the antithesis of it. :] If you have a severe aversion to bugs, I'd suggest avoiding it, since he posts them up pretty often, but they're almost always accompanied by interesting factoids, and I've actually learned quite a bit by reading some of his posts.

The Comics Curmudgeon - If you're like me and you have pretty much lost all faith in newspaper-run comics, this site will make you laugh. It will probably make you laugh even if you love to read them. It's a daily blog in which he essentially just rags on various serial comics, and it's almost always hilarious.

Posemaniacs - A very useful reference site for artists, featuring about 2,000 different 3D-model poses that you can rotate. Print-screen to save them, as far as I can tell there's no way to just right-click.

K! I'll go away now. =D

-click on the thumbnail to see the full image-

Art

God, this next page has been absolutely killing me for some reason. I've been working on it all day and I feel like I'm getting nowhere, lol. Although, I'm really happy with how this panel came out, so I thought I'd share it at (close to) full size, since it'll be shrunk down to less than 50% of this size when the final page gets posted.

It's worth noting that the greenery in the background does not look nearly as cool when you're zoomed way in like this, har har har.

Think of it as a little preview, I suppose, if you see it before the page goes up at some point tomorrow. :D

Total Time: GOD I DON'T EVEN KNOW. TOO LONG FOR ONE PANEL .
Tools: Tablet, Photoshop
Finished?: Yes :|

Rambling
We sell this chair, at OfficeHell. You may have seen it. It's basically just a stiff, armless, curved block of fabric that they call a "gaming chair", mostly because it has speakers in the sides of it. Presumably you're supposed to plug your TV or whatever into the chair and have stereo music playing around your butt while you're gaming. I don't really get it, but that's beside the point.

The point is, that they currently have the floor model of this chair parked directly next to the copy center, which, as you may have gathered, is where I work. And of course, what good is a floor model, if it's not functioning so that people can see how it works? Anyway, normally they have it on the local pop radio station, which is not great, but tolerable. However, of course, in light of the season, they have been blasting Christmas carols from it. Non stop. For the last two weeks, and presumably, for the next four weeks as well.

We had no customers whatsoever tonight, so, in an attempt to entertain myself, I kept a checklist. Over the course of a six hour shift, various, horrible remixes of the following songs came up:

Frosty the Snowman: 9 times
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer: 5 times
Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree: 3 times
Jingle Bells: 10 times
We Wish You A Merry Christmas: 6 times
Do You Hear What I Hear: 13 times ( !!!! )
"New" Christmas Carols That Nobody Knows The Words To By Various Pop Singers: 8 times

...God, I hate Christmas music.

-click on the thumbnail to see the full image-

Art

I didn't draw this! The original version is here, and was drawn by rantz. I was just using it for coloring practice, and was pretty happy with how it came out. I'm sad to say that I really know next to nothing about Witchblade, so I just kind of guessed at most of the colors. :D

Total Time: 1.5 hours
Tools: Tablet, Photoshop
Finished?: Yes

Rambling
Black Friday at OfficeHell was pretty much as expected. They were apparently super-busy during the morning, but I didn't have to go in until 1pm, so I missed most of it. It was pretty much completely dead the entire time that I was there, so they ended up sending me home early.

Surprisingly, I only had one customer freak out at me, and it was over the phone. We had a sale going on, as a lot of places did, that was only effective from 7am to noon. After noon, all the prices reset back to their regular price (except for a few which remained on sale, but at a higher price). This customer called, first asking me what our policy on price matching was. I told him that we weren't matching prices that day, because of all the Black Friday sales going on, but if he'd like to come in Saturday we can do so. Of course, at this point, he starts getting snotty with me; the conversation went something like this:

Him: WELL, I went to your other store, but I was an hour late for the sale. So I missed the sale price.
Me: I'm sorry to hear that, sir. o_o
Him: What can I do about it?
Me: Um.. Nothing, the sale ended at noon. The prices aren't valid after that. If you want the item, you'll need to pay the full price.
Him: So you're telling me that I'm screwed, because I was late to the sale?!
Me: ...Yes.
Him: That's ridiculous, give me your number to corporate!
Me: xxx-xxx-xxxx.
Him: This is ridiculous! [hangs up after ranting in my ear for another two minutes]

I just don't understand why people feel like exceptions should be made for them in cases like this. It was made perfectly clear in the flyer and all of the advertisements that we sent out, the sale ends at noon. If you're late, tough cookies. You had a span of five hours in which to get yourself to the store - if you choose not to do so, that's not our problem. Chances are the item that he wanted was gone anyway, since we pretty much sold out of everything in the ad by noon.

Buh.

I saw this fun little survey in terioncalling's journal and had to snag it for myself. It's a series of survey questions, answered by five PT characters. You can find more info on the characters here, if you're confused.

Just as a warning, there are some very minor spoilers contained below.

1. Choose a few of your own characters. Five at the most.
2. Make them answer the following questions

( Cut for length! )

Oh, and happy Thanksgiving! Don't eat too much, or you might explode. Nobody wants that.

-click on the thumbnail to see the full image-

Art

This actually started out as a portrait of Winley (second down), but his mouth kept pissing me off, so I cropped it. Then, as you can see, I got carried away, as I tend to do. :D I actually had a lot of fun doing this, and I might do another one with the rest of the cast soon.

Erm, from top to bottom, Sort-of-Cai, Winley, Aisha, and Verya.

Total Time: ~1 hour
Tools: Tablet, Photoshop
Finished?: Maybe.

Rambling
PT is really the first full story that I've released to the public. I don't really have any experience whatsoever with writing comics, although I've been writing short (and, sometimes, painfully long) stories my whole life. Most of them I've never showed to anyone outside of high school teachers and a couple of friends. To that end, watching people's reactions to the characters in PT has really been interesting to me, and quite a learning experience. People like (and dislike) characters I didn't expect them to, and have been catching onto some plot elements a lot sooner than I expected (while completely missing others).

The reaction to Margensen, in particular, has been really fascinating to me. In the beginning of the comic, he's really kind of a background figure, and he doesn't really have that big of a role to play until a few chapters from now. Never in a million years did I expect as many people to latch onto him as they have. Without getting into spoilers (since I know most of the people reading this journal came from Drunk Duck), I'm curious to see what the reaction to him will be once his role becomes more apparent, and changes a bit.

To me, the real story is really just getting ready to start as chapter 3 ends. My favorite characters (Winley, Veyra, and M'aar) will finally have more than a background appearance once every twenty pages, and we'll finally start to get some background information on characters. :D

I'm looking forward to it, anyway. I really wish I could manage to update 2-3 times a week, because I kind of feel like things are dragging a little at one page a week. 3 updates a week is not going to happen anytime soon, but my plan is to try to get at least one panel finished (inked/colored) a day from here on out, which will either get me a buffer (finally) or allow me to update more often as I finish pages. We'll see how it pans out.

I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore, so I'll shut up now.

-click on the thumbnail to see the full image-

Art

I...really don't have much to say about this, it's really just some random anime elf that I doodled while we were dead at work.

THAT IS ALL.

Total Time: 20 minutes
Tools: Ballpoint Pen, Photoshop for texture
Finished?: ya.

Rambling
I've been awake since 6am, because I had to work this morning, and I have this compulsive need to get up at least five hours before I have to be at work. There's just something about getting up and going straight into work that's enough to ruin my entire day.

Plus, I'm too cheap to buy a hair dryer, and my hair takes about two hours to try on its own. More, when it's freezing cold out, as it is right now.

Anyway, yeah. Gonna sleep now.

-click on the thumbnail to see the full image-

Art

I'm not exactly sure about the anatomy involved in having an eye on your tongue, but I can't imagine it would be terribly comfortable. Or, for that matter, terribly useful, in the long run. Unless you had some particular reason that you needed to be able to see inside of your mouth.

Er, anyway, this really ended up coming out very dark, but when I tried to lighten it up, it didn't look as cool. So I just left it. This is what happens when I go into "fuck it all" mode and start playing with the dodge and burn tools. :[

Total Time: 45 minutes
Tools: Photoshop, Tablet
Finished?: Ah-yuh.

Rambling
You know, on my way home from work this afternoon, it occurred to me how wonderfully ironic it is when they play censored versions of Rage Against the Machine on the radio. Every time I heard them futilely raging "f**k you, I won't do what you tell me", I giggled. Well, apparently, Mr. De La Rocha, you will do what they tell you, when they're paying you thousands of dollars to play your angsty songs on the radio, at least.

But keep on stickin' it to the man! Power to the people!

Anyway,there was more that I was going to say, but it will have to wait unti lafter I curl up in bed and die for a few hours. I was okay all afternoon, but I think three hours of sleep is finally starting to catch up with me.

-click on the thumbnail to see the full image-

Art

This started out as a reference drawing, with the girl in the middle, but I gave up somewhere around ten seconds into the drawing and just started doodling. Of course, dragons ended up coming out. They always do, no matter how hard I try to keep them from doing so. :[

Total Time: 30 minutes
Tools: Photoshop, Tablet
Finished?: Yaa

Rambling
If you have the option, never ship through DHL. Seriously.

We offer shipping through them at my workplace, and really, they're awful most of the time, but today just kind of took the cake. A guy came in with his reciept, asking me why, when he got himself a rate quote over their website, it told him that it would cost him $12 to ship his package by ground, while we had charged him $38 in the store, for the same service. At first I thought maybe it was just our retail rate (since obviously we mark it up a bit so that we get some profit from shipping), but that's a pretty huge difference, so I tried to look into it for him.

First, I tried re-shipping a package of the same weight and dimensions as the one he had sent, to the same address, same insurance, same everything. DHL's shipping system proudly informed me of my total: $28.35. So now we have three different shipping quotes, for the exact same package.

Boggling, I told him to wait and I would call DHL's customer service and see what they said. The customer service guy took down all the information, typed it into his little system, even used our account number so that he would be sure he was shipping with the same rates... What did he come up with? $21.42. We now have four different shipping quotes, for the exact same package.

Why, I asked the customer service rep, would this be? I am as confused as my poor customer by this point, and would really like to have an answer to give him.

"I don't know," he tells me. "I'd tell you if I knew. Can I help you with anything else?"

And then he hung up on me while I was still boggling about DHL's complete inability to produce an accurate shipping quote. Honestly. I didn't have any idea what to tell the customer, and suggested that he give DHL a call himself and see if he can't get himself a fifth quote. Luckily, he was more amused by the whole thing than he probably should have been, and told me he'd let me know how many different quotes he could get before they got sick of him calling.

-click on the thumbnail to see the full image-

Art

Nothing too exciting, just a study of an old man's face. I used a reference, but by the end it pretty much ended up looking nothing like the reference. He wasn't a farmer when I started, I swear. o_o Well, anyway. I don't know what the hell the deer thing is. Maybe it's running up to attack the old guy or something. :D

Total Time: 30 minutes
Tools: Photoshop, Tablet
Finished?: Yup

Rambling
Bleh. I've been completely unmotivated all day today, and I really needed to get some work done. I've just been so lethargic and out of it for the last week or so, it's hard to motivate myself to actually sit down and work on stuff. I blame the cold weather, just because I can. :D

But yeah, really. Nothing interesting is going on.

-click on the thumbnail to see the full image-

Art

Done! :D He actually didn't take as much time as I though the would to finish. The leaves were kind of added in as an afterthought, and I'm not sure I like them too much, but it needed something in the foreground and I couldn't think of anything else to put there. *deep breath* Despite my deep hatred of this particular shade of purple, I still had fun with this piece, and I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Expect to see me prodding around with some more fan art in the future.

Total Time: 2 Hours
Tools: Photoshop, Tablet
Finished?: Yes :D

Rambling
This apartment complex kills me.

It's, like, November, right? Freezing cold outside, the grass is no longer growing, there's still a couple of leaves falling off of the trees now and then. 8 am this morning, they had the grounds crew outside, sweeping up leaves. Not only were they sweeping them off the ground, they were also sweeping them off of the roof. With their giant power sweepers. This would be okay, except for the fact that they just did this not a week ago, and there are hardly even any new leaves on the ground, because they have all fallen off of the trees already.

As soon as it starts snowing, as it is every year, all of these grounds workers will vanish, like the flowers, underneath the snow. Not a single one of them will be anywhere to be found as the snow piles up outside of people's apartments, making it impossible to walk to their cars without a grappling hook and mountain climbing gear. The road will not be plowed until somewhere around mid-February, after the cars have already crunched the snow down into its own little snow-road anyway.

However, if one single leaf should fall off of a tree, seventeen workers will appear out of nowhere and descend upon it instantly, all with their giant noisy leaf blowers,to make sure it doesn't sully the look of the apartment complex.

Sigh.

-click on the thumbnail to see the full image-

Art

I don't really know what these things are. I was actually messing around with brushes in Photoshop, trying to make something that looked like a pencil, and got a little carried away when I started drawing hair, as I tend to do. Drawing stuff like this makes me realize exactly how little I actually know about anatomy. I usually just start fudging around with lines and hope for the best. :D

Total Time: 20 minutes
Tools: Photoshop, Tablet
Finished?: Yeah.

Rambling

I'm currently wearing three pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, two turtlenecks, a sweater, a pullover, and a hat. And I am still cold. I hate winter almost as much as I hate summer. I really need to find a climate that goes straight from spring to fall, and then right back to spring again. This whole "four seasons" system is really not working out for me.

Work tonight. Is it sad that I'm looking forward to going in because the building is heated?

-click on the thumbnail to see the full image-

Art

Ironically, the first thing I'm putting up here is fan art. I never really do fan art, at all, but I got to thinking a while back that maybe doing some would be a good exercise for me, since I don't really have a whole lot of experience interpreting other people's characters. Hence, this. The Persona/SMT series is one of my favorites, and there's a whole buttload of different monster designs from it that I really love, so I figured it would be a good place to start.

So here's little Black Frost, because I always found him cuter than the regular Jack Frost. He's not done yet, this is just inked and flatted at the moment. I'll be coloring him and posting progress as I go along. :D

Total Time: ~45 minutes
Tools: Photoshop, Tablet
Finished?: Not yet!

Rambling

First post~ :D

I've mostly just started this blog for myself and anyone else who might, for whatever reason, be interested in my doodles. I'm also planning on posting "stages" of drawings here (like this one). Sketching is something that I don't do nearly enough of, so I'm hoping that keeping a log like this will help motivate me to do a little more of it. It's unlikely there will be any friends-only entries here, but feel free to add me as a friend anyway if you so desire, and make me feel loved. :D