Yukiko 2010 & Avvie

First and foremost:
Happy New Years!
I hope all of you guys are having a marvelous winter. :)
That being said...

It's about time I made myself a new ID for my deviantART. Seriously, the one I was using before was a sketch a did on whim so I could have an ID. Needless to say, I spent way more time on this.

Oh yeah, and don't know if I said this, but I found on the openCanvas website that they opened up a sister site, PGN Community, and the cool thing about this is that you can upload your event files and it'll actually play 'em. So here's the first entry on the site:
Event File.

I had the concept for the picture for a while. Back around August, I actually had another sketch planned out that I was going to use for my new ID.

EDIT: Found an even older concept!

Yukiko 2010 Sketch 1

Didn't like it so much, but I wanted to keep my stuffed animals in the back. So I tried again.

Yukiko 2010 Sketch 2

I wasn't too fond of that, though. I did like the whole "drawing on my page" concept, though. So I drew a new one but put Yukiko in a different pose.

Yukiko 2010 Sketch 2

The clothes on both these pictures are pretty much the same ones (as they're actually clothes I wear).

I outlined and coloured the picture during a family dinner party. With any kind of dinner party my parents throw, my sister and I would just finish our food early, and stay locked up in our rooms until dessert or something. In the meanwhile, I had lots of time to finish this:

Yukiko 2010

I'm actually quite proud of how this came out. I don't have a set palette or anything for skin so most of the time, the tones get a little funky looking. Here, the skin's nice and bright, and I love the technique I used to blot the colours in.
Skirt and hair's also nice (the skirt especially just for the folds).
But yeah, really, when I finished the picture I was like, "OMG, did I ever improve! If I keep it up, at this rate, I might actually produce stuff coloured pro-like!"

In total, from the final sketch to the colouring, I'd say the picture took about less than a day to complete.


Sketched on scrap paper with mechanical pencil.
Coloured in openCanvas.
Writing done in Photoshop.

Also, heyy, new avatar!

Floating on Heart Bubbles

The name kind of just appeared. There's really no reason I called it that, especially since it's a heart balloon, there's only one, and she's not floating on, she's floating by.

However, stupid deviantART's size limit forced me to make it lose a lot of weight, so the animation's a lot faster on my actual avvie there.


Made in MS Paint.
Animated in Photoshop.

SF-A2 miki

Can't believe I haven't uploaded this one yet, hah! Well, here it ish.

Say hello to SF-A2 miki, or SF-A2 開発コード miki as she is called by on the box.

SF-A2miki

Event File

Not much to say about her, but I do like her box art. Don't have much to say about her songs either, except her Engrish isn't bad (probably the best I've heard from a Japanese Vocaloid thus far). But if I had to choose my favourite song from her, I'd probably go with Fragile Snow for being the first song Google results came with.

The drawing itself is really old, probably done somewhere near the start of summer. Originally, I wanted to make her in time for AE, but I was preoccupied with making things people would actually want to buy. Well, recently, I decided to dredge up her old OC4 file and finish her up.

Kind of like the background, even if it's half-assed. The colours I used were nice, especially how the yellow circles pop against the blue and background.


Made in openCanvas.

Purple Doodles

One day, I looked at my sketch folder and thought to myself, "Huh, I don't have enough of those to go around."

Not much to say about this picture, besides I was obviously trying to limit myself with colours, but I thought the pink was needed, for, you know, difference's sake.

Thought I'd try out oekaki again, too. Ever since I got openCanvas, I've (regretably?) transition towards it.
Now that I actually used oekaki again, I understand why now.

Man, I thought I improved, too! I suppose in respects of drawing abilities and shading, but in terms of utilizing the program: still fail.

Really, out of all the three main oekakis (Oekaki BSS, Paint BBS, and Shii Painter), Shii Painter is probably my favourite. For one: I like their pen brush, have more brushes in general, and can have multiple layers. Paint BSS on the other hand, though probably the most popular, only has a crappy pencil and watercolour tool and two layers, so it is kind of annoying. I still don't understand how some people make such pro lineart - or any pro pictures at all. Oekaki BSS... there's a reason no one uses this when given the choice.

I think the main reason that I chose to go back to oekaki was I figured I'd go remake one of my old pictures. They did look pretty bad:

My first oekaki - most likely the first CG picture I didn't do on paint!

Shut up, man! That was done with my mouse, okay? No fancy tablet stuff!


First picture made on openCanvas.
Second picture made on Paint BSS.

Vocaloid Series (Sorta?): Zatsune Miku

Zatsune Miku

You know that I must've been really bored nowadays to actually do something art-wise, especially if the medium is traditional. Yes, that's right, more watercolours!

You see this over-occurring theme of hair fading into a purple shade so that I can avoid properly shading it? And zero skin shading, too?

Well, luckily for me, Zatsune's colours are predomidently black and red. The purple is just there to look cool, but on the fanmade box picture, the background is purple/magenta so I'm sure it fits.

Alrighty, so what I do like: the shading on her sleeves, and her right foot (the one coming out at us).
As for what I don't like: the sloppy hair, the nonexistent colour on her shit, and the "Z" in the top right-hand corner I didn't bother to take out among other things.

I've been wanting to do fanart of the evil Miku for a while, but with my laziness with the rest of the Vocaloids, I didn't get much time to do so. I decided to draw her in watercolours because I wanted, for once, to paint something simple, yet give it more "form" than with my other pictures. Plus, it's full bodied.
Yes, this picture was supposed to be "simple". Didn't turn out that way necessarily, though.

Considering to go a CG rendition of Zatsune regardless of being able to check her off my fanart list, but oh well. We'll see if I ever get around to that.


Made on “watercolor paper” pad, coloured with Talens transparent watercolours.

I need some real watercolour paper which doesn’t warp so badly

EDIT: I guess this is the last time I'm using Live Writer to import my Picasa pictures. I guess back to writing posts on Blogger, not like anyone should care.

Gah, I’m so bored nowadays. Ever since break started I’ve been doing nothing except watching cheezy Christmas specials on TV. Ugh, I might explode from the cheeziness. So to prevent myself from completely short circuting from the stupidness, I decided to do art, because I forgot I had the ability to art.

Here you go, guys. More fun with watercolours.

She’s eating the blue thing, can you tell?

Oh, here’s the tell-tale extreme paper warping due to watercolours. And I was actually using a “water colour” paper pad, but I should’ve know that trusting anything from Daiso was a bad idea. Oh well; real watercolour is too expensive for me.

The hair I cheaped out on, and did the same technique I used for one of my older pictures. Though the floral patterns on her arms, hair, and cheeks were tedious, but quite worth it in the end. I love that meticulous stuff, don’t you?

This was supposed to be a piece of “emotional art”, but it didn’t turn out so well. It’s still the nicest watercoloured picture I have, though!

Yup, and now I ruined my nice, white, nylon paint brush by permanently staining it with purples and blues (come on, doesn’t watercolour wash off?!).

And in addition, I also did some CGing! My word, what has the world become?!

 Granted, it’s cell-shaded and done pretty crappily. If you expanded the picture, you’ll see how much I didn’t care about the cell-shading.

What I hate about oC is how the whole thing just started slugging  when I try to select something and I just abandon the idea and just wing the shading, hoping nothing goes onto other parts.

I didn’t even bother with the cape! Bleh!

I have no idea who that’s supposed to be. Lets just say its Little Red Riding Hood and call it a day. It’s ambiguous enough to be anyone in a red cape.

Another thing to note:

Yes, I didn’t finish one picture, nor did I finish two picture, but I finished three pictures today! Granted, it was an old CG I started back before summer and most of it was done already, I can now check it off my to do list! It’s excess from my Vocaloid fanart project I’m currently failing at because there’s so many new stupid Vocaloids being made, that I can’t keep up.


First picture made on “watercolor paper” pad.
Coloured with Talens transparent watercolours ”

Second picture made in openCanvas.

Studies, among other things...

Started off as an animation reel kind of thing, evident in the awkwardly posed people at the top running around. She was the main focus of the picture, until I decided to do some studies. I think I did quite a good job on the muscles, personally, but it may be because I copied it off the screen (not literally, but close enough).

Then I told myself, "Hey, why don't I just continue doing some animal studies? I mean, I do need the help."
That gave birth to this:

It really is a shame that I forgot to scan this picture in in colour! I love colouring muscles in! The feline had colour-coded muscles, in fact.

The bird heads look awkward, to say the least. Actually, every animal's head, if I decided to include one, looks awkward. Exception to this are the skull heads (my personal favourite is the skeleton dog head). Yup, I already forgot everything I studied on the sheet. I guess more naked-animal drawing for me.

I also have a NSFW picture, but being NSFW (not like anyone visits here, much less during work) it will be for my eyes only. :)


Drawn with pencil on scrap printer paper.

Chocolate Microwave Mug Cakes

Because I’m a nice kid, I like to give things away in the spirit of Christmas. Teachers usually are on my gift list. However, this year due to lack of preparation and funds, I was at a loss of what to give.

Cue chocolate microwave mug cakes.

Okay, so I got this ingenius idea of giving my teachers, as the name implies, a cake baked in a mug. I was going to decorate it so it looked like hot chocolate or what not. Plus, once they were done eating it, they were left with a cheezy Christmas mug I found lying around the house (that I soon learned was supposed to be a gift never given).

This recipe is so easy that I can recite it by memory:

Chocolate Microwave Mug Cakes

• Mug
• 4 tbsp flour
• 4 tbsp white sugar
• 2 tbsp cocoa
• Pinch of salt
• 1 egg
• 3 tbsp milk
• 3 tbsp oil
• 3 tbsp chocolate chips
• Splash of vanilla extract
• Marshmallows (optional)

Directions

1. Add dry ingredients together (that includes sugar) in the mug. Mix.
2. Add egg. Mix.
3. Add milk and oil. Mix.
4. Add chocolate chips and vanilla. Mix.
5. I personally poured out a little less than 1/3 of the batter into another cup to maximize my cheapness and to prevent too much overflow. This is dependant on how big your mug is, and if you care.
6. Put mug in the microwave and cook it on high for 1 and a half minutes. The batter will rise out of the mug, which is fine, as it’ll fall once you take it out. However, I would keep a close eye to any batter spilling over the sides, in which case I would stop the microwave, whip off the side, and continue cooking.
7. Stick a toothpick through the cake and see if it comes out clean.
8. For my mug cakes, I covered the top with marshmallows while the cup was still hot so it’d melt a little and thus hold its place. I was hoping that the melted marshmallow gloop would play the role of frosting in the sense of retaining moisture.

Yes, it may sound fishy that I actually don’t know how the whole thing tastes, but from the slice I had lopped off from an overflowing top tasted pretty good. It’s chocolate and moist. I would think the bottom of the cake isn’t completely baked, maybe even like a lava cake, but that’d be even better.

Yup, sorry for no picture! Forgot to take one! Not like that it looked impressive anyways. It was just cake in a cup wrapped in clear plastic.