Castle Designing

A pretty integral part of my thesis project is Daimon Castle, the last remaining safe haven for the Fae. I've really been getting into brainstorming about the design of the castle, and its getting easier and easier to see it in my head and on paper. Above are a few quick value studies of a street scene, day and night. Bellow are more concepts, and prop ideas. I like the idea of keeping some of the silhouette shapes close to a grove of mushrooms, kind of symbolic through the story.

Whats a Fairy Kingdom look like anyway? Luckily I have some really amazing influences, like Final Fantasy 9, World of Warcraft, Castles of Ireland, Allan Lee, Tangled... so many amazing artists and references to look at, they have helped me understand structures and design so much. Developing architecture and settings has always been somewhat of a challenge for me, but I feel more confident with it every day! I hope to take everything I see and push it further into my own style and fantasy world. I know that when Im actually drawing out the castle in panels there wont be a set recipe for how to do it, but thinking up all the different elements and designs I hope strengthens my idea of the setting when I get to it. So on that note, back to dreaming up more ideas. Taa~

Page and Process

I've been working on continuing the color for my story, with this page being the third and title page. It follows like so bellow (sorry no words or title in these images, just the art. Just remember that Daniel is really grumpy, and Air is so not.)

I think these pages have come quite a long way from the first instance I envisioned them. Originally they were to be a 2 page spread, which I like the idea of having only 2 pages, but it just wasnt going to work with the page layouts. Im happy with the way they have evolved from their first appearance.

Most of the time my ideas for a scene kind of explode onto paper in a fashion that only I can make sense of. I write a lot of notes, make a lot of squiggles, and draw things over and over to rearrange them- just to work through it and make sense of it for myself. This is a small section of a larger scene I have in mind where the tides turn, and the Castle of Daimon is attacked by the Lyking and Mab. It starts here pretty innocently, with Daniel and Aran having a nice, friendly dinner...

Sometimes my ideas come out really clean. I can storyboard them out, then move into page and panel layout pretty smoothly. This is a scene later in the story, after Daniel and Aranella have been separated, and Aran is held captive with Hallas by Queen Mab. It's kind of Daniels realization moment of the way he feels for Air.

Another example of an idea that came out pretty easily.

Then I can move into laying them out digitally and really cleaning them up and get them ready to color. This scene is where Daniel and Aranella meet "Merlin" for the first time as he welcomes them to Daimon. Its the first time we really see Daniel perk up in the story, he has a strange affinity for the Merlin, and will grow pretty attached to him as a mentor throughout.

Location, Layout, and Sketch Crawling!

(Ok, so the little gauche painting above was made a week later, but it was at the same location, and I feel it is an extension of my sketch crawling experience! ^^ )

Thursday marked my first even on location drawing, especially using only markers. Our layout class took a field trip outside and drew the opposite side of the street. I really liked it! I love using markers and drawing from life like this wasnt as daunting as I always supposed.

Which gave me much more confidence this past Saturday when I attended my first Sketchcrawl! It was so much fun! Sketch crawl is a really amazing event that happens world wide! The San Francisco division met up in Dolores Park in the Mission here in and wandered around. I stayed in the park, and decided to keep practicing that marker technique! Im really glad I went, and I plan to keep going for sure! It was so great to meet all the other artists who come out to participate, too. :}

So I guess I should update about the Layout class. Here goes-

Im taking a layout design class this semester with Oliver Sin. Im hoping that it will help me develop my backgrounds and settings more clearly. Im learning a lot, even though I still struggle the most with this aspect. I feel like I can see it so clearly in my head but it doesnt quite translate yet to the page. Still working on it, Im sure I'll get it when the semester is over and it clicks haha.

This was the first assignment, I designed a little girls room based around dance and ballet.

Then we learned the valuable many uses of tracing paper!

Our second assignment was to design a store in a cable car, and I chose to do a Fancy Hat and Feather shop! It was an interesting experience using brush pens, creating it all on different layers of tracing paper, and using the photo copier to enlarge and reduce. Its like real life photoshop!

Then we took our cable car and turned it into a cartoony style, or "wonky" as they say. At first you would think its just drawing poorly, but its actually carefully planned chaos! I really enjoyed the design aspect of wonky.

I went through a bunch of thumbnails designing a saloon. I tried to combine a few things from home into one. A gambling hall because well lets face it, its a saloon, and thats pretty much where I grew up! And I wanted to add a dance hall because I absolutely love Stoneys and line dancing! I was getting pretty frustrated with the results, so I just focused on making it more of a bordello, like Moulin Rouge-ish for the warped perspective version.

Heres the work in progress for half of my warped saloon. Im going through cleaning up the lines in pencil, and then I'll scan it and rework a few things in photoshop for the final. I think my favorite part right now are the mermaids. I used the entrance mermaids from the Mirage in Las Vegas as my muses. Even growing up it was just common knowledge that cupping certain bits of their anatomy on the way in was good luck in all of your adventures! ^_~

Harmony Harmony!!

I've been working on more (Air)head and expression studies. John Heebink really had me slow down and build up from structure and form, and I think it's a huge improvement. I was afraid that I would lose somewhat of that quick sketchy animated feel if I slowed down and made everything deliberate- I was totally wrong. I think my heads are getting much more dimensional with more thought in them. Im very comfortable with Aran, but I need to work with everyone else so I can get more familiar with their features. Time and practice!

Something truly amazing happened at school last Tuesday! The Wild Cat Fund brought in four of their cats to our school for us to draw! They were absolutely breathtaking. I've never been so close to wild animals like this before, and Ive certainly never drawn them before. I used brush pens, and didnt get too much done, I think I was too busy just staring at them in awe. They were squirmy little guys anyway, didnt really know how to hold a pose. :P We met a King Cheetah, a Caracal, a Serval and a Lynx. So awesome!

And now for something totally random - completely addicted to these two amazing things- Robot Unicorn Attack and My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic, I had to combine them the only way I knew how. My homage to My Little Robot Unicorn. Loooove!

Fairy Tale Style

Tinkering around with different styles, more for fun. I guess what sparked it was seeing the new designs for the My Little Ponies, and they are adoooorable! Not that Im drawing ponies, but I started playing around with different styles. I felt like I was channeling some amazing artist from the past with the above drawing, but I couldnt for the life of me place it. Ideas?


I even busted out the Flash!


Not that this is necessarily Fairy Tale material- (its actually my avatar from Gaia Online) but I did say Flash, and I remembered this!

Thank you!!

Wondercon was AaaAAaaaawesome! For my first time flying solo at a convention I feel like it was a huge success. Thank you so much to everyone who came out and supported me, all my friends, and people who were interested in my art. It was great being next to Fiona Meng, and those hilarious cock blocks, we all had a lot of fun! Im so very appreciative of everyone who purchased my comic book and took the time to talk with me about art and stuffs! Special thanks goes to my boyfriend Dale and my hetero sexual life partner Crystal for being my booth babes- couldnt have done it without you! Thank you for an amazing convention! Hope to see you at Ape!

Click below for my picture collages!! Thanks again everyone! <3 <3 <3