Sketching: Life is Strange - Partners in Time

Life is Strange - Pertners in Time
Also available in my DeviantArt.

Quick introduction for those who haven't ever heard of the game: Life is Strange, Square Enix. Episodic choose-your-own-adventure mystery with time travel. The left one is Max Caulfield, our heroine, and the right one, Chloe Price, her best friend (or, in one plot, lover).

Life is Strange. What a compelling series, what an emotional ending right in the middle of the finals I had several weeks ago. When it was all done, I did this. I still can't get over this game. Spoiler: I was too sorry for Max, which was why finally I decided to save Chloe instead of the whole town.

It was actually done before the Half-Blood Magus, but oh well, just had the time to write this up. This scene from the second episode hit me as marvelous, and I have been itching to draw that up. At first, I thought of switching around the positions to make it a little bit more original, and perhaps, interesting.

...Which was why I did a preliminary sketch. Turned out quite unnecessary in the end, as I would mostly copy by eye.

Starting with the all-important leg placement, I worked my way up Max, then started on Chloe. Linking their hands was quite a nightmare in positioning, it turned out, and to manage the proportions, Chloe's feet got moved quite some. Another ordeal considering I press down hard with HB. The paper's getting fuzzy.

After that, I thought it was time to shade. Starting from Max's top, this time. That part was quite quick and easy. I think that time I used only my HB and 2B, as my 4 and 6B were spent. 

I thought that actually, their hands weren't linked up good enough--so there I went again, redoing the top. To tell the truth, I actually think the subjects here are too small to be convenient in shading them.

But shaded them I did. Chloe also wasn't that much of a fuss to shade, apart from the detail being too small to bother. 

Perhaps it was just about inspiration and will: Life is Strange was inspiring enough so that I wanted to get these two shaded, seeing their final form as quick as possible. So, what came next wasn't done as wholeheartedly, to be very honest.

Looking back, I shouldn't have redid the linework over the shading, even with a 2B. Nor should I try to make a background in my quite lazy state--but I did it anyways.

After shading, I continued to make the background, against my better judgement. Perhaps the lack of a lumber pile next to the rails made the piece look too natural, not some rural part of Arcadia Bay.

As I foretold, the background ended up messy. I may get away with that being a personal choice, but I just wanted the piece to finish quickly. It took over five days, over around about six hours, probably. I just used my camera to take this picture and edit it, as I wanted to try comparing this with my usual scans. Only edited the contrast and touched up; no major surgeries needed.

Result? Characters good. Perhaps a little bit skewed to the right. Background's unworthy to look at, but whatever. I'll leave it to you to judge the final result.

By the way, I missed many weeks without a post. Haven't had the will to do one until now, I guess. This field of stars doesn't seem like going anywhere for me.

___

Life is Strange (C) Square Enix and Dontnod Entertainment.

Sketching: The Half-Blood Magus

The Half-Blood Magus.
Also on display in my DeviantArt.

The holidays being here, I shall continue to cook this idea in my head: a grand plan for an epic story. It is the continuation of this piece done long ago, and this guy will be the main character, the best friend of the Elf-King: the half-elf, whom I shall call Leon, as the Fall of an Empire's Leon would most likely go in indefinite hiatus. 

So, this Leon: an orphaned half-elf, who joins the Magi (I won't go into detail on that). Most could only harness magic only with staves, but this guy is one of the few who could do so without. Perhaps like Skyrim's bound weapons.

I already did some planning on the first pose, when I realized that it was quite close to the Assassin's Creed one I did before. Meanwhile, I was doing a Life is Strange piece... so this sank into hiatus. Man, I would use that word often.

Two of my references: Mannfred von Carstein for the pose. I really wanted to play that game but can't... technical reasons.

And Final Fantasy XV's Noctis. Handsome guy. Used him for the looks, naturally. Also would want to play that game, though I would doubt it, for the same technical reasons. 

Thus, back to the drawing board. Several poses planned before, and I straight off chose the one closest to Mannfred's pose.

First attempt, a bit disastrous. There was also a second try after that, however as I erased, turned out my eraser was quite dirty, and I would need a better eraser. So, a trip to the bookstore was arranged, and walked off with an eraser and 2H pencil to add to the collection.

That was more like it. Thinly sketching, then detailed it. 

Basically, that was my final sketch. Crosshatched in several places that I wanted to be darker, and I was off shading, from the usual top-to bottom with the HB and 2B. The planning and sketching took longest, where the shading only took around 2 hours from 5 to 6 hours, perhaps.

Finally, the traditional part was done. I scanned it, and tampered with the contrast and tones, and vigorously edited his face.

The result? Yeah, I'm satisfied. Halfway between manga and realism. But I'll leave it to you for opinions.

Change of Plans

School's out! 'Tis the holidays here!

...Which means I shall be deathly bored for the month, for the lack of tasks. But funny enough, however I may say it, I am still quite lazy to do any important thing, such as writing on this blog.

Point is, I'm getting tired at writing just series critics--series which not even much care about. I've decided that I've had about enough exercise in making those reviews--perhaps quite an unsuccessful attempt.But anyway, I shall fill this blog with things that I feel I truly need to write--or if I will write any, at all.

Really, I need to let my dispirited laziness shut up.

I shall be busying myself with not one, not two, but three projects along the month. One concocting a big plan about a story plus character design, one painting on canvas, and one 3D sketchup, plus about a dozen other little projects.

But please, please tell me how to tear myself away from Assasssin's Creed Rogue and Total War Shogun II and Kabaneri and Bungou and Re:Zero and... the list goes on. I'm out for now.

Sketching: Bungou Stray Dogs - Call A Name

Please, see this in my DeviantArt.

I shall simply feature this artwork here. Well, I forgot to take process pictures along the way, so this was the final product.

Bungou Stray Dogs was quite interesting, as you could tell from my reviews each week. In my boredom several weeks ago, I decided to draw these two: Atsushi and Dazai, the two most charming, fit to be drawn.

The ending song, Namae wo Yobu yo was a nice tune, and the art was just begging to be drawn. Actually, I did just copy down these references, detailed a bit here and there.

I simply moved Dazai over from the original position, made the papers in a circle, and removed villain Akutagawa from the picture.

It had been a while since I've drawn anything, and I thought that I could just practice shading here, plus composition. Used my usual from HB until 4B. As usual, HB was the most used, but 6B wasn't used at all, as the drawing was quite light.

This took around about four hours, I think. Same old-same old, with the outline first, doing Atsushi first, then Dazai, and retraced the lines for a dark outline. Then just a quick brush in Photoshop to clean up the piece from my scanner.

Not much to comment by me, here. Atsushi turned quite nice, but Dazai... a little too melancholic, perhaps.