Tag Archives: art

cyberpunxnotdead

Peggy
September 23, 2015

So Rainfurrest has this sketchbook they want the GOHs to draw things in. I found about this on like the last day of the 2014 con; it ended up sitting in my bag for a half a year before I took it out and started doing a piece I intended to do in marker. But then I realized I hate doing physical media. And then my mother died and things like this went way down the list of priorities.

Now it is the week before the con, and they want it back so they can give it to this year’s GOH. So I said “fuck it” and took my rough into Illustrator, did a couple reference photos for the character, and knocked it out in a couple of hours because that’s easier for me than faffing around with real media. Then I printed it out and glued it into the book.

I am sure all the subsequent GOHs will hate me for raising the bar like this.

And for your amusement, here are some things I tweeted during this process:

original sketch

“Oh yeah maybe I should finish this thing in the RF guest of honor book sometime.”

Reference selfies. Taken using a Gorillapod phone tripod to hold my phone to one of the uprights of my desk, with one of their magnetic tripod lights beneath me pointing up to get the uplighting I wanted. I use a now-unavailable timed selfie program called SnappyCam, but I’m sure you can find one. I highly recommend a setup like this; it makes tough poses several orders of magnitude easier, especially with a tight deadline like “oh shit I just got back from SPX and Rainfurrest wants the sketchbook back before their con starts Thursday”.

CPm7RRlWEAAmacs

Pretty much the best-looking misprint I’ve ever generated. My printer ran out of every color except Photo Black while I was printing the pitches last week, and I had to run out to get some more liquid gold ink.

(And also, yeah, hi PNW furry art friends who may be future Rainfurrest GOHs, they’re going to haul out this tome and ask you to draw something in it, please don’t feel obligated to bust out full color digital stuff unless, like me, you find it easier than hassling with real media…)

Parallax: the finished pitch.

Peggy
September 16, 2015

0 Parallax_landscape titles

Done. I’m printing two copies of this as I type. They’ll go in little plastic report covers, one with the Federacracy material first, one with the Union material first.

Sunday morning, I’ll give them to the folks Nickelodeon is sending to SPX. Maybe with a copy of Rita 1/2 to prove that I can tell compelling stories. Maybe just with a couple copies of the Rita fliers full of glowing quotes. And at some point soon I’ll probably send a digital copy of this to my contact at Cartoon Network, as well.

That show pitch is almost done.

Peggy
September 15, 2015

0 Parallax_landscape titles

Parallax-synopsys

I think this is really starting to shape up nicely. Two characters need fleshing out, the Spinward by Candlelight needs some windows on its lower half, the Whalesong needs a drawing, and maybe I should figure out what the Union fighter ships look like and draw them along with the Federacracy’s Tactical Pants. I’m sort of thinking maybe something that looks like a torso with arms so they can combine with the Pants when some kind of Outside Context Event makes them have to join forces. That might be too obvious, though. I’ll have to doodle around and see if it works. Other suggestions welcome.

Also a handful of episode synopses, including my ideas for the overarching plot that continues across seasons. Then I just print it out and stick it in a couple of presentation folders (one for each side, naturally) and it’s done. And I can get back to Rita.

Big thanks to Nick for suggesting that maybe the Union should be a bit goth, and kind of creepy-cute.

your adobe illustrator lesson plan

Peggy
September 15, 2015

Someone on /r/adobeillustrator posted an image and asked what parts of the program they should explore next. I ended up giving a list of most of Illustrator’s major features, ranked by how I think about them and how I sort of see them in different levels of complexity:

core stuff: global palette swatches, flat-color shapes with the pencil tool (double-click and play with its settings, the defaults suck), layer organization, draw above/below/inside (and clipping masks as well), transparency. Also of course all the basic shape tools and the pen tool (never turn more than 90° between two points, pull curve handles out to about 1/3 of the length of the curve segment they control, avoid s-curves between two points).

finesse: gradients, blurred shapes, line blends, pathfinder (I almost always hold the alt key when visiting that palette to keep my source paths live), play with bitmap effects and find 2-3 that don’t mostly suck (I find most of them to be kind of ugly, but I love using a soft/hard light mezzotinted rectangle at the top of the layer stack to apply texture to my work, also blurs can be super useful), line width.

don’t repeat yourself: blends, art brushes, scatter brushes, maybe symbols though I rarely use them, pattern fills. each of these is a powerful way to make complicated work quickly; each of them is the right tool for the job sometimes. play with them, learn their quirks, learn when to use one over another.

your invisible assistant: distortion meshes! Make a 1×1 d-mesh, then use the perspective mode of the free transform tool, maybe push the mesh points around a little more, and voila, something complicated in perfect perspective.

advanced: funking up your paths with live effects, layering multiple fills/paths/effects in the appearance palette, saving them for later use. I’ve been doing this a lot lately, as I find ways to make a faux-painterly look that is still clearly not “fake painting”, and renders quickly as my comic book pages get more complicated.

stuff i never use: gradient mesh (too fiddly, doesn’t play well with global swatchs), charts, autotrace.

And maybe that’s the outline for the book on Mastering Illustrator that I’ll probably never write.

it has a new name now and everything

Peggy
September 8, 2015

ensign k remix for nickelodeon_landscape titles

I think I like how this cartoon pitch is shaping up. I shouldn’t have any problems filling out the rest of the blank spaces in time to pitch it to Nickelodeon at SPX. And to Cartoon Network while I’m at it.

Needs a page with a loose map of the galaxy this takes place in, and something about what I’m trying to do with this show. I’ve probably already written a decent explanation of how it should be fun space adventure, with an undercurrent of your enemy is never a villain in their own mind, so stop caricaturing them already. Also a note that ideally this would all be 3D, with super-designey flat color rendering. But probably a wider palette than I’m using here.

soon

Peggy
September 6, 2015

Soon. Soon I will be able to do this iRL. Soon.

Or at least I hope so. I tried a couple of pole crunches at the end of strength class today and they were pretty damn good, which means I’m pretty close to doing this. Just in time to start running around and getting less exercise as I do four cons in as many weekends, but hey, I’ll have them again in a month afterwards at worst.

I know the featured image I’m referring to won’t show up when this is crossposted to LJ. I wonder if it’ll vanish for Tumblr as well? Let’s find out.

Armchair Sorceress

Peggy
September 1, 2015

Armchair Sorceress

So way back in 2011, I was hanging around at Erin’s place and tried out her Cintiq. I did the rough sketch of this, and I think set the palette and did some of the basic shapes of the figure.

 

Then it got brought home and forgotten in my working files directory. Until today, when I looked at the Illustrator subreddit and saw a ‘monthly challenge’: draw a piece with no strokes and flat fills, no patterns or gradients or whatnot. I went digging and found this and finished it.

What looks like a pattern fill on the wall is actually a pair of ‘transform’ effects stacked in the appearance palette, and what looks like gradients in the wainscoting and the far edge of the floor are actually blends. Which, once upon a time, before I was actually using Illustrator, was the only way you had available to do what you mostly use gradients for now.

Her anatomy is a little weird here and there. Hey, 2011. And here’s me too lazy to fix it. I might fix some of the worst bits tomorrow morning. I dunno.

One of those moments of loving my tools.

Peggy
August 26, 2015

“It’ll be great,” I told myself. “An endless plain of black eggs, stretching off into infinity. An awesome image to open the last chapter of Rita with.”

Yeah, sounds great. Until I have to draw them all. Or cut and paste them. Eh, screw that. I made a scatter brush (sorry, no video of that, I did this a while back), drew a couple of lines, and blended between them. Instant egg-field.

I faffed around for another twenty minutes or so after recording this video, and have a nice horizon line of egg-piles developing, with some aerial perspective as well. It’s mostly done. I’ll probably spend like another hour finessing it before I’m really happy with it.

I am so glad I don’t draw comics by hand. Making this happen in traditional media would take forever.

Pronoun Trouble

Peggy
August 21, 2015

so i am at worldcon right now and my friend orbus has a table where he is trying to introduce old-school sf fandom to the concept of pronoun labels, in the form of ribbons you stick to your name badge that tell everyone what pronoun you wish to be referred to as.
he has a handout that explains the whys and wherefors of this idea, but it is a wall of text, and he would like to break it up with some drawings that help convey the concept of different people preferring different pronouns.

so i drew this: three people with a mostly female form and a clear indication of A Bulge between their legs – rather like my own body configuration – who desired different pronouns. one of them may not be taking this that seriously, and that’s cool too. gender doesn’t have to be drop-dead serious 24-7 in my opinion; nothing does.

also i am tired and drunk and a little stoned right now so i can’t be arsed with proper capitalization. so there.