Rydia of Mist

just finished this piece for a friend of mine's art show

Rydia of Mist from Final Fantasy IV, a long time favorite video game character been working on it for a long time because I have high expectations of the character.

I tried referencing the DS game more then the Yoshitaka Amano art because his art is very inconsistent and hard to use as reference, even if it's beautiful and inspiring.

I won't lie I redrew her about a good 20 times, so I will spare you with every iteration, but basically I had the idea she spins around and summons a mist dragon like her mother but also her first appearance when she's older.

the line art is as close as what I want but still unhappy with her breast and her head.

But still this is a new technique I want to draw, and I'm always unhappy how my line art works and more excited to paint instead. So the lines are more mostly guideline.

I had to realign her head. It's not quite perfect, in the final version I'm still not happy with it, but I still want to have the the shoulder up close to her chin.

A new color was added into the shadows, instead of blue I added a bit of orange. I was afraid it separates the head and the body very close to one another but I do think it's interesting to have different fabrics inspired by cosplayers.

Originally I wanted to have a wing exposed to cast a shadow over her, but I don't quite think it would work if the dragon's head if lean forward so much. So I pulled it back so her hand carcasses it.

Nice detail on the jewelry and splash details were added I'm still a bit not sure about it but I'm happy the overall color of it and movement. It's an interesting piece, I might come back and either redraw it or draw her again.

Blue Falcon and Dynomutt

A special Birthday gift to a friend Robert Mommaerts. Took me a while working on this

Originally I wanted to draw them on the jet, but I think you see that too often. So I went in with the running animation instead

I often like to see designs through different angles, sleeked up design

I always loved the silliness of dynomutt, so it felt in his character making silly faces. Although I still wanted a sleek design to dynomutt so I tried to make the expression very limited.

I redrew the pose over and over and over and over again. I'm never satisfied with just one design, want to see it in every angle.

You know as long as my work process goes, my pens just die by the time I get to doing the line work. So here it's not quite dead but it's close to it.

now this is a test composition using two different images. Even if I'm drawing over things with a blue pencil I often am not sure if it's correct seeing each individual object together.

I'm not happy how dynomutt head is turning out so I'd rather take in a previous drawing and clean that up instead.

Even just as a rough test, I'm curious in the middle of penciling this to just push it into the coloring process even though I'm not complete with the pencils.

And like that, just curious to see what colors are like, this is the best way to get me to push development of sketches to finished product.

A vague idea how colors look, especially how complicated it is in between the two characters

trying to see how the pipes work just going around blue falcon. it's a messy design idea but it's someone I want to see because it's the humor of the show.

Fixing up the footprints to make it easier to fallow

Playing around with colors, want to have some blending in there, it's looking nice

Drawing behind dynomutt hand and legs of blue falcon using references from a pervious drawing of blue falcon to make it easier.

Cleaning up the pipe designs, now the final version is a bit too saturated in color. I kinda regret that and might refix it, but right now it's a fun piece to work on. My art process is odd but it helps me push my work.

Drink Cozy

Reginald E Norton enjoying his Mint Julep.
I have been kicking around this idea for a while

and like always I tend to redraw it a billion times over

so I stooped early on and just went immediately to production of the piece.

Not drawing the glass wasn't something intentionally difficult, I felt it gave me enough room to change it if it's digital.

Very crude but still got me rolling along

this was a small piece, so I didn't feel too restricted into little detail but doing a glass with a drink inside of it was difficult but it just took me a while to render it out. Reginald is one of my favorite characters so it's fun to draw him all happy.

brain talk

a gift for a friend Jill Kill a whimsical horror film fan and her loyal sidekick Darkling Dog. Took me a while working on this one, went in from about a good 8 pages of redrawing the illustration

lots of silly ideas kicking around, but not focusing on composition and making sure it works.

Now here's where I had problems I drew this around 5 times. I'll spare you all the drama, and just show you some of them

I wasn't happy how it turned out, so I was playing around with earlier sketches and putting them into the final piece.

a tighter, cleaner design, it helped me work faster

I started work on Darkling, because of the shaggy hair it's easy to get confused, and wanted his emotion to come out clear

it's fun working on the brain, just kept thinking of every single silly horror film I've seen.

Now skin is improve and the electricity from the tesla coils is moving around

now doodling designs of a Rat and a Spider, which I always wanted in the scene but didn't know exactly where and how. Now I rushed into this piece because thinking about designing the rat and the spider would have just made me procrastinate this further.

lots of doodling the background blending colors together, cleaning up smudges.

This piece was a lot of fun to work on and I'm proud how it turned out. I've doodles a billion sketches so I might do another one soon.