First of all, here’s to a happy, albeit late, 2012 greeting. I hope everyone who reads and glances through this blog, their 2012 has been a productive and interesting one so far. For me, it’s been pretty good, nothing much to complain about, health is going well(and it better continue that way!). In terms of artistic plans for 2012, I have one big plan, and I might as well come clean about it. If you look through all the entries for the past two and a half to three years, you might have noticed many works in progress and livestream videos(usually fanart), but never any mention of the finished results. There is a specific reason for that. And that reason is…I want to get all these fanart pictures printed and sold at conventions around town. I hope I’m not jinxing myself but I have my sights set on the artist allies of three conventions this year(which I’ll post more about here and on the front page of my site), Anime North, Ochiba-con and Dot-con. As a result of preparing for these events, pretty much all my drawing time has been devoted to finishing up the fanart, and getting it ready to be printed hopefully sometime next month. Here’s a video of me colouring that on of my convention works in progress. So there, I’ve come clean! For those of you following me on facebook, there’s the explanation of convention related questions and polls. Also, with that in mind, what sort of conventions do you hope to attend this year?

And this would be my last fanart print, because no print set is complete without a little Yousuke Hanamura…none!

A little something I started inking in December of last year. Nothing more welcoming on a deviantArt page, like a glaring charicature!

I definitely intend to update this blog more frequently throughout this year. Wish me luck…I’ll need it! In the mean time, you can see my sketches and doodles on my tumblr and finished and more polished looking work on deviantArt, as I put the finishing touches on the ol’ homepage.

…and nothing happens for those are inanimate objects!

The actual nitty, gritty, shading part of the program. You know…the part when things come to life!

Still doing that inking thing, but managed to take a break and draw something up for halloween.

Now if only there was a way to roll back the clock so this could have actually been finished by halloween. Then I’d be set!

Well my site revamp is about three quarters of the way done. All that’s left is to draw something for the about/profile page and of course to upload everything. Still very much in love with the whole damask pattern for layouts. And some how it gives the whole website a sort of “classier” look to things. Not that I haven’t seen classy looking artsites that use solid or vibrant colours.

Came across this entry on deviantArt challenging people to redraw whatever they used to draw when they first started out in art. For me, it was trees in the sun/ So of course this calls for….VECTOR TRESS AND SUNS WHOOOO! Now just to find a way to not make it look like every other abstract nature scene out there.

So my computer has decided to really act up when it comes to turning on and off. As written on my tumblr, I’ve had an electrician look at the outlet my pc and other things have been plugged into and even went so far as to have the outlet fixed. That lasted about a day and then it just wouldn’t turn on at all. Opting to borrow a laptop, that had its own annoying results…Technology why must you fail me at the most in opportune of times? Surprisingly, since writing the draft up for this entry on the 15th, my pc has been behaving itself a little more and being more stable when it comes to turning on and off. Though I still want to replace the power source. At least it’s co-operating enough that I can ink a little bit. Now keep co-operating.

Here we haven a process video of a sketch that I started inking a little while ago, around early February. I’d always find myself working on it between finishing other pieces. Then one day, in the middle of July I said “I’m going to finish that one and revamp my site dammit!” and…finally got working. One of the lovely things about cel-shading is that it can be finished quickly and can still look nice. Guess who discovered the wonderful world of gradients?

Recently, I came across a video of someone actually colouring artwork on their iPad and I just had to get in on that. So I sacrificed got some old lineart and tried Sketchbook Pro out. And you know what? Not as easy as it looks. What I like about it though, is that it gives everything this sketchy look, nice alternative to oekaki-ing. Guess I have no reason to finally learn how to sketch digitally, might as well go and invest in one of those Wacom iPad styluses.

I swear I saw the viking guy at AN this year!

Of course one must not confuse the title of this entry with an older, similar sounding entry. Been meaning to livestream for a while now and tonight since I had some time to kill…why not? Now just to generate a little more interest in the channel and get a few more viewers to hang around from beginning to end. It’s always awesome to see people working and have 50 billion people watching them as they paint away. Okay, so they don’t actually have 50 billion but they have a lot of people.

Heading towards the home stretch on this one, for some reason, I can’t for the life of me shade his pants and gloves. I guess it’s back to shining lamps on clothes for me. It’s weird, you see people wearing different outfits everyday and you’d think recreating what you see would be so easy, but nooooo…it never is! Either way I’ll get this completed.

It’s process video time!

Still have to smooth out the shading on his skin a little bit. Overall, after a little work, I’d say this fanart is coming along nicely! Be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel as I plan to add a few more process videos and there’s also my livestream page.

Been playing around with colour overlay layers, just like messing around with textured layers, it gives the overall picture a very nice effect.

Take one…tried doing the “circular” clouds around the moon, I think you need really large clouds for that to work.

Then went for a couple clouds and figured a partly cloudy sky would look better…love how this sounds like a weather forecast “And tonight’s cg art will be partly cloudy with a low of 12 degrees…”

A comparison of the two backgrounds…and I’m certain I’ll end up doing something else.