waterfall goddess

The Waterfall Goddess of Jiuzhaigou Valley (九寨沟), carving out mountains with streams and planting the first tree of the Primeval Forest. I doubt I'll ever stop being inspired by that place.

a  younger design for the above character

You Don't Scare ME

Character sketches for a story. I'm trying to port everything over from my art tumblr, since I've decided that I don't want to quit blogspot after all

hoi polloi

ack, it's been too long since my last post! recently I've been trying to push the my characters in terms of exaggeration and simplification. I've been learning a lot about these things as part of my mentorship with the amazing Victoria Ying, through a program called Motivarti. here are a few character sketch studies from this week, all from imagination.

Adelle

portrait/lighting warm-up from the other day, featuring one of my favorite characters in Sequence.   you can buy the game through Xbox Live Indie Games for just $3; it's only been out for a few days and has already gotten rave reviews!

here are some sprite alternates for the character... she's an astrologer who tries to read your fortune with tarot cards :P

Character Sprites

eep, it's been far too long! life's been busy on the personal front, but deadlines have loosened up a bit so i can get back to posting again... here's some backlogged character sprites from last year. these were made for Sequence, a rhythm/rpg game by Iridium Studios that's out on Xbox Live Indie Games! i also designed all the backgrounds, which i'll post later~

pocket brush pen

these sketches were done with my trusty pentel pocket brush pen that i carry with me at all times.  this pen really does the trick if you want to loosen up your lines!

click the right image to view an animated gif of the coloring process

character studies from months ago that i never posted here

Sequence character art

here are some of the first character sprites i did for Sequence... it took quite a while to figure out all the technical stuff - they had to be transparent so they could be placed right over the BGs from the previous entry, and that created all sorts of perspective/composition issues that hurt my head. D: but thankfully it's figured out now!

clean lines + quick color test for Ky, the protaganist

some pencil concepts

edit '10: touched these up and re-uploaded them :)
here is the finished sprite with a few subtle expression variants:

this mexican matador is one of the first bosses... i had sooo much fun drawing him!

Warmups + Character Design

So I've been taking quite a few commissions lately, just for single character concepts/illustrations. I should probably figure out a price table for this soon so I can start doing it on a larger scale...

Anyway, here's the piece that I'm working on right now. The initial sketch phase went super smoothly, and I like how it looks overall, but now the details are gonna be a HUGE pain to finish.  I really want to finish it tonight though~

edit: here's the finished version, totally forgot about posting it lol

also, here are a few 15 minute doodles that I do to warm-up before I start drawing.  I got the idea from going to regular figure drawing sessions at my Uni - they really help me get into the "fast sketch" mindset! :D
heh, I just needed to draw something to get me into that "fantasy swordfighting" mindset :D

Character Illustration: mafia wife

trying my hand at a semi-realistic, illustrative style. this is one of my better attempts.
she's an original character for a furturistic mafia story... i drew her first because all the other ones will be a total pain in the butt to draw. -_- (I suck at drawing guns...)
here's a couple of progress pics for this piece:
i like how in the beginning the block-in was so skewed and off balance that I had to rotate the whole canvas... thank god for digital tools like "lasso" & "free transform" to counteract my utter lack of planning =P

Emperor concept sketches

here's some tonal concept sketches, once again for the chinese fairytale project. i'm trying to plan out my pieces more (and just do more studies in general) to improve my composition and tones.it's IS helping a little, so far... i just need to remind myself of that constantly so i can keep plodding on and not get discouraged!

A Chinese Love Story: character designs

posting the finished b&w concept designs for the Chinese fairytale project that I've been working on. these two designs are for Niulang (cow herder, the mortal) and Zhinu (weaver girl, goddess from the heavens). they're characters from a very ancient and well-known chinese love story.i really want a top with gold embroidered dragons like the one that ZhiNu has...

Bamboo forest (chinese fairytale)

well shoot, I'm already way behind on posting in this blog! it's kinda funny how motivated I was to set aside time for art back when I was totally swamped with school, cramming for exams and standardized tests. quite frankly, my work ethic since the beginning of summer has been abysmal, and there's just no excuse for it. -__-; so it's time to get off my ass and make some portfolio-worthy pieces!

here are a few WIP illustrations i'm making for my Chinese fairytale adaptation. i'm sooo excited about this project!


more to come soon!