The first of a non-eve series

I'm finally back from my road trip up the east coast (South Carolina all the way to New York City), and it was a blast!  Coming home, I set to finishing up my first non-eve related commission - a rendering based off a photograph of an air-soft game.  It was a very time consuming piece, but at last, here is the result:

This is the first of 4 images commissioned by Cue1* - both eve and non-eve related.  Onward to rendering #2!

Pre vs. Post Tablet

So... I've been looking a lot at the pieces I completed using a mouse (pre-Tablet), and the pieces I've designed after I got my lovely-wonderful-amazing-fantabulistic Wacom Tablet (<3 my Tablet!).  I knew that the pieces post-Tablet were much better (because it's frankly a lot easier to draw with a pen than with a mouse, simple as), but I didn't know to what extent.  Curious, I decided to try to redraw a pre-Tablet banner I did for Kishin with my Wacom Tablet.  I managed to surprise even myself.

This is the best I could do pre-Tablet.  At the time, I was really happy with it.

This is what I was able to achieve with the Tablet:

I find the difference shocking.  It's amazing how much difference a simple tool can make.

Sigs: Larkonis, Sofia, & DAN13L

Well, I'm slowly working my way down the line of commissions, and I'm loving how unique everyone's requests are.  Some of the concepts people have pulled together are above and beyond anything I could have come up with, and turning the words and ideas into images has been an absolute blast.

Larkonis wanted a minmatar and corruption theme for his sig.  I was struggling with this for awhile and how to translate what he wanted into a piece.  In the end, I owe the actual signature concept design to Kishin Hattori.  I told him what Larkonis was looking for and he was pretty much like BAM, this is how you need to approach it. Yey teamwork! =)  Normally I like to avoid the rectangular look for sigs, but with his character looking through a massive window out onto the decks of a minmatar space station, the rectangular aspect couldn't be avoided (I actually had to fly over 20 jumps to get pictures of this bugger... apparently my eve home is nowhere near minmatar borders)... and then on top of that my program malfunctioned twice and I lost the image and had to redraw the entire thing (FML)... needless to say, I was happy when this draft was finally complete, lol.

Sofia wanted a simpler sig with just her char and a chimera, and she wanted the two divided by a partition.

DAN13L wanted a Redeemer jumping into an asteroid belt onto a surprised Vindi.  It took us a bit to piece this concept together, but we got there in the end =)

I'm ready to start batch 3!  This upcoming round of images will be my last, however, for about a 2 week span as I'll be taking a road-trip up to New York City with Kishin! =D It should be super fun, and it'll be nice to recharge the artsy batteries.  Then, when we get back from our epic little roadtrip, I'll get back to work on batch 4 =)

Notations:

Larkonis's sig is located in the white and black background galleries.

Sofia's sig is located in the grey gallery.

DAN13L's sig is also in the grey gallery.

My First Sigs! \o/

I've recently received several commissions (yays!) to do sigs, and this weekend I have managed to complete two of them. I had an absolute blast, and I can't wait to do more. Art is definitely more fun when it's designed for someone else.

Below is the second sig I completed, designed for Sil.  He wanted an Erebus over water with a pirate theme and a slightly foreboding/lurking atmosphere.  An Armageddon, Tempest, and Dominix are in waiting.

And this was designed for Phatstabley - he wanted a Sin with a cyno and a gas mask with the overall picture having a mildly sinister effect and vibrant colors, while keeping the image dark overall.  I'm fairly proud of this =)

I had a blast with both of these requests and am looking forwards to the next set I'll need to complete.  So much fun!

Note: Sil's signature is cataloged into the "Black Background" Gallery. Phatstabley's signature is both in the Grey and Black Background Galleries.

Learning to Yahrr

This is an ode to all our childhood games that helped shape us into who we are. =)

Note: this image is found in both the white and grey background galleries (it looks a lot more vibrant with a grey background)

Junkyard of a Pirate

I've finally completed "Junkyard of a Pirate" which is the third image I've ever done with my new Tablet.  I'm starting to figure out all the odds and ends with this thing, and I'm having even more fun than I expected.  =) This image will be cataloged into my "Black Background Gallery."

Can you find all the ships? haha.

Answer: 2 rifters (red as I wanted a splash of color), jaguar, worm, slicer, kestrel, taranis, vagabond, firetail, comet

New Beginnings: New Eden Ink

With a splash of color and a dash of ink, I've decided to repaint this blog into one with a more artistic outlet.  Art has long been a favorite hobby of mine, which I pursued all the way through college (I even contemplated an art major at one point in time).  Although my preferred medium is usually oils and pastels, I started dabbling in computer art when Kishin Hattori first asked me to design him a new banner for his blog.  Since then, I've started doodling more and more, and recently I've purchased a Wacom Tablet to aid in the design (drawing with a mouse on Paint is frustrating enough to make me want to pull my hair out sometimes, lol). <3 my Tablet!  The look is still hand-drawn and rough - nothing too fancy here - but that's a feel I personally really like in art. 

This blog is now being separated into sections.  This home page will contain my latests pieces, but to see a complete portfolio of my works, you can link to the "gallery page."

I'm happy to take commissions (signatures, banners, etc), but I'm also happy to just hear an idea you might have for me.  Pulling original ideas are always the most difficult part of the design, I think, and I have found that I prefer designing pictures others would like to see rather than constructs just for myself.  Feedback is always great, and criticism is appreciated as well (it's how we improve after all). =)

The first two pieces I've designed with my Tablet are this blog banner and the image below, which is just a rendering of Bonni3 and Kishin Hattori post-incursion.  I hope to get another piece done by next week, although I'm still racking my brain for ideas at the moment.  Again, any thoughts and ideas are most welcome!