Lenora and Madison

So... Lenora from my previous post is now Leon. I decided having two male characters would work better because a] it would give a better equality between the two characters and b] you would expect two female characters to be more willing to be protective of each other than two male characters. The way the plot works, the two take it in turns to save each other, and I thought it would just be a more interesting dynamic.

Because I still really like Lenora and her name, I decided to keep her as a character to use somewhere else. I have also been thinking lately that my character cast needs more lesbians. Or, to be more precise, any lesbians at all. My cast (and here I refer to all my characters across all stories, not just the ones from a particular story) trends towards male and this feels a little silly. Perhaps it's because I'm female and therefore I find less to discover in that aspect. I mean, obviously I'm not every personality of female you could ever find, but I relate better, so I feel I understand it better and therefore need to explore it less.

Anyway, long story short, I decided to draw Lenora and her girlfriend. Because of Lenora's previous role in Umbra as a guardian angel, I thought it would be nice to give them wings. But wings are a serious compositional pain in the behind, so I started wondering if perhaps these two are of a winged species, and every now and then a baby is born who only has one wing and so is flightless. It's a lonely life among those who can take to the skies, so they band together.

I don't know where to go with this story. I don't really want it, to be honest, because I want to focus on the ones I've already got. So I'll keep thinking about it and see if I can fit them into any other stories of mine, though that'll probably mean I'm nixing the wings. Unless they can be Mythics, but then the one-winged thing would be weird. And they'd probably have to be a bit older. Hmm... *continues to ramble to self*

This piece isn't exactly romantic, so I theorized that it's probably a little before they actually start dating. You know, they're getting along, getting to know each other, falling further into that awkward anti-communication stage where you're developing feelings but aren't sure whether or not to voice them yet. At least, that's how Madison feels. I'm finding it interesting that Madison appears quite self-confident in the way she dresses and makes herself up, and yet in demeanour she seems reserved and maybe even shy. Lenora, on the other hand, wears a dress that makes her look young and girly, yet has a more tomboyish personality. At least that's what I want to build on with these two.

Will I finish this? I dunno. I have a lot of other things I should be painting. Also, I'm leaving for Toronto tomorrow and Colombia on Monday. I'll be there with a big family friend group for a week, and although they say we should have wi-fi and I can bring my tablet or whatever, I won't have as much time to myself as I would at home.

- Hex

Umbra Characters

These are a couple of character concepts I drew for a story I had to come up with for our Narrative unit at uni. Because the story's meant to be geared towards a pitch for a hypothetical end-of-year short animated film, I wanted to draw them in a style that would be simple to animate. My usual art style might be a tad complex.

I think these guys' designs could still use work, but I enjoyed working with a more cartoonish style. I started with silhouettes for them (which is how I got into the idea of using silhouettes to generate poses), which helped me break out of my usual style.

In the story, Umbra, people's shadows represent their inner thoughts and feelings. For example, a couple of people could meet up and have a polite conversation, but they don't actually like each other, so you can see their shadows fighting in the background. Our protagonist, left, is currently named Damien; he's a surly teenager who hates the world. His shadow (aptly nicknamed Shade) finds out it can eat other shadows and, in doing so, gain power. Not 100% on what happens to shadowless people, but they'll probably go zombie-ish or just flat. Certainly in visual style they will lose all three-dimensionality, and they may become very plain personality-wise as well. Of course that would mean it'd have to be obvious that they are three-dimensional individuals prior to their flattening, so I'm still thinking about it. It might be very interesting to combine 3D and 2D mediums... but I like 2D better.

Digressing: Lenora, right, is Damien's best friend and foil. She's more timid and rather kinder, and the story culminates in Shade going out of control and eating Lenora's shadow. It's only then that Damien realizes what he's doing is wrong, but possibly Lenora's shadow becomes the light that separates Shade (or something deep like that) and restores everyone's shadows to their rightful owners.

I'm in a bit of a bind over what to do with the shadows' designs. Shade is supposed to change as it eats more and more, morphing away from a human form into the form of a monster. It's symbolic, okay? He would morph as below:

Everyone else's shadows are just silhouettes of them, signifying that Shade's gluttony is the reason it's changing. So for Lenora's shadow to have wings is a bit illogical. I don't want her to be eating any shadows because that's supposed to be wrong. I'm not sure. Anyway, I have until the start of next year to iron it all out. I'm actually quite interested in getting this film made next year. I don't know, though - there are so many brilliant ideas this year and I think I've got some tough competition!

- Hex

I was going to write a blog post...

...about how I've suddenly lost all motivation to draw anything. But it started meandering and I figured I'd spare you the pity party. I might try doing some quick comic pages for practice. I don't want to dedicate myself to a huge project I won't be able to continue, but I've done some thumbnails and I wouldn't mind just illustrating snippets of my stories. Comics are something I really want to get back into. Believe it or not, once upon a time I kept a comic going for about 80 pages. It's utter crap now. Wanna see? Here's the first page:

And here's the last one I did before I dropped it:

Loads better, but still pretty craptastic. Looking at ToK makes me laugh.

[ETA] Oh, yeah, and here's one with people in it for comparison:

- Hex

GET BENT

Happy birthday to my lovely housemate and friend Louise, whose deviantArt you can find here.

- Hex

Silhouettes Are the Best

Take a big brush in Photoshop and whack out some poses. It's so much fun.

- Hex

Sketchdump: Creatures

Dargons for December! Ooh, that would be fun. A Dragon-a-Day challenge. Except we're already four days in and I have course work to do. Hmm...

- Hex

Hex Through the Years (v2)

Gosh I love stuff like this.

See it bigger here.

- Hex

Faceless Flynn

Did some studies of sketches from the Art of Tangled book because ffff Glen Keane. Didn't draw Flynn's face in half of them because ffff Flynn's face. I really enjoyed drawing Rapunzel but I didn't quite get her face right either. Mostly this was for pose reference but I found myself practicing drawing on-model as well, so that was fun.

- Hex

P.S. I've posted TDKYLID on my deviantArt here, with a bunch more information about the characters if you are so inclined to read about them. I tried to keep it short... I did, honest! So if you want to hear more about them, all you gotta do is ask.

They Don't Know You Like I Do

Behold, the finished product.

...I think.

Left to right: Derek, Ethan, Lexy, Levi, Gale, Ter, Charon

Man, how many hours have I spent on this thing? Scratch that, how many weeks? I guess I've just kind of been chipping away at it here and there, but it always astounds me to think back and realize how the time adds up. I always tell myself I should time myself, see how long it actually takes me to finish big pieces, but I never get around to it and anyway I have a tendency to start and stop, getting distracted by the internet and food and things like that.

Stopping always used to be my downfall, too, with finished pieces. I'd just lose interest and give it up. Lately I think I've been doing better, though. I've also been more willing to change things that don't look right, instead of going, "ugh, can't be bothered" and letting it sit. Not that this piece is perfect, of course, but it's damn well good enough for now.

Things I did between the last update and this one:

- finished shading

- added a very subtle gradient to the bottom so that the backgrounds aren't completely flat

- scribbled in the quotes from the song that inspired this piece, consistently becoming frustrated at my chicken scratch and also the positioning of everything

- did some level/colour tweaks and minor edits

- modified the border to be uniform all the way around (not sure why I'd left it before)

For those curious, the inspirational song is Masterpiece Theatre Pt. 3 by Marianas Trench. It's the last track in their album Masterpiece Theatre and extra awesome in that it's also a medley of all the other songs on the album. It's just utter genius, especially how at one point it layers several lines from several songs. And it has its own unique parts, too. Anyway, I took the majority of the lines from the track and applied them to whoever I thought they fit the most. Some lines are left out because they don't fit, and there are lines from the rest of the album that I'd probably have liked to use, but I'm staying true to Pt. 3 here.

It would be ridiculously coincidental if my favourite album ever just happened to fit all these characters from the same storyline. You'd call me out on it. But I promise it's not completely forced. I had vague ideas about all of them before ever associating them with the album, but I will happily admit that the album's helped me solidify their respective stories. I did spend a long car trip listening to the album and figuring out which song fits which character best. I'll save the rant about the characters for my dA artist's comments. Anyway, the phrase "it's complicated" comes to mind...

All I can say now is phew! Nice to have it done. It will now sit as one of my desktop backgrounds until I get sick of the errors.

- Hex

Stop it Lexy

Lexy is being an ass.

I redrew him entirely (except for his head because fffff); this is probably something like the third or fourth version of him. Possibly he's finally decided to cooperate. Why are arms so hard to draw?

I'm really enjoying cel shading this, incidentally. It seems like it teaches me about form and lighting much more than soft shading, where I can get away with bullshitting it for the most part. I am learning that I need to not be afraid to be liberal with my shading, because it frees me up to really emphasize what needs showing, and I can always pull it back if it gets to be too much.

Also, why are eyes so small? I love colouring them all pretty and then you can't even see them. >:

Left to right: Derek, Ethan, Lexy, Levi, Gale, Ter, Charon

- Hex

TDKYLID 6

How have I not lost count yet?

I have started shading. Huzzah! Eventually settled for cel shading after being inspired by some things I've seen. It's... not brilliantly impressive, but it works. I'm kind of getting sick of this thing now.

Left to right: Derek, Ethan, Lexy, Levi, Gale, Ter, Charon

- Hex

ToK Size Chart

Click for a bigger view. That's how it works on Blogger, right?

This is a quick size chart I did for some of the dragons of ToK. I had to add the two humanoids on the far right because they're part of the main protagonist group.

There are several species of Dracona on Kenah, each with its own general size, i.e. a Scorral like Xeari will always be larger, on average, than a Nauvin like Vark.

In addition to this, dragons grow throughout their lives regardless of how old they've become. The growth slows as the years pile up, of course. Cym, having defied death and basically become immortal, has been around for way longer than any other dragon known to Kenans. That's why he's fucking huge. It is entirely possible that an existing dragon species could match his current size, but his particular species isn't meant to get anywhere near as big as he is.

Dauren's also quite old, though realistically so for dragon standards. Keelira's a bit young but she won't come up to Xeari's current size until she's near the end of her life.

The humanoid species, Wevlins, grow the way humans do because I don't feel like having superlarge humanoids in my story. Their wings do start off disproportionately small, though, and won't be big enough for flight until the kids are at least eight or so (in Earth years).

I just realized that I totally forgot to add any Zethyls to this line-up. Tisk tisk. Zethyls are... well, you know centaurs? Something that looks like a centaur on Kenah would technically be an equinoid Zethyl. Basically, take the body of an animal, size it up or down to about horse size, and tack on a humanoid body and head at the front where the animal's neck would be. Then add wings and you have yourself a freak of nature that potentially has ten limbs, because Zethyls need two pairs of wings in order to actually fly due to the added weight of another torso. I'll sketch a couple of my Zethyl characters for a later post. Zethyls, Wevlins, and Dracona are the three sentient species on Kenah; other creatures populate the planet, with varying degrees of intelligence.

Oh boy, it's been ages since I've thought about ToK! Maybe one day I'll put conceptualizing aside so I can actually focus on the plot.

- Hex

TDKYLID 5

And that's all the colours and lines done. I'm still a little iffy on some of them, so I'll probably spend some time tweaking and such before I... what? I originally hadn't planned on shading due to my linework, but said linework isn't quite bold enough to be its own shading. Well, we'll see. I think cel shading would suit this much better, but soft shading is so much more fun...

Left to right: Derek, Ethan, Lexy, Levi, Gale, Ter, Charon

- Hex

Draw This Again! Meme

This meme has been floating around deviantArt for quite a while now. I thought I'd poke at it for fun. Back in 2007 at school I asked all my friends to name an element, then drew a mage character for them. I didn't even bother referencing fire for my redo. Also I forgot the guy's ponytail.

The only reason I'm uploading the "before" is because you can compare it to the super amazing 20-minute "after" sketch. It still hurts to look at the old one...

Deviation here.

- Hex

TDKYLID 4

So apparently Levi actually looks alright in red. I'm not a big fan of red and therefore don't have a lot of experience using it in my art, I guess. Still contemplating Gale's colours. Stupid hair. Also Levi is not supposed to be THAT pale. At least not that ghost-coloured.

Left to right: Derek, Ethan, Lexy, Levi, Gale, Ter, Charon

- Hex

Boss Battle!

Dear Muse, I have other WIPs to finish. Please stop making me start new drawings. Love, Hex.

The "little" pinkish dragon at the top is Xeari, the main character of one of my oldest stories ever, Tales of Kenah. She definitely does not start off nearly this badass. And she's actually at least 2m tall, or nearly 7 feet. The original backstory was that she used to be human, then she got warped onto this planet named Kenah and transformed into a mutant dragon. She wasn't exactly happy about this. Not sure how much I like this idea anymore, so I'm thinking on that.

The big shadowy dragon is currently named Cymrae, but that's up for debate now as I feel somewhat more self-conscious about stealing the Welsh word for Welsh (which is Cymraeg, if you want to be specific) now that I'm in the UK. I don't think he's particularly Welsh. Originally I drew him waaay too big and then I had to shrink him down, which is why his lines are so light and thin in this even though you can't tell this zoomed out. He's still supposed to be huge. Just... well, ToK is meant to be a webcomic, and you gotta fit things into panels, y'know? I'll probably make a size comparison chart of my various dragon characters later.

Cym is the reason Xeari got warped to Kenah in the original story; there's a sort of prescribed lifespan for all dragons and when a dragon is born, another one dies and gives its soul to the new dragon. But when Cym was meant to die he refused, and (for reasons I haven't figured out) he survived the struggle with the reaper. So now the balance is all fucked up and someone's got to go put him in his place. Cue the Chosen One, Xeari. Cym is old, even for a dragon. Dragons tend to live to be at least a thousand or two, but even after maturing they grow slowly over time, so he's a pretty big guy for his species (different dragon species come in different sizes). I have lots of interesting concepts floating around in my head regarding the whole soul-balance thing, but I guess it'd be considered spoilers so I shall say nothing here.

I drew Xeari and her companions in black and white for the longest time before picking colours, at which point anything I put on them seemed wrong. So I arbitrarily picked a dull red and now she looks weird in anything else. It's something of a happy coincidence that this forces me to make Cym a complementary green, like classic dragons of old, but they don't call him the Dark Dragon for nothing. When I paint this properly I want him to be all shadowy-wispy and stuff. This version is just a sketch and a colour mock-up.

The background is just whatever, really. Been inspired by various fantasy paintings and their misty-foggy backgrounds, though I'll probably have to go hunt some down later to do this properly as it's all from my (admittedly terrible) memory.

They speak Welsh in Argentina?!

- Hex

TDKYLID 3

After some deliberation, I have decided to keep the colour backgrounds and add colour to the drawings. And vary my lineart. I'm not sure about shading yet; my varied lineart tends to work better with a cel-shaded style but I'm actually better at more realistic shading... on the other hand, learning and practice and stuff! We'll see.

I don't know why I'm doing them one at a time. I had ideas for Derek's colours by the time I was finishing up his lines, so I guess I just wanted to get those down... and it continued from there. Keeps me interested, I suppose. I am kind of trying to make each person's shirt complement their background. I bet Levi's going to look weird in red...

Left to right: Derek, Ethan, Lexy, Levi, Gale, Ter, Charon

- Hex

TDKYLID 2

Now with clothes! And colours I may or may not keep. Once I realized there were seven of them, my natural reaction was to try to fit them to colours. Red, green, and purple had already been chosen earlier, and I was pretty sure about the light blue. Let's not get into "how many / what colours are in a rainbow" arguments right now. I needed seven, so I'm using a more purple and and a more cyan blue.

Left to right: Derek, Ethan, Lexy, Levi, Gale, Ter, Charon

- Hex

Turaco Dragon

A turaco-bird-based dragon for a dear friend's birthday! here's some progress screenshots, the final, and some close-ups.

And no, I'm not going to be posting a million times a day on a regular basis. I'm just on a roll lately.

- Hex

TDKYLID

Bit of a thing I'm working on lately. It was going to be more of a single piece with all these people in it, but I couldn't figure out how I wanted it so I decided they would have boxes instead. As you may have noticed, there is a lot of wonky and Lexy's being a bum as usual.

These are a bunch of characters of mine who show up in a couple of related stories. It's not that Charon's short. It's just that everyone is stupidly tall |8

Left to right: Derek, Ethan, Lexy, Levi, Gale, Ter, Charon

- Hex

Hello! Also, spriting.

So this morning I was talking to a friend who swore he was following my blog. "Impossible," said I, "for a blog is not a thing that I have." (This is paraphrased.)

I proceeded to mend this travesty.

There is a thing that I am working on as I speak (although not precisely as I speak, considering I can't type and draw on the same computer at the same time, and let's face it, I'm not even talking anyway), a WIP (work in progress) of which I shall post just as soon as I implement this one change I suddenly realized needed doing. In the meantime, you can have a gander at the various pixel art work I've done. Most of it is for the species concept subforum of Dragon Cave, a collectibles site where you catch and raise dragons from egg to adult. These are projects in which collaborators create sprites for male and female adults, male and female hatchlings, an ungendered hatchling, and an egg. The process goes from sketch to spriteline to colour, with critique and redlining all the way along. The species are also required to have behavioural descriptions.

I'm only going to post work that is purely mine or that has only had minor edits (if it's been sketched by someone else, I'm leaving it out; if it's been coloured by someone else, I'll just post the WIP stage). Because I don't shade pixel art much, the vast majority of this will be lines or flat colours only. Clicking on the images will bring you to their respective forum topics, although I forget whether or not you need to be registered to see them. (The ones without links aren't for concepts, just for my own practice and personal projects.)

Note that all of these have flaws that gradually get ironed out in the production process. I'll probably post my sketches another time.







You can call me Hexephra, or just Hex. I'm too lazy to design/whatever a blog properly right now, so I'll probably build on it gradually, adding links to my other internet dwellings now and then. And stuff. I don't know. Organization is boring.

- Hex