Another Done, So What’s Next?

It’ll probably never get more than 10 bookmarks, but I think people will excuse me again as I share yet another finished… EoE parody.  Yes, I’m an unrepentant Evangelion fangirl, so sue me.

As usual, there’s a lot of room for improvement, but hey, at least I can do clouds now.

Ah, I guess this means that nightmare of a multiple-character piece is next. It’s a good thing that it’s summer…

Taking Samples

Another weekend, another personal Pixiv art project.  After scanning some pictures for my father, I was able to scan the little sketch I did this morning after we got back from Church (it was an important mass, as it was the last mass our trio of parish priests were to oversee before they were transferred to another parish in Santa Mesa).  As I mentioned in a previous post, it’s obviously going to be an Evangelion parody, and it’s going surprisingly well.  I’ve been able to finish the base color, the main highlight, and the shading in just a few hours.  What follows next is going to be much harder though, so I think I’ll just save my work for now and technically call it a night.

One of the problems I might be facing with this one is, err, adding feathers to the existing line-art.  The reason being I’d like to differentiate it a little from the picture I’m parodying (Giant Naked Rei, who has translucent fairy-like Sephirotic wings). It’s why I’ve been looking through Danbooru (account block aside) for pictures that have them and, more importantly, colored using water colors, acrylics, or pastels, as I’d like to duplicate the effect on SAI.  It’ll probably slow my progress tremendously, but eh, it’s something I’d always wanted to try, so I might as well do so now.

Speaking of painting, I really have to start on that squad of Tactical Terminators.  The deadline for the Librarium Painting Challenge is on the 31st of March, and it’s already the end of February, and I haven’t even posted a single progress thread yet.  I’ll see if I can work on that this week, providing the Customer-service cross-training doesn’t play havoc with my sleep schedule again.

As for non-hobby details…. I was able to take a jog in Makati, and was surprised to see that most of the Ayala triangle area was cordoned off for a fiesta celebration (the Caracol to be precise).  There were people in costume in parade and everything.  I didn’t stay long enough to watch the proceedings though, since as soon as  finished my fifteen-minute circuit of the Triangle area, I headed straight home.  And here I am.

Overall a surprisingly fruitful Sunday, I think, though it probably owes that to the fact that I didn’t have any work in the morning.

Change In Plans

Apparently I’m one of those up for cross-training next week, so I’m going to have a slight change in schedule for the duration.  From Monday to Friday I’ll go to work at eleven in the evening, and stay at the office for a full eight hours each day for the duration of the training period.  It’s not that big of an adjustment, but I do worry about the fact that I’ll have little time to rest after the Friday shift before I have to head over to school for my classes.  I guess I’ll have less excuse to procrastinate, and do what I need to be doing, eh?

Not much planned for tomorrow but read my the assigned stories for critique as usual. We’re going to have another guest panelist, so I’ll definitely have to come in early.  That said, it only means that some unlock sods will have their stories torn apart by said guest panelist… Hopefully it won’t be the second draft I submitted.

Schoolwork aside, I’m wondering if I should start on another Pixiv project.  While I’d like to do some more Madoka art, it’s likely going to be an Evangelion parody yet again.  I guess I’m just too much of a fan of that series.  Mmm, depending on how Episode 8 goes tonight (the only thing sure is it’ll be depressing), I might do something based on the picture below:

… On second though, this one is way beyond my current skill set, as it looks like something you’d expect from a watercolor or oil painting.  Heck I have a hard enough doing a self-portrait that has me look my age, ahaha.

That, or the series will be over before I even finish it.  ^^;

Whatever I decide to do tomorrow after my schoolwork, it’s bound to be somewhat worthwhile.

Harping

Well, here it is.  I though I’d only be able to finish this by the tenth episode of Madoka, but somehow even after some last-minute clean-up and effects via Photoshop I managed to get it done a day before episode 8 even airs.  It’s not as polished as I’d have liked, but given my level of experience I suppose it will have to do.  Maybe I’ll come back to it later though, once I’ve learned more advanced coloring techniques…

Incidentally, this project pretty much began as a sort of joke.  In the aftermath of Episode 3, many of the Western viewers were quick to compare the brooding atmosphere of Madoka Magica to Neon Genesis Evangelion, which to people who are familiar with me will know is a series that’s close to my heart.  While the comparisons are superficial, it tickled me to think of the possibility that Madoka would have its equivalent  ‘End of Evangelion’ (not really possible, but the show is going in a very dark direction)… which gave me impetus to scribble on my relatively new drawing tablet.  When I finished the preliminary sketch, I thought to myself, hey, wouldn’t this look better colored like the movie poster I based it on?

Funny how that turned out, huh?

Ahaha, well, I’m happy that it didn’t turn into the disaster I was afraid it would become.  The only thing that would make me happier about this is if it somehow got into Danbooru (not only is it not moe, but it doesn’t really fit the tastes of the majority of the moderators there), but that’s not likely.

So, what’s next?  A break, but… Notice how Madoka and Mami seem to be missing?  Well, do recall that there are two different movie posters for End of Evangelion…

Edit: Apparently someone did upload the pic onto Danbooru while I was napping.  That said, it’s embarrassing how a typo managed to slip through anyway… I suppose that’s the danger when typing in Madoka Runes.  ^^;

By Increments

I mentioned before that I find the coloring aspect of artwork difficult.  My general lack of training and experience is really starting to tell at this point.  It’s come to the point where the pace on my Pixiv project has slowed to a crawl.  The best that I could do is color the piece by a few increments of shade per day, and hope somehow that I’m don’t screw it up somewhere.

At this point in time, I’ve only colored and shaded two parts of the piece to my satisfaction.  That is to say that each segment has at least three layers of color to them.  The first part is the woman floating in the center of the piece (those who watch Madoka Magica will recognize her as Madoka’s mom, Kaname Junko), while the second segment is the one displayed in this post, which features Madoka’s classmate Hitomi.

Two down, eleven more to go.

Although I shouldn’t even be thinking of blending at this point, I’ve been trying out the blending options.  While the transitions aren’t as smooth as I’d like, they’re a sight better than how they look without smoothing applied.

All in all not quite happy at my pace, but at least I’m making some progress.

Hurdles

There's still a LONG way to go before this is finished.

I’d be crazy if I said that coloring in any form was easy.  Even with the convenience of Paint Tool SAI, it’s still mostly a trial-and-error process for me, with a bit of an uphill climb thrown in for flavoring.  This is especially so when I actually get to the secondary shading on a project, at which my work starts to slow down significantly.  Sheesh.  How many of the other Pixiv artists put up very nicely shaded and blended works within hours is a mystery to me, but then again they have much more experience with this stuff than me, who could be considered both an inexperienced novice and a dabbler.

Ahem.  Anyway at this point of writing I’ve started on one of the figures on my Work In Progress.  At the rate I’m going, it’s probably going to take anywhere from a two to six (or more!) hours for me to finish each.  On the bright side, it’s looking less flatter than how it was previously (well, as much as it’s possible for something mostly colored in shades of red to not appear flat).

And what do I do after I finish with the secondary shading? Why, then I can start on the primary highlights. I’m so looking forward to that.  If and when I finish both primary and secondary highlights, I can then worry about blending! Hooray!

Yep, this will definitely take a while.

Nightly Alternatives

When I’m not feeling particularly inspired, writing-wise, I normally get angry with myself.  Most of the time, if there aren’t any schoolwork to keep me occupied I’d mope a bit, before going to sleep in a frustrated huff.  However there are times where sleeping really isn’t going to help, so I do the next best thing, and channel those frustrations to other pursuits. I suppose you might say that, in these cases, it’s actually a good thing to have alternative hobbies to fall back upon.

Instead of painting models (which while fun take more concentration, not to mention I have to be careful not to spill either the paint or the water I’m using to clean the brushes!), I opted for my other major hobby, which is drawing. This time, my subject was the much-talked about Puella Magi Madoka Magica (魔 法少女まどか☆マギカ). It’s a parody piece, drawing inspiration from the old End of Evangelion movie poster.

But why Evangelion, you might ask?  Aside from it being the first fandom I’ve been part of, there’s a lot of talk amongst Western viewers about how the show–a rather dark reinterpretation of what constitutes a Magical Girl series–seems to be doing to its genre what EVA did for Super Robot series.  It’s a comparison Japanese watchers apparently don’t care for much, but then again they’re Japanese. Who knows what they’re thinking about most of the time?

Personally I think it’s far too early to jump to such genre-breaking conclusions, that does mean that the series is worthy of both attention and discussion. The fan-art done based on the show, after just six episodes, is staggering, never mind the record number of posts devoted to it on 2ch.  People are already betting that, at the rate it’s going, it’s going to overtake Bakemonogatari in DVD/BR sales by the end of its 13-episode run, and that’s saying something.

Anyway, as for my personal project… As one might notice, I’ve gotten as far as the base colors.  Thanks to the tablet, it took less than 2 hours to get to that point, which is MUCH faster than I’ve ever colored a project before (use of red tones aside), but the hard part is still to come: shading and highlighting, which are my personal banes.  In this regard, I can’t rely on the EoE poster as reference anymore, as its lighting is just plain wrong; the image is obviously lit from the front, yet there’s a FULL MOON above everyone, but the people on the poster aren’t shadowed appropriately.  I might be an amateur, but that’s just too obvious a mistake not to notice, which means I’m not going to duplicate it with this one.

Since I do have schoolwork that needs to be finished, I won’t continue on this tonight, but I’ll get to it as soon as I get off school tomorrow.

Once again, given my lack of art training and experience, it’s best not to expect much from this.