WIP: Lanavi Winter's winter 2011

So this time of year always reminds me of my most beloved original character. Her name, Lanavi Winter. Obviously by her name was inspired by this season which is my favorite season. Now I didn't really feel like doing a festive art piece to celebrate Christmas and well this is my second time passing on the tradition. Instead I really want to make a piece where Solstice is outdoors where it's snowing and its night and maybe put a hint of Christmas. The Christmas in the piece is going to be super subtle I'd rather express the season more than anything.

Click image for full view.

 There isn't much here right now. Lanavi is going to have longer hair to make look more elegant I guess and well I don't have a lot of long haired characters.

 Here is the final sketch. I decided to not only to change Lanavi's hair style but to also redesign her outfit. I gave her one of my favorite kinds of coats while adding a bit of my flare to it. (i.e. the wrapping ribbon like things which are button on. I guess if they needed a practical purpose they have different notches so you can tighten the sleeves.) I still thinking if I should keep the scarf in her regular design. I love drawing scarfs. I just enjoy make them seem to come to life and thus their motion is a tad over exaggerated. Again I always love drawing hands and all sorts of positions and such. She does wear winter clothing in the story she is apart of because she lives in very northern like area of the world where it is normally snowing and such. Each of my characters in this story have two outfits one for the cold and one for the warmth. Lanavi's outfit for the warmth would be under her coat. I just haven't figured out what exactly. 

This blog post will be updated as the piece progresses so yeah.

Ciao~

Class Artwork: Tribute to a great mind.

In my design class, we were told to do a portrait piece of some one of significance to us for our final project. I would've did my parents but we weren't allowed to do two (No I can't choose one. Both of my parents are awesome) due to the time. So I decided to do one of an individual who has helped inspired me to write stories and do animations, Hayao Miyazaki. Hayao Miyazaki is the man behind some of the best known Ghibli films. He's a director, animator, manga artist, and story writer.

So I have done portrait pieces several times before but this one was very different. How is it different? Well let's take a look.

Click image for full view.

 

This portrait was done with nothing but text! So starting off, I did a quick sketch of the reference photo with a pencil and then I wrote all the titles of Miyzaki's works that I have seen, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, Ponyo, Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso, and Nausica. To create different darker values I wrote over and over and wrote smaller. To make lighter values I just wrote big. This was my favorite project in design class.

Here are some detail shots.

And here is the photo I used as a reference.

Now my printer decided to screw up the photo and make the shadows much more darker than they should so that's why there is a huge dark shadow on his face and such. 

I used a mechanical pencil and my Sakura pigma micron pen to make this.