Spring Break, art equipment and web comics

Ah so happy to have a small break from school. Bio 101 is kicking a lot of our arses. You'd think an exam would be easy and you'd get a decent grade when the test are group test. Apparently not and the whole class scored badly on the last test. Our professor is probably being super strict or something.

Anyways spring break yes I can sleep in. I've been dead tired in the day time these past couple of weeks. I'm not a morning person yet I would rather take morning classes just to get them out of the way. Oh and April is coming up which is when I will really start getting into gear and actually start producing content for my web comic/manga how ever you want to call.

Tangent: I draw in the anime/manga style but yet I call it web comic and such. I know no one has pointed it out but I find myself thinking about this oddly enough. So when I say web comic it can be defined as either comic or manga since I honestly consider the two words to be the same. Same goes with anime and cartoons. I would rather refer to the two as animations or animated shows if all possible but anime is generally the fastest way to type it so yeah. If anything I could just refer to my comic as web graphic novel, but yeah that's a bit of an odd tangent I pointed out. I don't care how anyone calls it comic, manga or graphic novel they mean the same thing so yeah don't be too confused.

Tangent 2: I feel like getting an Intuos well more like on the fence. See it may not be a good investment right now because of the fact that I'm not a professional and such. I've been using art tablets for 5 years and my good partner, Wacom Bamboo has been a great help for those 5 years. It's far from kicking the bucket too, but I feel that I want to try out the other great pen tip pressure options Intuos has. Maybe in two years I see to buying one especially when I really get down to the nitty gritty of animation university. 

I've been lagging as far as work on Noobie Bounty Hunter. Video games kind of got my spare time these couple of weeks ehehe. I'll get KI-WI's character sheet done and will move on to the rest of the current cast promise.

In other news, I've been reading a lot of web comics. It's a way to get into the comic making mood I guess. So what am I reading? List time!

What web comics L.A. is reading:

First off is Andrew Dickman's The Roomies . I don't remember if I talked about Andrew Dickman in my favorite artist part 1 post but yeah Andrew is one of my favorite artist out there. He's an animator and or cartoonist and The Roomies is a project near and dear to his heart. He started this comic a long while ago but he dropped it because he didn't know where he wanted it to go. After some many years, he finally figured out how he wanted to tell the story and here we are. This web comic is new and started earlier this March and though the story hasn't caught on just yet, it is looking pretty solid.

Next up is Mary "Cube" Cagle's Kiwi Blitz. I actually really like Cube's style because it follows a similar philosophy as my own style which is being simplistic. My character KI-WI and her name was not inspired by Kiwi bot that is strangely coincidental. If anything KI-WI's name is based on the fruit not the bird and she was thought up during my freshmen year of high school roughly 8 years ago. I have no idea why I named her KI-WI but I did. Anyways this is a pretty entertaining comic I'm not much for serious sci-fi stuff but I can totally chill with colorful and relatively up beat sci-fi stories which in some cases Kiwi Blitz is. Granted the more recent chapters (or in the comic's case tracks) are much more darker in tone it's still very interesting and fun to read so yeah I'm eager to read the next track.

Jim Zub with the help of talented artist Shun Hong Chan put together a very, very beautiful and incredibly interesting web comic Makeshift Miracle. The art is beautiful and the story is very well though out and written so far. It's like one of those very good animes or anime movies that seem like a slice of life but actually have a bizarre, out of nowhere element to it. Like Haruhi or Summer Wars. Of course there is less of an Japanese influence in this comic and more of a western feel which is a great change of pace if I had to be honest. I'm eagerly waiting for new pages.

Snafu has a good number of on going web comics. I plan on reading Endling's Ever After as well as catch up with Bleedman's comics the Powerpuffgirl one, Grim Tales, and Sugar Bits. I'm not sure about the other comics but as far as it goes, Endling and Bleedman are my favorite artist here. Sadly I think Ever After hasn't been updated for 4 years but I haven't read all of it so I can make some head way.

Lastly we got Gigi D.G.'s Cucumber Quest. A very colorful comic that may remind people of Adventure Time. I've never really been fond of Adventure Time but I find this comic to be interesting. It has a neat sense of humor and though the art may seem cute and colorful for a man like me to enjoy I do. I remember some one told me once that I draw too cute for a guy and in some cases I agree. The visuals of this comic are nice, the story pretty interesting so far and the humor is really something. I like the food theme going on in it.

Some other web comics I'm thinking about reading are Sanctuary School, Romantically Apocalyptic, and Eerie Cuties.

So yeah sleep in, work on some school stuff, but mainly work on my web comic! So I'm off! *Wosh!*

Hello, Hello

So I decided to go post one completed art works here. This one was done just for practice, for stretching my art muscle.

Click image for full view

I titled it Hello, Hello for some reason but yeah it was decently fun to do and very simple. I was also experimenting with the line art and used a brush 5 times bigger than what I would normally use. It gave me some interesting results and I might try it again but with a 10 times bigger brush. I actually like the design of this character even though this kind of hairstyle boggles my mind as to how it actually works or how it could work in real life but yeah who knows, this character might find a home in one of my stories. Actually yeah I will think about putting this character into one of my stories and give her a proper name.

I was looking through my files and sketches and found this. I'm actually thinking about finishing a lot of my old sketches. Some of them need some major tweaks while others need to be re drawn all together but that's not too bad at least I will not be getting any art block anytime soon.

Anyways enjoy and ciao~

The Heads Up 3/21/2012

I've boycotted facebook, but I'm so tempted to update my status there but I know I shouldn't. So I'll do it here. You know I feel a whole lot better know that I don't have to worry about facebook. I'm happy.

My plan is to do this as a weekly thing and I guess maybe on Mondays instead of Wednesdays. So what's going on in my crazy head?

I figured maybe the illustrations I do don't grasp as much interest so start telling my stories. I've been told one of my strengths has been in story telling and the best way I can do that is through comics so let's do it with Noobie Bounty Hunter!

I've pretty much putting all my focus on Noobie Bounty Hunter. I want to start it up as a web comic. Currently I'm working on character reference sheets. I've started with KI-WI since she is the main character after all. I also need to start thinking up some bad guys and such and get a full cast rolling. I'm also thinking about the script for chapter one.

What I plan on doing is maybe get half of or all of chapter 1 done before I start posting that way I can consistently push out content and keep the readership interested while I work on chapter 2, but before I can even start getting a chapter rolling I need to establish the character designs and figure out how the story will roll in both chapters 1 and 2.

As far as characters go, I only have a solid design for KI-WI. Bunny Italics and Gilroy Straightedge still need a design. Of course I also need designs for the antagonists.

So yeah I really, really want this to be legit so I'm going to be working very hard to make this web comic real as well as work on a publishable version of the comic to submit to publishers to, just maybe, get a book deal.

It's time L.A. stepped up and made a name fore myself in the art world!

Left Direction Returns!

A little off topic here but I decided to revive my old media coverage blog Left Direction. Basically I wanted to do indie journalism since I do enjoy watching video game review shows and such, but I also want to talk about other things revolving around stuff like video games, animated shows, graphic novels, and so on. Basically it's going to be more professional than what I do here since this blog is more of a personal blog for me to spout thoughts mindlessly and post art and recent purchases.

So my goal is to give an honest resource as to what people could spend their time on. So yeah I'm going to start sprucing up the blog so yeah keep on eye on that readers.

So yeah stay tuned for that.

Sketch it up: KI-WI Action Piece

New section I guess. For when I do sketches because not all my sketches become actual finish stuff and even some planned projects never get finished so this is a bit better than a work in progress section.

So I'm yet again practicing with new poses and working with foreshortening since foreshortening is something I have trouble with. I want to do more dynamic illustrations so yeah.

Click image for full view

I decided to re do the earlier sketch I had of this character KI-WI. I felt the jumping pose she was in wasn't very exciting and so I made her tripping or in a very hap hazard fleeing state. I'm planning on putting something in the background to indicate what exactly she is frantically trying to avoid. I'm also working on expressions. I want to have a much more expressive style since they are really fun to draw. I still need to finish her right hand. I don't know what I want to do with it but something will come up eventually.

I'm also thinking about seriously making a web comic out of this character and the world she is apart of. Though I wanted to make a game about this character, I think it would be easier to start with a webcomic. So I'm hoping to start making proper character design sheets for the main lead of this story. The story is called Noobie Bounty Hunter KI-WI. 

So I guess I should start doodling up characters for Noobie Bounty Hunter.

New layout!

Yeah lots of green because I really like green.  Not because it's St. Patrick's day that just some really odd and well timed coincidence. If I had to choose a favorite color then it would most likely be green or maroon. Musical Vibes original purpose was to be a graphic so I can strut my graphic design skills because if there is anything I know how to do right it would have to be finding new and unique ways to use art programs.