One more time!

Hiatus... oh! And random fandom and meshes of sketches

2009-09-11T13:41:00.007+08:00

HEY GUYS!

Just to inform you people, I'm leaving for a while
But I'll be back around December... ermm.. hopefully bah.

But I'm not leaving you all empty-handed!
Here are some sketches to entertain you guys!

NO
This is not all the sketches I've done but these are the few of my favourites and post-worthy I suppose? (Plus, some I don't feel like posting =D)

Well, then... enjoy!

PS. Drawings are in chronicle order

I did this sketch on my Literature/Othello file... I was just randomly doodling to see if I can pull of an anime 'Kawaii' look... I think I failed badly with the eyes but I thought the details and the shadings of the clothes were nicely done.
(I like the 'twinkles' too! XD)

This is definitely one of my favourite sketches!
After watching this:
Smooch+vocaloid!
I was inspired to sketch on my physics tutorial some similar characters...
Actually I was just practicing with the eyes and I liked how each character turned out.
Plus, the sketch was done up in pen and the drawings/lineart looks clean that way

HAHHA
Oh my.
I think I was supposed to be doing the electropotential work so I was revising along the way.
I wanted to make myself remember this part so I drew someone pointing enthusiastically at it.
I was surprised at how... alive the character seemed...
Come on!
Its just electropotential... why all the hype?
SHEESH.

This was during a GP lecture...
They were talking about ice cream, music, fish... and something...else.
So I incorporated everything into this character... I know the drawing seems sketchy and the anatomy seems wonky but I just like how the legs turned out.

Okay, now with the random sketches being fully explained, on to my latest fandoms! ... or so...

Sailor Moon!

Yes! Its Sailor Moon...
What? Don't judge me! D=
I didn't manage to catch it when I was a kid so with youtube at hand, I begin to check up on it and see what's so great about it.
It was actually good (Well, better than a certain Mermaid melody pitch pitch pitch... cough.)
Yeah, so it has its lame transformations and powers but it was better in terms of storyline I suppose.

Check out her eyes!!! The details are mainly on her face, her accessories and hair.

I also drew a more realistic Sailor Moon (shonen like?) but I won't be posting it up here.

Vocaloid!

I know I told myself that I would NEVER get caught in the hype but look where I am now... sheesh... I like some vocaloid songs but I think what captured my attention the most was the renderings of the characters by some GREAT TALENTED artists! Seriously... like Yunomi, Miwa Shirow, Redjuice, etc...

Check this person's blog out for more details...
Polymetrica
(I love her posts, always filled with information and her thoughts about each's artists illustrations...!)

Here is a drawing of Teto.
I liked her character design but what irritated me the most was getting her hair to look realistic... Go google her and see whether her hair is... er... possible?

I think the scanner didn't pick out the details... hmm...
But anyway, I liked how the hair turned out here and her expression... hmm... plotting eh?
Yeah I know the anatomy is wonky here too

AW YAY!
One of my better sketches of Miku Hatsune...
All in different styles.
I guess one of the reasons why I love drawing her is that I can draw her FLOWY LONG HAIR =DDD
Plus I can draw cool MP3 devices and earphones...
yay!

Well... She wasn't supposed to be Miku... but every time, I flip to this page (COUGHorganicchemnotesCOUGH)I keep thinking that she was Miku. So with my trusty pen, I sketched in more details and came up with another cool MP3 + earphone combo... err.. THINGY!

Her anatomy is also messed up
But oh well...
I just like the details in her MP3 and her face (Shading and all...) XD

Here's one with Rin and Len... I like the poses here
I don't think I ever done a drawing with Luka because, I guess she looks... plain?
(I only liked her when I came across this song: 'Just be friends') (Illustrations done by talented Yunomi! =D)

Random sketch on Paint MS.
I wanted to do a more realistic Miku so she doesn't look err... very cute but I guess that's not the point of the sketch.

Tried to finish up the sketch... Not to happy with the shading and the eyes... but I liked how the hands turned out and how the nose was corrected.

The Dark Knight: Joker/Harley Quinn

Not exactly a fandom but I just love drawing the joker... well, the Dark Knight version.
Erm... I tried to draw the movie version of Harley Quinn I suppose. I was trying to figure out a costume she might wear in the movie itself. I was trying to move away from the spandex suit. hahah

I liked the one on the upper left.
A bit unrealistic but better than the others I sketched out... hahah!

Joker came back into play when I was inspired to capture a naughty expression on my GP paper.
I REALLY like the expression here... one of the better ones (Or the only better one? hahah!)

Since I drew joker, I thought I would give a go at Harley...
Her eyes are messed up because I keep scratching over the area with my mechanical pencil... heh...
Other than that, the details are there and I'm happy.
=D

Something I sketched on my small notebook. Harley Quinn when she begins to be infatuated with the Joker.

I don't think its too clear... briefly, she is standing in front of a broken mirror, donning on a red dress and her headdress?
Yup, it was another go at finding a more modern take to her costume...

A 'chibified?' drawing of the above one.
I wanted to have a full body illustration... so that was one way of doing it without putting in so much effort... ahha!

Well, hope you enjoyed this post... and hope that it makes up for the hiatus... for a while anyway?
Don't keep coming back here, cause I won't be posting up so soon... XD
Well, take care and to those who are taking their major exams...
JIA YOU BAH!

Just to show that I'm alive...

2009-05-31T19:22:00.004+08:00

Contrary to popular belief...

I AM ALIVE

D=

And here is a third entry to prove it!

HAH.

So there. (Enthu aren't we?)

Ahem...

Anyway, here are some sketches to prove that I am still drawing...

On one of the pages of my electromagnetic notes, I drew this picture of this vicious looking indian pirate! Cool huh?

Uhh... anyway, I like the anatomy and shading here.

Don't look now, but its...
DEMONA!

As you can guess, I've been watching 'Gargoyles' lately.
I like how the female gargoyles look elegant with their Gargoyle feet.
So...
I came up with Gargoyle high heels!
A punk looking one Demona is wearing
And cute wedges worn by the Angela looking human.

I was watching 'Monsters inc' and they happened to mention about matching monsters to the children they're supposed to scare.

So I thought of a cool looking (Think 'King' from the Tekkan game) white tiger monsters with feet which look like furry bunny slippers. He is the monster from the Asian district, and here we have a cute asian girl hugging his furry feet.

Uh... he doesn't exactly look cool in the sketch but you get the idea.

I drew more than these actually
but I don't want to reveal too much...
Surprise lah.

I would like to thank one of my friends for this post.
I told him I was too busy to draw nowadays but he reminded me that our friends from art has to find time to draw too... so if they can do it, why not me too?

So since this is the holidays and all, I'm going to take his advice and take some time each day to draw...
Hopefully, I can continue doing this without procrastination getting in the way...

By God's grace lah.
Seriously. =)

House Exco farewell momentoes

2009-05-31T00:02:00.016+08:00

WARNING: MANY MANY PICTURES.

Hey guys!
As you would know, the House Exco seniors have stepped down already.

We thought of giving gift bags to... well... ourselves
So I decided to chip in and make something for the house exco gang... just to thank them for their company and guidance

Here are my thought processes:

Well, the house exco key chains are supposed resemble these characters above
If you can recall, I actually created the Griffin character before but since I'm making presents for the whole Exco, I decided to design 3 more characters: Pegasus, Dragon and Phoenix to complement the Griffin. I wanted a cute look so I made them look like children... childhood friends perhaps?

Here are a few sketches of the characters. I was exploring with the relative sizes of the characters and the details of each character.

Colour exploration of the phoenix

... AND the other characters.

Like before I decided to explore with different kinds of dragons characters... but if you noticed as I progressed to the other characters, I come up with less and less character designs... uhhh... ooops? Artist block?

Eventually I decided on a nerdy and pampered looking dragon with a cloud for a sweater. Griffin loves to bully him =D

Dragon designs part 2

Phoenix designs. I was going for a girly design but I didn't want to go TOO far so I added in a slightly tomboyish element.

One of my favourite designs, Pegasus with hips in trackpants and Dr. Marten boots. Adventurous much?

I was coming up with designs for the gift. I decided that keychains would be a good gift so I came up with a sculpture of the characters, a laminated caricature of the fellow CCA members and a jigsaw puzzle for each of them. When all the 16 jigsaw puzzles are put together, a phrase will be formed. I have the design with me but I won't be posting it up until we get together to form the phrase. =D

Here of the designs of the sculptures. I wanted to incorporate the initials of my fellow CCA members' names and the 4 characters.

I didn't think that the laminated characters were practical (especially with my schedule) so I scrapped that idea.

I did up some sketches though of some of my friends... could you guess who they are?

Okay, So here I was starting off with the body of the scultures. I seperated the characters from the initials.

Close up of characters' bodies

Close up of the letter 'R'

Dragon sculptures, each with a different pose.

All that I sculpted for that day.

I know what you are thinking: 'The dragons don't look like the one in the sketches' Uhh... well, I realise with air-dry clay, it is very hard to sculpt in the details without the clay figure drying up.

I tried using the wire body to help me, but it only hindered my progress.

Failed creation #1!
WHOOTS.
Failure means I'm on my way to success right?

Then comes the phoenix sculptures! Everything went well, except for the legs.

YEESH.
The wires definitely did not help.
Failed Creation #2

What I did for that day.

Not forgeting Pegasus! I know they look fat and that they lack the long hair I showed in the sketch but its due to sculpting limitations... I mean COME ON! The long hair may just break if the sculpture were to be dropped.

The third Phoenix. See the details? Like the fingers?

The FAILURES.
Failure creation #3
Mostly due to the clay drying up too fast before I could add in more details.

I was trying to experiment on how the characters were supposed to stick to the alphabets but then I realised that the letters may be too thin to support the respective characters. So, sad to say, I had to change my direction.

Hmph. POSERS.
XD
Kidding lah.

So... I sculpted heads instead. Its a much simpler to make and still represented the 4 characters.

CLOSE UP! =D
(If you were wondering why the clay is tinted red, its due to the blood and sweat I put in making these keychains... HAHAH whatever. But seriously, its just a camera feature)

The crowd of heads

Close up of the dragon head

The whole gang WITHOUT the red tint.

Then comes painting!
I used acrylic paint for the heads. Took alot of time to paint the many coats of paint on the heads. But it was worth it.

Phoenix head details

Dragon heads fully detailed

So are the pegasus heads

Eh... Griffin heads almost completed...

You didn't think I forgotten about the initials did you?

Branded: House Exco.

So... I heard you were triplets?

Eh... Not exactly...

You know... you gotta admit, After looking at them long enough, they look kinda creepy smiling like that.

Phoenix having a little gossip session
OR...
2 Phoenix heads wondering why their fellow phoenix head resting on its beak.

Details of the back.
Flaming pigtails FTW!

What are YOU looking at, bub?
OH NO.
I'm not falling for the big eye routine...

I MEAN IT.

House sharing session...
Or just a group photo.

Here are the initials with the jigsaw puzzle pieces I printed, cut out and backed with cardboard.

Another CLOSE UP!

Here comes the fun part... GLAZING!
Makes it all shiny, waterproof... shiny!

The full package: The character head (Fully painted and glazed), the initial and the jigsaw puzzle

Full PARTAY! WHOOTS!
Looks nice as wallpaper eh?

Another shot

Us Griffin Seniors decided to give a parting gift to each of our Griffin juniors so here is my contribution: A rather large griffin hugging the juniors. =D

I used cards for this gift. By using a penknife, I cut out the shape of the arms so I can slip the characters in, so as to make it look as if the Griffin was actually hugging them.

What do you know. Another CLOSE UP!

So here we come to the end.

If you read the whole entry... then good for you! I'm so proud of you! =D

Anyway, if you want to comment on anything, feel free to comment.

Please and thank you!

Posts that should have been done weeks ago

2009-05-30T22:09:00.005+08:00

Hey there, sorry for not posting these up sooner.

School... but yeah... just when you claim that you haven't got the time, there's always going to be someone wise to tell you ' MAKE TIME.'

Anyway, to the point!

First stop!

House exco camp T-shirt design!

So here we have the first few designs of the camp t-shirt design.

Inspired by the 'Kids Next Door' logo, I decided to incorporate the 4 mythical mascots of the 4 houses into the design and since the theme was 'secret agents', I made their poses all 'spy-like'. But honestly they just look like one big blob... Especially Pegasus. Do you guys even know where is Pegasus? Man.

I thought it will be interesting if we had a design that resembled a detective's coat with a 'secret' book peeking out of it. But the design will be a little difficult to print and not exactly practical. See the one labelled 'Another back'? I thought it will be cute if you have a spy hiding at the back of your t-shirt. Does that scream 'spy'? haha

Eh, but those designs were a little too complicated so my fellow CCA member suggested that I should do up something with reference to the 007 logo. So here it is with 2 other variations below.

My same fellow CCA member asked me to design another one to compliment the gun design. So here they are. The first 2 are the revamped ones of the first few designs. The third one was the more popular choice.

Remember the gun designs? Well, a lot of them liked the one with the smoke coming out from the gun so all I had to do was made the smoke more legible.

Then here is the final design, all colored and photoshopped!

Now we come to the House Exco pullover design!
Didn't really use a complicated design for our pullover but it was fun thinking about the design!

I was quite happy with this one cause I'm not exactly good with typography but I thought this was quite an eye-catching and witty design.

A cute and more graphic take on the pullover design.
But since it might be quite expensive, we didn't for this idea.

The above 2 designs were not chosen but I was quite happy with the inking.
More typography based design since we wanted to gear towards a less graphic path.

Okay that's all I got for you today...
More to come so watch out!

PS. You might have noticed that I'm not really writing much.
The number of reasons being:

1) I'm busy watching a show
2) Its night time... I'm getting quite tired
3) There don't seem to be a point

For now I'm letting the pictures tell the story. If you want to know more about any projects that I have done, free feel to email in or there's always the tagboard.

WELCOME to the WINGS SALOON!

2009-01-23T23:49:00.009+08:00

Feeling dull?

Need something to lift you up?

Then what you need is a trip to the Wings Saloon.

Yes!

You heard me right.

THE.

WINGS.

SALOON.

Exciting no?

Here at the Wings saloon, we feel for the customers' desires to fill up that bald space behind them, commonly known as the 'back'. We believe we should be the ones responsible for fulfilling that missing part in your life.

Not yet convinced? Then let us enter the bowels- the inner workings of the saloon!

ONWARDS!

Thinking of something red? Then why don't you try the phoenix wings?

Shaded and textured with gold

Now won't you be the life of the party?

And its not just on one side, its TWO! So now others can view your wings when they face your front or when they face your back! Isn't that amazing? Wonderful technology has definitely played a large part in the making of these wings.

Since House Exco is sponsering the Wings Saloon, you will get a nice LARGE imprint of one of the House Exco mottos: 'Take a leap, fly with the House Exco' in CRAZY HOT PINK! Now, aren't the wings becoming more tempting already?

Want to start buying already?

Hold your horses!

There is still much more!

To keep your wings durable in all sorts of seasons, the Wings Saloon has brought you the service of ironing them in nice plastic sheets! OOH! Shiny!

Red not your colour? Then why not try Pegasus blue?

Nothing says peace and serenity like a pair of pegasus wings!

Feeling adventurous? Get a load of the genuinely textured griffin wings! We observed a live Griffin to accurately capture the details for your own satisfaction. Isn't that splendid?

Feathers not for you? Then there's always dragon wings!

Here are some of the feedback from some satisfied customers!

EP: *Shocked!* WOW the wings look really great! It really makes the drink stall look fabulous!
Xinyi: YES Definitely! Even though we didn't get to use them as regular wings, they're really useful for hanging around!
ShiXuan: WAH! Can even use them to brush the dust off the table!

There you have it! Customers who felt that the Wings Saloon was the turning point in their life!

Want to have your own wings? Sure thing!

Though we cannot be contacted through the telephone, you can always go to a nearby alley. Start knocking on the walls to the tune of Bosanova. When people asks you what you are doing, confidently say that you going to get a new set of wings. If people stare or laugh at you. Ignore them. We at the Wings Saloon believe that wings are only given to those who... well, believe.

Very soon, a person will stop what you are doing and tap a SECRET tune to open up to our main Wings Saloon branch (But not before commenting how funny you look tapping the bosanova tune alone in an alley)

We hope to hear a wide range of responses! So, don't hesistate today! Go to the nearest alley now!

PS, go NOW and you can get a free blank pair of wings...

Yes you heard me... BLANK! Creativity is now in your hands. Personalise your own wings! Wear them out! Be proud!

(No feathered creatures or being were hurt in the making of the wings... just blunt colour pencils.)

Pegasus web banner and chinese new year cows

2009-01-23T22:51:00.009+08:00

Hey!

It has been a while...

A REAL LONG while.

Okay... I don't want to go through the whole cliche cycle of asking for your sympathy and forgiveness for not updating so long.

So let's get to the point.

You know... if I had any inspiration... I would have thought of a better title but I do not want to waste too much time blogging.

Uh.

Yeah.

Here we go!

PEGASUS WEB BANNER

I know we just celebrated chinese new year but I want to blog in order, according to the time I did the artworks.

As you would know, Pegasus is the winning house of 2008 (cheers and whoots!) so I was asked by my fellow house exco member to help design a web banner for Pegasus to be put up in the school's website...

Here are my sketches:

I won't elaborate much but only on the main idea. Basically, after looking through the sketches, my friends wanted the web banner to have the caption " Who's blue, hoarse and long-faced?' with a silohette of Pegasus in the background. Then when people click on the banner, they would see an illustration of a touched Pegasus holding a trophy while the other house mascots applaud her.

So here is the inked sketches

I sketched another banner because I thought others would not understand the caption in the first one.
However, I didn't use the 2nd banner eventually because there wasn't much time.

Here is the coloured version...

Again, the colouring isn't too good because its rushed work...
Errr... At least I tried my best with the patterns and colour scheme?

Anyway, these are the final illustrations that you would see in the nanyang jc website... Please do take a look before they take it down!

Nanyang JC website!

ER... NO. Its not shameless advertising...

I am only er....

helping you be AWARE of the house system in Nanyang JC...

yeah...

YEAH!

That's it!

...

Oh who am I kidding...

Anyway, moving on to one of my favourite works...

CHINESE NEW YEAR COWS

I had to design cows to decorate the hall and give it a 'chinese new year' feel for the chinese new year celebration yesterday (23/1/09)...

I like the character design of the cows but maybe more could be explored.

But Thank God for the response it recieved...

The only thing that bothered me was that the colours of the enlarged scanned drawing was so dim that the cows and the chinese characters did not stand out.

ARGH.

Anyway.

Here is the progress!

This is the initial sketch... I was observing cows on the net and was exploring with different character designs.

Then I eventually had some solid ideas in mind and started sketching.

I don't have any pictures of the sketches, but here are pictures of the inking process.

The final inked products+coloured

After that, the teachers helped to enlarge the pictures of the cows and the bookshop auntie helped to mount on coloured boards. Thanks a lot bookshop auntie, for taking time off to do it nicely while handling customers in between!

So guys... if you could not have seen the cows at the front of the stage... PLEASE VIEW THIS POST for a MUCH CLOSER look.

Thank you!

I have done other drawings... but I'll leave it to another day...
So keep reading this blog and DO comment!

House Banner design OVERLOAD

2008-12-24T13:49:00.013+08:00

Yeah

That's what I get for not posting on time.

I'm not too sure whether I want to split this post up.

Well, we'll see how it goes.

Okay

As you would know, I'm from NYJC House Exco

The group dedicated and geared towards making your school a better place to reside in We believe that everyone has a place they belong to So through the house system, we hope to see people bond within each house And feel that they not only belong to the house but the school.

WOAH DRAMA SIA

HAHA Nevermind. I'll get on with it.

HOUSE EXCO POINTS BANNER

Remember these?

Yeah. My fellow designer and I were asked to design a house exco points banner.
But my designs were a little too complicated.
So I worked on the fonts (Greek design since most of the mythical creatures were of greek origin)

And we used her initial design.

I compiled everything together and here is what we got.

As you can see it is black and white
But OH HO,

COLOURS SIA!
Yeah.
These are the colour schemes I came up with.
We chose the black one.

We weren't going to paint the banner but rather print it so I had to come up with an up-to-scale one.

Here is the progress.

Yup, so after a few adjustments, we settled that.

NOW ONTO THE NEXT BANNER PROJECT

OPEN HOUSE BANNER

Here are my initial designs I had thought of when I was with my family at Mcdonalds

And here it is when they are coloured!
Sorry, this is just a rough colour scheme so it is not coloured well.

We were gearing for a simple design with red, yellow and orange to be the main colour scheme.
After a discussion with our teacher, I adjusted the design a little.

And a little more.
We chose the one without the lollipop.

You think I'm spamming you?
HAHA Be thankful I didn't post up my other sketches. Now that is spamming. XD

OOH! OOH!
Here are some pics of my friends working on this banner.

Man. The banner is sure big.

Council helping us to paint.

Consultation sia. XD

JIA YOU Qing Shan!

An entry of the banner painting event can be found on the House Exco website
Courtesy of Denise!

http://nyjchouseexco08.wordpress.com/2008/12/06/banner-painting/

Check it out for more info!

GRIFFIN HOUSE BANNER

OKAY.
I also designed the banner for our griffin house
My Griffin house captain wanted to go for 'ke ai de lu xian' or rather 'cute road'
XD
So I designed some griffins for her to see
I won't explain everything only the important ones I used for the banner

You see the shy griffin with the crown?
Yeah, my house captain wanted this but stronger and less... well, shy.

My griffin vice-captain wanted the big eyed one at the bottom
Because well,
Its cute.

I redesigned the characters and the house captain approved.
Man.
It is seriously fun designing the different griffins.
Who knew there would be so many variations.

I think it would be fun if I designed the other houses' mascot too. XD

I got an idea to make a felt jacket with a collage of that cute mascot on the front for our House exco notebooks (In the case of Griffin, I'll be doing the big eyed one)
If anyone of you Houseexcoers think its a good idea, tell me about it. I may do it and give it to you all when you step down from the CCA. =D

I came up with the banner composition

My House captain preferred the second one
Both macho and cute! Really going for 'ke ai de lu xian' XD

Here are a few coloured schemes

Before

After!

If you really want to know, the final banner was a mix of the 2.

BUT WHY DON'T I LET THE PICTURES DO THE TALKING? =D

Working on the fonts late at night. SHEESH.

A sketch was done up.

2 Griffins!

1 left and then came...
WHA?
3?!

Hey fellow Griffins! I need you to help me paint...

And there was... 1.

...

Thanks a lot hor. Evacuate liao. XD

BONUS PICTURE =DDD

Beautiful eh?
Thanks to all who contributed to the banner painting event!

Watch out for Open House! >=D

Okay
Looks like I didn't split up the post

Hey well,
Take care while viewing this post!

You want to ask me any questions just email me!

I'll be back... WITH A NEW POST.

SOON.

WHAT?

My mother baking again you know.

XD

PS

OOH! OOH!

Another BONUS!

Remember this?

BY THE POWER OF THE MECHANICAL PENCIL STAFF...
TRANSFORM!

Here.

So much better!
I think the mechanical pencil helps me to draw in the details properly since the lead is thin and all.
Man. I really like the mechanical pencil.
Am I committing an art sin?
OMGOSH.
HAHA Anyway...

Any other comments?

Comment,
Tag,
Email.

Whatever makes you happy. =D
Ciao!

OH YEAH HOR.

2008-12-02T08:19:00.003+08:00

I just remembered.

I'm supposed to blog about my doodles right?

Eh.

Yeah... okay Let's make this quick.

By the way, I didn't join the Pinkitude contest on Deviantart and I didn't make any brooches for the Yule Ball event...

It was very hard thinking of brooches to wear especially if your group was in the Slytherin house

And that JK Rowling had to make everyone in that house seem so bad

And that...
Someone was really distracted with work...

Hahah okay... enough of this, lets get down to business.

Oh my gosh... the original bat girl has come back after so many years of establising that another red head was THE batgirl?!?
HAHA
No, its not one of Joker's tricks
Just some inspiration I got after reading batman in the 60s. Much better than in the 40s or 50s...
Yeah I was also studying how the inkers then inked the comics. If you compare with the modern day Batman comics, you can see that inking before was very standard and not much details was emphasised on Batman or the other characters
i was doodling to have the feel of drawing the characters out and drawing out a standard 60s comic book cover
I may ink this out on photoshop or something.

After doing that Batman cover, I headed on sketching Joker. I was thinking of doing maybe a poster of the 2 designs of Joker (The original one and the Heath Ledger one)
I was only sketching so as you can see the composition and the jokers do not look so great.
Eh.
I was very unhappy with the Heath Ledger one... Couldn't get his look. I was SO frustrated that...

I tried to get it right. Apparantly I failed.
Oh man.
I thought I could draw him before.
Anyways.
I didn't have a reference and besides, its no big deal I cannot draw him. I must focus on other important aspects of drawing (Anatomy, sketching properly, etc...)

Ah... the things you can doodle while trying to keep awake.
I like this doodle because its so clean cut.
The character is well defined
Ah well. Except for the twins trying to fan the other character away
XD OMGOSH TWINS FANNING POWER FTW!
Er. What was that?

HAHA
Anyway
I'll be posting up photos of cookies and stuff. Those that are well-taken anyway
Well, My mom HAS been cooking ;D

Yeah Then I'll post up banner designs.
Well after the painting job on friday

Watch this space!

PRE AVENUE Q

2008-11-08T22:29:00.011+08:00

Hello, hello!

It has been a LONG while, hasn't it folks?

Well, if you were thinking that I was not going to update, EVER, you thought wrong BUB.
Haha, but I do apologise for the lack of updates. Anyway, I had school to deal with...

*COUGHpromosprojectworkoralpresentationgettingbackresultsohhhhthehumanityDDD=COUGH*

AHEM.

IF you could decipher the indication that I'm going to be unwell soon... you would see that I was busy and that there seemed to be no time for art.

Not to worry folks! In my next post, I'll be showing you DOODLES that I did to try to stay awake. There wouldn't be time for me to post everything up. Besides, it will make my post LOOOONG and MESSY.

Hey hey! As you can see from the title, I went to watch Avenue Q! Today!

But but, look... it says 'PRE'. What happened before today? Well, for every cool event, there has to be a cool outfit to go with! Or accessories. Cool accessories. Yeah. cool.

Back to the point.
I wanted to wear my purple dress for this special event. However, it did seem that my figure happened to *AHEM* move onto the larger side. HMPH. Must have been the promos. No time to exercise and DDR. Yes... it might have been my fault. I COULD have made time to exercise.

So.
BOO HOO.
I couldn't wear the dress and my designs for matching accessories became null.
It was a nice idea too!
Ai yah. Doesn't matter that much.

Here are the developments of the accessory. I wanted to sculpt a puppet/muppet since Avenue Q is a puppet show, like a sesame street rip-off. XD Since I'm wearing a posh purple dress, I need a posh purple mascot to go with. So I chose a tap-dancing monster.
But eh. You got to admit. A monster with just a top hat, tap dancing shoes and striped limbs isn't all too unique. So I had to develop the character further.
Along with the purple necklace, I wanted to do a victorian silhouette pendant to make my look posh. But I had to design the purple character fully before deciding on the silhouette and how it would look like.

I went to the net to observe the structures of puppets/muppets (IE. Elmo) and how would a silhoette portrait look like. I tried to experiment using Elmo as my guinea pig.

Here is a more developed look at the purple dancing monster. Both structure and colour.

Not that I was able to make it since I could not wear my purple dress.
Well, the holidays ARE coming, so there will be time to exercise.
Till next time purple dress!
In the meantime, I could make that purple accessory.

I was definitely frustrated. I planned it all so well and my dreams had to crumble. (But these dreams a BIT insignificant lah.)
Then I was reading the Ranma 1/2 manga at the library. I saw pictures of Akane and female Ranma in nice frocks which brought out a nice, sweet look. Well, I did have a frock-like dress back home. So I decided to settle with that and see how I could still design my accessories accordingly.

Here are my preliminary ideas.

Here is the rainbow idea. I like my necklace idea so I went around the idea of designing a similar necklace but with a unique character who has a 'multi-coloured' personality? So I came up with a Georgian roly-poly. (At the top right hand corner, I drew a surreal but cute character who is like a space man who likes to blow bubbles. I imagined him to be of pastel and bright colours. I wanted to bring out his innocence. He is an alternate design to the whole 'multi-coloured' character')

Eh. Then I thought he looked too simple and I did not have time to think deeper into his character so I left it to another day to develop on the design. Hopefully, I'll be able to do up this necklace. By God's grace. Seriously. =)

Then a next idea popped up. What about a muppet/puppet in a bow? That would be cute! But that means the puppet would have to be lying down. I thought it would be better if the muppet was upright. I think it would be able to create an illusion of interaction with those observing the muppet. I decided to go with a tie instead.
On the top left hand corner, I drew a sketch of myself wearing the dress with the accessories in mind (Monster-in-a-tie and muppet bracelets). I also wanted to wear my black tights and gladiator high-heels. It brings out the shape of my leg and stuff.

On the top right hand corner, I had sketched more necklace ideas- Sheep jumping over the fence and Cow jumping over the moon (With the spoon and the dish!). I would also like to do up necklaces like these.

The rest of the sketches at the bottom left hand corner are the sketches of the muppet bracelets and the different position it can be in.

Continuation of the sketches with a shopping list at the side! OOO!

OO! OOOO! Let me tell you more of the idea of the bracelets.

As you can see here ****(Ignore the figures. I'll explain those later.), I wanted to do a bracelet matching the concept of the necklace (Beads for limbs.). Here are just sketches of what I thought it would look like.

Then I thought, how about if the limbs were not made of beads but curved to fit your wrists? Just add hinges to the shoulders and wrists and there you have it, your very own bracelet! (Ideas include hinges made of cloth with a button to close it but stuck with metal chains and hooks which can be purchased from spotlight.

Anyway, back to the monster-in-a-tie concept. I wanted to make this muppet a zoo keeper or a shepherd since my dress was filled with prints of animals but it looked plain to me and maybe a little complicated so scrapped that idea and went with having a plain monster without any obvious role. I also experimented with the color of the tie and the monster. Remember, I had to match the tie (& monster) with the dress.

So I went shopping at Spotlight and Art Friends, got my materials and was ready to roll!

SHOPPING LIST YO! And dabbles of sketches. AGAIN!

First, I used the metal wires to construct the body of the monsters.

Second, I used some sort of hardening material to block the shoulders and hips of the monsters, giving them shape (As read from the net). Then onwards modelling clay! Since my sculpy clay had hardened to the point I had to throw the whole box away, I used air-drying clay which seems to be more reliable than sculpy (I don't see it hardening like sculpy!)
I did 2 monsters first. Made one a little too long though. Nevermind bah. Variation is good.

Next day, their bottoms on which they lied on had not hardened yet so I turned it over and worked on the last monster

TADAA! I added the artist-hat at the last moment. It looked cute!

Now that everyone is sculpted nicely...

Third, I went on to paint the figures using good ol' acrylic paint.

Eh. But I had to be sure of the colours first. So I quickly came up with a palette based on the dress designs and experimented. I chose to go with gold and silver monsters bracelets and a pink monster-in-a-tie.

Work in progress...

The FINAL PRODUCT!

*Ahem* sorry. Wrong final product...
Now... this is THE FINAL PRODUCT!

Fourth, I had to chain the limbs to the bracelet monsters. It was a bit tedious. To prevent the bracelet from dropping, I had to tighten the rings using the pliers. EVERY ring.

AHA! The FINAL FINAL product!

I like how the pink monster was able to rest nicely in the tie. And to think I was going to use glue to stick the monster to the tie.

I didn't want any accidents, so I place the bracelets in my bag and did not wear it until I reached the theatre.

I really learnt something from all of this. Plans are made to crumble like a granola nature bar. I mean look through the whole post. (If you dare.) All my designs were not able to come true... At most, I could only wear one without looking so weird.

I guess. If one depends on their own dreams and plans, it has a RISK of failing. But with God, your plans would never fail. Or rather His plans... since the world revolves around His will and not ours.

But anyway, I would like to thank God for getting me through this design process... Took me about a week to finish designing and making the products. If I had counted on myself, you wouldn't even see this vision come true. haha XD
But seriously. I enjoyed the design process. I would like to do another one but until next time.=)

Since this project is done, I will be working on badges and brooches which I can wear for the upcoming Yule ball for LTC participants and maybe join the Pinkitude contest on Deviantart.

****I have to explain the figures above eh? Well. I kept some trinkets here and there so I decided to design outfits that I can wear with the toys and trinkets being the accessories. Yes. This will also be my next project. =D

Well, see you on my next post on doodles! TTFN, Ta ta for now! =D

PS. OOO! Before I forget, Here's my take on a certain project I have to work on with a friend.

Here, I was trying to do a totem pole style. Each totem pole would have the variations of each mythological creature. There are different styles to each creature due to the historical factor I suppose. Pegasus was the hardest. There were very limited variations. Thanks to Wikipedia for the picture references.

And here, I was trying out a greek coin concept. Most of the mythological creatures originated from Greece, so I thought this concept would be cool.

Now, the Wall-E part

2008-08-31T07:37:00.010+08:00

Yes, I know I was supposed to do this entry yesterday, but...

Um... but...

I am doing it now anyways right?

So yes. About Wall-E...

My mom and I planned to watched Wall-E on a Friday night. The funny thing is, I was not as excited as I thought I would be. Hey, its a new pixar movie! I should be. Right?

Meh.

Whatever.

Anyway, Before meeting my mother at her office, I had a few problems.

I could not decide what to wear... OH dilemmas dilemmas...
I know what you are thinking. Why am I so vain and thinking about such SHALLOW things? Later, wait ah, the swarm of anti-vanity cockroaches shall haunt me and feed on my rotting body as punishment to have such FORBIDDEN thoughts going through my head.

I digress.

Yes. Even I was shocked at my own 'girly vanity' However, as an aspiring designer, I have to broaden my horizons, even if it means taking time to mix and match my clothes to find my style in the world of fashion. What? You think this is an excuse to conceal my hidden desire to express my girly need to be... well, girly? Well, listen here bub... that's where you're wrong because... umm... because...

Um... Well...

...

Well, look at the time! I REALLY should be blogging about my night at the movies instead of entertaining such UNnecessary stuff.

Where was I ? Oh yes. So I wanted to wear my 'gypsy' shoes (top right hand corner) so show off my legs, but I could not find anything to match with it. Back to the closet. I thought of donning on a green tanktop with matching set of pants (Bottom left hand corner) but when I saw how my fats bulged out, forming an undesirable shape, I scrapped the idea. So scrutinising at my line of clothing once again, I came upon my 'little miss tiny' pullover. Well, haven't worn that in a while. Inspired by my mother's sense of fashion (In this case putting on a pullover with shorts or skirt) I got my pullover with my black skirt (along with a black tanktop) and put them on. For the finishing touches, I wore my silver snazzy elegant track shoes along with a pair of ankle socks to show more of my legs. The final product is found on the bottom tight hand side of the picture.

By the way, sorry for the terrible colouring. Just take note of the basic colours on the different clothing to get an idea of what I was trying on then.

So after meeting my mom at her office, its off to the movies we go.

Okay, now to the main point of this post: WAS WALL-E GOOD OR JUST ANOTHER HOO-HAH?

My conlusion?
Well, a litte of both, honestly. To me, I found Wall-E cliched. Well, the storyline of robot falling in love is original but... perhaps it was the disney feel to it that got me down. Or maybe it was the lack of character design in the people in the movie (I suppose that's intentional) or even in the robots. I had so many critiques that I found myself putting the show down at almost every aspect. But, I applaud the people at Pixar for the creation of Wall-E and Eve. I find the theme of opposites in the show very intriguing especially between Wall-E and Eve. All the time through the movie, I was finding out ways to personify Wall-E and Eve, creating a fashion line inspired by their design and searching for differences between their designs. (Squares VS circles, elaborate design VS simplicity, etc.). I channeled all my ideas onto paper and here is what I came up with:

Exploring personification of both Wall-E and Eve's designs here. (If you noticed, it is more bent towards Eve. I just love her simplicity which gives me much room to work on her design) I first tried to draw Eve on the top right hand corner. This may be a bit of a spoiler, but I don't think it will give away much. Yeah here we have angry Eve getting scanned. On the left is Wall-E being very frightened for Eve as he think she is being hurt. I was thinking more on the eye-gear at that time. You can ignore Wall-E's head gear. That is definitely an EPIC FAILZ. Eve's glasses was inspired by the glasses Kanye West wore when on his 'stronger' music video.

For a more defined design, you can look at the figures below. On the left is Wall-E. I had in mind a construction worker with a tight tattered t-shirt with simple pair of jeans. To bring out the Wall-E look, I had him wear a pair of goggles which sort of resembles Wall-E's eyes and a square shaped jacket.

In the middle is the initial design of Eve's costume. I wanted to create a white hood with extra long sleeves to show the sleek shape of Eve. Since Eve's role is an outdoor based one, I had her wear a pair of tight shorts. (Even though it really seems out of character)

On the right is Eve with her suit. Next to her is a jacket. In the movie, they had a sort of ship theme. Since Eve is like an officer, I had her don on a smart looking jacket that may explain her status. Again, everything is white to emphasise on simplicity. I am most proud of this design as it portrays Eve well in character, role and as well as design. Thanks God for this.

Scroll down to see the coloured version. (Though I regret saying that you may have an eyesore after viewing it. So be careful yeah?)

Here is the continuation of the designs I came up with for Wall-E and Eve. I came up with another costume (Which looks awfully like pajamas). Actually, this was not intentional but I wanted to show how the grey logo looks on a back of a dress and this was what I came up with. argh... Maybe the arm and leg warmers were not such a good idea. If you look at the coloured version (mind you,I was very tired when I was colouring this page) You would notice markings on the arm and leg warmers. This is to contrast with the white dress. I even came up with a reason for the markings: it is to monitor the health of the person. The different marking accounts for the different aspect of the body and it functions.

Here you see the captain-like costume at the corner. I just wanted to show the back of the jacket. It may seem redundent. BUT PEOPLE! As a aspiring cartoonist/designer/character designer, I have to continuously explore the design of the character even if it means drawing the back, the front, other variations, etc.

BUT OF COURSE! Uncle time still rules and I still have to adhere to my other commitments. So you would not see tremendous amount of drawings and sketches with VARIOUS designs.

By the way, the coloured version is below. Do check it out (If you dare. MWAHAHAs.)

Coloured version of first page

Coloured version of second page

OO! OO! OO! FUN FACT!

Okay not exactly a fun fact but just miscellanous stuff I want to SHOW and TELL. (Man... I need to get myself a copywriter)

So here it is.

GASP!

Gaze upon this old and ancient sketch of mine. Okay, I did this only last year so it is not exactly OLD.

Anyway, this sketch of Hinata fighting with Sakura was inspired by the Naruto fighting game on the PSP. I just love the fighting game... it is one of the more original fighting games. What I like about the sketch is Sakura's anatomy and the smoke... oooo.... pretty! I will be working on its line art on Photoshop. Stay tuned. (Sketched on some chemistry paper... MCQ!)

Just a random sketch on my physics Current (electricity not description of time bub.) notes. I just like the anatomy here. I was experimenting with clothes here. How about, a large T shirt with tight leggings along with the 'gypsy' shoes eh?

Well, That's all I have. Have to go and eat my water melon. Do stop by and comment! I would really appreciate them. Thanks.

PS. Hey James. Thanks for the advice. But I'm a KUKU when it comes to these sort of HTML/JAVA things. Do guide me on this one eh? Thanks.

Teacher's day and Wall-E

2008-08-30T02:16:00.009+08:00

It has been a while.

But it is not too late.

Its teacher's day today (But since this is like the early morn, it should technically be yesterday). So its time to show you what I have been working on for Teacher's day.

But before that, let me clarify. This is not exactly my idea. My school's student councillers requested that each class do up a mug and a card for each their Civics tutor and a subject tutor. This was kind of last minute as my fellow class exco did not feel the need to do so until... well, the last minute. Plus we had to do up a mug for a subject tutor WE DIDN'T KNOW. I would have preferred designing the mug for a teacher the class actually knew. Well, its over so no point grumbling about it now.

Without further ado, here are the designs I did up using oil-based pens.

<--- Here is a close up of the 'Happy Teacher's day' font as requested by our class rep.

<--- Here is a close up of 0810's civics tutor: Mr Low!

<--- Sincerely 0810 =)

<--- And presenting, the mug dedicated to Mr Low, 0810's very patient civics tutor. Here is the mug we did for the other teacher who happens to be a tamil teacher. Since our class do not know him at all, it is obviously very hard to come up with a design that he would actually like. So I tried to design it, making it stylish but not too personal.

<--- Left

<--- Front

<--- Right

If you have noticed, I have written the name of the teacher in tamil looking letters. This way, I can emphasise on his role as a Tamil teacher. The lightning bolts... have nothing to do with him. hahah. Its just a design God help me come up with. Thank God for helping me through the designing process... without Him, I wouldn't have done it in time.

Well, I would love to talk about my trip to the movies and the inspiration that sparked when I watched Wall-E but it is REALLY late and I have to go.

Maybe tomorrow.

Yeah.

I'll get the sketches done by then.

So I have to sleep now.

God bless.

The others

2008-08-11T01:04:00.005+08:00

Hey! We have come to the last update for now. I hope you have enjoyed yourselves so far. Hopefully you guys would be COMPELLED to type in comments regarding my artwork so I can improve. Maybe I can put up a tagboard for easy communication? Anyway, let me stop rambling and let's get to the main point.

This post would be mainly on the minor drawings I had done up that are worth telling. I don't think I have many things to tell you guys now... but let me just get on with it.

1. My attempt for the Graphite competition

There was a manga competition recently. I wanted to take part in it as it would be a challenge for me if I take it up. I like to take up challenges. Its just that getting through the challenge would be the harder part. Apparently I couldn't get through the challenge. Not because of lack of self-confidence or anything like that but rather, its my own step of caution. I recieved my mid-year marks and I did not do exactly very well. If I were to take up this competition, it will just add upon the MANY reasons why I wouldn't do well for the upcoming promos. (Not that not taking part in the competition now is helping me in my preparations for the promos.) Plus, I have very bad time management. I don't think the promos is something I want to risk. So I decided to not take part and concentrate on my academics instead.

The theme was on festivals: the colour of life. I wanted to concentrate on chinese festivals and the food and stories that relate to each one. I decided to narrow my scope to Zhong Zhi and Tang Yuan but I went in search of cookbooks for more insights. (The peranakan cook book was a good choice. But I digress.) My mother bought a few zhong zhi for us to enjoy so here are my sketches of them:

Pencil sketch of the Zhong Zhi wrapped up in the banana leaves. I learnt about how lines play a part in good drawing. Not a very effective lessons about lines but still there is experience.

Here is the Zhong Zhi done up in colour pencils. This was without photo reference (Just by looking at the Zhong Zhi)(Eh. But of course, I got too hungry in the end and ate it up without exactly finishing colouring it properly. I knew I would do something like this so I took precaution and took a picture of the Zhong Zhi before eating it up. Maybe I took a few notes when observing the pictures I took but I did not totally depend on them to colour in the Zhong Zhi.) I really like to thank God for this art piece. I like it as it has a realistic feel to it. It has been a long while since I coloured. But One thing to note. When sketching with a pencil, do not press too hard or else it will just lose the realistic feel to it.

I was actually planning to do more coloured sketches with the help of the picture I took earlier. However, do to my tendency to procrastinate, I did not get around doing it. I seriously must change.

2. My attempt at drawing Joker

If you knew my whole evolution of my drawing style, you would know that I started off drawing simple cartoons which started to morph into (poorly-drawn) anime characters. I was not into drawing comic figures such as Batman because I was not confident with the proportion and such. Even now, I am quite afraid of making my comic characters look as if they had eaten balloons to make up for their AWESOME muscles.

I had recently watched Dark Knight which was a GREAT movie. (It developed the characters and storyline so much that one could actually believe the realism behind the plot. That's how I feel anyway.) Joker was a great character (Well played by Heath Ledger) and I wanted to draw him out. I wanted to test whether I could actually remember what I observed about Joker (His costume, his makeup, his body structure etc.) Well, the only thing that caught my attention was his make up which looked very realistic (With the make up fading/smudging) and his hair (VERY different from what is seen from the animated series). So I drew him out without any references:

Yeah, if you told me it does not look like him. I guess i have to agree with you. But I realised that Joker without his hair, is not deranged joker anymore. I just love how the hair brings out that miserable feel to his character.

After getting used to drawing him, I began doodling a scene where rain pours down and Batman has him pinned down with his foot. When the audience thinks Batman is victorious, Joker voices out his seemingly prophetic (Cliched maybe?) words: 'Don't think you've won just yet Batman, This is just the beginning' He ends off with a maniacal laughter and Batman continues to look on at this miserable freak of Gotham's.

No. This is not a scene from the movie. So you can put your hands away from your eyes and stop worrying about any possible spoilers. I just wanted to picture Joker at what he does best: Laughing his head off. Keeping in mind his look from the movie, I was able to pull it off. Thank god for that. But of course. Joker is human, he has feelings. Thus I drew a picture of him seriously pondering over something over at the top right hand corner. Yes he is not wearing a shirt. Thus you can see the muscles. Another test to see whether I could pull it off. Thank God. I could.

After being so inspired from the dark knight (and other batman comics I see in the library) I begin to have the urge to draw up a fancomic, complete with an original storyline. But until I can really to the task, its back to summations and method of difference for me.

Well, I REALLY got to go. Its very late. Ciao folks.

My paint program series

2008-08-09T08:21:00.004+08:00

Here we are! This is my fourth update. Just one more and I will be done... phew... let's get down to work then.

I recently came up with a challenge for myself. I told myself to create MSN display pictures of myself doing different dances that is seen on the net (specifically youtube.) But here's the tricky part. I'm suppose to do it on my PC which is without a good photoshop program and do it on the paint program instead using a mouse. Here is what I came up with:

1. Caramelldansen

Wanting to show my love (OR <3 hahah whatever...) for the caramelldansen dance, I drew
myself doing the caramelldansen! (Which may have led to utter blood loss to some who saw the picture. Sorry, not for the faint-hearted) Here is the process of my drawing process (which is actually a little of an... accident?)

Here is the line art. I actually wanted to leave it like that since I wanted to do it in black and white. Unfortunately, it did not look clear on the MSN display, so I decided to add in some colour.

So this is what I came up with... But it did look a little plain. Something was missing. Not only my glasses but something else. So I went back to my caramelldansen research on youtube and this is my final product:

Apparently I was missing the white highlights to make the character stand out and give the picture an enthusiastic feeling about the caramelldansen.

2. Girly man!

This was after watching the 'girly man' dance on youtube. Its actually an indian dance clip which look it came from a horror movie (yes, dance and horror. Don't quite come together eh?) where the person added in 'fake' subtitles according to how he heard the video. It was hilarious and creepy at the same time and I wanted to be part of it. So I drew myself doing the dance! Complete with back up dancers at the back!

3. Lucky star

Yes. I fell in love with the opening theme of the anime lucky star (Though it did seem pointless watching it) so I wanted to be part of the action. Here I am posing as they did on Lucky Star. My hair looked wilder than normal so you may not recognise the character as me. Unfortunately.

Here, I decided to complete the picture with random images at the back to compliment the randomness of the anime and added in PINK to show my girlyness. This picture don't exactly look complete but since the pink makes the character stand out,I'll leave it like that.

4. Captain underpants?! What the...

HAHA. BONUS. After returning to pilkey.com to visit, I took my time to take in the videos that were posted on the website which, you'll have to admit, is very hard to swallow. Still, the best video was the captain underpants flash so I decided to do something about that. Here is a picture of me shocked at the sight of Captain Underpant's posterior. UGH. Don't remind me.

I have more coming up so stay tuned. Meet you at the LAST update!: The others

Leadership Training camp (LTC) Preparations

2008-08-09T07:18:00.012+08:00

Hey there, welcome to my third update. You know how I am in House exco right? Well, this gives me that rare opportunity to take part in a leadership training camp. I never took part in one before so I thought it would be loads of fun. I had to go for briefing on one of the days (Saturday... dental appointment...GONE... uhh... sorry... moving on). When I entered the venue of the briefing, I was greeted by the music which seemed almost familiar. No it couldn't be. But I was right, as the lights were off and the powerpoint began to start, this LTC was no ordinary camp- it was a Harry Potter themed one! So here was I, a little in awe, taking in the fact that the teachers actually put in effort to incorporate the activities we are going to do with the Harry Potter theme (They even got us to ride on a broomstick... for the flying fox that is)

So anyway, to the main point. Apparently, I was in group Snape. (Cheers! WHO HOO!) Me and another group member volunteered for the position for the house elf for the Yule Ball. One of the jobs we had to do was the flag designing. So I asked everyone to remember to meet at a certain spot at a certain day and in the meantime, think of a design we can have on the flag. Here are my sketches for the design:

I played around with the ideas of snakes being fans of Snape but eventually came up with a logo or some sort with Snape in his side profile and a comic relief snake coiled around the circle which reads 'All for one and one for SNAPE!' (that's the motto we decided on as a team)

So I got my members to help colour in the flag as I wasn't too sure of the colour scheme (Thanks to procrastination) and this is what we came up with:

Alright isn't it? But i do have to admit, the logo was quite small. So we had trouble standing out a little when we were at LTC. (I mean you can see a green flag but the design?)

Well, when that was done, we also had to gulp down a bottle of soya bean milk to make our PENSIEVE (A bottle where you can store your memories... which are acutally bits of paper with a small journal entry. Not that I use the pensieve often anyway.) They said we could decorate it and I had some designs in my mind. Here is my thought process then:

I was experimenting with different facial expression (Exaggeration, my favourite) and I designed my own asian slytherin uniform. I was to paste the design on the bottle so after coming up with these:

<--- Me floating in the air, trying to conjure up magic...
And here on the right, is my awesomely wonderful and blue magical magic aura... OOO AAA!

I got to work:

I placed 2 sheets of paper a top one another. (Behind being my alter ego) Since the paper is a little translucent, I was able to draw our my MAGICAL AURA according to the size of my character.

OOOO... whose pensieve does this belong to I wonder? And behind you can see my messy work area... Well, an artist work is never done (Even including cleaning up messes!)

As you can see, After coloring in my MAGICAL AURA, I cut out the tendrils look alike to fit my character inside and to give it a 3D effect. Now it does look like I'm conjuring AWESOME MAGICAL AURA. EH?

Here is what it looks like when I pasted it on the bottle, not holding down the longer ends. oooo... VERY 3D!

Here what is looks like with everything pasted down on the bottle. Thanks to the trusty old scotch tape.

AND HERE IS THE FINAL PRODUCT! TADAAA!

From the top (bop bop bop , bop to the top... uhhh... sorry)

and from the side! (Nicely scotched-taped eh?)

Well, and that is that. From then on I was able to conjure AWESOME MAGICAL AURA to supply myself with more copic markers. RAWRYEAH!

Anyway, i would like to thank God in helping me complete this just in time for LTC. I couldn't have done anything without Him. Seriously. Well, I'm done here. Next up!: My Paint program series! See you there!

House exco experiences

2008-08-08T23:05:00.000+08:00

Okay! This is the second part of my updates. This time it is on my CCA, House exco!

(Sorry for taking so long to post up an update. You must be wondering why I'm so high today. I have been playing Rayman and Raging (?) Rabbids 2 on the Wii and it was a BLAST! I get to do LOTS of FUN games that got us laughing off our seats and till our sides burned with PAIN! With so much interaction and required movements, we get to SWEAT, LAUGH and get entertained by STUPID and UGLY rabbits that are SO NOISY and go alksfhiahfoinwakfnjhfiajfia....)

(I digress.)

Anyway, on with my posting. (I'll see you in the next post: 'LTC preparations')

First up: The dragon banner

So when I entered House Exco, something was lined up for us. Apparantly us interns had to come up with a design for the house banners and paint them for the upcoming sports day. So our group had to work on dragon.

This is a couple of sketches I came up using with, using a green marker, for my group members to decide which one would be suitable. In the end, we chose design 2 which is also my personal favourite. (Actually, The ever first design was by our group leader. I used hers for reference. This is so that our ideas can combine together. Besides, this is group work)

Then, I scanned the page into photoshop. I outlined the sketch using the magnetic lasso so that it will be easier for me to use the fill option to fill in colours and decide the colour scheme. On the right are the colour scheme I came up with.

Unfortunately, I think we had to scrap the dragon-looking 'D' and I came up with this design instead, keeping close to the original. I guess it looked a bit plain, so my group leader told me to add the flames and thicken the letters and here is the final design:

Final

Secondly would be: Griffin's publicity campaign

Actually, we were not so keen on the publicity thing but not wanting to do nothing, we decided to put up posters. I was in charge of the design. Kind of. I think. Or maybe. I voluteered. Ah. Whatever. Anyway, I was the one designing. My Griffin team member wanted me do up silhouettes (So as to hide our identities... ooo... scandalous... errmmm... moving on..) So I faced my good old photoshop and started using the lasso tool to form the shape of the characters. Speaking of which, Good character designers say that a good character design is one with a unique silhouette that, with one glance, you can tell that it is them.

Anyway, I was almost at loss because with our silhouettes standing together, we will look like a big black blob of mess. God helped me on the way. The opacity tool was what I needed. That way, I can put the silhouettes together and still differentiate the forms.

Here was the layout. I am quite happy with this. I like how subtle the design is. Even though the actions are almost exaggerated, our voting numbers are nicely typed across our characters.

Here is the final design, after a few tweaking and addition of a few things such as the words 'Griffin' and pop balloons to mention out identities.

Third project: Name tag design

Then came our house exco camp. Apparantly our group was called 'Doremon'. Since most of our group members were girls (Well, until Andre came), I decided to work on the character Doremi. Like a girl version to Doremon. Anyway, here is my sketch I did on photoshop. I used the circle tool for this as to gain that simple and clean effect (Not sketchy). I wanted to make similar tags for my group mates. To quickly draw everything out and get them printed in time, I knew that I had to come up with a more simple design. So I came up with an idea. I could just feature Doremi's head without a mouth so that it provides a space for the user to write his/her name. To add a little individuality, I changed the expression for the doremi on each tag.

Sketches of Doremi

Final design

Fourth time round: House Exco T Shirt design

I had to admit. I was quite, well, honoured that our house exco captain had asked me help design the house exco t-shirt. After all the hype about the class t-shirt, this is another way I could redeem myself, no? I wanted to work on ideas such as the 'I love New York' variation or the different mythical creatures at the back at the t-shirt pointing and staring to whoever was looking at the t-shirt and with a caption below: 'What are you staring, bub? This is a house-exco-er' or something along that line.

Unfortunately, my designs came out, well, disappointing. My characters looked too detailed. i was not able to get the cartoony feel. Due to time constraints and my BAD habit to procrastinate, this is what I came out with. Disappointing? Yes. Utterly Shameful? I know. My chance to redeem myself was gone away with the wind. Ah well, at least I was able to finish the design, by the grace of GOD of course and that another design had been chosen. Our T-shirts were out like... a few days ago... and I LIKE it. =D

The front designs

The back designs

Here's a closer look at the logo I designed. If you had noticed, the different mythical creatures are turning their heads at different directions. Also, the details on them are also different. Thanks to God for helping with the patterns when I was on the verge of getting stressed out over this t-shirt design.

Fifth one: Griffin notice board

Guess who is in charge of designing the Griffin notice board? Ah... it is getting late so let me cut to the chase. As you would know, we have an house exco board and we have to decorate it. Apparently I observed 3 stages from this fifth project I had to under go. I will explain on the way.

1. The initial design

I was to compose a design for one of the seniors in charge of this aspect. So this what I came up with. I played with silhouettes again and used copic marker to colour this in

2. The small design

Apparantly, our house exco wanted our notice boards to relate to each other so we were to have a standard design. The only thing different would be a mascot of the different houses. Mine was Griffin. I pictured a griffin in a bathrobe and sitting on an armchair. He holds a pipe in one hand and the other, a dumbbell. So there is strength in BRAINS and BRAWNS. I was not too happy with this as the griffin did not look too clear.

3. The standard (according to your own style) design

Another house excoer of ours drew up her own plan. So we chose to follow her design but varied based on the house we are in. So belonging to Griffin, I tried to draw something similar and this is what I came up with

Final design

Initial sketch

So what had I learned from these experiences? DO NOT PROCRASTINATE. FULLSTOP. Make most of what time you have and work with what is most important. Most importantly, have faith and pray for guidance.

Designs for my class T-shirt

2008-08-08T11:49:00.000+08:00

Hey guys! It has been a while. Here is an update from me or rather a FEW updates from me. Since this is my own personal art blog, I have decided showcase my recent small projects I was involved in. One of which I'll be talking about in this first post will be the developments of ideas for my class T-shirt. No, unfortunately my designs were not chosen and from this I learnt that when designing something, the audience that you are designing for plays a big part in your designs. You would have to be very clear of what your audience want before you can come up with a 'good' design. Ah well. There is always next time. At least now, a design has been decided. Designed by another classmate, we are now waiting for him to finalise the design. Go Fun! Anyway, without further ado, here are my designs. Comments would be appreciated. Well, see you in the next post: 'House Exco Experience'

1st design: Us five girls

My class has a very UNbalanced ratio. There are only 21 guys and 5 girls. So I decided to work on that unique aspect of our class. I was thinking of featuring the girls on the front of the t-shirt as I wanted them to be the focus. (The guys? Well, I was thinking of drawing them all squashed at the back of the T-shirt. Haha. Sorry about that you guys.)

This was done up in photoshop. I did the a rough outline in blue then started to form lines using the lasso tool with black. Since my class chairman suggested pink or orange, I showed him duplicates of my designs but only with a different colour.

My class chairman told me to simplify the drawing and add in some guys. However, I got too lazy and began to procrastinate on this. Bored, I came up with another design : the third one. But let's look at the 2nd one first, shall we?

2nd design: The sesame street idea

So when coming up with the first design, this idea also popped in my mind. I was thinking of sesame street episodes where it ends with a phrase like: ' And today's episode was brought to you by the letter... and the number...' Since my class is well... a number, I decided to draw something like that, with Big Bird by the side. This idea began to branch to the count and his counting habits and the Sesame street logo which I changed to fit the theme of the class T shirt.

I first drew the design with a pencil and I used references from what I found at home such as Sesame street on VHS and DVD. Later I inked it. I think I got too carried away with inking Big Bird's feathers so he began to look a little black.

My class chairman didn't think the class would approve since it looks so childish and all so I had to scrap this idea. Its back to the old drawing board.

Big Bird

The Count

Big Bird and Cookie Monster

3rd design: a more graphic take

This was the design that I put a lot of thought in as I thought this idea would be a good one. I had been influenced by a few books on good designing and one of the things I observed is that they are able to translate their focus into something cute and funny using what they observe around them, one of which is signs such as the toilet signs which gives you a pictorial notation which one is for the gents or for the ladies. So I decided to work on that, translating the unique side of my class into a more graphical presentation.

One of the few problems I countered was the lack of ideas. The only points I could pick up was the fact we had a class joker and that the common interest of the class was appreciation for his jokes. Some of my classmates stood out based on their own unique identity but I needed to work on something more general because this, after all, was a CLASS t shirt.

At first I sketched in ideas in my 'Anna Sui' notebook. After choosing the best 5 signs I wanted to work on, I began to sketch the composition of the design and how I wanted to place the different signs. I took a couple of measurements and began to draw the signs on other few sheets of paper. After inking, I cut them out and pasted them together according to the plan. After which, I scanned it in into photoshop where I gave it colour and words.

I think that the majority thought the design to be too cartooney? So, unfortunately, I had to scrap away the idea.

Sketches

The Layout

The Final Design : front and back respectively

4th design: a class quilt design

No. I am not designing a quilt for my class (What on earth would they do with it?) This design resembles a quilt so thus its name. This was just a suggestion to my class chairman since they decided to open to the floor and ask for designs again (after seeing another class with a rather nice designed class t-shirt). In a rectangle with about 5x6 boxes, I added in the characters, being my classmates, according to how I see them as and by their index number.

One of the problems which cropped up again was the lack of knowledge of my classmates. I was not too sure how to potray them out since I didn't know the character very well. Also, I became quite tired as I was designing this quite late into the night. So this came about... those astrix near the boxes suggested that I am going to redraw that particular character since it did not look too well done.

I think my class chairman got quite offended when he saw this piece (He thought he looked like a sushi) so he thought it was not appropriate for the class? Well, another idea scrapped again.

Well, I had a few more ideas, but due to my lack of initiative, they were not drawn up. Its another lesson learnt. I have to keep on drawing to keep the ideas flowing. No more excuses. I have to get down to work. Also, Like I said before, designing is like a hit-and-miss. Especially when your class expects you to come up with something without a theme. It was a challenge but it allowed me to gain a few experience: in my drawing skills and in my process of thinking when designing.

A step forward...

2007-12-31T12:39:00.000+08:00

... leaving everything behind

Even though though the choices I make may not be the best ones, at least I tried. Tried to something that still means something to me. God will continue to guide me in my way.

So here’s my blog. I decided not to put up my past post. Forget the past. Just move forward. Just like the lesson learnt from ‘Meet the Robinsons”. Even though you may have failed before, just continue to perservere.

Well, Just a little introduction: This will be a new blog for the new year (Which is tomorrow) I will be putting up original sketches of my own projects like my own comics and stuff like that. All of the artwork here will therefore belong to me unless stated otherwise.

Lets begin with my relatively old project involving my characters Bio and Logy

They came out due to a biology powerpoint I had to do (On kidney dialysis) . Here are sketches of them:

Here are my colour studies for them. The colours given due to their contrasting personality and interest.

Then here come the original sketch of them:

And the colouring process:

So I guess that's the basics I have to go through to get my CG art through. There's actually a mistake. I recently found out that Bio means nature and all that while Logy is a suffix for study. So... The seemingly brighter child should be called Bio while the duller one should be called Logy.

Well, More sketches will come your way soon.
By God's grace.