This was something that was a long time coming. According to my Things app, I’ve had the idea of “putting Sheena from Tales of Symphonia on a bike” since the beginning of 2010. Glad to finally have it see the light of day.
I had real fun with this one in particular, especially with the background and setting up this nighttime “urban” ambience. City was a little tricky but I finally tweaked it to give it that night glow I wanted.
Lineart courtesy Christina Weinman.
Despite having a lot of free time after I got laid off from work, I barely touched or did anything art related. In fact, it was in the middle of the “house disaster” that I was getting quite fed up with what was going on. To help try to reconstruct my social and work life, I tried to start drawing again. Not colorist work, actual drawing.
I was way out of practice and I saw that I had not even attempted to try drawing figures since I had graduated or working. I realized I needed to start doing some sort of drawing again.
This was the first step towards that. I took my blog mascots and drew out a hair-brained idea I had with spoofing Zenyatta’s ultimate. It wasn’t perfect but it was at least something.
In the geek/nerd/anime community, there’s a pun that goes around that “if you’re a virgin when you hit 30, you’ll become a wizard.” I fall into that category. However one night I was chatting with an ex-coworker, she mentioned that I was also a “tech wizard” in addition to that. I figured I’d embrace it it was going to happen regardless, and this happened. Now if my monitors would only stand up like that.
So in my hunt of people to interview and ask questions for the “Summer of Gaming” series, I broadened by horizons. Not only would I just focus on the guys that made my favorite games from the 90’s when I grew up, I’d also poke at some more recent fellows.
This search led me to S.C. Watson, an illustrator and artist for Space Empires V, a game I spent a whole lot of time on before getting a great new computer in 2007. His iconic “painted” portraits of the races always stuck with me, giving a greater “realism” to the game than the previous 3D models. He’s a self-taught artist, doing all sorts of traditional and digital work.
After some hunting I finally found Shane’s portfolio site and contacted him via e-mail. Explaining my intentions and project, he willingly agreed to contribute.
This was waiting to happen after Paola finished the last piece. Surprisingly while this amazed a lot of the RWBY fan community, a lot of them were on the fence with this one. Oops?
Lineart courtesy Paola Tosca.
Best holiday wishes from the Dawnstar squad. Celebrating the holidays in their own style, which involves landing on a snowy planet and planting a Christmas tree for use.
Lineart courtesy Christina Weinman.
After playing Ori and the Blind Forest for awhile, realized how Lindsey Stirling’s music style was quite similar in certain styles of the game. This idea brewed of Lindsey Stirling doing her thing with Ori looking in awe. DashingIce was happy to oblige.
While this did get posted to my Twitter with both parties tagged, this never did get any recognition from them unfortunately. Still, it’s here and there for posterity.
Idea mine. Artist dashingice.
Christina helped me conceptualize this scene; the two more “Terran” girls of Dawnstar go grab necessities, as they know the layout and acceptable behavior when landing on Terran-owned colonies. Why Happy Mart? Sue me, they probably like convenience stores better than supermarkets. Who knows?
Lineart courtesy Christina Weinman.
Something I had decided to do for the holidays, but took me a bit to finish. But this was a retro-styled art of Aunt Maddie from a non-public project I’m working on; this is one of the minor characters of the cast, a curvy redhead waitress at a pub who’s the sister of one of the main characters. Here she’s strutting her stuff and dancing away; one of my other art friends noted how it had a retro feel to it, which I can kind of see that.
Original lineart by Hannah Clark. Coloring and everything else by me.
This was an old drawn piece that I had done in my sketchbook back at ETSU, but decided to do over and give it a shot in digital a few years later. I had bought a bunch of brush packs in an attempt to paint better, and gave a few of those a shot here. These were all oil-painting type brushes, and I think they gave the effect I was looking for quite amply.
My name's Janeil.
Welcome to my part of the galaxy.
Moonlight game dev, creative writer, sharing my personal experiences.