So as I had talked about before, one thing that I’ve been trying to do is work faster. I figure that by working faster, I’ll be able to practice drawing more. If I spend too much time on a single drawing, that’s opportunity cost towards a new drawing.
Of course, it gets to a point where you end up moving too fast for your own good. You trip up, and make mistakes that sometimes end up taking more time to correct.
Above is my finished drawing. I couldn’t think of a suitable name, so I simply called her “Drops”.
Youtube video of it being done:
[pro-player]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVa6tQfXAHI[/pro-player]
When I had completed this drawing, I sat down and finally took a real hard look at the drawing, and noticed several errors. Things like the pose being incorrect, the belt buckle in the wrong place, the produce falling out was too small, the basket’s perspective was wrong, etc.
All these were mistakes that I know better not to make. Simple and stupid little mistakes that would not have come about if I had taken a little more time in doing the work.
Actually, it’s not about time at all – it’s simply being aware. Unfortunately, I’m moving a bit too fast to be aware of what I’m doing. Remember the Pilot Girl? I was moving deliberately fast with her, and you can tell how messy that drawing was. This one, I was moving nearly as fast, but putting in more detail everywhere.
While the end result is definitely nicer, (and Pilot Girl had her share of problems too), these issues bugged me a lot.
So, I went back and corrected it. This is NOT something that any artist should have in their workflow, of course. But correcting these problems is not as hard as it seems, especially if you have everything in separate layers.
The first thing I did was flatten the entire image and quickly roughed out the corrections needed to be made. She looks pretty cut up, I know.
If you don’t want to read the wall of text below, here’s an animated gif of the corrections:
Things I did included scaling up the produce falling out so it’s not cherry apples or something, even the leeks were scaled up. I extended the basket cloth, and corrected its perspective so it’s less ambiguous. I also rounded out the basket handle so the perspective is more ambiguous from there.
The pose is technically impossible. I shifted her belt buckle over, so that it’s suggested that her waist is less turned, and that it’s her legs that are twisting instead.
Because of the angle of the “camera” the perspective of her chest is wrong, so I pushed up her left breast. I think it was the bow that screwed me over. It should be flatter, aiming upwards, rather than towards the camera, so I fixed that too.
Her neck was disjointed from her body. I wanted to have her arching backwards, but obviously it was too much. I shifted the whole head over. I also corrected her eye’s positioning, and moved her little ‘X’ hairpiece higher. (I thought it would look cuter closer to the bangs, but no. It just looked weird).
After this rough correction sheet was done, I brought that back into the original PSD, and used it as a guide. I corrected the line art to match the guide, and then layer by layer, did the corrections.
The end result:
This, I am happy with. The moe-factor is quite high with this one. I added a little fang tooth to increase the moe-ness.
I decided to play around with the filters, can came up with this:
While it loses a tad bit of definition, it gives the drawing a completely painter look, like something from the Disgaea artworks. A bit too much definition is lost from the eyes though.
So what else has been happening?
Well, you saw my mega 4-post day last week, so you know I’m trying to sell some of my figures (I am writing a relevant blog post on that, which will go into the Anime Pride category).
Selveria Bles (alter) arrived. OMG, she is BADASS. Literally the (second) biggest boxed figure I’ve ever gotten (second only to Fate Testerossa. Nothing beats that box).
Preview:
I took several shots of this magnificent figure which I hope to post soon. But you know, priorities.
Oh, an update on the Gordon Ramsay toaster oven I got:
I was really looking forward to a delicious lunch of left-over pizza that I had obtained from Panagopolis the night before, “Bacon Cheeseburger” it’s called, and had just finished preheating the oven.
To occupy my mind from the anticipation of consuming such delectable cuisine, I turned on the timer, and proceeded to play Atelier Rorona. After about 10 minutes (the time I had set), I heard a loud BANG! followed by some sizzling. I dropped the controller, thinking “FIRE! Hell’s Kitchen!!”.
To my relief, there was no fire, but I was curious on why the glass of the oven looked a little “foggy”. I inspected it closely to my dismay. “Holy shit!” I exclaimed to nobody in particular. My pizza was ruined with glass shards embedded in it. I inspected the damage and kept repeating “holy shit…” over and over again like a youtuber who witnessed a tornado while the timer continued to tick. “ding!“
I guess Gordon Ramsay didn’t like my pizza.
Needless to say, it has been exactly 30 days since I purchased this item. The Bay only accepts returns up to 30 days. I decided to take my chances anyway and return it. Fortunately, I had decided to sign up for one of their “membership cards” just to purchase this oven (I get 10% off on my first purchase with it!). Anything purchased with the membership card apparently gives me 90 days to return stuff.
So now, I can officially say to Gordon Ramsay “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY KITCHEN!”
So it was Halloween this Sunday. What did you all do for Halloween (if it’s celebrated in your country)?
This year for me was a bit more toned down. Last year, I went to a friend’s party. This year my waifu and I carved pumpkins, handed out candy to kids, and bought fireworks and set them off at a friend’s place.
The waifu really wanted a Hello Kitty pumpkin this year, and it being her first time ever carving a pumpkin (after living in Canada for so long too!), it would be a fun thing to do. I admit, I’ve never actually carved a pumpkin like this before. Mine were always the basic triangle eyes ones. It’s actually a lot easier than I thought it would be.
Several years ago, a coworker of mine made this sculpture for me, but didn’t end up finishing it until Christmas that year. I was pretty happy that she put so much effort into making something for me, so kept it until now even. I posted it on my facebook recently and tagged her. She was overjoyed, and had completely forgotten that she had given that to me.
I finally gave in and tried out the KFC Double Down. (otherwise known as the Titty-Fuck)
This wasn’t made available in Canada until recently. I’m guessing that it had to pass some sort of health safety regulations or something because this thing is artery-clogging for certain.
There are some misconceptions that this thing will kill you. In fact, I found that it contained less oil than a piece of KFC chicken. I’m lead to believe now that most of the grease that comes out of a piece of KFC chicken is chicken fat. This double piece of chicken breast was actually quite lean and dry.
That’s not to say that this thing was healthy though. The batter they used is definitely different from what they use for their Big Crunch. And also, mine was incredibly salty. Like almost inedible. I only managed to eat about half before I had to stop. I’m sure the sodium will kill me.
Nopy talks about it too, but his experience seems to be different.
Well, that’s it for now, I guess.
Oh, can anyone in Singapore get me some AFA X tickets? 🙂
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Have you ever read Bakuman? I find it kinda interesting you are having similar issues in finding ways to draw faster as one of the protagonists.
Selvaria, she is much bigger than I expected. I have no place to display her at all. Funny thing though, her arrival single handedly made me start playing VC2 again and continue with my all A rank quest for the original VC.
I’ve heard of Bakuman. It’s still on-going, right? It seems like an interesting series that I might have to pick up, and the anime just started I believe?
Selvaria is definitely awesome-sauce. I used her in VC2 quite a bit in the early game, but since she had no storyline, no friendships, and not many good potentials, I put her on the sidelines in favor of other scouts like Melissa.
If you haven’t finished VC2 yet, I think you’ll be a little surprised at how easy the last boss battle is. OMG. I beat it in two turns. YMMV if your level is too low, of course.
In the end, I still prefer the epicness of VC1 over VC2. Here’s hoping VC3 will bring that back, with some of VC2’s combat improvements.
The manga is still going strong and the anime started this season.
I have the same dilemma with Isara, I want to use her but I should probably go with the other units first.
Indeed, I’m hoping for the same with VC3.
Sweet. Will definitely check it out then. They’re at what, volume 30 now or something? It’s pretty long!
Isara was one of the bonus characters I decided to keep on the roster. She’s just too sweet. Not to mention I hated every other Tech character except Alexis. I ended up with just Alexis as Elite Fencer, and Isara as Mauler. Eventually, Avan went to Elite Fencer too, once I got his Double Movement ability from him being a Melodist. Double Action + Double Movement Elite Fencer = pwnage.
I also kept Marina as my sole sniper. OMG she rocks. Her potentials have a high chance of triggering, resulting in deadly accuracy. I put Edy in the roster as well, but that’s a personal preference.
… now that I think of it, most of my roster consisted of all the girls. ^^;
First off, love the artwork as always. 🙂
Second…
Eek! when I saw what happened to your toaster oven I knew something bad had happened. If the display is made out of glass what could have happened depends on certain factors.
One of which is that the glass got too hot and something like water touched the already hot glass. If this happens it’ll shatter like crazy. Another thing could be that it got too hot.
When I took glass blowing in college this type of thing happened constantly if you didn’t control the heat well enough. Let alone if you didn’t get the already hot glass in the annealer fast enough.
Of course, in the end, it’s probably something else since I’m not sure if it could get hot enough to cause that issue :). It’s likely the glass was faulty already and just decided to give way under intense heat.
In any event, it’s still great to know that nothing truly terrible happened (like for instance… started a fire in the house O,O).
I’ll proceed to end this post–and carry away my sniffles with me–by saying great job on the work, and as always keep it up! 🙂
Until next time on the blog or MSN buddy! 😀
-Jason
Hey Udsahn! Thanks for commenting.
It was probably too hot somehow. Maybe the pizza wasn’t enough to absorb the heat. I had been preheating the oven 10 minutes prior.
Yes, heat expands objects, and if the object’s density is low (like glass), it will expand faster than high density materials (like metal). The burst probably happened because the glass was getting bigger than the metal parts holding it in.
However, that doesn’t justify anything. A quality product would have gone through all that testing, and be able to compensate for something so trivial. Having a mere millimeter or two of a buffer between the glass frame and the whole thing could have been avoided.
Cheers, my friend!
I tried out the Double Down when it came out as well, out of curiosity. Looks small, but it’s quite filling. Way too expensive at $7 for the sandwich alone. Chicken was ok and cheese/sauce wasn’t too much. Bacon was forgettable, but it was REALLY salty. Downed like 1.5 cups of pop and still felt thirsty the rest of the day.
Would I get it again? Probably not, but it’s not something that will kill you, so everyone should go try it out.
I agree. $7 blows my mind, and my wallet. I might as well be ordering a premium hamburger like a Legendary or Red Robin’s.
Interesting how it was your bacon that was really salty. I could barely taste my bacon because the patties were so salty. Or am I just reading it wrong…
I might try it one more time at a different KFC, just to see if the one I got was weirdly prepared, but it may not be worth the trouble/cost in the end.
sometimes quality over quantity is better but speed works can help you get in the groove or level up your ability to lay down accurate base poses/proportions faster and faster. i like the idea portrayed in that piece and prefer the soft painted version ^^
Selveria Bles, nice figure has a nice figure :3
nooo not the pizza… that gordan ramsay toaster really didnt approve of that quality of food lol really freaky thing to happen, lucky it didnt explode or spray glass all over your counter.
You’re right. I think I should just simply keep drawing more, faster. I don’t have to finish every drawing I do, or even post them anyway.
I like the soft painted version too. I think it brings a bit of uniqueness to my drawings. It’s too bad so much definition is lost though.
Selveria post coming soon. 🙂
The fortunate thing is that there are two panes of glass on the toaster oven. It was the one on the inside that shattered, so no glass exploded onto the counter. It also remained fairly in-tact too, so while there was probably some glass fragments on my pizza, there wasn’t much around to cause any damage.
Anyway, hate on Gordon Ramsay now. Because of him, I’m toasterovenless.
I don’t draw, so I can’t connect with the drawing editing and brooding. I do, however, build Gundams..and I do get what you mean about trying to speed up the process and ending up going over it again. This, of course, concerns sanding plastic..and sanding plastic cannot be fixed so I go like D: if I overdo it too much. ^^;
It did seem to me as if there was supposed to be a wind blowing past in the first, hence the ruffled up chest area. But my eyes are getting old, and my brain..destroyed. As much as I want to side with the original, the fang-tooth blew me off. Hence. ^^;
I sympathize for the microwave oven..they’re just too crazy. I prefer the classic toaster oven..mmmmmm grill lines. xD Also, SPUNKY SCULPT DO WANT! oUo Makes me wish I celebrated Halloween but..university has to come first, so I didn’t..sadly enough D:
As for the Double Down..I was disappoint. Colonel disappointed me. I thought it was supposed to be fckin huge…but Colonel had to disappoint. :/ The chicken and saltiness overwrote the bacon and cheese flavor so you can’t exactly savor it properly. Overall: Double Down soft is soft and is a disappoint. (????)
Nicely drawn parallel! It’s probably much harder for you to correct mistakes after completion than it is for me, that’s for sure. Building Gundams are what I’d consider “destructive process”, basically it means it’s linear, you can’t go back. Same goes with traditional painting. Digital painting, if you keep all your layers, is “constructive process”. At any time, I can go back to any layers and make corrections without damaging the rest of the image.
The fang-tooth is cute, eh? ^^
There were huge problems with the first image, and as much as I’d like to think that it was the wind ruffling her blouse, this was not my intention.
Oh but it WAS a toaster oven! I’m actually thinking of getting a Cuisinart Brick Oven now. That thing seems super awesome, is priced about the same as the Gordon Ramsay one, and is a very well established brand! The Gordon Ramsay oven was made by a company called Sensio. No idea who they are. Should have guessed.
It’s difficult to celebrate ANYTHING when you’re studying. Been there, done that. I feel for you man. I mean, you haven’t updated your blog in a VERY long time now too. I am glad you have your priorities set properly though. 🙂
So you had issues with the salty chicken breast too eh? Dang! A lot of people say the same thing, while some people say it was okay. Seems to be luck of the draw here! Maybe I’ll wait a few months to see if quality control improves before trying again. Thanks for letting me know your experience!
Lol, well, I try to keep it as much as the original as possible assembly wise. But the painting is totally different tho. Only grip in it is that you can’t mix the same color twice properly, even if you do take in proportions. D:
OMG DEADLY TOASTER OVENS. nts: don’t buy explosive toaster overs. D: Lol, yeah, with toaster ovens one has gotta be diligent and smart when buying them. xD
Ah yes..my blog..sad as it is I have neglected it. I still have the stuff that I was supposed to post over the months..they’re actually on my wall right now roflmao. Drafts. Just need to find time to post em. xD
And lol no problem. It’s kinda iffy overall. If they add more bacon and cheese maybe, and use a bit less salt it would’ve tasted better. We’re having a DD takedown contest tomorrow btw. Wish me luck. xD
I know what you mean with paint mixing. It’s never the exact same color, so I usually try to mix more than enough for the job, and store it.
Do you mix using eyedroppers? They’re fairly accurate imo.
I’ve found that the generic cheapo toaster ovens are pretty reliable. They just lack features, and performance is low. These newfangled ones require a bit more research. I shouldn’t have bought the Gordon Ramsay toaster to begin with, since I didn’t do enough proper research, and it seemed not very many reviews were available anyway.
I have quite a few drafts in my blog as well, that I need to get out at some point in time. Mine usually comes with images though, so it’s a little bit of a bigger task. ^^;
How’d the DD takedown contest go? I’m dying to know! I hope you didn’t die… lol!
O: Never thought about doing that. I need to buy containers for that to do then. >:3 Yeah, I use the eyedroppers…only the paint tends to stick on them really bad. Does that happen to you? I use acrylics btw so they dry real fast, maybe that’s why. D:
Well, not much toaster fans out there anymore ever since the microwave oven…sad as it is. );
Oh yeah, much like that. AND you have the videos and stuff to work about..as well as intro and retropection (which, btw, I really really like about your blog. xD )
I won. Downed (pardon the pun xD) in 3 minutes. *insert awesomesauceshades here*
Get glass containers, so the paint won’t stick to them. Make sure the lid can be close sealed so it doesn’t dry out.
I wash my eyedroppers immediately after mixing so paint doesn’t stick. Using hot water helps. What type of eyedroppers are you using? Mine are some sort of thin plastic (probably the same kind from milk jugs, but thinner).
Toaster and microwave oven are two completely different things, imo. Microwave will never beat toast oven in terms of quality. The difference between microwaving an egg tart, and heating it in the toaster oven is night and day! People are just impatient, I guess…
I’m glad that you find my content likable! I aim to please (myself and others too)!
Congrats on winning! Awesomesauce indeed! What did you win?
“Drops” must’ve had an extremely long neck in that first drawing ^.^
One of the things my art teacher told me was that you should have someone model a pose or do the pose yourself first in the mirror before you try to draw it. I guess it could apply to anime drawings too.
Some of my friends couldn’t finish the Double Down either. Mine got grease all over my desk, so I guess some restaurants make it greasier than others.
You see it too eh? Her neck is like far-out!
I feel a little embarrassed if I tried to pose like a moe character. My anatomy wouldn’t match either. Moe characters tend to have larger heads and small torsos, sometimes long spindly legs and short arms. Your teacher is right though. That method can apply to anime just as well.
Yeah yours looked pretty greasy for some reason. The quality control is still lacking, so maybe in the future. Nah, I’d rather have a Big Crunch. ^^;
Dude, holy crap. If that happened to my toaster oven I’d hire an exorcist. How would that even be possible? Isn’t it standard design fare to not have a kitchen appliance explode? Didn’t we perfect that like a hundred years ago?
More like, it’s lucky it didn’t spray glass on you. Thank the stars.
Well, Chef Ramsay is ever the source of lulz, so I guess this is just another part of his grand comedy.
It seems an endless quandary then – on one hand we can fall into the bear-trap of lethargy, and on the other we work too quickly and leave behind a trail of mistakes. I’m no artist, but the same obviously applies to writing of any sort; rush through it, and you give birth to a plethora of grammatical errors. Then again, grammatical errors will be there regardless of how carefully I plow through my texts, but at least it’s the difference between one or two and sextuplets in the dozens.
It’s funny how applicable ‘everything in moderation’ is as a saying. But that said, I liked codename Drops. And probably wouldn’t even have noticed anything even without the corrections. The tooth is cute (seems I’m still capable of liking certain visual cues), and the way she’s tilted gives movement to the piece. Which is, uh, a good thing.
I’m now proud to say that despite my blatant love of self-destruction and fast food, I have not sold my soul to the double down yet.
Though yeah, every recount of it I hear includes mention that it’s much too salty. Do not want.
An exorcist? lol!
I’m sure the oven got too hot, and the glass couldn’t withstand the rapid expansion. I’m guessing that this company is just not very good at making stuff, or have terrible quality control.
There are two layers of glass, and it was the inside one that shattered, so thank god no glass.
It definitely applies to writing! Though I guess depending on how much one sentence leads into another, corrections could be either very simple, or very very difficult. I guess on a broader sense, if you don’t write your base plot properly, correcting it later after hundreds of pages have been written, becomes almost impossible.
“codename Drops” lol. I should continue coming up with obscure but interesting names for my works now, just because. Calling them by date doesn’t actually help me in any way.
I couldn’t help it with the fang tooth. It’s a bit of a trope/lazy cheat, but it works.
Congratulations on resisting Death Incarnate. After serious consideration, I would not recommend eating the Double Down. It really is way too salty, omg.
Even the “too-fast” version looks lovely. You’re so talented!
I really like the corrected version, especially the out of focus fruits in the front juxtaposed with the adorable girl.
Ugh… KFC double down… Just looking at it makes me feel queasy.
Thanks for the complement, Yi!
I can’t remember, did you try out the Double Down? I remember you commented on Nopy’s post with a similar reaction. ^^;
I’ve never tried it, but I don’t think I ever will..
Well your corrected picture looks quite nice
at first I only noticed that the neck looked a bit strange in the first version. Well, you probably have a better eye for such things 🙂
The Hello Kitty pumpkin looks so nice
Your Selveria Bles looks quite promising Im looking forward to see your pictures of her;)
After fixing the neck, a whole slew of other problems emerged lol!
I had a lot of fun making the Hello Kitty pumpkin, even though Hello Kitty isn’t really my thing. ^^;
Maybe next year I’ll do something else.
Comparing the pictures side-by-side, the neck definitely moves by a lot (so is te ribbon), as well as the chest positioning and the enlargement of basket and its contents. From the perspective of people who are not so familiar with art and detailed observations, we’d think it’s pretty nice already, even though you’ve admitted that you’ve made several mistakes that you shouldn’t have. Well, maybe it’s just that a number of us are not trained to notice it (orz).
Pitfalls of moving too fast… Hm I like how Marx-Taich0u talked about Gunpla. Some people may take less time to build them as they become more experienced, some may take even longer and longer to ensure high details and qualities in their models. Like traditional painting, making mistakes can be irreversible, and we’ll need alternative methods to doctor the problem (pla plates, putty etc if people are good with them), so overall we probably have to be extra careful when it comes to those “destructive processes” that you’ve called them.
Pacing also reminds me of myself when I used to do quite a bit of cross-country back in earlier days. I’m no sportsman at all, but at least I’ve learnt to pace myself, and this was very important. Too slow and one may not keep up with the rest, but too fast you’ll go bonkers and make mistakes (hence what I felt you’re saying in this post is like me imagining sprinting in cross-country, which would be crazy ^^;).
titty what?! LOL
Slip your bacon between two breasts of chicken, and you’ve got some gooey white sauce? I’d say it’s aptly named.
Oddly enough I actually canceled my Selvaria, I think I need to know more about Valykria Chronicles to care about her. Although I hope when I play the game (finally) I don’t regret my money saving decision to back out of getting her.
lol you’ve made a very big mistake. 😛
I do remember you saying in the “Why do you buy?” post that you prefer to have some sort of connection to the character before you commit to buy a figure. So I’d like to know, what’s your reason for not buying Selvaria after playing VC?
Funny thing is I’ve been struggling to draw faster lately as well and it seems I do a better job if I somehow forces myself to draw faster because I end up correcting large chunks of error faster as I zoom out more often to see the big picture.
Well, I’m not a very good artist at all, as my friend has been “special training” me on being better at drawing. Well, even though I say special training, the goal is to make that a daily routine.
As for something that caught my eye, you play Atelier Roronoa. I got it myself, played for a little bit, I haven’t gotten that far in it though. (Disgaea 1 and Disgaea 2 got my winter break.) Though I will admit I was very disappointed with the graphics and battle system, I end up getting it mostly because of the artwork of characters and dialogues as well as some background scenery art.
Btw, I don’t understand how did you often just broke like that… wtf?
I agree with you on being able to draw better when you draw faster. Laying it all down, and then correcting en masse after is much more efficient, as long as the proper measures are taken so that it’s not too late to correct, like I had done.
That’s a very good goal. I hope to do that someday. ^^;
Your take on Rorona is the same as me. I was quite disappointed with it at the beginning for the same reasons. I managed to play through a lot more of it than you did, but I couldn’t shake that disappointment throughout. I eventually gave up on it, and cut my losses. Just wasn’t worth the effort/time for me anymore. Atelier Annie was so much better. Plus since I have the artbook (the real one, not the one that came with the LE) I’m not missing much. 😀