dubiouslog

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what direction I’m taking in my personal development. When I think about it, my mind jumps to when I was nine and I made a drawing about how I saw myself in the future: taller, with boobs, and working as a comic artist. When I was a kid, it was more like a distant thought: “and one day, I’ll be publishing my own comics”. Now this goal is fully in my reach, and all I have to do is keeping those stories running and my technique sharp and sharper. However, when I was nine I had no idea I would have developed a plethora of other interests. I could have never seen myself entering the website-making scene, running Angeltower Page and later Blind Dreaming and studying the web and how it works. I’ve always loved videogames, but I would have never thought of gaming as becoming such an important part of my life. And I just didn’t care about finding someone to share my life with.
I expected my life to be a lot more linear. I could even say that my dream life was a lot less interesting or fulfilling than my current life. I’d like to work as a comic artist, sure, but also as an illustrator, a character designer, a web designer, a writer…Mostly freelancing and flying solo, of course. I might accept some very special group projects, but only if I feel like it.

Now, it comes by itself that if I want to work as a freelancer I’m going to need more exposure, and I think I know what to do in order to obtain it. First of all, I’m needing a proper portfolio and for all my personal websites to look their best. This leads me to the next point: currently, not all of my websites are up to my standards, both in terms of presentation and content. If I am to get in the spotlight I cannot allow my work to be just OK, it must be as close to perfect as possible.

This is the very foundation of a big project of renovation concerning all of my online work; it will span across several years so that I can focus on university work while I keep on with this project. Let’s break it down in steps.

Phase one

All of the phase one steps are not incredibly complex or time-consuming. They don’t need my full attention, so I can multitask between them and school work. This should be a rough guideline of my personal work from now to a year from now.

1. Clear Bell renovation. It didn’t really made much sense to have a fanlisting with two pages of content, so I’m turning this website into a full Pokémon Crystal tribute which also hosts a fanlisting.
   I thought that would make a good starting point for my project for a few reasons. First, there’s no way the new content is ever turning stale and needing to be rewritten, since we’re talking about information for a game from 2001 and thus pretty static at this point. If I will ever have to touch the content again, it’s going to be for only minor revisions. Second, I still like the layout concept, so I’m not needing a complete redesign; all I will be doing is upgrading some minor details. Actually, most of the layout changes are already online, so if you check Clear Bell right now you’ll see what I mean. Third, my tribute will be targeted to retrogamers and nostalgics, but will also serve as a museum for the years to come.
   I’m currently writing the new content. It won’t be long before I put everything online, three weeks in the worst case.
2. Remake the weasels fanlisting from scratch. There’s not a single thing that’s right about that website, from the name to the layout to the overall feel. Even with such a tormented development, there’s no excuse for that mess. Now, I happen to have a drypoint drawing of a weasel for school which should be on print on Monday; if the result is as good as I intended it to be, I will be using it for the layout. The new layout is going to be either white or in neutral tones. Also, I’d like to change the name of the website. I tried to find another one myself but the results were rather unsatisfactory. So I’d like to get some input from you readers. The winner gets a free artwork :B everyone can participate, it doesn’t matter if we don’t really talk that much.
3. Minor layout changes in the Angeltower Dex. Like remaking the Poké Ball and the Great Ball in the respective styles with a proper 3D software or refining the content styling. I should also make a Master Ball style soon or later. Also, I’m going to upgrade everything to HGSS and rewrite parts of the core code.
4. Minor layout changes in the Super Metroid and Fearow fanlistings. I’m not satisfied with some of the content styling in the Super Metroid fanlisting and I don’t quite like the navigation in the Fearow fanlisting, so I’m going to tweak them a bit. Nothing major, though.
5. New layout for Dark Claws. That website has grown a lot over time, and the current layout is way too small and the content way too understyled to convey how big that website actually is. Plus the layout is also quite old (from late 2007 I think), so it was about time anyway. I’m going to keep the current red and grey color scheme, but with another artwork. Content is going to be fully revised and the URL structure changed. For example, sneasel/shrine.php?page=general-information will become sneasel/shrine/?page=general-information, because directories are cooler. Here we’re already talking about plans for stuff I will be working on about a year from now, so I don’t feel like I can already give more details than this.

The phase two steps are still a secret! I will be talking about them in due time. All I can say for now is that they are going to be the beefier part of the renovation project, each taking from several months to a whole year of effort. They will be about Advanced Blanket, Angeltower Page and the portfolio I was talking about before. :D

There’s also a great deal of work for other people I’m currently working on. I’ve been spending the last few months on the redesign of a website which should be ready in November or December, I will be making a whole CMS-based website which should take a good three months of work, and I’ll be probably working on another website too. There’s so much stuff to do, and I’m still without Internet D:

Now, for something different:

you know what? Ubuntu is a great system and stuff but its scanning utility simply sucks. And if someone tells you that’s just “difficult to use” is lying. I know how to bypass horrible interfaces, I mean, I was using The GIMP five years ago when it had the most confusing interface ever conceived, and even like this I often ended up fine-tuning everything until I had a perfect preview only to get an ugly mess of an actual scan. In the end I gave up with setting everything up before scanning and had to retouch everything afterwards, but doesn’t it defeat the point of having, you know, scanning options?
The funniest part is that this utility’s name is XSANE. yeah. talk about my mental sanity.

Now with the artwork:

Let’s start from the artworks I made for this exam whose results I’ll get to know on Monday. This was supposed to be a background for some cartoon. No, it’s not really going to be used in a cartoon, but still :B

A cartoon-esque Death Valley. This was made on black paper, so you know why the colors look that way.

Another idea for the Death Valley. There would be more sketches but they’re not really worth looking at, so.

The final work for the exam was about choosing a song and making some evocative backgrounds inspired by the lyrics. My song of choice was Pearls of Light by Within Temptation. Tons of better songs out there, but you know how it goes, its lyrics were short enough to have each artwork match some part of the song and they setted both the scene and the mood, so.
This one matches the first part of the song: “After the cold, the darkness in the heart of the forest”.

“Where birds are singing for the newborn sun”

“In the womb of the leaves, on the branches of the trees
Lies the treasure in the morning, the pearls of light”

“Carried away by the traculence of my world, I got lost in the search for the enlightment
The blue rain covered my roots and I forgot where I came from”
quite my favorite. the teacher liked this one better than the others too. Her only critique was that the huge difference between the lighter drawings and the darker ones could make people for which I could be working in the future object that they don’t look like works from the same person. Well, here I was experimenting a bit with techniques, but she’s right. I need to work more on consistency.

random doodles ahead
(hi there Flareon)

PARASOL WADDLE DEE

I’m in ur interwebz
maeking ur teeth rot

Do Sparkies look like mice? VG says they do. I’m not really getting it.

you may be forgetting something Meta Knight
aren’t you forgetting something

I don’t know if this should be cute or scary
By the way, up until now I thought Kirby was the one fandom completely porn-free. Well…I was wrong. Now I want to poke my eyes out for what I saw/read because seriously. Kirby porn. What may be next? Smut involving a phone and a cube? D:

AND NOW, FOR THE MONOCHROMATIC STAINS ANIMATION PROJECT
HERE COMES THE MAIN CHARACTER!
who is way too handsome to die after only three minutes. :( I’M SORRY

that’s it
oh and I’ve added a link to JaN aka K aka Kane aka … ’s blog. :D

Should post later and should post more. I’ve got a few issues I’d like to write about. Also read: you’re going to be bored. :B

I swear this is not edited.

ART POST

Let’s start with some school assignment…

There are my first gouache works since middle school. no really I’m serious. well actually the salamander is mostly watercolor but still.
Megaman here should also remind you of this, just with an alternate color scheme. no reference for the fail, but nice result for the win?
I don’t need to add that these works had to be in these specific colors as part of the assignment, I chose the subjects to suit the color combinations.

OH SAMUS :3
This was an attempt with pencil and rough paper. Anatomy is a bit off but I still like this. By the way, here Samus is dressed up as in the Metroid Fusion endings, but the gunship behind her is the one from Super Metroid, which was destroyed before we could see Samus dressed this way! We can only suppose she already had these clothes before the crash?

This is a reference based on official art, but every single person I showed this to seemed very impressed. :O I don’t get why but here it is

MOAR Samus

Face may be a bit too long, but I was drawing this without even really looking so.
Also, this was made on some recycled paper, which I came to appreciate only recently. has a beautiful texture and costs less than any other kind of paper :D

THE PERSPECTIVE.
I’ll make this into a much larger artwork, this was actually made on a A5 sheet and didn’t even fill it properly

why did I ever stop working with pencils.
also woah that’s a lot of Samus

DOES THIS REMIND YOU OF SOMETHING?
actually this was an attempt with a large black pencil I had

don’t freak out, this was actually a work I made in class, a five-minutes drawing of the model which is actually plain unfinished and was meant to be a study on wrinkles. Also, the sheet I drew this on was MUCH larger than the scanner, thus explaining why it does look cut on the left. But it still looks good, methinks.

I was listening to Finntroll and then I was all SO HOW DO THESE TROLLS LOOK LIKE. this is the result. apparently trolls have large manes and large sideburns and large beards and large
no.

fun fact: if I were a male, I wouldn’t be that different from now. but I’d look dangerously similar to Jeel. lol.

Meta Knight is the one giving Kirby those invincibility lollipops.
Invincibility lollipops = they must be made of drugs
Meta Knight is Kirby’s drug dealer.
also, the fact they live in DREAM LAND does not help either.

this is just plain silly but I like it

those two. btw, this is not the only thing with them I’ve drawn recently but trust me, you don’t want to see the other ones B:

ART POST IS OVER