League of Legends Preseason 3 Digi - art - part 1 (brainstorm)

5:25 pm EST
Riot Games is holding a digital art contest, which entailed entries to show champion(s) training for Season 3.  It was required to show at least 1 champion and 1 of the new items. 
This is just a brainstorm rough sketch with little detail on the champions.
I believe I took around an hour and a half to plan out and to put in some of the details (not for the champions).

King of Rocks - part 2 (more color and adjustments)

1:28 AM EST 
(I should sleep and catch up on lost sleep from yesterday.)Inspired by Lion King (particularly the scene just before Circle Of Life song starts)

Played around with Color Balance and Levels a lot in this piece haha. The blue of the water doesn't look right still but this is more of an experimental piece I guess.
I don't think I spent more than 3-4 hours on this? (with a large break between the first 2-3 hours due to class, dinner, meeting and practice). 

King of Rocks - part 1 (sketch, base colors)

After having not been able to touch my tablet in, I believe, a week, I was finally able to start working on a quick composition I thought about a while back, just about an hour ago. This particular one was inspired by Lion King, specifically the scene just before the song, "Circle of Life" starts.
At the moment, this only has the base colors and very little shading for the rocks.

First blog post on Weebly blog site

It's some time after midnight, and honestly I should be sleeping so I can wake up early tomorrow to get laundry done...

Finally decided to make a Weebly site. We'll have to see how much of the site I like and how proactive I'll be with sharing the posts to my Tumblr or Twitter. I'll have to decide if I will still use my WordPress blog or even use both blogs. I rather not use both though, as that will end up with me using one more than the other or all together not using the other one at all.

/edit
11:46 am EST

I've made some wording changes in my About Me section. I've also updated numbers for length of use for certain programs. In addition, I made formatting changes in terms of making things more uniform.

Update/ Final post on WordPress blog

This is most likely my final post on this blog (WordPress) as I will be sticking to the Weebly blog instead. I rather not spread myself over too many blogs.

My weebly site (which has a blog tab): lillianchenartworks.weebly.com

It's the same url except instead of "wordpress.com" it's now weebly haha.

/Edit
I apologize ! I incorrectly linked the url! It's corrected now.

/Edit again.
I realized I spelled WordPress as WorkPress in the post title...

/edit 4/6/13 The link seems to have failed. lillianchenartworks.weebly.com

I made a Weebly website

I decided to make a Weebly account/blog/site. I haven't decided what I will do with this blog though...

Another Challenge - design character for favorite book/game/show

I just saw this and I'm really interested in the idea. (Up for the challenge!)
We'll have to see how much time I have between now, the League of Legends contest I'm thinking of entering and this challenge (along with school work).

If I don't end up entering the challenge, I'll def. try to do the challenge on my own time then!

League of Legends Preseason 3 Digi-Art Throwdown contest

I think I found my next artwork project and with a deadline!
http://bit.ly/10YHWcK

And I'll be needing references and imagination to depict these weapons: http://bit.ly/UcBqFn

Year of the Snake sketch

I didn't go into much detail for the shading but I plan on digitally painting this in as Chinese Lunar New Year gets closer.

Update

Since classes have started back up the Tuesday that just past, the number of posts and sketches and artwork will be a lot less frequent (compared to when I was still on Winter Break).

 

Hopefully I will be able to get some sketches in during weekends, but I 'll have to see when those weekends come up.

Original Character designs - first few a main character meets

10:01 pm EST

Today seemed oddly busy so I was only able to get to these sketches an hour ago.

Character Design sketches:

White Lie character design - telepathic hero

K.Roo character design  - boxer and super jump

Pitch character design - Super sonic cry + flight

Volt character design - super speed

Cogs character design - gadgets + intelligence?

Teens of Valor - Chapter 1 Beginnings (page 6)

 

Read from right to left, top to bottom

-- - - - - -

'Unable to see her brother or cousin, Julie, she then realizes she's in outer space. However she isn't alone, as someone's radar picks her up.'

- - - - -

One of the 3 teens' names is finally revealed! I plan on revealing them naturally rather than the characters addressing each other; I always found that...odd?

Teens of Valor - Chapter 1 Beginnings (page 5)

 

Read right to left, top to bottom

- - - - - - -

'After being sucked into the vase, the three teens were thrown into a dark space and were soon greeted with a bright light. The sister is now thrown into outer space.'

- - - - -

I played around with the story settings and options available in Manga Studio and discovered I could provide page labels! I also put more time into the detail work such as backgrounds and shading.

Teens of Valor - Chapter 1: Beginnings (page 4)

 

Read right to left, top to bottom

----- - ---- ---

Page 4 of Chapter 1

- - - - - - -

'The vase starts glowing and he is shocked or perhaps surprised. His sister and cousin rush in to grab him away from the vase, however that action betrays them as the vase starts sucking all three of them in. Horrified she tries to pull away but to no avail. The vase hits the floor and shatters.'

 

A few studies

4: 27 pm EST

I did a few studies - one of the hand  and one of the eye (though it became the emotion rather than the eye.)



Study of my own hand: 6 mins to complete





Study of a sad eyes: 5 mins timer on myself



Images I used for the sad eyes study: Sad infant eyes , Sad teen? eyes

Teens of Valor - Chapter 1: Beginnings (page 3)

 

Read right to left, top to bottom.
- - - - -
'Not paying attention to the exhibit nor to his surroundings, he bumps into one of the vases on display. Luckily he caught it, however he has now broken the tour guide's rule of not touching any of the items in the exhibit.'

- - - - -

I'm still in the explaining pages but next page should be more interesting than the previous pages since that's where things really start to change!

Teens of Valor - Chapter 1 Beginnings (page 2)

read from right to left, top to bottom

- - - - -

Page 2 of Chapter 1: Beginnings

'Still firm in belief of facts and not magic, he is rather unamused with the exhibit. Both his cousin and sister show signs of disgust with his behavior. '

- - - - - -

Another slow page, I apologize! Things won't really start up until probably after this chapter is finished.

DC Comics-Young Justice- Blue Beetle fan art (Birthday gift)

Jan 11th 2013 12:09 AM EST

I won't be posting this until after the 16th, since this is a birthday present for a friend and my WordPress being linked to Tumblr, which she does check time to time, would ruin the surprise.

I had to go through a few different characters in my head before selecting Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes). I was going to paint the Justice League International, but since I don't know the members that well and Google images was giving me too many different rosters (though there were a few re-occuring members), I then proceeded to look for reference images for Guy Gardner, but I couldn't find a consistent hair style for him, thus leading me to Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes) from Young Justice.

rough sketch and coloring, reference image



Jan 11th 2013 5:01 pm EST

After reading yet another tutorial (tips) guide from deviantART, I gathered a few tips on different combinations of opacity and flow for brushes. With those tips, I continued coloring the fan art/birthday gift. I must say, a switch from 30%  opacity (for softness)  and 50% flow to a mix of  30% opacity 50% flow  and 70% opacity and 50% flow really does make differences for coloring. As for sketching I had to increase the flow to around 70-90% flow.

Teens of Valor - Chapter 1: Beginnings (page 1)

 

 

- - - - -- -

Read from right to left, top to bottom (Manga -format).
--------
It's a bit dull, I apologize, but here's the first page of my graphic novel I'm working on, on my free time. Having worked with Photoshop for so long, I had to get use to the shortcuts in Manga Studio Debut.

Teens of Valor cover ch 1

10:43 pm EST

I finally decided to get around to starting my fan fic but soon to be original (hopefully) graphic novel. 

Here's a cover page for it at the moment. 

Batman the Animated Series - study

12:14 pm EST

I decided to rewatch Batman the Animated Series a few days ago and also decided to do a few study sketches of Batman while watching the episodes. These aren't serious studies however.

Tree study

5:44 pm EST

Randomly searching "Tree photography" on Google images, I briefly looked at several images of trees (and branches) to gather rough shapes for trunks, branches, tree bases, and parts of trees with branches sticking out of them.

Original Character Inquirer - finished

10:29 pm EST

After being out and away from my computer for most of today until around 5pm when I finally came back home, I was able to continue working on the hair and finish the rest of the drawing. The problem with me splitting drawings up in progress with breaks is if someone asks me how long I took to finish the piece, I may not be able to give them an estimate...

Regardless, I digress.

Finishing up the hair, I played around with a few color choices for his clothing, especially so for his jacket. I wanted the colors to somewhat flow together with his hair, rather than his hair standing out too much. After looking at a few color theory tutorials (tips really) I had saved from deviantART, I decided with green (sea green in this case..or whatever color you'd call his hair) with orange (orange & brown from orange color ) and yellow.

Originally his jacket was a reddish brown but red is a contrast of green so I scraped that color choice. It was at this point I went to those color theory tips I had saved.

After making most of the color choices, I used the burn and dodge tool for the metal effect. I personally think I still need to work with using those tools but I think I was able to grasp a better feel for them this time. I suppose next time I use them I'll try playing around with the exposure percentage.

No background design for this guy as I couldn't think of a suitable background for him except for splashes and random grunge brushes using the colors I used.  After finishing up all the rest of the colors, I used two of the adjustment layers (Hue/Saturation and Brightness/Contrast). I turned up the Saturation and Contrast around 20 or so for both to end up with:

Original Character Inquirer - hair progress

11:19 pm EST

Since I have to wake up really tomorrow morning, I have to stop my progress for tonight. At the moment, I've colored in the skin, done basic eyebrows and eyes and started detailing most of the hair but have yet to finish.

Original Character Inquirer values

4:00 pm EST

This is quite sad; I'm yawning too often for getting 8 hrs of sleep.. Anyways, I've added in the values for the drawing. This time, I used two default brushes:  Hard Round brush and Soft Round brush. For most of the value shading, I used Hard Round brush at 50% flow, 60% opacity. To soften things for the values, I used Soft Round brush at 50% flow, 30-40% opacity and the eyedropper.

Original Character Inquirer line art

1:21 pm EST

After finishing the rough sketch with some details last night, I went back to it again earlier today and fixed some details as well as added some extra details to the clothes before roughly doing the line art.

Character design while learning upper body male anatomy

1:18 am EST

After looking up tutorials on a different coloring technique or coloring tutorials in general on deviantART, I finally pulled myself away to get to drawing.

Instead of just going straight into sketching without references, I decided to work on [upper body] anatomy at the same time. I might have to go back and rescale his legs and feet ...

Playing around with default brushes in search of sketch brush

11:59 pm EST (Jan 8th .. as it's about to turn into the 9th haha.)

 

Originally, but recently,  I was using a custom brush someone had a video for as their sketching brush. This works for very light thin line sketching but for a more defined sketching brush, I ended up trying out a default brush in Photoshop CS2: Airbrush Hard Round 13 but at 50% flow. As of what I've sketched so far, this might be my new favorite sketching brush!

Rainy Day on Highway digital painting

12:49 am EST

After I got Photoshop CS2, I wanted to draw something to sorta test out CS2 (after having worked with Photoshop Elements 8.0 for so long).
I couldn't decide exactly what I wanted to draw, since I wanted to try something that wasn't a person/human like character.

In the end I decided to finally get to the idea of car lights in the car, on the highway, which came to me as I was in the car on a highway during a rainy night and seeing the oncoming traffic 's lights on the other side of the highway against the rain in the dark. It was beautiful, in my opinion, due to the many colors of car lights (the "white", "yellow", "purplish -florescent" ).

I painted this as one would traditionally with paints.

Rise of the Guardians fan art - Jack Frost

5:25 pm EST

Rise of the Guardians and its characters do not belong to me.

Excluding the foliage and snowflakes (they were custom brushes), everything was painted by myself.

Custom brushes used: (from deviantART)
yumedust 's 23 Brushes for Photoshop for snowflakes
LadyVictoire 's Branches and Foliage Brushes for the foliage.

Rise of the Guardians fan art - Jack Frost (colors part 1)

4:25 pm EST

After coming back from lunch, I started painting the colors. Yes this time I really didn't start with values before the colors. I feel like I still need to fix the eyes, something about them doesn't seem quite right.

Rise of the Guardians fan art - Jack Frost (sketch and references)

1: 55 pm EST

Using these references ( Jack Frost upper body , Jack Frost full body ) as well as the Posemaniac's Hands for Drawing (#13 hand) , here's the sketch for the fan art!

Since I really couldn't get the hair to look right with my lines, I painted in a rough sketch for his hair.


sketch + references

Sketch dump

10:46 pm EST

I spent whole afternoon and most of evening (excluding meals) sketching whatever was going through my mind and/or whatever what brush strokes made me think of drawing.

I played around with different opacity settings and brush sizes and found out the "[ " " ]" s change the brush tip size.

Original Character : SparkShock (colored)

5:59 pm EST



I think I took around 2-4+ on coloring this while watching the movie, Tangled. I'm not completely sure though, since I rarely check the time of when I start, haha.

I've been meaning to provide a better background for my character paintings, so it's not only a gradient background. So for this one, I provided a somewhat eerie mountain/hill top with dead trees (or at least, leaf less) with two random creatures crawling towards my character. I'm not sure what they are, since they were thought up of on the spot. I just I imagined black wispy creatures that have long claws and arms with snake-like bodies ..?

Original Character: SparkShock - values

12:03 am EST

While watching and finishing Sword Art Online anime series, I worked on the values. I think in a way, that helped since I didn't rush through the value shading like I usually tend to do.

I also went back and cleaned up the many many stray sketch lines I had.

Original Character SparkShock - sketch

5:36 pm EST

Here's a rough sketch of one of my original characters from my graphic novel/fan fiction, of which I've called Teens of Valor. I still have the goal of making it more of my own rather than a fan fic, but there's an important part in the story that uses a location that doesn't belong to me that I need to change.

But I disgress, here's SparkShock. I still need to add in the flower designs on her dress though... as well as figuring out a good background for her.

 

Maya - Virtual Gallery

8:25 pm EST

Deviating a bit from my usual 2D works and went to Phase 2 of my senior thesis project, making the pieces for a virtual gallery before I place the textures and move them into Unity.

front view of Gallery

side view (from behind staircase)