... to now halfway into 2020. (Thoughts on current world concerns)

So much has happened within the half year. 2020 has been very eventful for many reasons. CoVid -19, BLM movement, resurgence of "Me Too" within the entertainment industry, and more.


Fear, concerns, unsureness. Those were a majority of the thoughts swirling thru my mind back in late November, early December. They still are.

The start of this pandemic (before it was officially called a pandemic), was concerning for me. I have relatives in Taiwan, including my Grandpa, and Taiwan's proximity to China, the epicenter of the virus, was scary. Taiwan already was getting the smog from China's air pollution, and with unknowns of how CoVid-19 spread, the concerns grew. Then anger set in, towards the Chinese government due to lack of global news and public knowledge, and the gross management of quarantine in the initial weeks of the outbreak.

Then the virus spread around the world. And the US was not immune. Lack of face masks, panic buying, increasing cases, community spread. Who wasn't immune from the fears? (I won't get into those who believed the virus was a lie. That's just a whole other rant.) 

However, there were two bright sides of this virus: a lot of time to ourselves, and better air quality in heavily air polluted countries.

But public outrage over the police brutality and racism towards African Americans, and people of color flared up and gained a large movement both in the form of protests and information across social media and various networks. This movement has been long overdue. Followed by a lot of women (and some men) sharing their horrific stories of sexual abuse through social media by those in power within the entertainment industry. It horrified and angered me, that this wasn't 'old' news, this was current.


So much of the world needs to change still.
- Public Health in many countries, now that the effects of CoVid have shown all the cracks in the wall, so to speak.
- While things have improved since MLK Jr's days, racial discrimination is still prevalent. It's no longer acceptable to turn a blind eye, because people of color can't afford to turn a blind eye.
- Sexual abuse, both physical and verbal needs to be pointed out as well. Too many victims have had to 'just deal with it' for far too long and for the worst of the worst sort of actions too.


But with all this negative, what are some positives? Awareness is definitely one of them. By the public being more aware of these issues, it's a good step in the right direction, even if it's small!

The rest of 2020 is still unknown, as CoVid is still around, protests are still happening. But here's to a sincere hope that all of us can move into the right mindset and improve on all these concerns.

Been a very busy year!

Since my last post, almost a year ago (oh..!) :

• Bugology, the  was released on Google Play
• I got a part time job at a retail store, 
• started, and finished [the art], on another game for the group 
• went to Lightbox Expo's 1st expo! Made a ton of new art friends and went to a lot of talks
• experienced Black Friday shopping as a worker, and as a shopper; also experienced Christmas Eve shopping as a worker
• finally did some fanart of RWBY
• worked on anatomy through the fanart 
• discovered I need to work on shadow shapes more
• reorganized my Pinterest poses board with subcategories 

Cenote Xlacah illustration done for Rune Master, for the startup indie group I joined last Aug. 

Queen's Throne Room, personal piece 

Team RWBY, personal piece/ fanart 

Ren, personal piece/fanart 

Jaune, personal piece/fanart 

Nora, personal piece/fanart 

Stylized Food studies

During the holidays, I decided to paint up some food studies, in a stylized style. Partially, I was inspired to do so, with how appetizing food is drawn & painted in the movies from Studio Ghibli and various anime series/films. 

Bacon & Eggs - from Studio Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle

Danish Pastry - from Google photos

Fruit Pancakes - from Kimi no Namae Wa ("Your Name")

Hot Cocoa, with bread - from Google photos and Studio Ghibli respectively 

Ozoni (Mochi Miso Soup) - from Google photos

Red Velvet Cake (square) - from Google photos

Scout Astor Hummel - prop and character design

Kappack (backpack prop) - Ortho

Scout Astor Hummel - character design illustration 

initial sketch of Astor Hummel character design 

Redesign & paint of Queen Crystallos & Diana Lang

In telling myself I needed to draw more orthos, I revisited some old character designs and selected out some props. The props I knew I wanted to draw were from the Visual Development for Live Action course I took while at AAU. During the course, there wasn't really a prop design requirement; just 4 characters (hero, sidekick, villain, creature) , vehicle and environment. 

The first prop I tackled was Queen Crystallos' scepter. 

I knew there was gonna be quite a few details I had to figure out while I was drawing the orthos, but it was a worthwhile challenge. 

From there, I decided to revisit the old character design of the Queen and redraw and redesign the character. The old painting, while for live action, was pretty blotchy in the paint, and it bugged me for years. 

For the redesign/draw/paint, I went and tried a line based approach and added a lot more detail to her dress, and completely redesigned her crown. The old one looked rusted, which wasn't what I wanted,  and bone-like, which while does work for villains, was also not what I wanted. 

After I completed the Queen, I told myself I might as well redesign/draw/paint all of the remaining characters and create orthos for their props as well. 

Thus, the heroine, Warrior Diana Lang. 

Her style ended up being something very different from the style I went with for the Queen. (I intend to go back and repaint the Queen in the same style as the Warrior.) 

The retractable shield gauntlet changed quite a bit from the original design. I actually couldn't recall what the original one looked like and this version was a happy accident while I was painting the new character painting. 

So far, I really like the style I went with for Diana Lang, and her shield gauntlet. Onto her sword! 

Bugology - a large milestone

Back in August, a developer reached out to me to join his game making group, as an artist. After many bumps, the group has finally released its tester (demo) version today!

Backyard Insects - paintings

Backyard background painting 

Backyard background painting, with objects placed in. The wood pile ended up being repainted by our second artist due to initial roles of me, as the background painter, and the second artist as the character (insects) and objects painter. Due to balancing issues, the objects painter role got sent back to me, haha. 

Bugology game logo, version 3. 

Logo sketches. Client ended up liking two images, one as the logo and the other, the client selected as the game's icon. 

There ended up being quite a few designs I went through when designing the logo. 

From the selected logos, I went through many iterations. 

But of course, there were ideas, paintings and assets that were unused, such as the original game user interface design I had designed, sketched, created parts for and mocked up. 

Sketches of the GUI for client

Mockup of GUI for client / developer to build. Our group's third developer voiced out that this setup would cause a lot of lost space, and tiny assets,  to which I agreed. 

The main menu (settings) UI design, the client wanted me to design for, also got unused. Or at least the main game menu that is released with the testers (demo) version, is using a simple version. 

Other unused assets and ideas included buttons and Login/ Create Account screens. 

  
 

Unused Create Account/ Login mockups. 

Bug Book UI mockup, version 1.1

The Bug Book mockup stayed unchanged mostly from the version 1.0; just color changes, and removal of clients' side arrows to be replaced with folded pages. 

Playing with a different style for environment drawings

I wanted to try changing my painting style to something more solid, less loose. A lot of my early paintings could be considered pretty muddy with the paint so I purposefully painted in flats and worked up from there. 

The kitchen illustration was actually the first set of the three, where I focused on values and story telling. Going from there, I had a personal success with the Greenhouse, in the style. And the Study Room was a second test to repeat that same style. 

Personally, I like the Greenhouse's results best; I feel like with the Study Room, the color palette was the best result out of it but I didn't get the same clean look I got from the Greenhouse piece. 

Moving forward, I definitely plan on working on this style!

Greenhouse 

Greenhouse - initial sketch 

super messy thumbnails for Greenhouse composition

Kitchen - initial sketch

Kitchen - rough values

Study room  - comp thumbs

Study room - initial sketch (rough)

Study room - sketch version 2 (cleaner)

Study room - rough paint in, pre version 2 sketch.

Study room 

Vehicle and character design pairing

As a challenge prompt from a Facebook artists' group, I designed a character and vehicle. It was definitely something new where I had to consciously make something look damaged, as the prompt involved an escapee and their get away vehicle. 

For the character design, I wanted to challenge myself with making an armored character, and began sketching helmet designs. Once I found a couple I liked, I began working on the full character silhouette. 

The initial character sheet's layout started pretty much as above, with the character's illustration on the side. 

Eventually, I decided the back light beam was too much and took it off, and began working on the character's lighting. 

After taking away the line drawing underneath, and cleaning up some areas, I changed the layout after receiving some construct critiques on the model portion of the sheet, and hard edge indications. 

During these edits and changes, I was also working on the vehicle design along side the character, progressing at the same time. 

 There were tons of thumbs I went through as I was figuring out what to use as a design.

My idea was to have a small ship, one that wouldn't take a large crew to fly, especially since the character was escaping, and most likely had little to no time to get a crew.  Design wise, I also wanted the ship to hold some similarities to the character. The two tails on the back were part of that design. 

The damages I envisioned were from ramming into objects during the escape, with bullet holes from people trying to stop the character from escaping.  The main section that had the bullet holes was the cockpit area, as the guns were aimed at the character. Another area I thought about was the crew area, where the smaller windows were, but the windows were too small and might have made the holes unreadable. 

I then decided that the piece where the smaller windows were was too messy so I brought the paint back and thought about indents above that section of the ship. However, in the end, it didn't make sense with the shape of the ship, and I couldn't think of a logical way for the damage to end up there. 

Similarly, I scaled down some of the other damages on the ship, and cleaned up the orthographic drawing. 

Towards the end of this challenge, I caught myself more on the lack of hard edges when I was painting, which was good, now that I could catch myself on it. Going forward, I definitely need to use hard edges more, or at least, while I'm painting, jump back and forth from hard edges and soft.