Okay, really, I am not (instead it’s quarantine like many others), but yet again site update didn’t happen for a bit. XD Anyways, I hope all of you reading this are staying safe in these times.
There’s a lot to unbox and wind down with this time, so let’s take it easy.
Furious Fennec: The Friendly Encounter
10 Apr 2020. Krita, Inkscape (text).
A mix of Serious Sam and KemoFure, using the Serious Sam: The First Encounter box art as the primary reference. I’d imagine TSE would be “The Sugoi Encounter”. XD
Yet again, I don’t know where the idea started, but it was apparently deemed worthwhile. It must have been from some KemoFure mods for Serious Sam Fusion, ehe. The Friendly moniker comes mainly from KemoFure 3, where Friendly-type entities do well against Relaxed-type ones (Fennec being among the latter).
I was intending for a more complex background, but concluded it was not going to work well – so have a plain desert instead. I did like the background and effects style at least, even though they contrast with the cartoony foreground objects. Additionally, this was done nearly entirely digitally except for the very first drafts – which isn’t spectacular by the standards of most illustrators, but I suppose it shows a growing comfort with my tools.
Japari Park 3rd Anniversary Drawpile (collaboration; my work is near bottom-left)
Late Mar-Early Apr 2020. Drawpile.
This was a community event organised by the staff of a Discord server, so many members, including myself, participated.
My contents are as follows, from top left to bottom right:
– Flamingo standing on one leg
– Tabactsushimo
– The Atlantic Puffin mugshot, which feels like it could’ve fit in Metal Slug
– Horned character, a spoof of a server bot
– Dhole with glasses on beach with Celien behind. It was an attempt at colour gradation on shadows, but it didn’t quite work well; it’s a bit too blue in hindsight.
– Part of Furious Fennec
The Drawpile tools do feel very limited, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable working with them for the most part. On the contrary, it helped as a way to adapt existing traditional approaches I take to a digital medium. (Perhaps, though, my ancient tablet can use an upgrade. XD)
5-Minute Artist Meme
22 Apr 2020. Pencil for portrait, Krita for everything else.
The 5-minute Artist Portfolio page was a bit of a fad on Twitter around this time; seeing it, I knew I had to partake as well. I have tried to be honest about things here, even if it does seem mediocre compared to other entries. But hey, I’m not really in the business of comparing very different skill levels, so I had fun nonetheless.
Birbs in the Air Tonight
1 May 2020. Coloured pencil, some colour edits in GIMP.
An odd crossover between Touhou (Mystia), KemoFure (Scarlet Ibis), and a scene from the 80s American show Miami Vice. If this were redone and polished up, it could fit in amongst the most impossible crossover ideas list.
Using coloured pencil in lieu of the usual ink or dark-lead pencils proved to make outlining a bit tough, with a mix of inverted colours used to simulate darker areas being notable especially. Does it work…I don’t think so, haha.
Otter Must Fall 2097
5 May 2020. Profiles: ink, Krita. Everything else: Paint.NET.
The title was stuck in my head for a bit before I decided to make this, probably helped by reading Arai-San Mansion (an SCP-like exposition with the Original Friend Giant Otter and Arai, among others) at the time. Combine that with DOS knowhow and this ends up happening.
The profiles were admittedly very crudely drawn and coloured, but considering the psuedo-anime style the original game had, I felt this was more than sufficient for this purpose. The UI was redone from scratch for ease of editing reasons – it would have been harder to emulate the original texture on the frame, among other things.
Because many DOS games (including OMF) used 320×200 resolution with tall pixels (5:6 ratio, not the square 1:1 we use nowadays), the image was originally edited at 320×200, then later resized to 1600×1200 with nearest neighbour scaling to give the desired effect. Additionally, colours were reduced to fit VGA restrictions (256 colours at most, 18-bit RGB).
Réimunix the Shrinemaiden
13 May 2020. Krita, Inkscape (text), GIMP (postprocessing).
A crossover of Touhou and Astérix was something I had been thinking about for several years before this. I could perhaps put up a draft of that from ~7 years ago if I dig through old sketchbooks. Yet, it was only at this time that I end up making it…why that is, there would be too many possible reasons.
Anyways, the reference material is the older cover of the first Astérix volume (which I do have a early-70s French copy of, albeit in poor condition). I figured that, by putting Reimu and Marisa as the Gauls, perhaps Kanako would then be Julius Ceasar, trying to take over all of Gensokyo. Considering Touhou lore then, the tengu and kappa would be the legionnaires fighting. As for Édifix, I’d guess Mima would be him, but other Touhou fans have suggested Aunn instead.
“Why do we all have to wear these ridiculous outfits?!” (Sailor Moon Redraw)
22 May 2020. Waterproof ink, water-soluble (and crummy) marker.
#sailormoonredraw was a trend on Twitter around this time. Noticing that a family member was going through the Half-Life series as a way to spend lockdown, I decided to put one of Black Mesa’s fine scientists in the seifuku of Sailor Moon.
For the most part I am happy with the inking layer. However, I don’t think my markers are doing any justice. It was as if Japarico from spring 2019 wasn’t enough of a justification to simply toss those out in favour of something else.
Pages From Gokumax (1999.12.31)
3 Jun 2020. ZXNet (teletext pages), Shotcut (VHS-like effects, extra audio crust); foobar2000 (MIDI recordings), Audacity (audio effects).
This is a piece of fanart made for Shimotori Sadaaki’s Norikoshi project; most of the other teletext projects posted thus far are also there, but their purpose was withheld as the creator did not, until late July 2020, publicly announce his project.
It should be noted that this work is NOT to be treated as canon to the project, unless the project site says otherwise.
It was quite enjoyable to write a lot of brief stories within the limitations of teletext. I would have liked to add more transition pages à la BBC Ceefax, but that would have greatly extended the amount of time needed for this. Maybe for another segment.
As for the audio, the MIDIs of various songs and the later effects were a fun exercise in how to get that old recording feel. I can do better next time though 😛
The video editing and splicing worked mostly as intended, and was great for learning new tricks to make a psuedo-VHS tape. However, it’s also taxing my system even though it’s at 240p; given I am using a 2011 system build currently, it may be time to do what others are doing in lockdown and build a new PC. XD
Untitled
21 Jun 2020. Krita.
A few warmup sketches after a hiatus. I’d probably want to see Tasmanian Devil (full body chara with colour layer) in such an outfit, though.
BanG Gauntlet! Girls Dungeon Crawl
04 Jul 2020. Ink (foreground); Krita (background, colour, touchups); Inkscape (text).
Yet another absurd crossover, this time between BanDori (a series that I know nothing about, so I had to ask a friend who does) and Gauntlet (80s Atari cooperative dungeon crawler; more specifically, the Gauntlet 2 title screen is being parodied here).
The choice of BanDori was very arbitrary – I didn’t want to use Touhou or KemoFure. Though in the style I’ve taken, I think I didn’t do a great job at representing the characters, aside from hair colour. XD
I’m not too happy again with the cel-shading attempt, so some proper practising is yet again recommended, prob’ly.
Untitled (WIP Kaban)
10 Jul 2020. Krita.
This is intended as a draft for the time being; I plan to go over it again with a smoother approach. But the rough draft here works well for assessing things, and builds up on two previous drafts/outlines (not shown). Iterative approaches seem to be my preference – fitting given the meme that was circulating around this time that all artwork is just practice for the next work.
Taichouwave (feat. Dhole)
14 Jul 2020. OpenMPT (composition), Sonar (mixing/effects); lots of FM8, some Battery, samples from Kemono Friends 3.
A silly mix drafted in March, but for whatever reason extended later. I have since come to realise why most MADs tend to not be melodically complex, or use the voice clips as the melody itself. Nevertheless, as an exercise in messing with samples and making something synthwave-like (voice tracks aside), I think it was a success in that regard.