Morrigan Aensland

Hey folks!

It has been a little while since I last posted. I have been pretty busy (satisfyingly so) and have not had as much time for "art for me," and I am not able to post any of the paid things I have completed just yet. Soon, I reckon.

Anyway, instead of playing video games or watching Battlestar Galactica (can you believe I've never seen it?!), I decided I'd spend my relaxation time drawing something for fun. I chose to draw Morrigan Aensland, popular Capcom character born of the Darkstalkers series, but featured in many of their "...Vs. Capcom" games. I've been wanting to draw her for a while now as I've always felt her design is really very solid. Great color choices, good balance of elements, a lot of personality, and frankly I happen to love sexy characters. But that's just me.

Here's the completed image:

I went with "80s bangs" Morrigan simply because I dig it more and it translates better to my style than the flat-haired Morrigan featured in current iterations of the character.

Sort of a run-of-the-mill "Drew Green" pinup, but I wasn't prepared to put too much thought into this so there you go. I have relied heavily on my "gouache brush" in Photoshop so I decided to try something softer this time around. It made the process generally faster and I think the results are nice enough. Basically, I erased some areas so that the edges were harder than others where the edges are soft and used the blur tool to connect those areas seamlessly, and for the most part it worked.

Here's the sketch:

Any good artist will tell you that you should do a mirror flip of your sketch so that you can truly see some of the mistakes you may have missed. In this case, I didn't just edit some lines here and there. I also revamped the pose quite a bit and overhauled her eyes, which in the original, unedited sketch simply were not exuding the "sex" that you'd come to expect from a character like Morrigan. The change to the eyes was a last-minute thing: I'm realizing more and more that when something doesn't feel right even slightly, I should just scrap it. I almost kept the original eyes but I made the right decision and changed them to satisfy my gut feeling.

Anyway, enough rambling. I realize that it's Thanksgiving (here in the United States), and nothing says "Thanksgiving" like a demonic succubus girl from fighting games. So happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it, and eat a ton of food in the name of...eating a ton of food!

Best,

~Drew

Busy Season

Hey folks!


Although I certainly feel a little bad for not utilizing my blog lately, I'm happy to say that it's because I am indeed very busy on paid work, thus paying my bills and keeping everything running. I just quit my job at Blockbuster Video...I was simply fed up and felt that it's time for me to take freelancing more seriously and also look for one, relevant "regular" job doing art.

So that is my goal.

If you'd like to help me out, you can commission me!

Additionally, I will be putting some prints up for sale pretty soon so be on the lookout for that. ;D

In the meantime, I promise I will post some art here in the near future. I would like to revise and clean up my portfolio, too, so that'll be a good time to update.

Hope all is well!

~Drew

Ridley Vs. The Boos

Hey folks!

A late night/early morning post this time, since I need to update my blog.

Big news:  I have a Livestream page!  You can go there to watch me draw live every now and then (I'll make noise about when I'll do it).

To kick things off, I created my celebratory Halloween image from start to finish throughout three live events on my streaming channel, and I think that despite some technical difficulties experienced largely during the coloring stage, the experience was a positive one.


Let's start with the finished image, I s'pose:

The image features one of my own original characters, gamer geek Ridley Duncan, dressed to resemble Mario. Some Boos and a mid-transformation coin block were thrown in for good measure and "scary" fun, to keep things Halloween-y (lawl).

Here are the process shots:

I started with an idea of what I wanted to do on the air with a quick and dirty sketch. Off-air, I made some edits and even added more background elements to flesh out the image and make it way more interesting and closer to the theme. Back on air, the concept was polished when I inked my sketch in Adobe Illustrator, and later that night I colored the image from start to finish live. I topped the piece off with some glows on the Boos and gold elements and a subtle color filter to bring it all together.

I hope you dig it! Lemme know your thoughts!

~Drew

Cranston Silvernose Concepts

Hey folks!

This time, I bring to you some concepts of a minor character in "The Quest for Love with Yoki Safari," Cranston Silvernose. Cranston is the town science man. He invents, discovers, pokes and prods at things, and is an infinite source of wisdom. Naturally, though, he is very eccentric.




The pen and ink concepts were done during work at the video store a couple weeks ago. It's all in chronological order. You can see that the character started out looking really different from what I ultimately ended up with.

Admittedly, I much prefer the wide-eyed, vibrant Cranston seen in the pen and ink concepts to the one from the colored concept. I feel he does not have the same liveliness about him, but that's okay. I can instill that later.

The colors are not final, I should say. Something feels off about them. But it's a good start.

The thing on his back is sort of a clock...it ticks away as the hot moon rises and sets. Cranston is rarely seen outside of his little laboratory, so he needs some method of knowing what time it is. ;D

Cranston will not be a particularly prominent character. His real introduction beyond just being present in the background will probably be somewhere around issue 3. That's the plan right now, anyway.

Alrighty, g'night folks!

~Drew

Turnover Concepts

Hey folks!

Work on my upcoming webcomic, "The Quest for Love with Yoki Safari," has been going well. My main focus right now is tying up loose ends and getting a better understanding for the environments (because I've got a pretty good understanding for the characters at this point, hehe). Today, I share with you some concepts for the little castle town of Turnover, the central setting of the comic.



Turnover is super-tiny, consisting of a main castle, surrounding homes (made from old "castle parts") that house the residents, and the seedy underbelly of Turnover, "Dark Turnover." It is not a particularly populated little kingdom, consisting of only a handful of people and located in the middle of a vast desert.

Turnover is located on planet Rockstead. Rockstead is unique in that it has two moons: one is the "hot moon," a source of light and heat for the daytime, and the other is the "cold moon," which is much larger (a concept not illustrated above, unfortunately) moon that causes the nights to be chilly and sort of bright. The left is day, the right is nighttime...you get it. I reckon the cold moon might actually be a full moon at all times, with the hot moon being a crescent moon as illustrated. Still tinkering with the idea, so we'll see.

And of course, there is a circular courtyard in front of the main castle that has a neat little whale fountain. This design isn't finalized...I actually dunno if I want it to be so cute. I might go with something a little more mysterious and stoic, but we'll see what works.

Anyway, lemme know your thoughts!

~Drew

MON concepts

Hey folks!

It's time now for another round of concepts for a project that is either defunct entirely or put on the waaaaaay-back burner (as in...anything that isn't Yoki Safari). Spotlight: MON.



MON is a project I never actually got around to revealing to anyone until this moment, and it was only created recently, dead as soon as it was born. I'm only just now noticing that a lot of my favorite artists and creators are pulling from the things that influenced them as children: Tartakovsky's take on anime teenagers in mech suits in the form of "Sym-Bionic Titan," McCracken's observation of a world in which imaginary friends live relatively peacefully with ordinary citizens in "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends" as well as his cheerful interpretation of formulaic superhero tales in "The Powerpuff Girls." So...what influenced me heavily as a kid?

It was somewhere from 1998-ish to the early 2000s that the "collecting and battling colorful monsters" craze was at its very height. Most kids had chosen to jump on the popular bandwagon of Pokemon, which I certainly enjoyed, but I found a much richer experience in the detailed designs and character-driven plots of Digimon. For a long time, I have nerdily thought to myself "What would I do if given the reins to the horse that is the monster collecting/battling genre?" The answer is "MON."

Telling the tale of an inner-city 20-something with no aspirations and plenty of problems who is swept up in the interdimension-protecting agenda of a small, orange dinosaur named Karondo, MON is an action-oriented, gritty take on the monster collecting/battling genre. It was meant to follow a similar path of the first season of Digimon, with some of the grittier, darker tones and themes found in the excellent third season.

Ultimately, when I realized that the only project I REALLY want to be working on right now is "The Quest for Love with Yoki Safari," I put "MON" away with the rest of my stuff. Maybe it'll resurface one day, maybe not.

Anyway, I know I just lost cool points for admitting that I chose Digimon over Pokemon and was ever actually considering doing a webcomic inspired by it, but hey...at least I'm honest.

Best,

~Drew

Catch Up

Hey folks!

Wowza! My last blog entry was one of those awful "I need to update" entries, in which I promised I'd update the next day or so. Well, it has been a couple weeks now and still no update, haha. So, here are a couple things that I decided to put on here finally.

First, as announced on my Deviantart page, I have canceled "Charlie Dubai." I got very tired working on a project I did not feel passionate about, so I pulled the plug to save myself from going nuts. As a nice send-off, here's a piece of concept art for Castle Mermalot, dwelling of the merfolk and setting of most of the first issue of Charlie Dubai.



My focus now, then, is "The Quest for Love with Yoki Safari," which I will be doing as a webcomic instead of the originally proposed print comic. I'm finally locking down some character designs, most notably Yoki, Jules, and Durango, all shown in the following image (sketch and complete).




I will make some noise about the details of the webcomic, particularly its launch and location, when I know more. ;D

Finally, to cap things off, here are some fun "Duncan Button" doodles and concepts.



From left to right: A full-body image of Denise (drawn with the Pencil Tool); a side-view of Pac; Ridley's new design featuring less face fuzz; Ridley playing a video game in his underwear (don't lie, you've done it too); the current design for Ridley's friend Maria Grind; A failed image of Ridley that came out WAY too fat; a concept for another one of Ridley's friends, fighting game fanatic Seth.

And there you have it! I finally updated! I will try to be more active and up-to-date with my blog. I feel bad for neglecting it!

Hope all is awesome,

~Drew