WIP Wednesday - 2017 - Volume 4

I've been working on more of what you saw last week: Angel is almost finished (at least for this part--the entire print has a lot more to it). The Magic Girl commission is finished. This one was fun. I was given a lot of creative license to come up with the design--I was given red hair, blue eyes, bare midriff, wields a great sword, and uses the element of steel. Also the yin-yang symbol because this character's normal form is a guy--he becomes a girl when he transforms.

WIP Wednesday - 2017 - Volume 3

In the last week, I've been working on a commission and art for one of my Archetype print sets. The commission is for someone's original character. It is a magic-girl character they use for roleplaying including a D&D/Pathfinder game using the rules for the Anime RPG book we released several years ago. The other art is for a print involving the Angel archetype. This image is only part of the picture--it's going to be kind of like a compilation picture. I'm super excited about the set.

WIP Wednesday - 2017 - Volume 2

There's not much that I can post this week. We've done some writing and planning on the front end of several large projects--at least one related to what I posted about last WIP Wednesday. There has been progress, but it's just not the kind of thing that goes well on a blog post. I will post more about these projects as I have pictures and progress that I can share. 

What I do have is a picture of my husband helping me cut out some fabric. This is another new thing that is coming to my art table. I will share more details about that project too once I have a little more to post for it. 

WIP Wednesday - 2017 - Volume 1

I've been a bit out of it the last year. School really ate a lot of my time. Now that I'm not doing that, however, I am free to get back to art. =D I have so many ideas and plans for this year, but I'm not going to go into those specifically here. ;-) Suffice to say that there will be a lot of fun stuff coming this year, including a more up-to-date blog!

So, for the first round of WIP for 2017: One of the biggest series I will be working on this year is going to be majorly expanding my Character Archetype series. There will mean there will be more characters. All old characters are going to receive new art and will be put into new formats. I am revamping my badges! No more laminating. I am investing in a printer that will print directly onto a plastic badge tag. I am super excited about this. I will be funding the printer myself, but I'm planning a Kickstarter for stocking supplies and what-not. Here are a few sketches for the new badge designs:

Angel, Bondage Villain, Bunny Girl, Exorcist, Drunken Master

The above designs will have profiles on the back. The fun part about the way I'm setting up these new badges is that I will be able to allow some customization, like choice in colors for the character on the front or making the back profile more personalized. There are also going to be two print series stemming from this set--one of which is related to the Magic Girl Noir picture I did a couple of years ago. The other is more comedic, and will hopefully have a preview of some kind for next week's WIP post.

Along with the badges and prints, I'm planning several books including a series of mini-comics. The mini-comics will be short 28-page comic books featuring one of the characters from the Archetype set. Here is a preview from the Angel Mini-Comic--yes drawn the old fashioned way with pencil on folded pieces of paper.

So, yeah, 2017 is going to be full of fun and new art for me.

Wednesday WIP, Vol. 34

Two days late... could be worse. XD The last two days were pretty busy. I still managed to get some stuff done since WIP vol. 33. There's some lineart and coloring going on. I also have sketches for the newly redrawn Rainbow Dash and the fifth design for the Hunger Games set, but I was too lazy to scan those for this. That and I don't get a lot of time for art stuff today, so I'm going to keep the blog short and sweet and get back to work. Here we have more work on my most recent commission project, lineart for Fluttershy, color and starting to finish the first in a new original set, and the finished 4th Hunger Games design.

Wednesday WIP, vol. 32

So, the blog is a day late, but it has been a better week overall for art--this means I actually have something to post here this week. XD

The third Katniss design is drawn and inked and in the process of being colored.

Just for the fun of it, I pulled out my markers and colored pencils and made this:

This was fun; I may have to do more of those.

I have lots of sketches for new art:

my favorite	don't like... will probably redraw

Wednesday WIP: Vol. 29

This is going to be a light week on updates. I have spent pretty much all of my art time over the last week working on trying to finish up that commission. Really, I just didn't get a lot of art time this past week, and so all of it went to the commission, since that has the highest priority on my to-do list.

Right now, the picture is pretty much finished. I need to fill in the details on the cards on the table Locke, Terra, and Setzer are at, and I need to fill in the details for the menu Gogo is holding. After that, I want to go through and clean up things a little bit, but once that's done, the whole thing will be finished (finally--not that it's a project I don't like, but it's taken a lot longer than I would have liked to finish).

Wednesday WIP: June Part I

It's been a crazy month since I last posted a real WIP post, and sad to say, I don't have a whole lot new to actually post here, especially considering how much time has gone by since the last post.

Anyways, let's go with some updates to what I've been working on--much the same as what I was working on last time. Let's start with the plushies. Last month I started working on a set of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic plushies for Animazement's Art Show. We did not make it to Animazement, mostly because of little Sophie, but also because I spent so much of May sick that I wasn't able to finish either the plushies or planned costumes for the convention. The weekend before the convention we decided to cut our losses, canceled the hotel room, and stayed home Memorial Day weekend for the first time in 13 years (this will probably be a post topic for another day). I am still going to finish this set of plushies. They are still going to be one-of-a-kind. I will probably put them in Anime Weekend Atlanta's auction or maybe I'll do something online. In any case, here is a photo of the progress on that project: Twilight Sparkle is finished, although I may go back and redo parts of her mane; the other six planned ponies have most of their parts made--I still need to make their eyes and cutie marks, assemble the pieces, and add their manes and tails.

 
Along with the My Little Pony plushies, I was also working on a set of Soul Eater costumes for my family for Animazement. Once it became clear we weren't going to make it to the convention, I slowed down work on these. Generally speaking, most of these costumes are still piles of fabric. I have started Soul, although so far, about all I have is a little bit of progress on his jacket. I might have these done by the end of summer.... Maybe. XD

Then, I was working on that epic noir-themed Final Fantasy VI poster. That's still not finished. >_< It's really close though. My biggest problem right now is Photoshop. For every minute of decent work I get, I have to spend 5 minutes waiting for Photoshop to reload the file because it crashed and then I have to redo that one minute of work, or I'm waiting 3-6 minutes for the file to save before I can move onto the next minute of work. You'd think this was exaggeration, but sadly it's not. We thought we'd fixed the problem, but for whatever reason it reverted back after one session of good behavior. It's been incredibly frustrating. On the plus side, this project is almost finished. I need to add the rest of the color behind the picture and then do some minor touching up.

I have plans for a few other odd things. I am working on a set of My Little Pony human-form badges. I started this back at Anime USA last year, and I added two more character sketches at Magfest. These aren't necessarily new WIPs, but it's a project I'm going to be trying to finish up this summer. I'm also going to be working on finishing the Hunger Games bookmark and postcard set I started before we moved (for the last time). I've finished the designs for Katniss on the chariot debuting as the Girl on Fire and Katniss at her first Interview. the next one I am going to work on will be Katniss at her interview after she one the games in the first book. I've got a really cute design in mind, and I can't wait to get it down on paper. On top of those fanart projects, I am also working on a new original art set for Anime Weekend Atlanta--all I have for this set now though is scribbles and ideas, so no pictures to go with it yet, but I'm hoping that will change by next week. =) These are the main projects I'm working on (well more like my main secondary projects). There are also a myriad of smaller side projects that I'm kind of playing around with--as if I don't have enough to work on, but this kind of thing really suits my short attention span. This means though, now that I'm mostly settled, mostly well (and hopefully that stays that way), no longer pregnant and exhausted (believe it or not, even with reduced amounts of sleep being up with Sophie, I still have more energy), and done with distractions like travel and family events, which although fun, don't make ideal times to get work done, the Wednesday WIP posts for this summer should be filled with all kinds of fun and exciting things. =)

Wednesday WIP Posts Are Back

Now that I'm back to writing on this blog, Wednesdays will once again be dedicated to stuff I've been working on. Being that this is a convention month, I have a ton of stuff planned for this month. We will be attending Animazement in Raleigh, NC Memorial Day weekend; I believe this will be our 13th year going. Boy does that make me feel old. I will not have an Artist Alley table there this year. I am not particularly sad about this, since we will have a couple week old baby with us. I am planning on submitting some plushies to the Art Auction, participating in the artist charity event (if they hold it--which reminds me I need to email someone about that), and hanging out with family and friends (while cosplaying of course).

Let's start with what I have planned for the AZ Art Show. Technically I have lots of things I'd like to do, but given time constraints, I'm going to keep it to one set of things. As you might know, I like to make little chibi amigurumi plushies. I also happen to really like the new My Little Pony: Frienship Is Magic show. I've been wanting to try my hand at making pony plushies for a little while now. I've debated whether or not it was something I wanted to make available on my tables and in my Etsy shop. I've decided to go with the "not" answer. With the manes and tails and some of the details (like cutie marks) I think they will be more involved than the plushies I normally make for my table. Considering I have a hard enough time keeping plushies in stock for that as well, expanding that inventory just doesn't seem like a great idea at the moment. So, I am putting together a set of one of a kind pony plushies just for the auction at AZ. I have seven planned: the main six plus Derpy. Given that I have about 2 weeks left to get these done, I guess we'll see whether I make that goal or not. Today's WIP photo features the bodies and appendages for Twilight Sparkle and Rarity, although Rarity's body is still missing it's stuffing. =P I will hopefully be finishing those two up in the next day or so and be moving on to the rest.

Next up is costumes. AZ is the one convention where we really focus on cosplay. We have participated in the cosplay Masquerade Contest every year for the last 12 years. This will mark the first year that we are not planning to compete. I imagine it is going to feel weird not spending most of Saturday on that. However, we are still planning on cosplaying. This year's costume set will come from Soul Eater. I have wanted to dress my 3 older boys as Death the Kid, Black Star, and Soul for a couple of years now, and now seems as good a time as any to try that. My husband will be going as Stein and I'm planning on going as Marie. Originally I was going to cosplay Blair--I really like her witch outfit and it didn't seem like there was any real "pairings" (romantic or otherwise) outside of the main 3 characters and their weapons--given a choice, my husband and I like to do "couple" cosplays or at least cosplay characters that have a connection with each other. Having watched more of the series since then, I decided that maybe I could do Medusa or Marie since both of those ladies have clear connections with Stein. I've picked Marie because I like her, I happen to already own shoes for her cosplay, and she's a giant hammer.... I have a big thing for giant hammers. XD This is probably why I gravitate toward paladins and clerics in fantasy rpg games. Anyways. That's our cosplay lineup. We are still debating on what to dress the new baby as. I am still leaning toward Blair cat if it's a girl. I'm thinking maybe the priest Death Scythe character whose name is completely slipping my mind if it's a boy. Current progress consists of printing out references and digging through my scrap fabric drawers to see what I can use from what I already have for these costumes. Amazingly, I am only going to have to get a little bit for my costsume, stuff for Stein's sweater, and the yellow on Soul. This is cool because it means my fabric shopping bill is going to be almost reasonable--this very rarely happens when you're making this many costumes. Today's WIP photo is a pile of fabric that will eventually be costumes.

Finally, I have been working on a massive commission project I picked up at Magfest. This has been an incredible challenge--in a mostly good way. I was asked to draw the entire playable cast from Final Fantasy VI as a poster in the style of the Nintendo Noir badge set I put together. Originally my customer had asked for a movie poster style picture, but after some brainstorming, I included a mock-up of a club scene with all the characters in it along with a couple of movie poster mock-ups with the first set of WIPs I sent and he really latched onto the club idea. In hindsight, I probably made more work for myself, but it's been a fun project, so I'm not going to complain--my only real frustration is that it's taken me so long to get it finished. Of course, realistically, I was putting fourteen characters into a picture, each of which had to be redesigned for the noir setting plus there are more background details to add and so on. It is a large project, and that, combined with the moving mess, means that it was going to take some time to finish. That said, I'm definitely on the home stretch now. The character redesigns and sketches have been finished. Everything has been scanned into the computer, and I am nearly finished with the lineart, which is where the bulk of the work for the noir pictures is. Everything gets shaded in black, and color is added behind that to keep with the noir style. Since this is a poster, and not a small badge, I have used several shades of dark gray for shading to give it more detail and depth as opposed to the solid black I used for the original badge set. I have a little bit to add to the background in the top and bottom corners on the right side of the picture, and then I need to put in the carpeting on the floor. That will finish the lineart phase. Then I will fill in the color behind everything, clean up the lines, and everything should be done then. So far, I am very pleased with how it's coming out. =D

Works in Progress No 1, Vol 9

Technically this should be No. 3 or 4 or something for November, but it's December now, and November wasn't a great month for getting any kind of art or craft work done. On that note, I have high hopes for December. I only have a little bit to post for today, but look at it as the start of what's going to be a highly productive and fun month. =D

First up, a couple of friends of ours had their second baby boy just before Thanksgiving. Normally I like to make baby blankets for people, and usually I like to get it finished before the baby's born. This time, it's already here, and I'm only just getting started. No big deal. =P I'll have it ready in time for Christmas. When I made the blanket for their #1 boy, they'd asked for autumn or earthy colors, but when I went shopping for yarn, the selections of warm colors, especially the oranges, were horrendous. They were all too bright or too pastel, so that blanket ended up going with greens. This time though, I found a great dark orange color, so this time they will get an autumn blanket. Right now it looks like a nifty scarf. =P

The other post I have is the random badge project I started at Anime USA. I'm not going to say what it is right now. Can you guess? I hand-inked it and did some pencil shading because I was bored. I will probably scan it into Manga Studio and redo the lineart digitally because I'm not overly happy with it. Otherwise, I like it. It makes me giggly.

Work in Progress No. 4, Vol 7.

 So this is going to be a short, belated work in progress post. I don't have a lot of time today for a super detailed post, but here's a run down of what I've been working on.

For art, I'll admit I've been moving slow. I have 8 badges I'm supposed to have finished by tomorrow, and right now I only have 2. On the positive side, I am doing these almost entirely with traditional pen and pencil, so I can skip the long hours working with Photoshop. This means I do have a chance of getting them finished on time. These badges are for our murder mystery game that we run at our Halloween party every year. Each player will get a badge representing the character they're playing. I will not be turning these into official badges for my art tables or Etsy shop, but I am considering altering them and making them into bookmarks. Here are the two that are finished.

This is Alice from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Our theme this year is Tim Burton, and these are two of the playable characters. I will also be drawing Batman, a martian from Mars Attacks, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Willy Wonka, and the bride from The Corpse Bride. I will be posting these to my Tumblr account today and tomorrow morning as I get them finished.

After this week, for art, I will be working on my new set of Sailor Moon bookmarks for Anime USA. Because of how things have ended up, I will probably forgo trying to get anything else finished for AUSA. I guess we'll see what happens there.

Outside of art, I've been working on Halloween costumes for my husband and I. We are planning on going as Jack and Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas. So far, it's been slower going than I'd like though. I do have Jack's jacket finished. That still leaves pants and the collar thing for Jack and Sally's entire dress. @_@ I will be posting updates on these as well on Tumblr, along with decorations and food any all the other fun stuff we're putting together for tomorrow's party. Here's hoping I can pull it all off. 

Works in Progress No. 1, Vol. 8

This weeks WIP post will include stuff for this week and last week, since I missed posting last week's due to pre-AWA craziness. Actually most of this post will be for last week's stuff; I haven't actually gotten much done since AWA--I've spent most of this week catching up on sleep so far. =P

So, let's start with art--that's the big one, so let's get it over with. I did finish the Zodiacs... all of them. It was exhausting, but I was glad I had them all finished for AWA. That's about it for art though. I'm starting new sets this evening though, as soon as I finish putting together this post, so there should be some cool, exciting, new stuff starting next week. =D

The big time sink last week, outside of finishing the zodiacs and getting all the badges cut out and laminated for AWA, was the Anime Tarot Deck. I wanted to include pictures of the booklet we were putting together for the deck with last week's WIP post, which was why the post got put off so late that it didn't happen. It took us literally all day Wednesday to finish tweaking the formatting so the book would print properly, printing it, cutting out all the pages, arranging the pages in order, folding the book, adding the cover which also had to be cut out, and stapling it. Random bit of trivia: the insides of this book are one of the only things on my art tables that I have printed from home. Usually we take it to another place to print; we did have the cover printed elsewhere.

Uncut pages

Assembled Book

Finished Deck

The next spiffy thing I finished (mostly) last week was my Fluttershy costume. The dress in the photo is a little wrinkled and the wings are a little squished from the trip home, but that's nothing a little trip through the wash then ironing and a pile of heavy books won't fix. Fluttershy's butterfly cutie mark is still missing from the dress; I will have that added by Halloween, since I'll probably be re-wearing it for our annual party.

Finally, I started a new plushie kitty during AWA. It's going to be another Kisa-colored one. =D

Works in Progress No. 3, Vol 7.

This week is going to be a fairly large update. I've been busy working on art stuff over the last week. I'm still trying to get all the zodiac stuff finished for AWA, which means it needs to be finished by this weekend so I can have time to get everything printed and all the badges laminated before the convention.

So, what's been done since last Wednesday's post on the zodiacs? Well all the partially finished print-sized zodiacs from last Wednesday are finished--that's Pisces, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Libra, and Taurus. I've also finished Cancer. Virgo has been drawn, inked, and colored, and I've started to shade him. Now on to the badge-sized chibi-zodiacs. Aquarius is finished. I have drawn, inked, colored, and half shaded Gemini and Aries. Capricorn and Pisces have been drawn and inked. Leo has been drawn. This leaves 6 chibi-badge-sized zodiacs that I haven't started yet. Can I finish this by this weekend? Maybe. I hope so. There have been some late nights, and I'm sure there will be a few more.

There has also been some progress on my crochet projects. I finished the Pikachu from last week. I finished the Halloween mini-kitty from last week. I've also started working on a new Kirby, since I sold out of those at Otakon. My goal is to have at least one of each plushie design by AWA--this means I need to finish Kirby and then make an Umbreon and White Mokona.