I’ve also done some small, one-off images recently. I’ve been trying to work with the methods discussed in the Magic Box, just so I get some more experience with it. It had some pretty mixed results but I think at this point I’ve finally figured it out. None of these are particularly interesting compositionally, however, as I was focusing more on the actual technique. Hopefully in whatever my next set of smallish projects end up being, that’ll be more of a factor.
The first thing I did was to do a a quick avatar of a lerk, one of the aliens from Natural Selection 2. I did this for one of the competitive players I like pestering, Golden, who plays lerk for Titus Gaming.
At this stage, things were probably a bit too sharp. I wasn’t using the lasso/gradients effectively and at a certain point just ended up just painting like I normally did. Probably too much too fast, or something.
I also of course had to draw more budgies because budgies are awesome. I wanted to update an avatar or two of my own, so I made this, but I didn’t end up using it as much as I’d been thinking. One of the things I noted about it was though I liked the style, but probably should have left it as a sketch and redrawn something more interesting for a better actual avatar. I learned a bit more on how to effectively draw the little wing markings for budgies, though.
This might have actually been done before the drawing of Asimov, but it was within a couple of days of it, at the very least, hence similar styling. Anyway. Needed (yet another) avatar for a character I’m playing in a friend’s game.
Either way, these two middle drawings were probably too much the other direction — too soft, too flat. The colors, also, are pretty weak.
One of my long time friends from the great realm of the internet goes to one convention each year and so I try to make her a badge for it of her character. It’s a bit large for a badge but it definitely allowed me to put in some more detail there. Maybe I should have made the whole thing a bit smaller but oh well, too late now — I sent it off in the mail today.
This one, however, I’m much happier with. I feel like it’s not hideously soft and not super sharp. Sure, it could do with a bit more refinement, I’m sure, but it was a small item with a due date so I couldn’t do much more than that!