Small Projects

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.

Golden Lerk Avatar

 

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.

Asimov Doodle

 

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.

Risk - James Voulge

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.

Bryndel Badge - 2014

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!