[[+-.Of Red and Blue Eyes.-+]]// -- Mystickal's Graphics Journal

I'm wondering why on earth do I even keep a journal for art and graphics if I barely do either anymore? ;^; But yes, me posting means I did do something new! :D Now that I've a new Vaio (yea it's been so long that I've not even mentioned that here...), pshop is working wonderfully and can handle immense files and tons of layers without killing my laptop~ So to commemorate that, me being back in SG, and a brand new year, I decided to up my personal drawing challenge a notch, and do a mini comic!

So what sparked this was a rather unfortunate incident last Friday. Since it was finally the end of a long week, and I was actually looking forward to spending said night drawing or writing so I could rest (i.e. do nothing, like really nothing at all) the day after and start on work on Sunday. But nope, as fate would have it, the light in my room fused so I couldn't see a thing -.-. And since there was no way in hell I was drawing in the living room, hours of tantrums later, my folks got me a massively blinding 60W wall socket light bulb -.-. (Yea, my light bulb is some fancy super thin energy efficient bulb that isn't that easy to find, especially that late at night...) So now semi-blinded by the light from the wall bulb, I decided to draw so I can keep my head turned away from it. And since it caused me quite a bit of grief, why not spin it into a mini comic?

Gotcha! No, it's not featuring me. Why on Earth would I practice drawing myself? To spice things up a little, I decided to swap me and folks out for two of my favourite characters~ That's where my two YGO boys come in! Drawing the boys gives me 1) more incentive to actually see this little challenge through 2) make the incident more interesting without showing how much of a brat I am 3) more incentive to practice perspectives since when I doodle, I sketch cartoon characters and not OCs. The dialogue (excluding their thoughts) are pretty spot on as to what was actually exchanged between me and my folks, although the tone was a little different (i.e. a lot more frustrated on my end). Anyway, click first, read my rants later!


So yea, the boys get a sort of happy/sweet/whatever-it-is ending, while I was stuck with well, not a bad ending, but not the perfect one either. I originally designed the comic in the typical yonkoma style, but decided that my longwinded nature necessitates something that is a little, just a little longer. (Yea, which ended up with three times more panels. Joy.) It didn't help that I drew all the individual panels without planning my paneling beforehand. Despite having a vague idea of how everything was supposed to be placed, I didn't think much about panel shapes or alignment until I finished all the individual panels... Hence the pretty monotonous shapes for almost all the panels, L to R reading despite this being more Asian inspired, and odd insertions of inverse space for borders to break away from the overly traditional style. I didn't consider the inclusion of speech/thought bubbles either, since I'd assumed I can always randomly draw circles or boxes to include them. Seeing how cluttered everything was, I ended up just slapping plain text alone, and honestly I don't think it looks too bad. And it feels amazing to finally use a typical comics font! Oh, and the DA version is 35% of the original piece, so you can imagine the headache I had trying to fit everything into a proper comic format, and also the tons of resizing I had to do for each panel... OTL

I'd a ton of fun doing this piece though! It feels odd to draw again, especially on my tablet after not sitting and drawing properly for over a year... And to do so many panels back-to-back despite their basic formats. The changes in angles and perspectives are on purpose since this is more of a drawing practice than anything else. I'm notoriously bad at consistency in anything (even writing), so this was yet another attempt at trying to improve that... I don't think I succeeded in that respect, since trying to visualise Katsuya's devil of a mop of hair is enough for me to tear my own hair out. On top of that, I tried to vary face shapes a little to differentiate between the boys even more (Seto's face is supposed to be sharper...), but I ended up messing up facial proportions instead /headdesk. I got pretty frustrated at the end and just reverted to my same-face-syndrome-style for the largest panel to make sure the proportions are right OTL. Colouring wise, I think I'm finally a little bolder with shading skin (either that or this new brush set is better xD)~ But I'm still as crap trying to create the illusion of different textures... That said, I'm still worried about overshading (although I perpetually undershade things), especially for the rather unorthodox light source here. Oh well, baby steps I guess.

I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out, especially after not drawing for so long! And even better is how my Katsuya looks a little more recognisable than usual! :'D Although the entire process was pretty tedious since I'm a n00b, the deciding to colour everything on a whim was admittedly not one of my brightest moments, it's a milestone in my drawing journey for sure! It's a ton of fun (I even added a Pokemon cameo just because I can, and also as a play on someone's surname hehe), and a decent tribute for once to my OTP!

Until I decide to draw again, assuming I don't die from my final sem workload...









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I lovelovelove the Gang! :D You guys never fail to put a smile, no matter how silly or unglam looking, on my face! :D <3~! I better get down to doing the project I've planned for ages then D:...

I really really felt like doing some WoW fanart, but I doubt I can pull Illidan or Sylvanas off without butchering either so... Original WoW art it is! And what's better is that I can try my hand at making 'comics-styled' strips! :D Which by the way, is WAYYYY harder than it looks D:. The character is based on a story I had in my head since I started playing BC (thanks to Illidan :D) with influence from my experience in Vanilla. Oh man, I miss those days...

Lame attempt 1!

I've been playing with perspective recently, however minor a shift from my usual front-facing sketches, so I was thinking doing a mini web comic-esque thingumajig can give me more reason to keep at it! I've seen sooooo many web comic artists grow just by doing so, however casually, and I really really admire the effort they put in to make the strip both entertaining and aesthetically pleasing. I doubt I can do either but hey, drawing practice! Pathetic background because I got bored after doing the first row of grass. Love how I don't need to clean the lineart up if I draw it really big and resize it xD (at the loss of details but meh). That's not the main character but xD I'm more comfortable drawing guys, sadly.

No idea how often I'll draw it but hey, as long as I continue to love WoW, I bet I'll keep drawing xD. As for the title... It just popped into my head. Because I'm lame like that. Let's just see how this goes then! :D

EDIT: I just realised after looking through my art, that my headshots/close ups look VERY different from my full body drawings... OTL I fail.

PLEASE DO NOT USE ANY OF MY GRAPHICS/ART WITHOUT OBTAINING PROPER PERMISSION FROM ME.

~Mystickal




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