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

I guess this qualifies as post-Minnacon huh? If you're hoping I'm going to give you an insider's rundown on what happen, I'm afraid I've to quell the excitement since I didn't go for it. Several reasons: The haze when I woke was a massive 390, and even in the house I'm wheezing my lungs out; I had terrible insomnia the night before, only managing to sleep at 5.30am, and yes you read that right; my dad had to go to the office for a conference call so if I wanted to go, I need to take a bus (yes I'm that lazy). So taking the advice of my folks, I curled back in bed and snuggled into the warmth of my sheets :D. On top of that, my dad decided to surprise me with a toasted roast chicken and spinach sandwich with Brazilian coffee on the side (what's the occasion? I honestly don't know ._.)~ Well, not gonna complain! Quite a decent trade-off really! (Although a part of me is still a tad regretful that I didn't get to see the anthology in person, or grab goodies...)

So I mentioned in the previous post that I wanted to spruce up the profile of my writing LJ, and surprisingly, I did manage to conjure something simple up! :D Unlike the process for this LJ's graphic, I didn't feel like doing up a piece specially for it (since my writings span a myriad of topics, encompass a variety of styles, and differ in tone and formality), nor was I particularly inspired, so I decided to use my Twin Whites piece as a base for my design. Despite loving the colouring on Jack a lot more, I ended up going with a standalone Gil to allow more space for the text box, and since he looked a little more natural than the former anyway ;_;.

( No, the tagline isn't Single White xD )

On another note, I'm still wondering how I should go about posting the piece I did for the Hetalia anthology. Since it's still on sale, I shouldn't really devalue my own work by posting it for free on all platforms yet, but if I wish to expand on the universe, I do need it up as a linking bridge for the proper explanation and creation of the world I have in mind. /headdesks hard. I guess I should worry more about it after I've actually added the flesh and other embellishments on the skeleton of an outline that is still lying in the dusty corner of my desktop. But at the same time, I want to gauge the reaction on it before I continue with the idea. (That's not really a genuine excuse since those who know me well enough know I don't give a rat's behind about what other's think: I write solely as a narcissistic reflection.) Either way, I'll let the thought simmer for a while more before deciding if I should just post a snippet of it for now and the full piece later in the year, or just screw it and post the entire thing up (since the anthology isn't that pricey in the first place, and that's just less than 20% of it spoiled (don't forget the other lovely stories and art!)). I can't ponder on this in my current sleep addled state. I'll update when my thoughts are clearer for the gloomy weather beckons a round of Dead Space 3 :D.

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

~Mystickal




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Crunch time starts again from tomorrow onwards until summer hols. /gulps. So here's a quick update on a couple of items I managed to squeeze out since I last posted!



Yes, that creature I drew is yours truly! Except much thinner. Did it last month for a Tumblr 'activity'; actually just a random post which said draw myself in my current position and outfit. Thankfully I was that unglamourous at that moment and I felt an urge to draw so here we go! And yes, my chin was supposed to be tucked into my collar bone while I'm slouched into my seat. Yes, I've a really bad posture :D. Hair's slightly more brown than usual since I'm still trying to grow my highlights out and yes, those are eyebags :D. Big eyebags.

Other item was an icon/logo created yesterday for a friend who needed something for a mixed martial arts meet~ (If I assume right, it should be hosted by NUS Muay Thai Club) She specifically asked for a white orchid with a drop of blood on it so here it is!



It's more purple than white but hey, that's the only way to do highlights unless I wanted proper non-vector art (then I'll go for blue or grey). Was too lazy to clear the white outlines inbetween so I told her to either get the person who's adding the logo to either use a white background or the multiply/magic eraser tool to clean it up :P. To make things slightly easier, I did one with a black outline too xD. Not too bad since it's vectored in pshop with only the main shadings airbrushed on.

Am currently working on a drawing (Le gasp! Really!) which should hopefully be done later tonight or tomorrow :3. Just in time too since I've so much due in the next 2 weeks. ._.

/goes off to draw. Oops.

EDIT: Omg! 100th post! :'D

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

~Mystickal


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(

Goodness, I didn't even realise it was nearing the end of the year @_@. Time sure flies doesn't it? It's the dawn of another semester of pure torture. /shot Anyway, a very belated Merry Christmas to all of you (because I was being a bum during the holidays and used my trip as an excuse to not do anything productive) and a Happy (Potentially Last) New Year! (I doubt I'll post here in a while xD.)

On a completely unrelated note, I did do some half-hearted graphics for one of my presentations last semester (although thanks to my friend's laptop not being able to properly fuse them into the template, they were at the last minute abandoned, much to my chagrin). The frustration was partially because of the narcissist in me and also the fact that I specifically extracted a couple of hours upon my group’s request to do up something ‘special’ to kill the entire class’ bell curve (which thankfully, we did). Did I mention those hours were originally meant for me to catch up on my homework (which I later pulled 3 all nighters to complete)?

Here is the 2 minutes menu (vegetables stolen by my friend from goodness knows where; comment if you know and I’ll gladly credit; EDIT: I only did up the background. Sent it to another group mate who added everything else in...) and the original template [1] [2] [3]. Not hand annotated because I originally wanted to do this post in Shanghai. To provide some context, our group's proposed business venture was that of a vegetarian fast casual restaurant /cue laughter from all my friends. (The) Beanstalk was my first attempt at drawing a… ‘Plant’. Not sure how much of a fail it was… Logo was rushed in 2 minutes or so too (I really couldn’t be bothered with something nice since it was for a single presentation and report only). I’m going to leave this portion of the post here because thinking about the module more drives me absolutely insane with rage at an idiotic group mate.

Putting that horrendous experience behind us, the CAS newsletter is coming! (It was originally supposed to be a Christmas edition but due to lack of content and late submissions… /coughs) Was in charge of 2 ‘articles’ this time, in which I ranted quite a fair bit for the AFA one (didn’t have much time to edit it although I did get some feedback for it for… Tone adjustment. Opps.) hopefully in not too sarcastic a tone. The other was for Cosfest which I’d originally just wanted to take the easy way out and send a pile of photos over with lame captions and let Productions handle the rest. Since I was in such good spirits (not to mention I felt sorry for the newsletter team), I decided to do something a little… Different :D.



You get cookies if you can guess who is whom! :D It’s quite a stark difference from the article I wrote (so people will probably wonder if they are indeed written/created by the same person) but hopefully, worth the time I spent on it. Did I mention since I changed my mind at the last minute, I rushed the entire thing out on the day I was flying off to Shanghai? /cue applause. I nearly made it too! I had to spend another 15 minutes in the hotel realigning everything, double checking grammar etc before I sent it off though xD. So yea, I’m famous for doing last minute work because I’m actually good at it. Oh, did I also mention daemon_angelus has 2 articles in the upcoming newsletter too? :Db So if you want to find out who the mysterious blacked out figures are, or if you are a fan of daemon_angelus' works, stay tuned for it! (I might post a link to the newsletter here xD~)

Until next time! Enjoy what’s left of the year!

EDIT: Changed the links @_@.


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

~Mystickal


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Just a quickie before I head off to bed; had an average of 3-4 hours of sleep daily for the week again. So, I've just ended my final (last of the sem too!) formal oral presentation for my Business Communications module today! :D Although I know that my performance could have been better if I'd more time to practice, I thought I did decent enough a job of 'Steve Jobs-ing' the audience :D. I think that method of selling your idea really helped my group stand out for once. Anyway, so remember how in I posted the supposed final oral presentation slide designs in my previous entry? (If not, just scroll down to the entry before this xD.) Well, after rehearsal, we realised that it looked too plain and boring... Since we were revamping our whole style and script to suit that of a proper sales pitch, we figured we needed more professional looking, and perhaps inspirational slides (LOL). So I was looking for ideas and I figured why not browse through my collection of space/astronomy related images? Which is how I ended up with this new presentation design layout:

Main Title Slide
Section Title Slide
Sub-section Title Slide
Content Slide with Progress Bar
Content Slide without Progress Bar

I'm rather pleased with how they turned out! xD That said, I spent much more time on it than with the previous crop-cut-and-paste presentation design. xD The main title slide didn't really turn out the way I had originally envisioned it to be, but my group thought it was fine so haha. Brushes used were from differentxdreamz (yeap, the same brushes I'd used to make my formspring layout!). Additional tweaks and brush strokes were added to the brushes to either make them better wrap/fit the globes and to make them look more vibrant and shiny :D. I had sooooo much fun with the colour dodge and screen settings for layers as I was 'colouring' in the glows! And since blue/black is one of my favourite combinations to use for graphics, I ended up overdoing the glows quite a few times (like with the main title slide HAHA). That said, I forgot to 'shiny-ise' the 2 'light bands' around the globe in the main title slide after drawing them D:. Oh well. The two globes used were not rendered or drawn by me (I can't achieve such details for my life). The globe for all but the main title slide is from here and that in the main slide is from when I was searching 'Earth' in Google images @_@.

Random but can you tell the content slides' designs were my fav of the lot? :D

For our presentation today, at least our slides kept the class awake with glowy globes! Which isn't really the best thing since some were staring at the globes instead of looking at our content =/. That said, I think we did a commendable job and managed to 'Steve Jobbed' the class :D. During Q&A, the questions posed weren't too simple but I think we still handled the whole thing rather well :D.

If you thought my presentations were all peachy, then you've got it wrong. I'm actually trying to sound a little more positive since I've been ranting about something nonstop.

Thank god it's over though.

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

~Mystickal




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Remember how I said this week's kinda a respite for me? Shoot me, for I have a report due next week which I'd forgotten about. So instead of lazing around, I'm having almost daily meetings for it. Again. And my weekends are thus completely burnt since we are meeting up then too. But before I actually remembered that, I thought hey, maybe I should finish up the poster (this was at around 1am btw) and you know, take the rest of the week off. Which made sense to me then since I was suffering from yet another one of my emotional crisis and insomnia. OTL

I know I promised to do a 'half-assed' one since I was in dire need of rest etc but knowing me, as almost everyone else had predicted, I ended up doing a proper poster. What's even better is that this one was completely drawn by yours truly. -.-;; So not a single brush was used (no need for those anyway) and everything else was vectored (on Pshop though, since I am more familiar with it than Illustrator) save for the logos of the sponsors. I managed to finish it by 3.30am or so, which is rather... Quick a time for designing (let alone drawing), even for my standards. This was after I had experimented with my usual designing styles etc. I guess the frustration of not having any inspiration for a proper poster drove me to draw? (Nope, not because I wanted to draw so badly. :P)

Soooo not my usual style xD.

I'm kinda happy with how the whole thing turned out xD. As simple as it is, the 'rising sun' styled lines did help fill up the otherwise plain background. I'd originally wanted to have the items flying out of the bag on top of a rainbow but I realised I cbf xD. So I added this 'cloud' thingum to make it seem as though we can either see through the bag or something. The items look a tad 2D though (since I didn't really bother to do much shading/lighting even on the bag itself :P)... And no, I'm not a fan of NUSSU. It's just that the writing pad and pen inside the pack are from NUSSU. Speaking of what's in the pack, the items drawn pretty much cover all of them. If you can't tell, they are: post-its, Chocomint, Cheezles, Yeo's black soy drink, KitKat, Nescafe, some Dewberry Jam biscuit thingum and the NUSSU pen and writing pad. Overall design's a little plain though, but heck it, at least I didn't leave it as white.

On another note, I feel bad for not drawing more/posting on DA DDDDD:. Darn you school.

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

~Mystickal




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Recess week my foot. -.-;; This week is almost as good as not having a break at all; group meetings, rushing work, meeting tutors and whatnot, running errands ARGH. Still, I was insistent in getting some time off to do something I like, seeing how I've not drawn anything in AGES. So, I started a temp sketch request board on TDN just for laughs. I originally meant it to be quick 'sketches' without colour etc, but I still got carried away in the end and made it into a 'sketchy not-so-proper art' kinda board instead. At least I didn't bother to colour properly or to clean up the lines; I just don't have the time to do so =/. So here's the first of my crappy lot! An Alien Aisha.

Clicky!

At least it stil looks sketchy enough! I think. The next what, 3 requests are all Draiks. Damn you stupidly rich people. Now I'm tempted to make proper petpages too. But guess who doesn't have time? ;_;

Here's another quick one of the poster I made for this year's BTTM - Green Hornet (argh, how I hate Jay Chou). Guess who asked me to add screenshots of Jay Chou into the poster -.-;. Like the original wasn't awesome enough as it is! I'm actually quite happy with how it turned out seeing how I couldn't think of any proper designs for the poster.

Bizad to the Movies - Green Hornet (Resized)

I'm almost tempted to post the one with screenshots here; just to show what a stupid idea that was. -.-;; Like it wasn't hard enough to think of a design without cringing at the fact that a certain singer is acting in it. Thankfully I don't need to do another until next semester.

Hope I can finish all the sketch requests and still get my work done! ;______________; Until next time~!

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

~Mystickal




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Thought I'd post the coloured/edited version of the chibi eh! I wish I have time to do it but bleh. I have school. Damn it.

So I've not done a full-blown poster in a while. Needless to say, my skills are anything but up to scratch now =/. But still, after hours of brainstorming and redoing my WIPs, I've managed to more or less settle on the design for the poster for my management class project(I went back to the first idea I had OTL). The first WIP was too elaborate; the second too techno and the third (which is this) is too simple for my liking. Since simple = easiest and quickiest of the lot, I settled with it. Techno didn't really fit the children and community service theme and also, making it too elaborate will just waste my time since the poster might not even be used given our tight schedule...

Click!

I expected to finish it quickly but instead, I took a couple of hours -.-;;. Tweaked the general layout and design here and there while filling up the big handprint with small ones. I spent the bulk of the time slapping on 3 colours worth of handprints facing NSEW to make it look more realistic (don't expect me to individually rotate each and every single one xD) and repeating it for both the handprint sizes (to denote students and children). I found the image too plain still so I slapped in a quickie vector of a girl (which looks terrible but I was too tired to bother). The original idea was to have the girl and two students putting handprints but meh :P. This looks fine haha. I'm generally pleased with the overall look of it but I do see a lot of potential for it but bleh. It's a 'fake' poster and I shall put in 'fake' effort to complement it. The rest of the group better like it or else... When will I finally have time to do my own stuff? D:

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

~Mystickal




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