…boy it’s been a while since I had a chance to update this. Last semester I was supposed to be able to work on Asher for a project, but then I was made project manager for an animation project on ancient Rome and everything got set aside for a while (well, a whole semester). But now I’m working on sprites (above), and making good progress on the side-view walks. Tetriin’s outfit is going to change–I think I’ll put her in a white dress–but on the left are the two villains, Aya and Julius, and they’re looking pretty much as I intended.

Goals in the next few two/three months for Asher:

• Four profile-view walk cycles (currently 3/4 finished)
• Eight background images (watercolor)
• Four portraits, complete with lip syncing

Asher Progress:

• Writing: 100%
• Polish: 80%
  (10,500 words of mostly-dialogue and counting)
• Voice Acting: Approx 60%
• Visuals: 15%
  3/7 maquettes

S

After that, I made a maquette, because I wasn’t sure about lighting and wanted it to look fairly realistic. (I was also really tired, and it’s easier to tape things together than to invent a lighting scheme:)

I made it out of foam board and a bit of fimo, then stuck it on this old foam I had from sculpture during my freshman year. Well.. I was forced to take sculpture, but I make the most of it. Anyway, yes, just some modge podge (my favorite) and tape. Then I made a charcoal drawing of this:

I was still working out the figure and composition. Just a quickie to work out things, and plus, I think the end result will be darker than that first image, because I’m not sure I want the building to be made of marble. So some of my inspiration is drawn from Pompeii, especially that street she ends up sitting next to:

I drew the sketch in two-point perspective. Perspective is really not as hard as people seem to think. It’s kind of fun. The trouble I usually have with it is making it work with my previous sketches and the composition. But I will talk about perspective later. A really good book is Perspective! for Comic Book Artists by David Chelsea. Even though it says comic book artists, it does say everything… in graphic novel form. Which is great for people like me who need pictures in order to pay attention. (Seriously, I’ve picked up books on color with no pictures at all–oh, fine, moving on:)

It seems like I’ve done a lot in this step, but I mostly thought about the lighting. In watercolors I like to think of it as being in two steps: the value/lighting part and the tinting part. This is because watercolors are so transparent, and I use them very transparently. I would say that most of the time I’m using a 1:1 ratio with pigment/water, and the fact that I use watercolors from the pans is part of it. But then, I water down watercolors from the tube quite a bit. If you use it transparently, you can cover it up better later on if you’re going for something different. Anyway, here I used a mix of ultramarine and English red for the shadows. I think it’s more of a bluish purple. Then I did the floor in the tiles in orange (mix of English red and hansa yellow) leaving the space where I wanted the reflection to be white. Then I added a little yellow to the gravel so that color wasn’t limited to only one portion, and decided the building would be painted yellow/red, too.

I added more washes to the columns. The trick with the columns, for me (and I’m sure there’s a better way out there somewhere) was to make a line down the length of the column in purple, then use clean water to feather it out, daubing at it with a paper towel if it got too dark or out of hand. Then I added the dark lines for the bricks, deciding this building was very old Her hair was colored to see if it would look brown with my limited color scheme, and it did (much to my surprise).

Did a very transparent wash on the bricks, added more English red all over, to the ground, to the tiles, added some orange-y colors to the woman, left the plaster bits white, but didn’t fuss over them much, either. Because I’m using only three colors, I don’t see the need for one big wash, although maybe next time.

Initially I’d drawn a background, but decided that it would detract too much from the figure, who was already pretty small. Anyway, I added another layer of red to the bricks, and then did a wet-in-wet wash of green in the background. Oh, by the way, I’m using Fabriano 300lb cold press watercolor paper.

I detailed the foliage with hansa yellow/ultramarine to make the green, then some red and blue to add some variation.

Sorry for the blurry picture. Anyway, I added some green to the rocks. This is where I just filled in any white spots and added more color/shadow to anything that was too light. I detailed the edges of the plaster/stucco on the walls, for instance, added more layers of color to the entranceway to make it look black. I think one of the key things with a limited color scheme (or really, any color scheme) is to repeat those colors. I added green in several parts, not just for that one location where the foliage is, if that makes sense. Even though I’m using only three colors, the mixed colors (green, purple and orange) would still look strange in isolation, or, at least, they did to me while I was painting.

Hope that was helpful to somebody. Thanks for reading.

S

I took quite a few photographs for my last project in my Materials Studies class. It’s basically a mixed media class. The theme was Japan because of the recent tragedy, so the final piece is hung up with a couple of symbolic imagery. Anyway, it’s made of sculpey on a wire armature, the hair is made of embroidery thread and horse hair (next time I’ll use black, unspun wool), the fabric from kimonomono and hand-sewn into a kimono (sort of) by yours truly with embroidery thread. The sculpture was primed, then painted with acrylic paint. Well, well over 40 hours of work.

S

Set back in the script a bit by school, but catching up.

Thanks for reading,
S

Music is still Royalty-Free stuff from the web. May add sound effects and music after visuals/recorded dialogue is finished.

S

On the left in the image is a maquette of Tetriin. The maquettes are used for drawing reference, to keep the characters to the model sheet. Her little draped turban thing is to cover up where the coils in the toaster oven scorched her scalp. Ouch. But yes… Tetriin has many soft shadows on her face, where Kelkethe has lots of sharp angles. This is another problem that the maquettes solve–drawing characters that look wildly different from one another!

All right, but I digress. The cast list (using the names initially given to me, not as they will appear in the credits) is as follows:

Karen……………………………………..TETRIIN REICHE, an unfortunate student
Jacob Browning………………………DEVNE REICHE, her brother, a bootlegger
Tomoyo Ichijouji…………………….ROSEMARY DAED, her friend, an actress
Kage-Ichihashi……………………….KALEVEL VENHE, the guttersnipe queen
U-1…………………………………………KELKETHE, an unsung Rogue
Syphoned……………………………….JULIUS RAMSII, an opportunist
Tomoyo Ichijouji…………………….AYA GAVIAL, his accomplice

Asher, Act II will follow Asher, Act I, so if you’re interested in being considered for those roles, please send me an email saying that you’d like to be a part, and I’ll email you when auditions are again open. My email is kieskita (at) gmail (dot) com.

S

Fimo polymer clay work in progress.