Kiki and Jiji

Tifa sketch

In honor of the announcement of the FF7 remake!

Little Krishna

I've had a not-so-well-developed-or-researched idea for a comic strip about the mischievous years of Lord Krishna as a child (I always thought it was charming that the actual mythology of a deity includes a mischievous childhood and a, if I remember correctly, lady-killer young adulthood).

Actually, save for the mythologies that are basically humorless self-appointed moral arbiters that hold too much sway in contemporary world affairs, I've always found mythology and folklore - Greek, Celtic - stories fascinating, and endeavor to one day suppress my laziness long enough to read up on them more.

I digress. Here's a design for Lord Krishna and his flute, and his mind's visual representation of his previous life, Lord Vishnu. One idea for the comic was that despite having four arms, Lord Vishnu always only has one free hand, and his other arms act more as props.

The more I think about this, the more I think if I'm not careful, this could turn into Calvin and Hobbes far too easily.

Fairy

complete with background!

Christmas drawing

I'm in between computers this year, unfortunately, and didn't get to my usual Christmas illustrations. I did manage one on my new Cintiq Companion, though, depicting my adorable niece Emma doing what she does best.

And I'm honored to be the one who facilitated the great artist, Emma Jain's, first drawing!

More homework for Rad Sechrist's class

Having a tough time staying on-model even for my own designs, unfortunately. Also, it's been a while since I've done some Eva fanart.

Some redesigns for a boxing gym owner/coach. Used to box, himself, and a bit stubborn in temperament.

Rad Sechrist class HW WK2

Breaking down the structure of existing characters and posing them ourselves.

Rad Sechrist class HW WK1

So I'm taking James Sechrist's character design class, and he recently gave critiques on our first week's assignment: drawing expressions.

Here's mine:

I had a screenshot of Mr. Sechrist's critiques, but wasn't sure how he felt about me basically sharing content that I was paying for. Rest assured, these drawings are ugly, and there are tons of things wrong with them.

more character designs

Working on more character designs. Gleaning pointers from Rad Sechrist videos and influences from Fabien Mense. And that tall boxer, he's definitely Bert.

Life Drawing at Mr Tramps

Chun Li vs Cammy

Once again couldn't bring myself to work the outlines into the paint :) Also I'm noticing a few of my recent pieces have been sharing a similar color scheme... like this one and this one. I think I'll call this my blue and magenta period.

I've been watching a couple videos on digital painting and picking up a few tricks here and there. I'm working flatter (fewer layers - still not as flat as they do in the videos) and using a base background color that I color over on another layer, not at full opacity. This makes it a lot easier to experiment with the HSL sliders and quickly change the color scheme, by tying the whole piece together.

Here are the thumbnail and outline stages:

Watermelon farmers

Husband and wife character designs for a comic idea. Happy with how these turned out, though the woman may be a bit too heavily influenced by an artist I've recently been obsessed with....
Fortunately, I like the guy's design more, except I'm not sure about the legs, and I'm certainly open to suggestions if anyone has a better eye for character design.

I'm wondering if their height difference is going to be a problem for staging...?

Cartoons

Before I dropped out of my digital painting class for being a bit basic, I spent a week doing a sketch every day. A good practice that I don't have the discipline or creativity for, but I got a couple doodles out of it. Still trying to play with style, and using pen for the first time.

It looks okay, but I like the old school anime look of Fabien Mense more. One of the things I dislike most about anime is the copy-paste character designs, where the only real difference between all the characters is hairstyle, color, and clothes. There's still enough play with shape with Mense for some personality to come through, plus I'm just partial thanks to being raised on Osamu Tezuka's Unico and the like.

Xmas 2013

So just to follow up my post about patience with my craft, here's one where I express some frustration with my lack of progress, after not putting in the practice.

Here are the Christmas illustrations this year, and the gifts they were associated with.

Okay, complete honesty here - this is a blatant ripoff of one of my earlier drawings. A 10 key number pad.

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 Akuma/Gouken figurine.

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Even after receiving the gift and knowing it was a Cosby bluray, my dad still had trouble figuring out what this was. Disheartening. In case this helps:

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Skyfall. An even more blatant ripoff. Basically traced over an old Christmas illustration for higher resolution and digital inking. And drew in the gun.

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The Last of Us. I really just wanted to do Ellie fanart, so the only changes I made were to make her blond and added the bow. I probably spent the most time on this, and therefore the most disappointed with the coloring. Sigh. Also got a lackluster reception since the recipient wasn't familiar with the characters yet.

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A wine rack. Again, dishearteningly, my parents took forever to understand what this was, and what she was holding. Yes, I draw for a living.

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Where the Wild Things Are.

So yeah. Patience, indeed.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

I just finished watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a great documentary on Netflix that was on my queue for ages. It helped me to remember that I am a student of a craft. That I should treat that craft with respect, and afford it the due patience required to devote myself to its mastery. A lesson that applies across the board, from making sushi to the visual arts.
And oh yeah, it made me very hungry for sushi :D

AVAA Sunday

I had started steering clear of AVAA since the models weren't very good on Monday, but had never gone on any of the other days. I went on Sunday this time, after not having really drawn in months. The model was much better. I'm using crosshatching a bit more, but otherwise still not making much progress. Of course this has to do with not putting in the practice, but I also don't have a goal in terms of style to work towards. Without a reason to get better (namely, a story to tell), I'm finding it difficult to see why I should draw at all. Well, until I start needing the money again.

Sorry this one was a bit of a downer, it was just one of those days.

And the batteries died on my laptop before I could finish this one:

Shadow Animation shot complete!

Finally finished with the first shot I decided to animate. As I'm pretty burnt out with animating this for now, I probably won't be making much progress on it for a bit. But here's what I have so far.

The real problem with time travel

I suck with names of things, so enjoy the generic comic title. This probably took me way too long, considering how much art I reused. It IS my first full attempt at a comic, though, and I think it turned out pretty well. A bit frivolous, but I'm happy with the execution. Inspired by Jon Su and Monica Ray.

SCAD animations

I've found myself having to hand out my portfolio more often as a freelancer, now, and more interested in working on personal stuff than putting together a nice website. I've been somewhat awkwardly sending two links: one to this blog, and another to my personal website at www.krishnajain.com, which hasn't been updated in a while. For the sake of simplification, I think I should probably post anything of value from there on here. Ideally, there'd be nothing of value since the work there is so old but...

All stuff from my years at Savannah College of Art and Design.

Sci Fi Concept

My most rendered piece yet. A concept for a sci fi idea I've been kicking around for a while.

I think this is where this drawing ends for now... Look how close I came to not needing the lines anymore!

Oh well, maybe next time.

And a WIP since I have that somewhere:

The Reward

Feeling inspired by The Reward animation. Not only was the story great, but I really liked the backgrounds, animation, and character designs. I gave the style a shot, though as I look for a style that suits me, I feel this probably diverges from the Japanese influences I started with too much for my liking. As I make my way through style limbo, I hope I find a distinctive style that I'm happy with eventually.

Sketchbomb

Sketchbomb's assignment: draw a mascot for a boring game. I drew a dragon playing golf.

And just the dragon head: