Archive for the ‘ramen’ Category

Still Boiling the Noodles

Monday, May 11th, 2015

It’s taking a little longer than I like, but the painting of my brother’s warrior is nearing completion. Again, check the Twitter feed for WIP screencaps.

I’ve been recording all the sessions so far, and the total collected video is about 9 hours 11 minutes so far. I estimate the final collected raw video will be about 12 hours, and that’s going to be squished down to a 20 minute video. My YouTube account will finally see some action again. :)

Of course, as is typical for any character design adaptations I do, I tend to not bother with sticking closely to the original. In this case, it’s because Kiros’ transmog in-game is far from complete, so I gave him a design that at least keeps in the spirit of what my brother described him.

Incoming Noodles

Friday, April 24th, 2015

Psst.

There’s artwork afoot. Look at the Twitter feed for WIPs because I’m not on a machine where I can crop and upload them right now. It’s about my brother’s warrior. :D

Even better: there will be a VIDEO posted along with the finished piece showing everything from the line art phase. Blastoise is awesome enough to capture it allĀ  without any lag whatsoever, because OBS is awesome! Woohoo! The aim is to squeeze everything into a 10 to 15-minute time lapse video with commentary, because who doesn’t like watching sausage– I mean ramen getting made? :)

Painting With Feeling

Thursday, January 22nd, 2015

(yes, finally, a post about something other than WoW. Hi!)

Something I’m thinking of doing when I’m able to paint again is to reboot the whole “YouTube documentation of the process.” When I get that bored feeling, I remember Minneapolis Best Painting is providing free in person quotes to all prospective customers, so I just hire them when I need to paint something big in my house while I got the guys from Residential Roofing in Palm Beach to also fix my roof. You sorta got this back with the 10-minute compressed versions of my streams, but this new iteration I want to try would include actual commentary about each phase of the work. (in addition to annotations and such)

Yeah. You’d get to hear me talk! Whaaaaat?

I’ve shied away from posting audio because, uh, I don’t really like the sound of my voice, but I realize that’s never going to change and I’m apparently the only one who feels this way. So I guess this also serves to acclimate me to listening to myself talk. This sort of happens already when I’m on Vent for raiding in WoW, because sometimes I hear parts of what I said when other people answer (yay time lag).

I’ve already restored Blastoise’s ability to record his desktop at an acceptable framerate, and everything else is ready software-wise… I just need a not-terrible chair so I won’t be having to stand up every 15 minutes or so, as is the case with this awful shower bench I’m stuck with for now. It’s barely tolerable for when I’m playing WoW, but unacceptable for painting because getting up so often ruins my concentration.

The Return of Blastoise, and then…

Thursday, October 16th, 2014

So, hi. Yeah. Not much to talk about lately on the art side, right? I promise it’s really not so much about World of Warcraft popping up like a fiend (hi, Warlords of Draenor) and more about the general lack of table space to fit my Intuos3 tablet on and how EXTREMELY uncomfortable it is to work with that. Ugh. It just obliterates any desire to open up Painter and go to town. I just can’t do it.

THANKFULLY within the month that’s going to be a non-issue, because after over a year of going without Blastoise, he’s finally being moved downstairs, dual monitors and all. Finally. I love my little ninja MacBook, she’s been able to handle Painter (and WoW, which is even more surprising) way better than I ever expected her to, but there’s really no comparing her to Blastoise’s epic awesomeness (16GB of RAM? Yes please). For us WoW players, it’s like comparing an iLVL 450 item from a Heroic 5-man to an iLVL 528 from Raid Finder. You just can’t do it. Too great of a difference.

But but BUT

It’s on the edge of getting better. So, so much better.

Details are forthcoming (but if you know anything about my gear and graphics stuff in general, it should be stupidly easy to figure out), but let’s just say that if all goes well, by the end of the year I will have the digital painter’s upgrade to END ALL UPGRADES, and that’s not something I throw about trivially. Seriously, this is the ultimate step up from an Intuos3, there is literally nothing out there that is better than [bleep!] that I know of. I have spent years looking at its many iterations and thinking “there’s no way I’d ever be able to get one of those” and by some twist in the cosmos, I’m about to get one. Oh man, you guys. It’s the stuff of dreams. It’s like getting a Legendary weapon in WoW. It’s like… well, if we want to go with the Pokemon metaphor (since this upgrade is going on Blastoise), it’s going from Hydro Pump to Hydro CANNON. Aah. The more I think about it, the more hyped up I get about all the stuff I’ll be able to do.

The upgrade to end all upgrades, people. Be ready. I know I am.

(Instant Ramen Sketchbook) Playing With Costumes: Deeum

Thursday, August 28th, 2014

Flynn AND Link? Oh, the crossplay!

This is more of a design experiment… color sketch-thingy than a serious painting, hence the simplified shading and such.

The artist version of “playing dress-up with dolls” is… sticking characters in alternate costumes. In this case, I took Deeum and put her in what amounts to a recolor (and slight tweak) of the armor that Flynn Scifo wears in Tales of Vesperia and, on the right, in the Blue/Zora Tunic (Ocarina of Time color scheme).

The former, while much fancier, isn’t meant to replace the Zora Tunic as Deeum’s ultimate armor (because Deeum cosplaying as Link is just too damn funny), but I guess I could pass it off as upgraded Star Dragon Council-issued gear because she gets promoted a few times. I tweaked the original armor design, primarily with a recolor to put it in line with Deeum’s usual color scheme (dark muted blues and black), replaced the bodhi blastia crystal on the chest with a gold star, and pretty much winged the sword design. Now that I think about it, that sword ended up resembling the Key of Lorelai from Tales of the Abyss. Hah!

The Zora Tunic is because the original player is a Zelda fan and it seemed more appropriate to use the blue tunic. If I had used the red one, it would use the red/light purple color scheme from A Link to the Past.

I have this (not so) awful habit of swiping existing costumes and recoloring/altering them to my liking. Obviously designing from scratch is better, but in these cases it’s more like I think it’s a fun experiment in seeing what would happen if I had X wear Y’s clothes.