Saturday Bosscade - Daemon Bride

                       


So, yesterday I had the opportunity to play Daemon Bride for the first time, and I have to say that the game itself is pretty awesome. Examu did a really good job of taking the established controls in games such as Blaz Blue and Guilty Gear and streamlining this into something that both casuals and pros can actually enjoy. If I am to go further in my delving , I could even argue a case that this game does a better job of catering to both crowds more than Street Fighter V. Which isn't hard to do by any stretch.

Needless to say, this episode put me through the ringer, and I think I came out a bit better for the experience.

- I'll see you next Bossfight!

Part One: Head Games

At my day (night) job I can often be found at lunch sitting in the breakroom drawing faces. Random faces, faces for character designs ect ect. Often i'm told that it's difficult to draw faces and heads from co-workers and friends who watch, and to be honest if you don't have a basic idea of what you're doing it really is. So I decided this will be the first thing I cover in my quest to help you, the reader become a better artist.

The first thing i'm going to tell you is very important. Every artist basically says this, and it holds true in a lot of ways; You have to observe things in life in order to better understand how they will appear on the page. Grab some images of faces through Google search, grab a mirror and just stare at your own face. You have to familiarize yourself with what you're drawing in order to understand how to translate it onto paper. Take a few minutes to observe your own face in the mirror, every curve every angle. the basic structure notice that if you really look you can break that down into shapes. Now let's draw those shapes that will be used to make a face on paper.

Beginner's Method: Familiarity with shapes.

These are the basic shapes I use when constructing my head drawings. Technically you can use any shape in the world to construct a head, but let's take baby steps for now. The following are broken down in seven types

1. Circle 
2. Oval (upright)
3. Rectangle (sideset)
4. Rectangle (upright)
5. Hexagon 
6. Trapezoid 
7. Oval (sideset)

The oval is the basic shape used for heads, while circles are mainly used for youthful faces. You can even combine both to create elongated or more shapely faces like for females. Rectangles are good for square jawed guys and rough characters. While Hexagons and Trapezoids are good for creating more interesting shaped heads. Below is an example drawing I did to better explain.

Now for the sake of covering different basic styles I'll be showing you multiple techniques. You can pick and choose which ones work for you, but I'm just giving you some variety. I usually blend techniques as i see fit, because I believe that there is more than one way to skin this theoretical cat. Not that I believe in skinning cats...eh you know what I mean..

This is the most basic of basic styles.

Every how-to book in the world has this setup. To me it's kind of vanilla, and I don't really care much for it but i'm posting it just because it's the basic of the basics.

You start off with the Oval

Draw a center line through the oval to give a sense of space between the eyes and to help you to frame the nose.

Draw additional lines to frame where the eyes will be and where the nose will be in position to them.

Eventually, you'll be able to rough out the mouth and start to add shape to the facial features while providing hair and other details. I always draw the ears parallel to the eyes because that's how mine are, but I also have small ears for my head (don't laugh). The larger the ears the more they take up the face.

Homework: Try to at least do ten heads in the basic style in order to familiarize yourself with the technique. As you begin to draw them again and again you'll build muscle memory and will be able to draw faces without the use of the guides. Try it!

Next time I'll show you my method for drawing heads, as well as some tips on drawing hair.

See you next time

Restart

For a little over a year i've been sitting around trying to figure out what to do with this blog. I'm not anywhere near my goal of being a professional artist. However, I have been spending more of my time plugging away at my video game blog which has been doing quite well these past few months.In addition to that I've been slowly working my way up the ranks at my day-job. I have found kindred spirits who like me want to reach their goals and be masters of their field, but have been at a loss as to how to reach their goals. This has lead me to decide to want to help them and myself.

 From here on out I have decided something; I want to devote this blog to helping people get better at art, and to use that as a means of pushing myself forward and becoming a better accomplished artist. I will also be using additional things as a means of promotion for positive feedback. I want to accomplish my goals, but to do that i'm going to have to simplify them and work from here.

So now that I've gotten that out of the way. let's see if we can get this train back on track.

Here's a piece i had been sketching up a week ago.

This is just to show you guys that I haven't been slacking off in the least. I'm still drawing and always polishing my skills. I want my details to be top notch. 

So yeah.... Let's do this!

Man's beast friend

Salutations.

Been all sorts of busy with other things. thought I would make it up with something really cool. This picture came out of a hilarious convo about dogs and Berserk. Hope you guys like it.  Other than that. things have been interesing on this end. I've been video game blogging for a bit and I have a couple ideas going on for what exactly I want to do with this blog in particular. anyways I'll post again soon.

One small step for me...

Well not that much of a milestone, but I've pretty much reached the first cliffhanger to Solar Bomb, which is pretty awesome. Seeing your work actually materialize into something you can actually show to other people just gives you a serious sense of accomplishment. Soo to be nice. I'm going to show off two pages that I've been working on.

Just two, but enough to know that I'm not just sitting around on my thumbs. My goal currently is to create enough pages to make a buffer to keep a steady flow.. well that and finish off the prelude to the main story while plotting out what will happen during the rest of this first story arc.

If you're wondering. yes, Vectoring  can be time consuming and difficult, but I've been doing it for five years so you tend to get better and better as you go.That's the cool thing about art, though. If you want to create something you have an unlimited amount of ways of doing it. In my case it's just putting my graphic design skills to good use.

Retro Bomb Comix....

I was looking through some discs and found some of my old pieces from 2007. People who are interested in what I'm doing for Solar Bomb will be pleased to know that the following comic I show you is actually one of the prototype versions of this comic. Note: This character will still be in the newer comic, but not exactly how he's portrayed here. Enjoy.

Supernatural sketch par-tae

Did this while I was checking out the season finale of Supernatural, which was pretty damn good. I didn't know how they were going to lock Lucifer back in his cage and stop the 'planetary enema' that was the biblical apocalypse, but the Super Winchester bros. and the gang pulled it off quite nicely. Of course not without some big character deaths along the way... Season six is so close yet soooo far.