GrrrrrRRRRYYYYYEAAAAAAARGH!

Happy week 4 everyone, have a hunter.


Drawn with a 2B pencil, inked with a rollerball and brush pen, coloured with watercolour pencils.
I'm trying some more dynamic poses at the moment and this has turned out quite a bit better than I'd hoped.
Changed the red levels to give the colours a bit of a boost, but they still seem a bit murky and areas like the left hand don't stand out as well as I needed them to. Also the silhouette isn't too strong as the hand crosses over his right leg.

I want to turn this into a full colour piece with background at some point so I'm going to keep working into it with the pencils. Hopefully continuing to build up the colour in the shaded areas will give it a lot more vibrancy and depth when I wash over it.
As usual, if anyone has any critiques or tips I'm all ears (or eyes in this case).

Also, I apologise for any mistakes in the design. I didn't have any references to hand when I'd passed the initial sketching stage!

Hunter and Left 4 Dead © Valve

DeviantArt link.

Project 52 challenge - Weeks 1, 2 and 3

My first entry is actually a three-in-one since I started the challenge a couple of weeks into January. For those who are members of DeviantArt, I'll also be including the DA gallery links.

First up are two characters from my comic Soulsnatchers.


DA Link

A brief introduction:
Eric Killian has been searching for clues to the whereabouts of his brother, who disappeared mysteriously four years ago.
During his search, he gets caught up in the "Soulsnatchers" [pending name change] organisation, a sort-of black market branch of hell that specialises in trading human souls for what they most desire (without their consent naturally).

Eric, the main character, is the dude to the left. I've not posted him to DA before but he's changed quite significantly since I first designed him. He was originally supposed to be a dishevelled cop, but I didn't like the way it was working out so I made him a (slightly scruffy) university student. Bright but his curiosity often gets the better of him.

Some of you may have seen Alusius before if you know me from DeviantArt. He's the head of his team of soulsnatchers and before Eric joins, is unique in the fact that he used to be (and possibly still is) human. The first outfit is him in his uniform (worn so as not to draw too much attention to themselves on the surface) and the second is his casual outfit, much more comfortable since it's less restrictive to what lies beneath his bandages.
I've also given him a slight design change, giving him a high coat collar, different boots and baggier trousers.
Here are some of the original drawings I did of him for comparison:
Alusius original design 1
Alusius orginal design 2

The comic style itself is getting a makeover too. Less loose with more varied line weights.
A couple of pages from the original comic:
Page 1
Page 2
I'm hoping to post up more SS stuff in the near future, more characters and also environments which will also have an overhaul from the previous version.

These were both sketched in pencil then inked with a Copic brush marker. Rather missed it, it's been a long time since I've done non-digital inking!
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Next is just a quick digital drawing of Eric suiting up for his first day on the job:
DA Link

I'm thinking I should have made the line weight difference between Alusius and Eric greater to help distinguish between their jackets (or perhaps made the colour shades slightly different?). Also, does this inking style still work for the refined character designs?
Any ideas at this stage are more than welcome.

Critiques are more than welcome of course! : )

- Ryuuza

Project 52 challenge - the drawing edition!

DeviantArt is currently hosting a photography contest called the Project 52 photography challenge, in which users submit one photo per week to their gallery (on the theme of "progression") throughout 2010.
I thought this was a really neat idea, not just as a contest, but as a challenge to one's self.
So what I'm going to get myself to do is a similar thing with my drawing. At least one piece (not job related) a week throughout 2010 which will be posted both to here and to my DA gallery.
I'm going to use this challenge as a way to boost my drawing skills and confidence as well as a means of getting my comic story "Soulsnatchers" off the ground.
It'd also be very cool if anyone else wants to take up the challenge themselves! : D

I do realise I haven't used this blog in an extremely long time as I hadn't really felt like I had much to contribute, so this is going to be its long awaited revival.

Hope everyone's having a good 2010 so far, all the best!
- Ryuuza