Blogger: A New Purpose

Hey, it's been a while since I last made a blog post here. 

Card Art of Sarah for an OC TCG I've been on and off working on with friends.

This has been a weird year. I've been keeping up on posting art on a few other sites, but I realize I kind of abandoned Blogger, unintentionally. I don't plan to abandon it forever though. I'm merely planning to repurpose what I use this blog for. Any time I want to showcase progress on an illustration from start to finish, or just post a lot of drawings from a bigger project, I plan to post those all at once here. I also will still make my yearly end of the year recap and beginning of the year posts. I just don't plan to use Blogger as a way to show frequent art updates like I used to. 

If you're interested in those, check out my Discord server, Instagram, or deviantART. Those are the places I'm most active and will be posting most frequently. 

I'll talk more about why I'm making this change in more depth in a few months when I make my recap of the year post, but as I mentioned earlier, it's been a weird year, and rather than abandoning Blogger entirely, this is what I decided was best going forward. Though I'll probably only be making a few posts a year on here, I'm not leaving for good. 

Because it's been so long, here's some art I have created this year:

Val's NAD

Mooth in TWEWY style

I'll be sure to post more in my later posts, like the yearly recap, and anything else that comes before that as well. So anyway, thanks for sticking with me during this time. Until next time!

Nay Fanart Inspiration

Some recent Nay drawings that were inspired by anime or games!

I finished the anime of Muhyo & Roji's Bureau of Supernatural Investigation the other day, so I decided to draw Zandra in that style. I really like how unique their eyes were in the anime.

I decided to redraw The Nays in the style of a video game cover. I started with Persona 3 since it was a pretty simple one.

Chozu's Like 30

I made this for my brother's 30th birthday, which was a few weeks ago.

We've both been playing VA11 HALL-A a lot recently, so I recreated some of the scenes from the Shard of the Orient Eventure in the style of VA11 HALL-A.

Chozu's Like 30 from Michelle Rakar on Vimeo.

Here's a gif of Moz in full quality.

And here's a still of Rosie.

Art Style Variations

Here are some recent art style drawings I did of my characters.

It's been awhile, so here's Powerpuff Girls! I used to watch this show a lot as a kid, but just for a short time. This style was so difficult because it's SO SIMPLE. I felt guilty using shape tools to create some of these shapes like the perfect circle head, but it was the only way to make it true to the style. Definitely a challenge for me!

I really haven't watched PPG in awhile, but from what I can remember, I would compare Zandra to Blossom the most because she's a leader and kinda in charge. And believe it or not, I used a Blossom action figure as Zandra back in the day when The Nays was a "playing with toys show" when I was younger. So I feel like I HAVE to associate Zandra with Blossom. I mostly referenced Blossom for looks with Bubbles' color scheme. And since no one in the show has scarves, I had to make it up based on Mojo Jojo's cape.

Scott in Lucky Star style.

Ralphie in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure style.

Comic Styles

As part of the Mr Marcus event (Version 3.0), I redrew some random manga pages from a randomized list, but with my own characters in place of them.

This is Rabiah and Firebreath in Fist of the Blue Sky. I've never read this manga, but this was fun!

Another manga redraw! This one is of Grenna and Pubby in Shinigami of the East.

Gamishness: Remastered

A new variation on an old project! I've been keeping a list of every game that I play, so after some organizing, I thought up this idea. I'm creating fake screenshots to look like these games, but with my characters and moments from Eventures. The variation is that I'm starting from the beginning for both games and Eventures. I started with the year 1985 (since that seems pretty far back), and Eventure 1. From there, I organized the games so that there are 5 games per Eventure. Eventually I'd love to draw every single one, but for now I'm drawing one game per Eventure so that I can get a bigger variety in content. I'm also giving myself a half an hour time limit, and then any additional time to finish up the piece (kind of similar to the Dr Buh's Fools Event!)

To start things off, here's Bard's Tale from 1985 for The Gek Eventure. This is while Zandra is warning the group against going into The Link Between Worlds. And I drew this in a tiny resolution, because that's actually what the NES resolution was! I didn't play much of Bard's Tale, but some parts were interesting considering the time period it was made in.

Continuing along with 1985 games, I drew Duck Hunt for the Cimc Eventure. During this Eventure, Pubby goes back home with Cimc to see his home. That's when Snuvy attacks Cimcicola, so I figured this would be pretty fitting.

Last of the 1985 games for now with the worst one I've played from that year: Winter Games. This is from The Nays Eventure when a bunch of them are racing against each other for Gek Points.

Dr Buh's Fools - Anime Screenshot Project

This is a new project where I would watch a random episode of an anime I've never heard of starting with the same letter as a Nay and try to draw something inspired/based on what I see in the time limit of the episode. I tried to draw in the style of the anime as best I could as well, but sometimes there wasn't enough time to have an accurate representation. But I also tried to make them look kinda like screenshots. This project was called "Dr Buh's Fools" in reference to when Professor Braves used to let The Nays watch new anime from the Lakewood Library (and today's April Fool's, so it was fitting).

Clove watched Canaan, which had an interesting setting for things happening since it was all taking place on a train. I feel like some of the concepts and characters were interesting in theory, but how it was presented felt too generic.

Ralphie watched Re: Hamatora, which was probably the best one so far. It had an interesting concept and lots of action. This is one I might actually try again and pay full attention to. This was my favorite drawing of how it came out in the end as well, but then again I think it's the one that strayed from the initial style most.

Gair watched Gamers!, which was just some generic slice of life romance anime. I liked the video game references, but the story felt kinda boring. The opening was the best part though. Oh and on a side note, I drew the mouth normally and then realized in this anime, they have mouths on the side of their faces so I had to redraw that part to fit with the style.

Arianna watched Absolute Duo, where I didn't really understand what was happening. I just know they were looking for someone. Oh yeah and Photoshop crashed in the middle of this one, but luckily I saved.

The first one was Spicco watching Selector Infected WIXOSS9. It was some card game anime and the themes were kinda weird.

Mr Marcus Art Style Challenge

So I was doing the art style meme by drawing Zandra, but this time I drew some other Nays in another style as part of the Mr Marcus World event!

Clove in Summer Wars/Digimon the Movie style

Grenna in One Piece style

Different Styles

Recently I've been trying to draw more for that style meme that I started awhile back. I've been watching some anime recently so I figured I would draw some anime styles.

So I really do not like the Clamp style all that much... but I enjoyed Code Geass for the story. It's too pointy for me, and the anatomy is not as accurate as it could be. So this was a challenge. Especially that chin. Pointy chins are just so hard for me to draw, because I just want to smooth them out. The nose was difficult too. 

So it's been awhile since I watched all of Code Geass... but I'd say Zandra would be most likely be closest to a mix between Kallen, Cornelia, and Suzaku, maybe? It's hard to tell, really. But as for how she looks, I referenced Kallen and Shirley.

I really like the story and everything in Detective Conan a lot, but the art style isn't my favorite. The noses have always looked so odd to me. But I like that Gosho Aoyama's able to make so many characters and make them all look pretty different.

As for the character comparisons... I would probably compare her to a mix between Haibara, Sato, and maybe a tiny bit of Kir or Ran? And I referenced Ran and Sonoko for how she looks. During her time that she was just becoming close friends with Amber, I would definitely throw in some Sonoko for her personality type.

Gamishness Screenshot Makers

This is a fun new activity that my brother thought up for us to do. We made a list of games, and from there, we would make a fake screenshot in that style, based on our Eventures, with our own characters, from our story.

So this one is Scott running into Dallasama in the Demon World.. in Wild Arms 3 style! It was very challenging to keep with very sharp edges and the faces in WA3 are a bit too generic anime styled for me, so that was also a challenge to keep within that style, haha.

This one is of Piko and Gair facing off in the World K Tournament... in The World Ends With You style! After doing pixel art earlier today, I had to take a break and go back to drawing. I love the TWEWY style, and it's a lot of fun to draw in. I was surprised how well my characters translated into this style.

This is when Sarah and Trekkon first meet at a dance in Undertale style! Pixel art is sooo challenging for me! And Undertale's is pretty simplified, so getting this down was hard. Also I kinda messed up the light sources a bit, but I tried to fix it by making two.