2016 Recap

Now that it's almost 2017, it's time to reflect on 2016. But first, let me show you a summary of this year in art form!

2016 was a crazy year, that's for sure. But most of it was actually positive for me. In the beginning of 2016, I made a huge push to revamp my entire portfolio. I worked for months to create artwork specifically for my portfolio and create something that actually represents me. I'm honestly still happy with my portfolio that I finished back in March, and I've mainly been making minor tweaks to add in updated artwork. So that was the good start to the year.

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to work as a Lead Instructor at iD Tech's UCLA location. Although I only had two days off the entire summer, it was a lot of fun and I met some really great friends there. I loved it so much so that this coming summer I will be returning as a Lead Instructor in California, but this time I'll be at Stanford. So that's exciting.

As I was recovering from the intense summer, I was applying for a few jobs and internships in the fall. I was lucky to be interviewed by Turner when they visited CCAD in Columbus, OH. The recruiter gave me some useful tips that I've been working to integrate into my work and current portfolio. A week later, I had an interview with Tonko House, one of my dream job studios. It went really well and I had a blast talking with Dice Tsutsumi. He let me know that it would be a few months until I hear back with what the next step in the process would be, so I'm still patiently waiting for those results.

After all of this excitement with interviews, I got a call from someone I know at iD Tech, and had a sudden interview for a full-time job that I applied for. She sent over the test and I successfully did that. A few days later, I got a call back and received the position as a Curriculum Developer at iD Tech! Not long after, I flew out to Campbell, CA and went through my training seminar for the new position. And for the past month and a half, I have been developing curriculum for some of iD Tech's courses that will be available in the summer of 2017. I work full-time from home, so it's super convenient and exactly what I needed right now!

So overall it has been a very exciting year. Although I have been getting less and less time for personal art, I have been progressing in my professional life, so I am super happy about that. Even though I've been busy, I have been keeping up as much as I can. In the first half of the year, I was still able to do daily fundamental drawings every day for an hour. I was able to draw daily characters as part of my Nay-A-Day project. Once summer hit, those things stopped happening daily and were a little more whenever I had time in between my 7am - 11pm work days.

After summer, I was doing things daily a bit more often. And then once I started my job as a Curriculum Developer, I have been drawing daily still, but doing less of the dedicated projects. I managed to complete Inktober and Huevember this year, but the end of November and all of December has been a struggle to draw after eight hour work days. I've went back to doing more of my Pokemon-of-the-Day project, since those are a lot quicker and easier to do than the NAD project. I've drawn a few NADs since then, but not a huge amount.

Since our offices have been closed last week and this week, I have had time to do more personal drawings and most specifically: I have been working on progression in my story. This week I have been working a lot on a Weebly site for my characters, so stay tuned for when that goes live!

Oh yeah and during all of the craziness of this year, I have been working on a game with some of my friends. We're extremely close to the end of pre-production and are about to start into production finally. Next year we are planning to do most of the production work, and hopefully the game will actually be released by 2018! I'll definitely post an update here once it is closer to the release date.

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.

Spinarak & Ledian

Some more Pokemon drawings!

#167: Spinarak

#166: Ledian

Pubby Sketches

I just finished an Eventure that was a huge turning point for Pubby, so I've been doing some sketches of him!

 After the Pubby and Lonny Reunited Eventure, Pubby is going to get a new outfit. So I'm trying to figure out what he'll look like. I'm leaning towards the one on the far right.

It’s been like 6 years since we made up the Dusty Dimes, and I never took the time to fully design what their logo looks like, even though it’s important to the story. I’ve been drawing something like this as Pubby’s tattoo, but now it’s finalized.

Noctowl & Ledyba

Some more Pokemon drawings!

#164 Noctowl

#165 Ledyba

Hot Spring Nays

So for Christmas this year, I made a short animation centered around The Nays visiting the hot springs in Tag World, and the kinds of things that they think about there. This was a gift for my brother.

The initial plan was to only draw one scene per time that he was out of the room, but then it got to crunch time and I had to make a lot in the end.

Hot Spring Nays from Michelle Rakar on Vimeo.

 And then, since it was centered around the hot springs, I made a little diorama of what an area of the hot springs might look like!

 I took some of the toys that we used to use as The Nays and placed them in there, too. Lots of views so you can see the whole thing!

This was the Pidgebeetle drawing that I placed on the diorama, before I cut it out.

1,000th Blog Post!!

IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!

And today marks the day of my 1,000th blog post! Thank you to everyone who looks at my posts and supports my work, I genuinely appreciate it.

So for Christmas, I drew some gifts for my friends. And this one is what I drew for my three best friends! It kind of goes along with last year's gift, since it has the same sort of theme:

This year's gift!

And this was the one I drew last year!

Now it's time to show the process!

 The initial doodle to plan out the composition

 Then I sketched in the character details and edited the canvas size, to fit them better

Next was the lineart

And then the flat colors

I did some shading 

And then I added a background, text, and border!

Christmas Gifts!

I drew some things for a couple of friends recently for Christmas time. Here are some of the gifts that have already been given!

Gigi for my friend Renee.

Jelly Spider for my friend Jesse.

 Magikarp for my friend Mario.

The Dailies

Yesterday I had time to do both a Pokemon drawing and a character drawing!

 #163: Hoothoot

Snuvy is a very clever dog who is very deceiving. He is always creating new gizmos and gadgets, and wears his trusty jet pack at all times. Snuvy constantly creates robots and other mechanical creations. He is very dedicated to his work, and doesn't have much time for a social life. Cimcicola criticizes him for this, which is what leads him to deceive the rest of the liars.

Sentret & Furret

More Pokemon drawings!

 #161: Sentret

#162: Furret

Lonny and Pubby Sketches

Last night I was planning out the Eventure that I'm planning to do this week about Lonny and Pubby. Now that I have a break from work, I have enough time to work on my personal projects a lot, so I'm excited about that!

Here are some sketches I did based on the plans!

Nays Pokemon Pearl Adventures

So The Nays have been playing Pokemon Pearl recently. I always forget everything about Gen4, so I decided to sketch each of their turns to try and force myself to remember more about these games (and to keep me drawing for myself). I ended up beating the game last night, so this is the project all the way from the beginning to end!

Lotus & Geot

These two characters actually coincide with each other.

Lotus is a young orphan boy who was kidnapped by rogue birds at a very young age. Because of that, he hates birds and fears them greatly. He basically grew up in a prison and was named Prisoner #13041. Lotus has very bad luck overall, and does not trust anyone. He doesn't believe that good people exist in The Worlds, until he meets Xing, who is kind and compassionate towards him. Lotus was captured because of his rare ability to gather and use cloud energy to his advantage. Mr Kami Sakurai bought this young boy from the rogue birds and had him shipped in a box all the way to Aiml World, where he luckily breaks free and runs away.

Geot is a rogue bird from the southern area of Tag World who makes a living off of the black market. He does a lot of illegal activity and has a whole group of rogue birds who work with him. Geot is very tricky and is able to manipulate others into doing dirty work for him. He even ends up selling Grenna to researchers in Mr Dude World at one point, and uses The Nays to help him with this.

Bringing Back the Gif Compilation

Remember that old project called Nays Gif Compilation? Well probably not, but I felt like continuing it for one night.

Lonny is going on a journey on a row boat, but when he loses his cell phone, the fun is over.

(Scott Pilgrim style)

Lylie & Eustace

Some daily characters!

Lylie is a very lively young boy who always carries his paintball gun wherever he goes. He loves shooting paint in peoples' faces and is an avid trouble-maker. Lylie loves hanging around with his older brother Kicky, even if Kicky thinks he's annoying and hates being around him. He really looks up to Kicky and follows him around everywhere.

Eustace is a wealthy slave owner who is very close with his daughter. He is very protective of her and will never let anything bad happen to her. Eustace is generally nicer to his servants than most slave owners, but he obviously is not very morally healthy if he has slaves in the first place. He is very often blinded by power and can be incredibly stuck up.