www.sketchpad.tv - Live streaming site for artists by artists

First off. I'd like to shift everyone's attention over to sketchpad.tv. ATK decided to go out on a limb and try something new: utilize live streaming and pool viewers together. This way, artists can get more attention and more exposure. We're still looking for artists to stream in certain timeblocks for now we're just hoping that we can garner enough attention.



Secondly. I've decided to start writing for a site called Moar Powah! It's like an "everything" blog but it's made by a college friend of mine. Hopefully, if he starts pushing me with deadlines then I'll be more willing to write stuff on both there and here.

Life Update -ATK collaboration: Visual Novel

Normally I would be increasing my posts every week but I've been busier with a major project that I'm now working on.

I won't tell you specifics, but ATK and I will be working on a self published (doujin) visual novel written in Flash I believe (I can't find the engine that the japanese circles use). I'm his writer and we'll be aiming for releasing it by NYAF. It'll come in two languages, English and Korean, which means I need to work my ass off in writing the chapters up as fast as possible. I never expected this to happen....

Hatsune Miku Speed Paint (Commission)

A commission received from someone who bought the super large Rin poster that Al drew in crayon. His plans for NYAF this year is to try and sell disks containing the image files. To compensate, he'll be drawing on larger scale. As of now this one is 4000x3000 but I think he said he'd be going for even larger.

His coloring process changed from the last time I checked. I like this foundation better.

Drawing Request from Mabinogi - Speedpaint

Funny enough, I received an email in March about a request for a drawing in ATK's name. I was pretty sure we put both our emails in there..... Regardless, I forwarded this to him asking what he though about it. It wasn't a commission, more like just an earnest request. Finals were coming up so I wasn't sure how to deal with this one to be honest. In the end, he finally decided to do it.



This one was fairly simple. We received two reference screencaps to base the drawings from, so I won't bother him about shading first before getting color scheme down. The palette is already set and he probably already has a light source in mind.

Nothing major to note besides the horrendously deformed necklace thing. Perspective doesn't change THAT much with a leaning person.....

DnF - Valentine's day Event Speed paint

Currently, in Dungeon and Fighter Korea, there's an event where you have to color in one of three outlines and submit it as an event for a prize.
Al, has decided to do his own take on it.



This is definitely different for him. He has to apply his own style to something to a base line art, and the start is very awkward (detailing the face first and then moving on).

This speed paint is based on the most recent avatar sets released in Korean DnF.
What's restricted him the most seems to be the base art style. The Mage's head is HUGE and it looks iffy.

Because this is based almost directly on something else, the detailing on these two characters is very nice. The hairs are distinctly ATK and the soft shading works well.

ATK's DnF Fanwork

What am I supposed to say to this.....
I guess that's one way of combining your hobbies but.... what?

It's not the multitasking that's an issue, nor the work or the tower run. It's the combination that confuses me. What am I supposed to comment on?

Random side note: The sound effects synch up with the music at 3:29 ish.

Dear Zerreth, How was NYAF 2009?

NYAF was last week, and this week I was swamped with projects due, so I haven't had much time to post. Sorry.

NYAF this year also had the World Cyber Games (WCG) national finals, so the booth vendors and attendees were actually mixed. Samsung had a booth near WCG as well as Sega, and I think that by hosting WCG at NYAF, it attracted a somewhat bigger crowd than last year. There was no maid cafe this year unfortunately. Next year, Comic-con is co-hosting with NYAF on the same day and share the same space. My thoughts are mixed about that, but I'll dive into that later.


This year, ATK wanted to go to the artist's alley again. This time, however, he and a few of his new friends in college wanted an artist's alley table as well. Prices actually went up in the artist alley by about 30%, whereas booths took a lesser hit. So instead of buying a table at the artist's alley, he decided to buy a booth and share the space with others. He contacted a new found friend at last year's NYAF, RedShoulder, and I contacted one of my college friends, Neolight, who was majoring in animation. Adding one of ATK's college friends we had 4 artists all sharing work at the booth.

Around August, ATK had to think of a name for the booth, so I proposed "Medley" as it was a group of artists with different styles and mediums all sharing work.


The first day (Friday) was relatively slow (as expected). All of us were all over the place trying to determine a better layout for the booth, we eventually ended up with a S shape with 3 tables. The table at the front would display all of our work while the tables to the side and back made an opening for others to enter the booth and allow attendees to extensively look at the artwork of each artist.


We had some support the second day. TheGunrun and his friend brought over some electronic equipment for us to try and advertise the booth better. At first we decided to have a small space dedicated to DJMax Trilogy so that we could try and hook some people in, but what ended up happening was that we were drawing a crowd of the wrong demographic, mainly those of the "join crowd because there's a crowd and leave once point of interest is now boring" group. It ended up distracting any onlookers from looking at the work, so we switched it to a stream of Neolight working on his animation on his tablet, and ATK's speed paints. For the later half of that day, I had to set up a playlist with my Zen as TheGunrun's PC on shuffle didn't really give us the music we needed.


The third day, we switched the setup so that there was only a monitor of DJMax playing and those interested would have to walk into booth to try. This shifted the crowd over to one side and freed up the front table so that it displayed everyone's artwork better.


I didn't track everyone's sales but I believe everyone at least once had a major sale one of the days. What surprised me the most at the convention was this one person who took a liking to ATK's Vocaloid crayon fanart (They're originally on this 17" X 22" paper) and bought them each for $50. We weren't intending to sell them, simply to display them to attract customers but who knew someone would take such a liking to it?

I feel that ATK and I should've also ordered DJMax Trilogy in bulk or something. The number of DJMax fans as well as those interested in buying the game was enormous. If only I linked them to this blog first, I could've probably gotten some commission from Play-asia...


I gotta say though. I was dead tired on Monday. I almost fell asleep in class and my performance in Kendo was atrocious. Regardless, this year was a good experience as well. Maintaining a booth and setting up a table at the Artist's Alley were on whole different levels.

I'm not sure what ATK should do next year though. Because NYAF is co-hosting with Comic-con, there's gonna be a larger number of attendees that will probably head on over to the artist's alley. At the same time, there's also going to be significantly more attendees. The closest thing to Comiket that we have here in the States is probably Otakon but nothing really focused on the artists. Hopefully, we'll get something like that soon.

NYAF 2009

Tomarrow is NYAF, and once again ATK and I will be there presenting artwork. This time, we'll be at Booth 131 along with 3 other artists who all do independent work. Aptly referred to as "Medley" we intend to try to make this bigger and hope to have more artists collaborate next year.

The Artist's Alley is fairly out of the way and cluttered which was a slight problem. In addition, prices increased and ATK decided to take advantage of this by buying a booth and sharing it among other exhibitors. Not only would this cut costs, but it also gives us prime space and more potential attention. Be sure to drop by.

New Artwork

I just got a chunk of work from ATK.



Another crayon sketch that blew my mind.



A nice piece of acrylic work. This one is pretty balanced in terms of contrast. My eyes are moving all over the place and I'm having a bit of a problem find a focal point, but it's good work nonetheless.



A good use of basics. A nice black and white piece with some really nice detail.



I had to "smart sharp" on photoshop on the original image. I think ATK took a hasty shot in capturing this image. Another interesting black and white using the dark background to highlight the tree.

25,000 Hits Celebration.

Since I didn't do much for 20k hits, ATK decided to draw an exclusive banner for 25k hits.




Speedpaint.

ATK's Second Speed paint

Here's the finished drawing.

Well... His hands are getting much better. What still bothers me is his attention to detail so early on. I really think that setting base colors first and then highlighting and shading later on would prove to not only be more efficient but help him see the bigger picture early on. I've yet to talk to him about this but I'm not sure if he realizes that the roofs of the houses are the same brown as his muffler, and that there's FAR too much gray.

Contrast wise, it's very light which his style, if he applied some extra detail the background could help complement the character, but right now the character and the bell tower ( I think that's a bell tower) seem to stick out very much.






Oh right... He needs different music XD.

ATK's First speed paint

I need to remind him to speak proper english.......


This is once again, a different style that ATK decided to use. I've spoken with him for a while and he decided to use this art style for the visual novel.

I'm actually glad he decided to do a speedpaint actually. Now I'm able to see how he colors and the first thing I noticed right off the bat was his attention to detail so early on as well as the use of a small brush which would lengthen the time it takes to color. That's not necessarily bad, per say, but it's a bit inefficient from what I've seen. Many professional artists I've spoken to and articles that I've read often involve establishing basic color schemes first and then working with shading and highlights later on.

I guess I can't really complain if he delivers though....

Character Artwork for doujin game

Yes. I know. The date stamped says March 30th which means it's been in my possession for around 3 days collecting digital dust in my harddrive (because digital data is so expansive that the far corners of those.... round disks....I can't do this. I made a terrible analogy). Anyways, the main reason I waited was to try and space out the posts for his artwork. As great as it would be to post them the moment I received them, the pace at which he draws his artwork (like my workload) comes in waves, like space invaders (cue for younger generation to say "Huh? Space what?").

As for the art itself I find it pretty obvious when he decides to scan in line art and color, and when he decides to it all in photoshop. (I take that back, I just noticed the light pencil markings) Considering this is supposed to be a cut-in (when you have character portraits or images that appear with text) I naturally asked him if white was the "null" color.

For those of you who don't know what that means, I'll gladly explain it. For those of you who DO know, sorry. What I refer to null color is the color that will is used to represent something else, like a background. This color surrounds the character outline so that only the character itself shows up "in-game." Consider it a "green screen" if you will except that game designers usually choose something else, like a specific shade of pink or purple as chances of using those colors are extremely slim (as compared to green or blue). Then, when you start coding, you set that color (I'm not sure if they use the hexadecimal RGB color scheme) to represent "null" or "transparent."

His response was an "of course not" which made me thank god inside. Anyways, artwork.

Once again, he changed up the way he shades and highlights, the result this time making it look like an evening gown. In addition to the color, the way the dress clings to the body and the necklace definitely give off that evening gown, "I'm going to be attend a ball, how about you?" look. There's another set of cross hatching in the hat once more and hair looks pretty straightforward (neglecting that it could probably touch the floor).

Upon close inspection, there's an "aura" around it which leads me to suspect he placed a copy underneath and used a very thorough gaussian blur. Eye highlights have changed AGAIN, which reminds me to complain to him that he needs to at least keep eye highlights consistent.

I need to talk to him about level balance and shading again. With the exception of the dress she looks very flat. The contrast isn't dynamic enough and it's very light from the torso up.

dimensions are 800X1200, a nice wall scroll/poster size I guess........


P.S. Don't ask me what's with the file name. I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to other than that "Final" refers to the render version.

Mabinogi Character Fanart

Drawn for Nexon's event for a succubus figure (don't quote me on this) ATK just sent me this drawing. According to him he decided to change it up a bit and colored first then added the line art....

It's pretty noticeable from what I see. It has a nice watercolor feel to it probably due to the conjunction with the background. Though, since he did start with color, it seems that he payed much attention to lighting, and shading. The black bothers me slightly (the highlights kind of look like smudges on the monitor) but since it IS fanart based on his character, the black is somewhat necessary, so I'll just have to let it pass.

I guess what makes it seem more like water color is the cross hatching in his hat. I'm enjoying the details in his accessories and hair. One thing that feels a bit off is the body aspect ratio. It's probably due to the black which poses a slight problem in applying shading to body form (the major folds in the coat seem a bit generic).

Still though, the coloring is what's most notable and I'm hoping he can apply this kind of shading to his future work.



P.S. As you can see. I've added a new tag for ATK's artwork. I can't say for sure if I can get artwork in on a regular basis, but I should get some stuff in periodically.

P.P.S it's in a nice large format for your Desktop.

You can do that with crayon?

As his editor and his friend, I keep tabs on ATK's work (especially even more so with the hell I had to go through organizing the minimal amount of recent art into a workable art book for NYAF '08). He recently sent me this image taken with what I presume to be a digital camera (you can see the flash on the bottom right, click image for full size).

According to him he drew it all in Crayola crayons.....
I'm not going to say something ignorant like, "crayons are the MS paint of non-digital art" but they're not necessarily easy. They much harder than colored pencils that's for sure. Since it's supposed to be a light, casual sketch, it's missing his watermark and signature (which I'll probably add on later).

Crayons are abysmally hard in my opinion. They make shading quite easy (although rubbing is much easier with charcoal or colored pencils) and who knows how much crayon you lose from simply sharpening the point for details. It's also not a very "clean" process in my opinion, tearing wrappers off, shaving the point, and dealing with small clumps of wax as you draw kinda frustrate me.

I gotta say though, lots of props to him for drawing this. I'm sure it's obvious, but the main thing that seems to stick out are the eyes. Rather, the clean gradient/highlights on them.

Character design wise, it could be better. It's an improvement from before, and he's finally getting back to his old self but it's nice.

I still await the day he returns to getting art like this up.


(Drawn June 20th, 2007)


P.S. If I can get drawings from him periodically, I might be able to use the Second Opinion to advertise for him. He seems to have stopped updating on DA and naver anyway......