Month: March 2022

Gijinka Shin Godzilla

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I follow this cosplay photographer’s blog named CosplayJP. In this year’s “WONDER FESTIVAL WINTER 2022”, the photographer got some photos of a Shin Godzilla cosplayer. It’s a gijinka version, so of course the cosplayer had to be creative on how to portray Godzilla’s features. Godzillas tail being also a cape was a really great touch.

Here are the references (sadly the cosplayers name is nowhere to be found, If you know who it is let me know):

https://cosplayjp.wordpress.com/2022/03/25/wonder-festival-winter-2022-shin-godzilla-anthropomorphic/

I want to do a couple black and white drawings for a while, but this time working with hatching or inking. The line art was done in pencil and darkened digitally after I isolated it from the white background. I was debating whether to hatch it traditionally or digitally. This time I decided to do it digitally using the g pen in Clip Studio Paint. That took a while. I know I can do this digitally but I wanted practice with different textures to differentiate between the clothes, the skin and the hair. It looked good, but I wanted to add a background. I started with the circle and the pattern screentone. But because I isolated the line art, the screentone became visible… So I had to paint it in within the line art. From there I felt it looked good, but I wanted to add a cityscape. I chose Shinjuku. I added a shadow below her to add more feeling. But with the black background, Godzilla blended in a bit too much so I added an outer glow to make her stand out more.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Shokuhou Misaki after a workout

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Line art from inktober 2021 day 11.

As we learned from chapter 5.5 of Astral Buddy, Misaki exercises (or at least tries to) in her apartment. Alone. For this reason I chose this setting. Just using the basic layout in the manga I decided to go with the point of view of looking towards the window. Although it was a cool idea, I wasn’t really thinking about the window at all.

So as I was painting the floor, and the wall I was feeling really good because I was doing it with no references and just instinct. But when I came to the window it finally hit me. The window has to have a reflection… For that I did have to see references to try and learn how I can make it work. So for that I started working in sections, painting over each section at a time. The base layer was just blue, then I started working with the reflections. I started with the floor then the bed which would be in front of Misaki. The second part was reflecting the rooms walls. For that I used the wall’s colors but mixing them with the blue base to get a translucence look. From there I played with lighter light transfer to emphasize the furthest part of the room to a more solid color of the wall to showcase how close the ceiling is to the window. Looking at the references online, the lights outside (in cityscapes) are quite vibrant and go through the reflections. Looking through the To Aru anime, the window lights (from the skyscrapers) are usually turquoise. The final part of the window reflections were about Misaki Shokuhou, but first I had to paint her.

I didn’t have much of a plan to paint Misaki, so I started painting her exposed body first. Whit the vase idea done, I started working on the sweat beads. Luckily I had an idea of how it looks like on surfaces thanks to the painting I did of Momochi.

That can be seen here:

https://darkcloudxero.com/2021/04/05/style-makeover-momoko-tsugunaga/

The second section I painted were the shorts, luckily this was pretty straight forward. I decided to work on the shirt next because I wanted to figure out how to do it. I started with a base light warm gray and started playing around with lighter areas (the folds and shirt bumps), then for the areas that are tight on the body, I made see through to simulate the sweat. In these areas I played with the way light reflects off the wet shirt and the areas that are in the shade.

For the third section I painted the hair. With Misaki mainly painted, I started playing around with the painting and added more sweat around the body.

This time I wanted to try out making the line art more translucent (I think I put it at around 30% opacity) and adding an outline in a layer underneath with colors that correspond to each part of Misaki. I’m going to be playing around with this style more.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Marin measurements

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They really put a lot of details with Marin’s measurements scene. The amount of movement in the animation is amazing. I really wanted to give this scene a try.

When I painted the background and Marin, I felt it was still a bit lacking. When Marin’s body and contours were to my liking, I started playing around with darker shadows and lighter areas to increase the contrast. When I was satisfied, I then added light beams coming from the window behind Marin. I did this with the sergeant brush then changed the layer to hard light.

I’m going to leave the painting as it is now, but I may come back to it at some point later.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Ranma in the Sunset

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Line art from inktober 2021 day 3.

I wasn’t too sure what to do with the background, but as I was looking through my screenshot references I came upon a couple of a sunset that I wanted to replicate.

Reference here:

I was wondering whether to change the colors of the outfit from the reference of Kyôko Koizumi:

But I quite liked this color combination so I decided to keep it. As for the color of the sneakers, I was playing around with the idea of various colors like purple but I ended up with this black accent ones.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Punished Kii-chan

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Original line art from Inktober 2021 day 26.

I know that Kii-chan in the vol. 20 Special edition chapter is supposed to be a BABYMETAL type idol, but I liked my idea of her being punished Kii-chan. So with that idea in mind I went with a Metal Gear parody painting. When I finished painting Kii-chan, I felt it would be kind of funny painting in Tomoko as Big Boss. But not as an active soldier but as a weapons dealer like she mentioned back in her chuunibyo days.

I was kind of worried about the crow, but it was much more straightforward than I thought.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Berryz Koubou 18th Aniversary 2022 Line Art

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For Berryz Koubou’s 18th anniversary. Miyabi, Yurina and Maasa held a live where they celebrated with a cake containing the cover of their debut single “Anata Nashide wa Ikite Yukenai”. When I paint it, I might tweak the cake a bit more so that the cake art can be seen better. Miyabi’s outfit I couldn’t see completely from the photo that Maasa uploaded so I had to guess how it looked like. Sad that I couldn’t see the live. Hopefully they put clips of it in the M-line Youtube channel.

I’ve been wanting to try out this style for a while. I think it works really well with this drawing. I went with an Anime X Cartoon style. I like the more stylized look of this art style. We’ll see how it turns out when I paint it.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Happy Birthday Momochi 2022

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Momochi in her winter outfit was super cute.

Momochi is the first painting on my new clean install. I started with the sergeant brush which was a bit rough (looking). When I painted Momochi it became obvious that it definitely didn’t fit well together. So I used the tapered oil to soften the edges and blend things together a bit. This also helped give the feeling of distance. Momochi’s outfit was a bit tough at the beginning since I had to come up with different shades of white for each piece of clothing. Then there are slight shades of blue and greens that interact with the reflections and shadows from the snow. I left the face and hair for the end. With the surrounding colors finally figured out, working for these last colors was much more straight forward.

In computer news. So far so good, while painting I encountered no problems what so ever. So I should be able to just paint without any problems from now on.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Happy Birthday Momochi 2022 Line art pencil

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The day almost passed but I somehow made it. Happy Birthday Momochi! I really hope you’re doing great. Although I know you followed your dream, I still selfishly wish you were active. I’m so glad you were really active back in the day because luckily you appeared in a lot of media.

It’s no secret that I love drawing Momochi. Drawing her has been a great source of inspiration in my art journey. Here’s to more in the coming years.

The outfit is from her photobook, the references I used were from the Digital Hello Project Photobooks vol. 98. I liked her pose and smile from different photos, so I used them to create this drawing (along with others that showcase more of the outfit). This is still a work in progress. I’m probably going to paint it digitally (now that I can finally do it).

After finishing the last Buono painting, my computer decided to blue screen uncontrollably. I encountered some of that while painting but the computer was unusable after I finished luckily. It took me four clean installs until I finally managed to fix it this morning. Good thing I have all my data in separate drives just for these occasions. Seems like my scratch disk was the one causing the problem (first time I have ever seen that happen). As soon as I replaced it, the problems ceased. Now everything is working correctly.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Buono Festa 2016

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I really miss Buono! I’m so glad they have so many recorded media of their activities. What’s great is that there are a lot of new fans appearing. Their legacy continues to grow!

This painting took me longer than I thought it would but I’m finally finished. I went with an 80s anime style. I started with the background and then started painting from left to right. The line art was overlaid digitally then set to multiply. The base colors went in first then I started adding the leopard, polka dots and star designs, etc. I then created a separate layer where I multiplied the shadow layers. Then above all the layers for each member I created a new one for the lighting. To keep with the anime aesthetic I chose the typical anime hair colors so that they popped more. For their eyes, I chose their member colors.

As I was working on this painting I got reminded that Berryz Koubou’s 18th debut anniversary was on March 3rd. Sadly I wasn’t able to do a piece to commemorate it though. I still wan to make one though. I have an idea for one, but maybe I should save that one for their 20th anniversary. Or maybe I should just make that one, we’ll see.

A great intro to Buono! is Hatsukoi Cider. Check it out here (Their official video has over 5 million views!):

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Buono Festa 2016 Trio pencil Line Art 2

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Didn’t have the time to finish it today but at least the line art is ready. I was thinking about uploading an inked version but this refined pencil line art will do for now. I saw the prompt for idols and of course I had to draw something for it. There are many options but I decided to go with BUONO! The formation of Momoko, Miyabi and Airi was just magical.

The reference was from their 2016 Festa Concert.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE