Today is the last day to upload to the Final Gear -Heavy Battle Princess contest here on Pixiv. I wanted to try something different this time, so I decided to try going for an Ukiyo-e style. I decided to go for a mix between traditional and digital (although if I had a bit more time I might have painted it traditionally). But I quite love the way it all came together. I really loved working in this style, I really want to try it again at some point. Hope you guys like it.
I’m actually quite interested in watching it, luckily it seems like it has been fansubbed so I will have the chance now. I’m really glad the community of this media exists.
For this painting I went for a simple 80s anime. I played around with the static filter, but this time I only used in for the background while leaving the character layer clean and crisp. I quite like the way it looks together.
My entry to the DeviantArt contest. Tried to include all my current art styles into this piece, both traditional and digital. Background is fully digital, painted with Corel Painter. The astrological clock, character and ink jar backpack, g pen and brush were done using Photoshop. The pixel maid was done using Pro Motion NG and then enlarged using Photoshop. The skeleton was drawn using my g pen and the tiger was painted using ink. The text was drawn using Photoshop. I painted my current workspace which I used as the background, but most of it was covered up by the front layers and also cut off. Apparently if Scorpio is in the Moon Sun position, it indicates that they are “creative, intense and mysterious”. Which I thought would fit in well with the theme. Luckily I read the instructions again so I redid the VHS distortion by hand which does the trick quite well and has some cool painted effects from the I believe it was the pastel brush.
The character himself was actually the element that took me the longest to paint since I was just coming up with each section as I went along. Life can be hard and it can chain us down, both in terms of time, physical methods and psychologically. But art is a way that can help us break those restraints and let our emotions and creativity take shape, letting us create anything that’s inside our minds or that of others.
With that in mind, I wanted to create a painting where I could use my art tools to bring my creations to life and help free me from my limitations and problems. The tools would change in size depending on the application and would revert to their original size when I needed to put them away. The ink jar I felt would be carried as a backpack.
The reason the skeleton and the tiger are splattering ink is because they have been newly painted/drawn so they are not fully dry yet.
An anime version of Naoko Kawai’s UNbalance cover of her 1983 single (if you get the chance check it out).
For this painting I again went for a flat painting style but added in color variations that dealt with shadows and translucence. I still wonder if I should add highlights? will have to try it out at some point. The metallic arch was surprisingly simple to paint.
Akina Nakamori’s anime cover for Prologue, her debut studio album. I of course went for an 80s anime painting style. The static really reminds me of the cellulose that was noticeable in the old airings on tv back in the day and on old prints of classic anime. When I see it appropriate I really like using the static filter effect that Photoshop contains.
This is Colored version of the line art I uploaded yesterday. Overall the painting is done using solid colors added in layers, except for the lights (headlights, tail lights and console lights). For those lights I used the outer glow Layer style. I will at a later point actually add a background and add other elements to it, but that will be at a future date.
While looking through my references I came upon one of the Akira Bike, the details were a bit different from the anime version (I’m glad I decided to look at other references before committing to the design in the ad). Looking at figure reproductions, real life versions of the bike it seems that they all stray away from the animated version a bit. Looking at all the designs and the one used in the manga, it seems I have also created a slightly different variant as well.
When I finished the inking process I noticed that I made the hind tire a little too large so I had to edit it digitally.
Here is the colored version of the walkman drawing I made on Friday. I wasn’t really planning on makin a reflection like in the reference photo I used, but when I decided to just give it a try I noticed that it wasn’t that straightforward. Because the Walkman and cassettes are at an angle, I had to cut the base painting into different sections and erase certain sections. The effect isn’t completely clean but it does do the trick. The line art was either removed, used multiply or color burn. Color really completes it.
