Vritra Maquette - Finally Completed!

Took me pretty much all year to complete him and I'm so glad he's finished! Hopefully, my next maquette/sculpture won't take a year to complete. Though to be fair, that mostly consisted of my lack of motivation to finish this guy, mainly because he's filled with so many tight spaces! Never again and will plan better next time.

Anyway, enough of my mini-rant. Here's Vritra, the main baddie of my graphic novel in progress in his full glory! Despite some hardships during making him, he was a lot of fun to work on.

Materials used: Wire armature, aluminum foil, small beads (for his eyes), Sculpy Clay, FolkArt acrylic paint, model grass crumbles (for moss), and wooden base.

Original - Creature Concepts Part 1

Did some more experimenting with digital painting and for my willing guinea pigs, two of my creature creations. On the left, a wolf-lizard like creature I named "Drarowk," and on the left, a creature that I'm temporarily naming "Aquaerpent." Out of both subjects, the Aquaerpent is perhaps my best effort. Still trying to work out on how to digitally paint fur, but at least it's a start.

As for the creatures themselves, I will make reference sheets of them in the near future, but for now, here's their current designs.

Original - Moth Rider

Finally some original art after a slew of fan art related pieces. This is one of those silly concepts I've been toying with for a while, which is essentially boils down to moth/butterfly riders and tamers. It's nonsensical and impossible, yes, but hey, I enjoy messing with concepts that are fantastical in nature. Admittedly, it's not one of my better compositions, but for a first piece, it's not bad. Also was one of the prints I had for sale at Nashicon.

Vritra Maquette - Progress Report

Still working on getting him done. Only just finished his neck a few days ago, and working on the rest of the details as I go. I hope to have him finished way before Christmas.

Taking Flight - A Mini Comic

One of my two major projects I've been working on for the past ten weeks, both are 8 page comics. Needless to say it was a challenge for me and taking I managed to pull through.

These pages are part of a minicomic project for Getting Published and Self Publishing, staring my long time character Rayne (renamed "Rain" in the comic) and her friends, also long time characters of mine. It's been fun drawing them again since I decided to change their species. I'm also enjoyed making this project and plan on doing more minis in the near future.

Here's the front cover of my minicomic as well as its eight pages.

WIP - Fan character MLP:FIM

Very rarely will I be creating fan characters, but this time I thought it would I do so just for fun plus experimenting with Photoshop a bit more in terms of a new style of inking and digital coloring. Here's just a quick work-in-progress image of my fan character for MLP: FiM in all her glory, so to speak. My concept with her is that she's a traveling researcher, who's main focus is on the animals of Equestria most ponies don't know too much about. I have yet to decide on a name for her, but I do have a small comic story in mind for her in the future.

About her design, yes, I know she looks vaguely Lauren Faust ponysona-ish, but this is just the first concept of her. Some things will bound to change with time. In the meantime, enjoy this little piece. Finished art should be up by the end of the week.

Marker Art - Aggressive Courtship

Another marker piece, but this time featuring my other creature creation, Drarowks. In this piece, the female Drarowk (gray one) is angrily roaring at the male Drarowk (brown one). Just for brief information, the Drarowks are solitary animals, only interacting with each other when competing for territory or during mating season. And even in mating season, both sexes act very aggressive towards each other and takes a while for the pair to calm down. And that's all I'll give until I can put together a species sheet.

This is just a concept in terms of color. Some of which will be modified in the final reference sheet.

Concepts - Drarowk

One more set of sketches before getting back to studying and working on my final projects. For the first time ever, I give you another creature creation that is not a Vaarg. It's called a Drarowk, which is mostly a hybrid of a werewolf and lizard/dragon. No, they don't or will change human after the full moon. These creatures are reptilian and canine like in nature. Most of them is covered in short fur, but the underbelly and underside of their tails have soft scales. They also have a dark mane along their necks and strikes running down their backs and tails. I will get into them more as I continue to develop them.

Plush - Toothless

As posted on my deviantart account and my livejournal post, I bring you TOOTHLESS! Took me a little over a week (about eleven days) to finish him and I'm happy with the results. Long story short, after seeing How to Train Your Dragon a few times, I wanted a plush of Toothless, but the official ones were not that appealing, not too mention one that was a little expensive. So I quickly decided to make one. After getting all the materials together and along with the help of Katy-A's tutorial and pattern, I got to work in creating him and his eyes. Over a week later, he's done!
I have to say, making him was fun and I will do the other dragons eventually, especially since I want to create Monstrous Nightmare and maybe a bigger Toothless plush. But that's a project for another time as I want to work on chibi plushes of my original characters plus I'm devoting some time to finish my City of the Ferrets novel and outline for all three books in The Guardians. Anyway, here's Toothless in all his glory.


Materials used: Black Minky cuddle plush fabric (from fabric.com), black felt, black thread, and stuffed with cluster stuff (most of his body) and poly pellets (his feet). His prosthetic tail is made from brown felt, velcro, and brown thread.
Pattern from: Katy-A on deviantart