Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Exciting adventures IRL.
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Raid
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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Raid » Fri Oct 28, 2022 10:51 am

Day 28: Camping

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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Raid » Sat Oct 29, 2022 10:01 am

Day 29: Uh-oh.

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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Lenny Solidus » Sat Oct 29, 2022 2:58 pm

To the mooooOOOOOOOn.

Oh and two days. Well done.
Building the future, and keeping the past alive - are one and the same thing.

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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Raid » Sun Oct 30, 2022 12:20 pm

Day 30: Gear

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Please, please, do come in! Allow my latest invention to provide you with some refreshment! You must be so weary after so many assassination attempts!

Oh what a marvello.... oh I say, why, it appears to have a sword for an arm...

Oh, my liege! That is merely for serving the cake I.... we shall be celebrating with later I assure you!

I think I may have spent longer trying to come up with an idea for today than I did actually designing and drawing it. It's a bit of an homage to the Clockwork Soldier from Dishonored 2, one of my absolute favourite pieces of character design.

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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Raid » Tue Nov 01, 2022 7:27 am

Well, that's annoying, I was sure I posted the final piece yesterday, but either I previewed it and didn't click submit or the forum ate it.

Day 31: Farm.

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Death's scythe does not work that way, and now he has to deal with ghost wheat.


------


So a post mortem of Inktober as a whole.

Firstly, it did the job I wanted it to. I've produced more "finished" pieces in the last month than I have in the entire time I've been studying this stuff. I was in something of a slump beforehand and it's largely brought me out of it. I'm probably happy with more than half of what I've drawn, which is a better ratio than I was expecting at the start.

But whether this is the right way to go about doing this I'm not sure. I think plenty here are aware that I suffer pretty strongly from fatigue and low mood, and there've been plenty of days in the last month when this has felt more like a chore than a project, and I suspect some of what I've posted reflects that. At the start I was thinking that still being able to sit down and create something even when I didn't want to was helpful, but then someone in another community I'm a member of alluded the concept to that of crunch in software development, and I can't help now but agree with them - overworking yourself does not really lead to a good end product.

On the other hand, more often than not the ability to actually produce something has cheered me up. "Gear" was probably a prime example of that - I spent two hours struggling to come up with even a concept, with every idea feeling too complicated or unsatisfying, but one flash of inspiration (annoyingly from Pinterest, a website I hate because of how frustrating it's made image searching), then maybe 30-40 minutes actually drawing it from start to finish, and I had a character and a little story to go with it. That's the sort of thing I really aspire to.

So I'm undecided on whether it's a good idea or not. I'm 100% certain it's been a net positive, but obligation may not be the best way to approach a fun little hobby project.

My favourites have been:
Crabby - Further proof if any were needed that bad viral marketing is very effective. The phrase "giant enemy crab", which is where the concept came from, has lived rent-free in my head since Sony's PS3 announcement E3 conference. That was 16 years ago.
Scrape - The piece that took the longest to make (I think it was about 4 hours), and that I probably had the clearest concept and least trial and error for (although it's fan art, so the design work was done for me).
Scallop - I just like D&D's mimics as a concept and as a design theme, and the real creature just fit that theming so well. Please, Mantis and Wrathbone don't read too much into that, leave Arctiss and Opus out of this.
Bad Dog - I think this is probably my most technically accomplished piece. The perspective looks about right, the colour choices seem to work together (it's drab but that feels appropriate), and I just think the concept of a pet doing something the owner doesn't want, except that owner is a warlock and the pet is too clever for its own good, is just good.
Eagle - It's such a dumb concept, but I just like the final image.
Forget - I just think it's fairly witty.
Fowl - Oblivious animals doing human things will never not entertain me.

It's clear that when left to its own devices, my imagination immediately runs to "whimsical", and if it finds nothing there it takes a trip to "macabre". I'm fine with that.
Last edited by Raid on Tue Nov 01, 2022 7:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Wrathbone » Tue Nov 01, 2022 7:41 am

Raid wrote:
Tue Nov 01, 2022 7:27 am
So I'm undecided on whether it's a good idea or not. I'm 100% certain it's been a net positive, but obligation may not be the best way to approach a fun little hobby project.
I'm very much the same with writing. When I did my MA in creative writing, part of it was that I wanted to see if I could write full-time as a profession, and I discovered that it wasn't for me because writing to a deadline absolutely throttled my enthusiasm for it. I think loose targets can be useful for a creative hobby, but not if it stops it being rewarding.

Incidentally I've been quietly enjoying your wonderful art every day. :)

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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Sly Boots » Tue Nov 01, 2022 7:46 am

Wrathbone wrote:
Tue Nov 01, 2022 7:41 am
Raid wrote:
Tue Nov 01, 2022 7:27 am
So I'm undecided on whether it's a good idea or not. I'm 100% certain it's been a net positive, but obligation may not be the best way to approach a fun little hobby project.
I'm very much the same with writing. When I did my MA in creative writing, part of it was that I wanted to see if I could write full-time as a profession, and I discovered that it wasn't for me because writing to a deadline absolutely throttled my enthusiasm for it. I think loose targets can be useful for a creative hobby, but not if it stops it being rewarding.

Incidentally I've been quietly enjoying your wonderful art every day. :)
Didn't know you did a degree in creative writing mate, so did I! When I was going to uni there were two main places that offered it, Bath Spa and Sheffield Hallam. I ended up going to Bath, you?

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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Wrathbone » Tue Nov 01, 2022 7:52 am

I did my undergraduate in Computer Science at Lancaster, then stayed there to do Creative Writing*. Then stayed there permanently. ;)

It was a fun, stressful, weird and enlightening year in which I made friends with an ex-Navy Seal on the course and accidentally made someone cry in a seminar after criticising their poem about a rabbit. I also wrote some bloody awful material in retrospect. :lol:


* This admittedly bizarre combination of degrees landed me a job as a technical author, which grew over time into my current development role, so somehow it worked!

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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Raid » Tue Nov 01, 2022 8:01 am

Wrathbone wrote:
Tue Nov 01, 2022 7:52 am
Then stayed there permanently.
The place does tend to have that effect on people.

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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Sly Boots » Tue Nov 01, 2022 8:14 am

Wrathbone wrote:
Tue Nov 01, 2022 7:52 am
I did my undergraduate in Computer Science at Lancaster, then stayed there to do Creative Writing*. Then stayed there permanently. ;)

It was a fun, stressful, weird and enlightening year in which I made friends with an ex-Navy Seal on the course and accidentally made someone cry in a seminar after criticising their poem about a rabbit. I also wrote some bloody awful material in retrospect. :lol:


* This admittedly bizarre combination of degrees landed me a job as a technical author, which grew over time into my current development role, so somehow it worked!
Awesome!

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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Lenny Solidus » Tue Nov 01, 2022 10:11 am

Well I have nothing but admiration here at your completion point Raid bud, as Wrath said the first thing I would tend to do once my PC birthed itself was ponder on what you had come up with that day - straight on TGA and this thread and I always came off in a better mood after seeing each and every one and looked forward to the next. The additional writing pieces really added to them too.

Creation can come easily, sometimes far less so. But all of it is a large piece of yourself laid out for everyone else to see, to closely study, admire and take away whatever message they directly interpret. The fact they were both witty and clever obviously helped. Yes yes, you are witty. ;) Anyway, you did a grand old job and kept us all extremely entertained every day man, thank you for your dedication and for sharing all of them.
Building the future, and keeping the past alive - are one and the same thing.

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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Raid » Tue Nov 01, 2022 12:05 pm

Cheers Dave, and everyone for that matter.

Posting your artwork for others to see is a key part of Inktober, so I wanted to make sure I followed through with that. There've only been a couple that I considered just not posting at all; the aborted "Nest" from quite early on and "Heist". The latter was due to its use of characters from the forum D&D game without the players' permission, and the frankly awful job I did on everyone but my own (because I'd already spent a fair bit of time designing him prior). It was far, far too ambitious a concept for someone with minimal experience with drawing human-esque characters, at least in the time I had to draw it.

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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Mantis » Tue Nov 01, 2022 8:06 pm

Congrats on seeing it through. It's no small order to commit to taking part in Inktober even if you feel like some days are a slog or you're not feeling very inspired by what you produce.

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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Snowy » Wed Nov 02, 2022 7:25 am

Just wanted to stick my head in to say well done for seeing it through, really enjoyed watching what each day will bring :)
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Re: Arty Antics and Similar Stuff

Post by Raid » Mon Nov 21, 2022 7:48 pm

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I wouldn't suggest trying to push past her. She has a short temper and has already had a really long day.

So I started this as a way of testing a method of getting proportions right for a character at an angle, as well as getting the feet planted correctly. I wasn't really planning on spending hours on it and fully rendering it, but I've had trouble getting the enthusiasm together for practice work and studies recently, so here we are. Could I have made my first real go at specular highlights easier had I not drawn an entire suit of sodding plate armour? Probably. The pose is a bit awkward (the near arm just doesn't look like it's positioned correctly), and I evidently faces and hands are something I need to work on, but I'm pretty happy with it as only the second full humanoid character I've drawn. She doesn't really have a name or backstory or anything, I've been referring to her as Pike because that's just what I named the file initially and it sorta stuck, but I later realised that's one of the names of a Critical Role player character, so perhaps not. She's very loosely patterned after Brienne of Tarth I guess, in that she's supposed to be imposingly large.

The first incidentally was the rendering I did of my D&D character a couple of weeks back, and forgot to post outside of the D&D thread which I'm guessing non-players don't really visit, so forgive the indulgence of a repost.
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Arctiss was a very different matter, given that he's a character I'd been playing for as long as I've been drawing and I'd grown quite attached to, but having to invent some of his anatomy as I went was challenging, and I think I spent as long trying to get his long neck right (I don't think I quite managed it) as I did drawing most of the character above.

I think doing Inktober was a massive boost to my self confidence more than anything. I know these are going to look extremely amateurish to trained artists, but fuck it, I don't see the harm in taking a bit of pride in a couple of pieces I'm currently very happy with.

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