Pinali

2010-06-13T07:14:00.002Z

If anyone's wondering about my total lack of blog posts, it's because I'll probably be moving to a personal site/blog sometime soon; should be at pinali.net.

2010-05-10T11:13:00.000Z

I've been horrifically inactive recently, so have some Alter concept art.
Probably going to finish this one up sometime in the next few days for use as a splash page; it's nice and vague and pretty while still getting across the "giant robot" idea.
I think this image sums up the series nicely. It's more focused on thought-provoking stuff and backstory, rather than constant in-your-face action sequences, despite what the beginning looks like!

2010-04-18T10:22:00.000Z

When I was in high school, a kid used the fact I have an imagination as an insult, as if having one was akin to having the mind of a small child.

I just thought I'd write it down somewhere, because now that my imagination is making me money, and makes my life a hell of a lot more awesome than it would be without all these super cool images in my head, I realise how incredibly stupid and closed-minded that kid must have been.

2010-04-16T17:09:00.000Z

More Eli.

You don't wanna know how many iterations of Echo system I have been through at this point... finally found one I like though! Simplistic and glowy, mmm.

2010-04-12T09:10:00.001Z

I must admit, you can't go wrong with cute mech pilots in flight suits.

Don't really have anything else I can/am permitted to show, so that's all for now.

2010-04-04T14:32:00.001Z

Just need somewhere to make a list of to-do stuff since I'm a tad busy at the moment and it doesn't look like it's going to let up anytime soon.

Terra : send for printing
Personal portfolio website
Finish 2 remaining commissions
Alter : custom layout, model final mech, pages
Gifted : coding for website, contest prize (ARGH, completely forgot about this)

I can't say I mind being this busy with art-related things. I live and breathe art!

Oh, fine, have some in-progresses.

Alter C01 Promo Art 1 - Colour

This one needs more colour; at the moment it's a bit monotone what with all the yellows and reds and browns. I'll probably throw some blue/purple in there somewhere.

How To Train Your Dragon

Hiccup and Toothless, obviously, and the huge mouth/scribble behind them is going to be the Green Death. Hopefully. If I ever get around to finishing it. It'd be a crime not to because the movie is so deserving of fan art!

Back to work.

2010-03-29T17:03:00.001Z

Remember this mech?

Here he is in 3D!

Scary huh?
At least he only took me 5-6 hours compared the 10+ for the first one.
Oh yeah, doesn't have hands cause I'll be drawing those in.

2010-03-28T13:14:00.000Z

Two steps of "Night Stalker." This first one is the initial sketch with a really rough underpainting to get an idea of the colours, lighting etc.

... and the "finished" result. Mmm, ketchup!

2010-03-26T10:53:00.000Z

Drawing and Style: the Pinali way

Hey guys. Here's a quick tutorial about drawing and "style."

"Style" is something that comes as long as you don't force it. I see a lot of people like "I want to find my Style" and that's the wrong way of going about it.
Style is like Love. Run around looking for it and you're usually just going to have a load of failed relationships and come out feeling disheartened.
The correct thing to do is go about things as usual, and then it will find you while you're doing something "normally."

I started drawing people when I was about 13-14. I copied a picture of Ash from Pokémon off a magazine cover. This is the wrong way to start drawing people, because I continued copying anime characters for a long time afterwards and hardly learned anything about anatomy... all my characters had stick-arms and stick-legs for quite a while and I still have trouble fleshing them out, and getting heads the right proportion.

The best way to learn to draw people and develop your own style is to draw from life or photos. That's what I'm going to do today!
This is a photo of me being a moody fag.

It's a bad webcam photo, but you can make out the facial features so it'll do fine for a self-portrait.
I choose a blue colour for the undersketch, and lay out some basic shapes.

So, this is a head. I've put lines for the eye level (about half way between chin and top of head), and middle of the face, and I've also drawn the jaw in. It also has a really basic neck and some shoulders. You can already see I've stylised some of this, even though I wasn't intending to! This is my "natural style" coming through.

Now I move on and start adding the facial features - on a new layer so I can erase the guide lines easily afterwards.

Here's the face. I have emphasised the eyes. Again, that's my style coming through, and I didn't do it intentionally! I just looked at the photo and drew what came across to me as the most important thing. To me, eyes are the most important thing. When I'm looking at someone I always stare at their eyes... so that's what I subconsciously emphasise while drawing.

On a new layer, glasses and hair. Tiny alterations to face (looked at myself smiling in the mirror so I'm not so srs), and erased any unnecessary bits of the guides.

Now this is ready for cropping, inking, painting... whatever you want to do with it! I'm going to paint it, again, in my own style. Merged all three layers, then cropped/rotated as I saw fit. This is for a deviantART ID, and maybe some icons for forums... so composition wasn't very important. I think this will do:

New layer for basic lighting stuff. I put the sketch above, in Multiply, and also make the lines greyish using Hue/Saturation filter. Then I make a "first pass" using mainly airbrush with a bit of pen at low density, to define the basic shadows.

The rest is sort of rinse and repeat. I'm not going to do it now 'cause I have work to do, haha. I make two or three passes, adding more definition each time, using smaller brushes. I use water brush to blend. Once I have a fairly nice monotone painting, I add colour in Photoshop, and then import back into Sai again to finish it.

I'll make another post or add to this one when I do that. Laters!

2010-03-25T17:05:00.000Z

Action pose!

Need to detail his gun arms but the hard bit's done. Phew!

2010-03-25T15:02:00.002Z

Skill acquired: 3D modelling.

Next: rigging/posing!

2010-03-18T11:10:00.000Z

Preview of ALTER; been getting one a day done so far, which is pretty good.

Readable online @ alter.smackjeeves.com

Still looking for a job, sigh... thinking I need to do some more personal projects to build up my graphic design portfolio, since graphic designers are far more sought than illustrators. Having no professional experience except freelance doesn't help either. Art as a profession sucks, why does it keep coming back to me?!

2010-03-09T21:59:00.001Z

hot!

2010-03-09T21:45:00.001Z

2010-03-09T17:03:00.002Z

colour :)

2010-03-09T14:43:00.002Z

The university of awesome called. They want their mech back.

This guy's definitely a keeper.

2010-03-08T23:22:00.002Z

More!

So, spoilers: this is my main character. He's called Eli (Elijah) which is pretty cute. This is an early design, no doubt he'll evolve as I draw him more and settle into a way of doing it.

2010-03-08T20:49:00.002Z

Some concept stuff for a new graphic novel idea.

2010-03-05T21:51:00.000Z

Quick one while taking a break from commission... oh to be able to draw in my own style <3

2010-03-04T18:17:00.000Z

More on this. Really should've worked on commissions but been out at meeting this morning and then working on webdesign all day, really didn't want to do more work tonight.....

Anyway, it has colour now, happy with everything so now I'm just going to finish it up by detailing, detailing, detailing... hope the process is at least a bit interesting/informative

2010-02-26T12:21:00.000Z

Commission finished and up on dA, though detail completely killed by resize, but whatever; cel shading is no fun anyway :(
Here's some real fun: progress on the WoW picture. moved the lineart behind the shading, can still see it enough to follow the lines while adding more detail to the shading

(using Pen @ 30-50 density and size 20-40 at the moment)
still gotta decide on an armor set for the drake rider. Prolly go for priest tier 6 without the hood. :)

2010-02-25T18:23:00.001Z

Busy with commission work, here's a preview of what I've been working on Tuesday and today.. never get much done on Wednesdays, have other obligations

want to get back to that WoW piece but pictures for people who pay me are more important eh :O
New shiny 20" 16:9 monitor :D

2010-02-22T22:35:00.000Z

So, to begin the painting process, I take the airbrush and define very basic shadows. Start big (300px) and work your way down, putting more detail as you go. Smallest brush I used was 35px.

Oh yeah, no colour! Nowadays I work in greyscale and colour later because it's easier to tell whether the image "works" composition-wise when you're working in greys.

2010-02-22T21:31:00.000Z

Pulled out a ref for the proto, tidying everything up ready for starting to paint.

2010-02-22T17:14:00.000Z

Planning to show progress shots on this one; been a while since I drew any World of Warcraft so decided to combine my wanting to draw flying things with that. Protodrake!

2010-02-18T21:19:00.000Z

2nd version of that commission, was asked for a different scene.

2010-02-17T11:01:00.000Z

Here's a commission WIP. This is how my very rough sketches look. They don't really have any definition to them yet, there's a very vague idea of setting and composition, but everything can be changed without much effort.

Other sketch is Jamie from Gifted, looks like he's about to make something go icy. Just testing out my ability to draw younger characters.

2010-02-16T21:57:00.002Z

Wonky one... I tried!

2010-02-16T19:13:00.000Z

Style is evolving... good sign! Here's some Rhys... have to draw Gifted stuff more often in prep for the next comic. Been out in the Alps until a week ago, not a lot of art done since I was spending most time skiing... falling over etc! Had fun anyway.
Another update later maybe, going to give Simon a shot with this style.

2010-01-06T16:23:00.001Z

Well, it's something.
The "tilted upwards human face" has always eluded me so I decided to learn how it's done by the tried and tested method of "looking at it and drawing what you see." I like #2 the best, haha.

After learning something from reference I then tend to try drawing it without. Not too shabby.

2010-01-03T17:50:00.000Z

As a demonstration of how terrible I am at drawing girls...

This is how my sketches tend to look. Just something I may end up entering into a contest over at deviantART.

No sketches last 2 days due to not being at home, hopefully won't be the case during the week...

2009-12-31T13:59:00.000Z

Crap, I need to update this place moar. OK, how about I say I'll do a sketch a day and throw them up here?

Here's a random schoolboy, since getting in some schoolboy drawing practice is a good idea considering...

Have this too. Nowhere near done, just a concept from a dream, so if it looks like existing ships, blame my subconscious!

2009-10-17T13:56:00.000Z

Just some very quick, rough studies, I was browsing ConceptArt and got inspired to practice a bit... maybe do some less anime-y stuff sometime. Ref'd from photos at various places.

2009-10-15T18:08:00.001Z

Long time no update, haha. Here's some stuff I've drawn over the past month... it's by no means everything I've drawn, I hate a lot of my stuff so much I refuse to upload it, but here's the stuff I don't find too bad.

Firstly, I was going to fill out a Digimon meme but got bored 5 questions in. I just kept this doodle for the "what's your favourite season?" question:

Some more Frontier stuff that I never finished because the perspective on Kouichi wouldn't behave and I just decided I couldn't be bothered:

Next is Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender and... that was supposed to be Momo, but I was drawing from memory (how clever of me to draw characters I'd never drawn before from memory, derp), and my thought process went something like: "what the heck does Momo look like again? I think he's like a lemur... with huge ears... a long tail... and skin joining his arms and legs so he can fly, amirite?" so he came out like this and now I don't think I'll ever fix him. Poor guy. I fail it.

This one is lovingly named "perspective blarf." Because that's what it is... my brain blarfing around with perspective.

I'll end this with a couple of a good 6-7 Gurren Lagann sketches I've done, most of which I don't like and hence am not uploading. This one's just Simon looking at the sky or something, I don't know. xD I didn't finish his legs for some reason, must've gotten distracted. But one of them was going to be resting on the other... if that's not obvious.

This just sort of came to me randomly and I had to doodle it out. It's Simon and Kamina, and Simon's like "OMFG ANIKI LOOK IT MOVES :O" looking at shooting stars. haha. >_> Yay for non-obvious fanart fanart.

Think that's all I'll throw up here for now, might add a couple more later. ciao!

2009-09-05T14:25:00.001Z

Starting with the new...
These guys are all from Soul Eater. From top right, clockwise: Soul Eater, Tsubaki, Black Star, Excalibur, and Death the Kid.

Maka, and Soul in scythe form, from the same series.

Now for some old Gifted stuff! This was my first go at drawing Rhys.

This was going to be a group picture but I never finished it.

More Rhys.

There's more, but they're so god awful I'm not sure I want them to see the internet, so I'm leaving it at that for now.