News + photos + images

Since last Fri or sometime around then, my photo I took before I was stuck at home for a week due to flu,

Okayama by =Waterdroplet-s on deviantART

has been featured in the main page of loftwork website, a Japanese website that has more than 13000 creators of different genre. It will be posted there for ~ a week- so it will end probably this Fri or Sat.


Thank you very much for the feature!


This is the first time I had my photograph featured in a Japanese website. I had manga and illustrations featured before in other Japanese/international sites, and photograph/illustrations occasionally in individual deviantART news. So I'm happy :D



And... one more great news is that my collab partner got back to me over last weekend- so it will finish within a few weeks probably. We were working on it between our free time between our busy schedules, so it took long- since May. However, the illustration theme is set for winter so I think it's perfect timing... perhaps a bit early.


Following are photos I took over last weekend in Kobe and Kinosaki. I took all of them with a mobile phone, mostly with a new function I discovered over the weekend, so they are weird in some areas:

This is Herb Garden on top of a mountain near 三宮　Sannomiya, Kobe City, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. Since it's a bit off season, there were mostly leaves... not much flowers other than two-three types. So, enjoyed the view while munching on a lavendar soft-serve (ソフトクリーム）.

Front:
Back:

Somewhere mid-way:

Tried to take a shot diagonally:

Ate the soft-serve and went back home:

On the next day- Sunday- I went with a friend to Kinosaki 城崎 for a ride after a bit of important meeting (nothing related to art) :D

Kinosaki is in Hyogo Prefecture but on Sea of Japan side- so I guess my weekend was spent moving around places for over 300 km. Probably with train rides and all- covered 400 km.

Since I had to swing myself around 180 degrees to take previous photos, I decided to take the easy way- by taking a photo while my friend was driving.

Result:

Gaaaaaaah!!

And... a town next to Kinosaki (forgot its name):

nice sunset in a town close to Sea of Japan.

Anyway... I'm currently working on series of wallpapers. Manga needs slight fixing since I'm trying to condense the story into a fewer pages as possible. In meanwhile, wallpaper I'm working on is based on a little survey I put out a week ago, asking people in deviantART about what genre they prefer in wallpapers. I will try to improve the composition on the way.

This is the result:


Thank you very much for answering my survey! :D


Ok... so my purpose of doing this is that I could determine which genre I should start on for series of wallpapers I'm planning to create so I could practice in an organized matter. Since I randomly pick topics often, I wanted to create something that's according to a set schedule. I am currently making wallpapers with genres that had greatest number of answers to least.

Therefore, the current topic I'm working on is fantasy, and I must say I faced a bit of an art block for a week. I would create an illustration and botch it in two days of working on it. So... the first one that I botched was this:

How it looked like in Photoshop:



I used two vanishing points for this one (although I drew a third here but didn't use) then... I began to not see the difference between fantasy and Sci-Fi genre in this sort of drawing. In addition, it looked like something a pre-schooler could draw. So... I botched it.


I had two other drawings I started and then botched. The second one was a bit of Japanese themed fantasy- then botched it since it looked flat. Then, the third one was space drawing. I might use that later but not for these wallpapers probably.

Did a bit of 3D CG practice to get my mind off:

Created this in Photoshop:
and used alpha in the material setting to get this effect:

There are many ways of cutting models- Boolean and by clicking one surface one by one- but I think this was the best method to get windows for the building.

I think I will incorporate this skill in the future.

Then, yesterday... I finally got what I wanted for the wallpaper.

I finally settled on something from Aesop's fable, The Honest Woodcutter.

Following are wips:

DAY 1
First, I doodled in SAI, thinking that it would be a 1920X1200 pixel wallpaper:

I meant it to be a guy looking out from a space between buildings or walls- to a bunch of jellyfish or something floating in the space.

SAI had too small brush so I switched to Photoshop and colored in "walls":


Yeah... then I thought it was a crappy idea since it was similar to lines of:

The World of bits 2 by =Waterdroplet-s on deviantART
I worked on the beginning of this year, and

Wallpaper: Night flower by =Waterdroplet-s on deviantART

a wallpaper I worked on a few weeks ago.


So... I decided to use a different approach by making the bottom right side as water related place:




I've done stuff on shores looking out to water but not this angle so I thought it was suited for this time. Then, it was sort of boring just having a guy and water so I added a nymph, goddess or something from Aesop's fable:



Honest Woodcutter- was it?

Then, started coloring:



I'm planning to not do this in a oil painting style but in lines of semi-realism like:

Room by =Waterdroplet-s on deviantART

To be continued~