How does his hand fit in there?

When you were introduced to Raven Hole, Agrius was drinking a smoothie. Now you get to meet the spokes-model for the smoothies; also a singer it's Michow Mooble!

I honestly don't know how this happened but it did and asides from Story Makers' 'Blue Cow', this is now my favourite cow in the world. The smoothie bottle now has it's logo and decoration labelled on it, since their mascot is now fully designed.

Michow's colour scheme is made up of earthly colours from a landscape pack of Tombow pens, with the exception of a pinky colour used around the nose and mouth. It wasn't intentional but the result turned out to be this way and it was really nice. The dark blues worked well for his clothing and is a nice homage to Blue Cow, as mentioned earlier. I was considering giving him more colourful hair but I decided to stay realistic and use a brown and white pattern.

I was originally going to use a Michael Buble pose as reference when drawing this cow but I found this pose of a guy sitting on a stool with a tilted head and knew it was perfect, so log as I got him to promote his product.

Now lastly you're probably all wondering, how can a cow be male; isn't that technically a bull? Well yes he would technically be a bull but if cow and man can merge then I guess he would officially be transgender? We'll leave that for Michow to decide!

Drawing On The Go - Part 2

This is second instalment of a two part series where I draw while in motion! Part one came out a week ago and is available if you have yet to view it.

Last time I drew Batman with two materials on a moving vehicle, no eraser included. On my return journey, I took to the challenge again to draw something different but this time using only a pen! I decided I would draw three of the main cast of Family Guy.

Okay so the really off putting part has to be Brian's nose, I don't know what I was thinking! In fact Brian in general appears to be rather disturbing. It's not so much down to the fact I was on a moving vehicle with no references but down to the fact I must've put less effort into him. 

On the other hand, Peter and Stewie are looking much better. They're at least looking more accurate. I didn't want to try anything too challenging and so just drew the heads of this trio. There's not much at all really to say about this piece and it didn't take that long to create.

I don't think this is better than the Batman piece I did the first time but given it's one of the few times I have inked without the use of pencils, this turned out alright. I'vr got ball pens now so I'll be able to practice sketching with ink which will be a step in the right direction for making more confident lines. Perhaps I should do this piece again in the future to see how I have progressed with making inked lines without a sketch to work from.

Colour Exchange - Droey meets Echo

Last week Tenvad met Phoenix, and so this week Droey's going to meet Echo Gillette!

I struggled to think about how I was going to get Echo and Droey to interact, since I haven't had the honour of meeting her in person. So in the same way that Tenvad and Phoenix had common ground as technobians, I looked to see what myself and Echo shared as common ground. It came to my attention that we both shared almost monochromatic colour schemes, using grayscale tones with a signature colour. So what if we swapped colours for a day?

Now you see Echo trying on blue stripes which do look lovely but don't compare to her standard red. The only red part that I didn't change was her hair, simply because I wasn't going to make her go the lengths of dying her hair blue for a simple colour swap!

I however, don't have any blue enhancements in my hair or anywhere on my body and so went the full length with the colour swap, including a new red cap (to be temporary of course). The emblem on my shirt is meant to resemble an Echo symbol that Echo used on a Teen a Titans OC in one of her sketchbooks, I didn't have acces to the video at the time so I can't garuntee the emblem being fully accurate. The red seemed to suit me fairly well but I certainly won't be changing over to red, nothing beats the brilliant blue!

Do you have a signature colour or have any OCs with a signature colour? Why not try swapping them with other characters to see what crazy result comes out?

Drawing On The Go - Part One

Here is the first installment of a two part series where I will be making art while in motion! Part two comes out on the 27th of June.

So I was on a long journey and I decided I would take the oppurtunity to draw with a stability handicap. I always find a hard and still surface to draw on, so not having any stability definitley stops me from making my masterpieces. So what can I come up with when I don't have a steady surface, references or coloured art supplies? Well this time I'm drawing Batman!

I had a pencil and a pen to hand, so I started by sketching out Batman, this was less different from my usual process as sketches are less tidy anyway. I created the image that I would then ink and moved on to the pen, which proved to be quite pleasant! Given that the pen's markings would be subject to the movement of the vehicle as well as my hands,  still had a decent amount of control over where the  pen drew.

I started with the thicker outlines that would mark the edges of Batman's mask. I think it is because these lines were thicker that I had less difficulty overall. It certainly helped the line shading to stay within the lines for the most part. Once I was done with the pen, I went back to the pencil to try and shade Batman's head and add a darker tone to his mask. The pencil didn't make such a mark but it made enough to shade the chin which was good enough for me.

I deemed the artwork finished and ten minutes later the journey was done and I could sign it. This was fantastic but it wasn't challenging enough, so I knew I would come back to this on my return journey. Come back in a week's time for me to do another piece without pencils!

Tenvad meets Phoenix!

Tenvad is the Technobian mascot on this blog, a talking laptop with her own life to live. I might as well let you all know that the inspiration for Tenvad comes from a character called Phoenix, a sentient laptop and companion to the YouTuber artist, Echo Gillette. I think it's time to acknowledge that in art form.

Tenvad is naturally star struck when she meets Phoenix in person and is delighted when he lets her take a picture with him! It's quite interesting to see these two together, especially since they're different types of laptops. Tenvad is based on a Windows model while Phoenix is based on an Apple laptop, you can see him in the background of Echo's recent videos.

Echo depicts a sentient laptop with a humanoid figure made of technical matter and his slim laptop screen replacing the head. Tenvad on the other hand is just a screen, with her computer mouse arms and legs plugged in. Needless to say if Phoenix was canonical to Tenvad's universe he would be a more advanced Technobian than herself while Tenvad is more of a hybrid between man and machine.

I designed a webcam like a selfie stick for Tenvad to use since she wouldn't have a phone for herself, would that really be necesary? As for Phoenix, he translated into my style quite easily, the only difficulty being in his hands which I was able to sort out. Rather than giving him the traditional rounded hands most characters in my style have, he kept the hands as Echo would've drawn them, which I think is four fingers (three and a thumb).

To finish off the piece, I wanted to add some dialogue and 'Say Cheese' didn't feel right. So instead I got them to say Control, Alt. Delete, the three button trigger for logging on to a laptop. This was a fun little illustration and was nice to made a crossover for once. I'll be doing this again with Echo and Droey, but that is a story for another time.

Inside Out, Inside Droey

Inside Out is a good movie, you can't argue with that. I do enjoy the concept very much and am surprised that it didn't spawn something of a meme by taking miscellaneous people or fictional characters and going inside them! In fact I've only seen such a humour taken on inside the minds of Thomas the Tank Engine, so allow me to create one of my own!

While in the movie, the characters are all meant to resemble Riley's emotions with defining traits of their own vessel, I thought it would be a bit more interesting for the emotions to fully take the form of their vessel, tweaking them all to match the emotions. I wanted my emotions to all be interacting with each other since that is most likely to be the case, every emotion is contributing a little something to the presentation we express. With Anger I had to draw him throwing his hat to the ground, something  completely expressive and a trait in so many fictional characters; so I let him take the lead and moulded everyone else around him.

Fear is obviously afraid of what Anger is capable of and trying to keep his distance, unable to look away at the sight of angry Droey. The face on Fear is perhaps my favourite thing in this whole piece, it's priceless! In case it is difficult to tell, Fear has backed into Disgust, who clearly doesn't like that. Sadly I ended up covering half of disgust's face but I get the feeling that he wouldn't want to be seen with the rest of the Droeys so it sort of pays off.

Looking this piece as a whole, I suppose it is actually Sadness taking the lead, providing a reason for Anger to get angry. I seem to have more blues than any other colour so Sadness' shades are more diverse. Given all of these emotions are supporting negative feelings, it came to the point where it was time to wonder just how Joy would fit in with the rest of the piece. Quite naturally I realised that Joy would be trying to list Sadness' spirits, since the two emotions tend to rely on each other (both in and outside of the movie).

Lastly I gave a little glow around each of them, since Joy in particular had a little glow to them in the film. This was a fun project and the result while not perfect is something I can be satisfied with. Perhaps I should come back to this to give one of the other emotions the leading role and see how it would affect their actions. There's a good four other possibilities to try out here. Why not try it out yourself and see how your five emotions are behaving?

The Doki Doki Members

Before I get started on this, it has come to my attention and goodness knows how I didn't notice but this is my 200th blog post! I would have posted something a little more special if I had known but I found out at the eleventh hour, anyway what I've got for you today is a piece I am delighted with so I'm cool with that. I'll try to make a special effort for post 300! Thank you everyone who has stuck around and continues to follow the blog, this journey is obviously far from over and probably still taking it's baby steps. The rest of this year's looking to be great on the blog, so here's to a future of art!

Almost a year ago a new game came out. I'm not a gamer and there's little game paraphernalia that interests me, especially these days. While I don't intend to play the game, I have taken an interest in the concept that is Doki Doki Literature Club. If you want to see a kid friendly version of this game, watch the Gravity Falls episode 'Soos and the real girl', it's nearly the same thing.

SPOILER WARNING

If you are intending to play the game or you just don't want spoilers, now is a good time to stop reading the text!

What starts out as a light hearted dating simulator becomes a psychological horror when each of the members is killed until you are left with just Monika. She is aware that you are playing the game and has eliminated the competition by tampering with the game itself just so she can be with you. It is this fourth wall breaking feature that has me hooked and while it may not be the most famous horror out there, I consider this to be a good horror.

So what do I do when I get into something? Obviously it's time to get creative! I was looking for some anime characters to redesign in a western style, inspired by some videos done by Lavendertowne. Although it wasn't until after I started that I realised she already did this for Doki Doki, I had decided these anime girls would get the redesigns.

I was going to make full body designs and I do have some in mind but for the sake of making something that looked good, I decided to stick of head and shoulder shots of them. I then came to the conclusion of making what could be a piece of promotional material if these girls had their own cartoon.

For the most part, these designs remain unchanged but I had make a few minor tweaks, some with reason and some just to make the designs stand out from their original counterparts. Two definite differences were Natsuki's shirt becoming a tank top and Sayori gaining an ascot to break up the lots of pink and red in her design... yes it is a reference to something in the game, there's no way the cartoon would get away with the original 'neckwear'.

In the game, despite all having different bodies they are still incredibly similar so I took things a little further since western cartoons can get crazily diverse body types. Monika remains the closest to her original design, even keeping the uniform. Natsuki is given a lot of sharp edges and a body type close to the daughter from the Incredibles. Yuri has a squarer head up top and a pointed chin while Sayori is more rounded.

I can picture this being a fun cartoon concept if there was a great deal of episodic material written for these characters. They'd be able to fit the five mane band trope, minus the Muscle member. Monika would be the fourth wall breaking character for obvious reasons, Sauori would be the heart of the group while Yuri and Natsuki could the sparring partners creating conflict for a number of their sketches. I've never played the game nor do I intend to so I'm probably not the guy to trust with this idea, but what do you think, should Doki Doki get adapted to become a family friendly cartoon or even just a cartoon for older audiences?

Happy Birthday Anne Natalie!

Today is Anne Natalie's birthday, she turns nineteen today! So to celebrate she's off for a birthday drink with her friends.

I don't necessarily have the intent to make one of these every time one of the characters has a birthday to celebrate but given that Anne's was coming up I decided to go along with it. Thus Anne has gone out with her friends for a drink, Droey on the Coca-Cola. Tenvad doesn't like to go to pubs so she has stayed at home to chill, but sent Anne a birthday message. Lottie, John and Ida have also turned up to celebrate and the five of them are having a great time.

I decided to ink this using my coloured ball point pens to give the masterpiece a bit more life than it would with just a black outline all over. I gave each day of the characters an individual colour to be outlined with and then the rest was outlined according to realism. I was going to leave it there but then decided to bring out the coloured pencils and give the illustration some much needed colour.

We can only assume it's been a happy birthday for Anne Natalie, she seems very cheerful. If it happens to be your birthday, then happy birthday!

Lottie's got some Tsum Tsums!

Lottie Line loves her Tsum Tsums, and here's nineteen of them all huddled together with her!

In this bundle you will find Alice, Merida, Cinderella, Beast, Belle, Tiana, Anna, Elsa, Chip and Dale, Rapunzel, Pocahontas, Jasmine, Ariel, Snow White, Mulan, Auora, Mickey and Minnie. This took a fair amount of research to make sure each of these Tsum Tsums was accurate since I don't actually own any Tsum Tsums.

I absolutely loved making this, I cannot put to words how uplifting it was to make this, which was during already good days! It took me about three days to put this together and eagerly worked at this all the while. It was also my first time drawing many of the Disney characters, if Tsum Tsums count. Prior to this, I had only drawn Snow White, Rapunzel and Mickry Mouse! I should draw more Disney.

So if you've had a bad day, I hope to sight of Lottie hugging a load of Tsum Tsums has lifted your spirits and if you're having a good day, I hope this has made it even better!