Welcome To The Scrapyard

AS SEEN ON YOUTUBE

A lot of years from now, a young girl named Fjuter sneaks into a scrapyard and takes a look around, unaware she is being watched!

Fjuter sneaks around the scrapheaps of Crapper and Smith's Scrapyard in Ki as the day draws to end end. Light is fading away and so Fjuter turns on her old fashioned flashlight that she has brought with her. She was a historian who liked the explore things about the past and close to the subject of technology. She likes collecting machines of the past to either restore, showcase or upgrade, but Fjuter knew she was trespassing on private property.

Along her walk between the piles of scrap, Fjuter found several items that begun to catch her eye. She notices first a single horned helmet that although broken and rusted, resembled the helmet worn by the owner of the former lighthouse in Birdbarndeslynn. There was not so far off a robotic head that she recognized from some old pictures from a robot attack, her view of it was almost completely hidden by a dishwasher so she couldn't really tell. But what intrigued her most was a laptop head. It may have looked simple and it could have been any laptop, but Fjuter was interested because it resembled a Technobian who was said to live with a local mage.

Fjuter knew she wouldn't be able to take much so she carefully tried to fit the helmet onto her head, at least it was sqaure enough for the helmet to balance on top of her head. She also grabbed a hold of the laptop head while holding the flashlight in her mouth to light the way home. All the while, she has no idea that a little security drone was hovering around, watching her every move. If Fjuter didn't shake it off her tail, she stood a great chance of getting caught...

What a way to wrap up March of the Robots don't you think? I've enjoyed coming up with all of these technologically themed artworks and the month just seemed to get better! I hope you enjoyed March of the Robots if you participated, I'll be going back to my normal content for now so come back next time for a comic strip!

Technobian Train - Biofusion Experiment!

If you have watched Shed 17, you know what I'm talking about. If you're a young child, don't watch Shed 17! Imagine the scientific aspect of Thomas the Tank Engine and presented as horrifically as possible.

Here's an old photograph of an early prototype for the Technobian Trains, an idea to save the railway companies money by investing on sentient locomotives that would be independent, living creatures. However the result was not quite as glorious as scientists intended. The best they could do was get a train to talk and think.

Experiment 17, Jeremy Holden was the first one that survived experimentation and was released to the eyes of the public. The photo was taken close to where Droey and Co. lived but was before their time. Now Jeremy lives at the National Railway Museum must remains static for the majority of his life, coming out to run once or twice a year, apparently it causes him great pain to move about, though less nowadays than it used to, perhaps he is adjusting to the pain.

Jeremy is sometimes allowed to talk of the work that was put into creating him but can get into deep trouble should be talk too much. There was a controversy when Jeremy had been shut up for several years and hidden from public view, all for the sake of mentioning a name- Paul. After some investigation, all that can be assumed is that Paul was another experiment, one the world was not meant to know about...

So why did I draw a talking train during March of the Robots? Well trains are mechanical so I think I can get away with it, especially since I don't so often draw transportation. This is the most detailed train I have drawn in a very long time! Have you ever seen your childhood characters in a darker tone? Maybe try creating that darker style if they haven't already been, see how messed up it can get because this is probably quite tame!

Droey Draws Drobot Draws Droey

Drawn by Droey as well!

It's about time that Drobot got some love! And of course it was only natural that he be put alongside Droey, his human counterpart. I wasn't quite sure what to do with them though so I looked on the prompt generators for something to inspire me. The prompt I got was 'Drawing Someone Drawing Someone' and it was perfect. What's something you've never seen Droey doing since I created this blog? It's drawing! An artist with a blog called 'Droey's Draws' and with 'Draw' in his name, you'd have thought Droey would be seen drawing a lot sooner!

Becuase Drobot is the robotic likeness of Droey Drawson, he's probably programmed to be able to draw as well so Droey is putting it to the test by having them draw each other. I tried to make Drobot as close to the same size as Droey as possible and while he looks taller here, you've got to remember his back can't curve. I think inevitably Drobot is going to be a little taller than Droey so perhaps it can be an intentional decision to give him a more 'useful' height.

It's the first time I can recall drawing Droey from a side angle, he's always been seen head on or three quarters but to his credit, it's a pretty good side angle! The only part of Drobot's side view that was complicated as his face since the mustache mostly fits around the surface of the spherical lower face.

The two characters were supposed to be pulling identical poses but I forgot to switch Drobot's legs around though perhaps it's Droey's legs that are the wrong way round, who can tell? Other than that the only thing I would change is the shading on Droey's skin which I think was done a bit harshly, it looks more like cell shading than smooth shading as it present on Drobot.

Have you and a friend ever drawn each other? It sounds like a fun bonding activity to try out, was well as an opportunity to practice your artistic skills!

Robot Cosplay!

You know we can't go a year without Droey and his friends cosplaying, so what's the cosplay this time? Anyone remember a Cartoon Network show called Robot Boy?

I discovered it while looking for some robotic themed stuff to draw and loved the cute style of this robot. While looking at images for inspiration, I also found out that there was a female counterpart to this character and she had a lot of similarities to Eliza Barnsley. For those of you unsure of who Eliza Barnsley is, she made her debut on the blog last month helping John at his restaurant.

Droey and Eliza have cosplayed as Robot Boy and Robot Girl respectively for the Technobian Pride parade; though neither of them are Technobian they are there to celebrate with their Technobian friends. Anne Natalie however was expecting to cosplay as Robot Girl as well, and is surprised that Droey twinned with someone else!

This piece was a struggle. I hadn't used my coloured ball point pens on this paper before and it proved to be quite a struggle, perhaps their performance will improve if I get used to it. Then I used my Magicfly markers for the characters, the same pens that were used for Inktober and my goodness they were being problematic this time! I swatched my skin tone and it was a perfect skin tone but once applied to the drawing it tried to bleed and thus came out a much darker orange! You can see part of where it has dried in such a mass that the tone actually darkens, particularly on Anne Natalie's head! I resorted to using a crayola pen for the background, not willing to take anymore changes on this piece with my Magicfly pens.

While a bumpy ride to finish, this cute little piece still tells it's little story and continues the tradition of Droey's cosplaying antics. Are you and a friend cosplaying for anything? If not, why not draw one of your characters dressed up as someone else, be sure to have fun doing it!

What Happened To Benpress?

Here is an experimental comic strip. Beneath is the plot for it in case any clarification is necessary.

Benpress was hesitant. Approaching a stranger is something that people are warned about many times in their life, and then there's those moments when people would be praised for doing just that. To Benpress, this looked like one of the latter. Tears streamed down the delicate face. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a very cute fang and a soft voice, even when suffering from whatever terrible pain was causing her to cry. Benpress made his decision and placed his hand firmly on her shoulder, reassuring that he was here to offer his support to whoever it was he had just met. She was still streaming tears, but her cries softened into a hopeful smile. Benpress wasn't quite sure, but he could have sworn her face was glitching...

So I introduced you properly to Benpress, but I didn't tell you much about the unusual character whose face is not coloured pink in the last panel. You can read all about Lovebyte the Dating Simulator Demon if you look through last year's Inktober content:

http://droeysdraws.blogspot.com/2018/10/inktober-dating-simulator.html

So March of the Robots was a good opportunity to bring back Lovebyte, one of my favourite editions to the Sbookies. So she's back on the scene and looking for love again, I only hope Benpress is okay! If you read the story below it as well then I hope it was a good read, but why didn't I write anything on the comic strip itself? It's time to talk about the making of this piece.

When I put together this comic strip, I decided I wanted to tell it's story visually. I refused to add any narration or dialogue to the comic strip, in the hopes I could create something that would get the important message across visually. Whilst I did write a story for it beneath, that was just a bonus but the comic is intended to be read with interpretation, perhaps you can try it out on a friend and see how close to the text they get.

I felt like creating a monochromatic piece and so I chose to stick to the colour pink, including the line art. I was inspired to do this after looking at my one hue challenge in which I drew Albiona Whitaker. But I was concerned that the final panel would not have the impact I intended if I coloured in only with pinks. This was when I decided I would colour the screen in Lovebyte's actual colour scheme and the rest of the whole piece would be just pink, this would allow for the screen to be the center of attention in that final panel and draw you to the glitching features.

So that's the making of this unique comic strip, you can see I'm still trying to get into the habit of making comic strips in the hopes that one day a Droey's Draws comic will surface just like I always intended. Hope this has given you a bit of insight on the use of colour!

Designing A Cyberman

The Cybermen started out as a medical solution, then they upgraded to the point of which they are nowadays just robots with brains. They have been around almost as long as Doctor Who has been running and are one of the most iconic villains in the British Sci-Fi. So it's about time they got the Droey Drawson treatment!

Above you can see my design, hopefully you approve of it! You're probably wondering why I didn't just pick a Cyberman and draw it instead of creating an entirely new design, and that's because I take advantage of the fact the Cybermen are always changing. Not only could I alter the design to suit the style, but I could take the elements I liked best and combine them to create a completely new design. So now I'll point out what elements come from which Cybermen, for those who haven't worked it out.

We start with the original Cybermen as they appeared in 'The Tenth Planet', not to be confused with the altered designs used in 'World Enough And Time'. To be fair, this design is so distinctive it should get it's own drawing and maybe I'll do that one day, I love how creepy the design is, the suggestion that there is still visible parts of a human being trapped by the machine taking over (an illusion sadly spoilt by the second version of this design seen in World Enough And Time). From this design I took the giant lamp on the top of the head, but embedded it into the headpiece rather than placing it on top.

Next up we have the Tomb Cybermen, this being the earliest Cyberman episode I have watched. These simpler designs have a few elements brought into my design. The face is inspired by these designs (though I have removed the borders to simplify the design), I only wish they still had such a blank expression as these. I also took the wiring that comes down their limbs, most visible on the hips and the left arm in my drawing. Perhaps the most obvious element I took was the hands, these Cybermen have only two fingers and a thumb, which while maybe not as 'upgrading' as having four fingers, I love the look and went with it.

While I had the designs from Revenge of the Cybermen in mind, I ended up using the helmets from Invasion of the Cybermen instead, which I modified to fit the lamps from The Tenth Planet. The wide and smooth handlebars are what set this helmet apart from those used in Revenge of the Cybermen.

The only other classic Doctor Who episode featuring Cybermen I have watched is 'Silver Nemesis', but those designs were slightly altered version of the Cybermen that appeared throughout the eighties, originating from 'Earthshock'. I love the 80's designs for the Cybermen, very intimidating and they happen to have voice modulators that make them sound like Mr. Blobby! All I took from this design was the chest plate and the idea of the piping connecting from the chest plate to the thighs. I'll also point it out now since this is the last classic design, my Cybermen design bears the sort of overall get up that all Cybermen up to this point would be seen wearing.

The last design to have any influence on my Cyberman is not the designs produced by Cybus Industries that we are all familiar with. These are the Twelfth Cyber Legion's Cybermen, though the only difference in design is the replacement of the Cybus logo for just a circular disc. This disc is used on top of the chest plate from the Earthshock Cybermen. The only other element from these modern Cybermen that I used is the armour from the knees down, to prevent my design looking top heavy. These were the Cybermen I originally intended to draw, before I decided I would rather create my own design combining elements from Cybermen throughout history.

So there's my explanation and analysis of the 'Drawson Cybermen', why not give a try at designing some Cybermen yourself, or a different Doctor Who monster? Being a character designer means you get to redesign pre-existing characters as well as create original ones, in fact it's probably a good way to start designing characters!

Drobot 2.0

Do you guys remember Drobot? Here's a look at his original appearance on the blog.

Well he doesn't look like that anymore, because he's been through a pretty heavy redesign!

Here are the sketches that were drawn for the redesign of Drobot. I was mostly focused on redesigning his body, which I wanted to be thinner and to have a more distinct shape than being a rectangular block. It would also be an opportunity to make the suit better match Droey's spoon shirt. The problem with the original design was that it looked more like a robot costume than a genuine robot so those were the errors I set out to fix. By making Drobot impossibly thin, it would be clear that he was a robot.

The bulky hands were another thing to change, since they were based on the original style for Droey's Draws, arms were bulkier towards the wrist. While I could have still done this for Drobot, I didn't think it fitting so I gave him hosepipe arms with mechanical hands which I adore so much!

While Drobot is a bit tall in proportion when compared to the rest of the characters, he hasn't been drawn alongside anyone else so I intend to make his height the same as Droey's but alternatively he could be made taller for practical reasons.

So without further ado, here is Drobot reborn!

I couldn't change much about the head, it was my favourite part of the whole design! The top disc is now white as is his face, which has been given a makeover to turn the chin into his mouthpiece and a mechanical mustache for decoration.

I removed the blueish grey colour in favour for sticking to colours on Droey's scheme and the addition of the darker blue. Anything formerly this colour can now be found in white.

The torso is one of the biggest changes to the design, now a lot more slender and made the resemble the spoon on Droey's shirt. The legs were made thinner for the thighs based on some robotic designs I took a look at while I left the bottom of the legs to be bulkier so the design wasn't top heavy. I was considering making the right arm more buff for more manual duties but felt the lack of symmetry in the arms might have spoiled the design.

Hopefully we can look to a future in which Drobot will be making appearances alongside Droey and Co. , who knows? Would be a shame to put this awesome design to waste! Perhaps someone else will be getting the mecha treatment at some point, would be something nice to try during March of the Robots. Maybe these ideas would work for any characters you have, if you're doing March of the Robots why not give it a try?

Realism Challenge | Jirou Katou

He may look human, but Jirou Katou is actually Technobian! A robotic replica of his twin brother, Ichirou, Jirou is the most human of any machine in the world. So here's a realistic portrait of him.

I felt like drawing a realistic human since I hadn't done so in quite a while but with it being March of the Robots, I thought I would coincide with that by drawing Jirou Katou. This would also be the first time I realistically drew Asian features, since Jirou is Japanese.

There's only been a few times when I've drawn Droey's Draws characters realistically and I remember when doing so for Anne Natalie I didn't use any line art, which looking back is something that would need a little more practice. But I definitely liked how my realism turns out with line art applied to it so I decided for my own satisfaction to use line art in this piece. I kept the detailing as minimalistic as possible to prevent Jirou from looking too aged.

I didn't have access to my larger collection of coloured pencils at the time so colouring Jirou accurately was going to be a challenge. Luckily with a few different pencils for each colour I was able to replicate the colour scheme of Jirou in a pastel tone. Rather than using darker tones of these colours I resorted to using a new colour, choosing indigo since it would suit with the turquoise eyes. The same can be said for how a gradiented background from pale blue to purple was applied to the illustration.

So this one, despite depicting a robot wasn't very robotic for March of the Robots, but I intend to make the remainder of March's content as robotic as possible, so look forward to more robot themed content and more from the Technobians of Droey's Draws!

March Of The Robots | Technobian Pride Parade

It's March now and a popular art theme at this time is March of the Robots, but to the people of Droey's Draws it's also Technobian Pride month! So throughout this month we're going to be seeing robots and Technobians galore!

For those of you who haven't been following long, Technobians are a race of technological sentience, this can vary from phones to cyborgs. To be considered Technobian you would be at least 35% tech, and here's four characters that fit the bill joining the parade.

From right to left, there's Tenvad Drawson, she's Droey's laptop and the brains of her household. Jirou Katou the human Technobian, a technological replica of his twin Ichirou. Paddy Ipswitch the Ipad, friend of Tenvad who spends his free time reading. Lastly there's someone you won't have met before, Coffee Waterson the cyborg, she is an experiment towards the idea of human being able to resist electric shock, though everyone assumes she just has another pair of ears!

One more thing about this piece is that you'll notice the symbol forged out of glowsticks and printed onto Tenvad's flag. This is the Technobian symbol, which is inspired by the binary code. Technobians can have gender, though some prefer not to tie themselves to a gender as it is simpler to just call themselves Technobian; hence there is no variation of the Technobian symbol.

I don't often draw the Technobian characters which is something I should really get into the habit of doing so I am hoping to become more keen on drawing them by the end of this month, as well as maybe some more technical and mechanical stuff. Are you needing to get into the habit of drawing more robotic stuff? Give March of the Robots a try, you may find it quite enjoyable!