Drawing

For a long time, drawing has been a bit of a sore spot for me. I've always had a passion for character design — I love to come up with a character's personality, attitude, and looks, as well as the story behind how they came to look and act that way. However, for a long time, I did not have the drawing skill to ever represent these characters. People respond much better to a picture of a character than any description, and I really disliked not being able to do anything about that.

But I've been putting in work to fix that. I put a good chunk of time into practicing my drawing skills, focusing specifically on the initial blocking out of the human figure. Good artists know that, if you're drawing a person, the final drawing is only as good as the foundational sketch beneath it. The linework that comes next still takes effort, but a good blocking sketch means a surprising amount of the work is already done for you.

I'm also trying to work on my posing and the drawing's overall gesture. When it comes to conveying a character's personality, finding and drawing a good pose is half the battle. At the moment, I don't have any finished character pieces, but I'll be sure to add any once they're complete.

A little while back, me and some friends started playing some tabletop role-playing games. We used an online system to handle the games' map and movement, so each character needed an icon to represent them. A made a few custom ones, but most of them ended up not being used (the one that did is the robot that I'm currently using as my avatar). Most of these, like the MONOCULUS! pictured above, come from various games and other sources, but a few are original.

This is an icon of Delirium, from The Binding of Isaac. I did change up their design a little bit, but that's mostly just interpretation. I always liked the facial expression on this one.

This one is original. It was supposed to be used for when an effect would backfire, which could briefly turn you and your enemies into harmless little kittens. The design of the kitten itself is nothing special, but I think my usage of color here has a nice effect.

In the game Guilty Gear Strive, Faust the insane doctor has a tendency to pull out little plush versions of himself. Mess with them, and they will go nuts and wail on you with a oversized scalpel. I thought including them would be a nice reference, especially in a game between friends.

This one is of a character I made that never got used. Not quite alive, not quite dead, Elizabeth Winters has nothing left but bitter resentment for the ones that failed to save her.