The Internet's Best Kept Secretion

Hey folks.  SO.  Here I am… trying to be “regular”.  Stop the presses.  I find it not only interesting that I consider a 3-week interval “regular” but also ironic that the one time I decide to actively engage  myself with this whole blogging thing (as opposed to merely resorting to it when I have nothing better to do) is when there really are better things, or rather, more productive things to do with my time.  Even more “irony-er” is that during these  holidays I have been incredibly busy -in my head AND on paper- with such an incredible array of things that it really wasn’t much of a holiday (not to mention that I‘ve hardly been sleeping).  If all goes according to plan everything will come together pretty soon.  For now though, I still have about a month’s worth of images to get through.

Starting with these:

I haven’t really posted a link or done ANYTHING to promote this fact, but for about 8 months or so, I have had a DeviantArt account,  which means I have also been posting my art on the site and interacting with fellow artists from around the world.  One such artist goes by the moniker HakuzaCaF.   After going through some of her characters and story ideas,  I fell in love with her Mafia White and Black Universe; so much so that I decided to do some fanart featuring the series‘ lead character, Haku.  Yep.  I’m that kinda guy.  Not only would it be good practice, but the character was also a lot of fun to draw.  I feel that one of the marks of a good lead character is an applicability to different media and situations.  Haku over here works as a cute mascot figure, a sex symbol,. a vessel for comedy  and as an action hero.  That's diversity for you.

As for the images, The first one was fairly standard procedure.  No witty anecdotes there.  Whereas, with the second image, I once again took the opportunity to experiment with Photoshop.  About the time this was made, I'd been asking around about how to selectively blur images.  After no solid answers, I eventually devised my own fairly simplistic, albeit limited method, which gave an admittedly static image (well, static's a bit harsh, but it definitely wasn't as tight, fluid or as dynamic as I wanted) a great sense of movement.  Thank you, layer masks.

I really wanted to steer clear of FuZioN U stuff for a while, but as it so happens, this is next image pertains to precisely that...

"Merlin Hawke upside yo Head!"(I honestly have no clue what that means)   Not long after I decided to base Merlin Hawke's appearance on Mr. Laurie,  I knew that the story would have to include one scene with a cain as a little homage to one of Laurie's most well-known portrayals.  This isn't exactly that scene (more of an outtake) but it is more or less the atmosphere that the scene will have.  It will include a secluded pathway in a foresty-type park environment and take place at a similar hour, so...

Colouring this image was an oddly organic process.  I wasn't entirely sure if I would be able to produce what I'd imagined or how I would go about doing it, but I just kept going until... this came out. This image also where I started vaguely defining the look of the story.  I wanted to have a cell-shady vibe to it but also with softer lighting for the atmosphere, if that makes any sense.  Almost like Tekkon Kinkreet. But not quite.

I was going to premiere a new character but, on Sunday I thought up a new and slightly more efficient method of revealing my characters, while also showing their development, so I think I'll save him (Yes it's a dude) for his own entry.  Later.