Assorted updates (Patreon)

I hope you don't mind the occasional long update post, because apparently that's what I'm doing now :)

This is the final design for the bookplate stickers. They'll be printed on silver vinyl so the colours won't be quite like this, but hopefully it will be nice and shiny! I'll be sending these off to be printed soon :)

(Self-indulgently attempted to animate the shiny in Clip Studio Paint. I'm enjoying getting the chance to learn all the different things CSP can do.)

And here's the tentative final bookmark design (including 3mm of bleed on each side, so these are actually quite a bit skinnier than they look.)
If I still like this in a week I'll send the files off to the printer  - the bookmarks will be, by far, the most expensive to print so I want to be 200% certain I like them ^^;

On the Webtoon front, I am sitting and waiting nervously to hear back from the last revised pitch I sent for Flowers & Fangs. Waiting is nerve-wracking!

To work through my anxiety I've been doing some style tests for other possible projects in case Flowers & Fangs is turned down after the revisions to the pitch.

My main goal with these style tests is to find a way to do immersive backgrounds quickly, by experimenting with the different things Clip Studio Paint can do with 3D models.

(Webtoons seems pretty keen on 50+ panels per episode at the moment, and backgrounds are a big time sink! I'm not too worried about the backgrounds for Flowers & Fangs because it's a modern fantasy, and since we all know what a modern city looks like, the backgrounds only really need to be indications, not drawn in detail.)

Tests for a human/android romance set in the outer solar system

Test 1

While I enjoyed drawing this, and love how it turned out, this sort of drawing/colouring style gives me vibes of Carmen Sandiego or Steven Universe and that isn't the atmosphere I want.

I think I need lines for this story, so that the lines can get messy when the characters are messy.

(That said, I really do like how this turned out! 3D backgrounds often look obviously computer generated in a stiff, disjointed way - but I think with this sort of colouring the 3D blends perfectly into the hand-drawn elements. This is a good style for doing backgrounds quickly, it's just not the style I want now.)

Test 2

This turned out way too angsty, lol. That said, I like the colours, I like the way the hand-drawn foreground lines have a similar slightly mood to the computer-generated background lines. The background has more of a stiff, 3D feel than style test 1, but I think that's fine for a sci-fi story.

Test 3

Taking a break from backgrounds. Since I've missed the mark twice in a row regarding mood, I thought I'd do a quick characters-only sketch to explore the mood I want.

These character designs aren't even a little bit finalised, but this did help me figure things out.

Test 4

And here we go! This is a good aesthetic.

The colours are nice and the square brush gives the shading an interesting sci-fi feel. The background does feel 3D, but in an acceptably sci-fi way, and there's very little disconnect between the hand-drawn and the computer generated lines (at this point I'm not even sure which of the guitar lines were hand-drawn and which were from the 3D model, I am very impressed with Clip Studio Paint.)

I think I can convey a variety of moods with this style, and it's neither too cutesy or too gritty for the story I want to tell. If I end up pitching this story to webtoons I'll have a good starting point for the art :)

Test for a modern fantasy romance with folklore/fairy tale elements

It was much easier to figure out the sort of aesthetic I wanted for this (and for the next few style tests), mostly because I now have a much better idea of the different ways CSP can export lines from 3D objects. So instead of starting with the background lines, and then figuring out the aesthetic, I could start with the aesthetic, confident that I can get CSP to generate somewhat appropriate lines for the background.

Test for a secondary world fantasy set mostly underwater. 

Test for a story that I'm 99% certain I want to tell as a visual novel or some other type of interactive fiction (I think this story would really benefit from having multiple endings) but I was having fun trying out different things in CSP so I just kept on drawing~