Gresh and Vorox Pumpkin lanterns

Back in 2011 I mentioned about wanting to make a Vorox pumpkin in the Bionicle Jack-O-Lanterns post. I've wanted to make a Vorox pumpkin since the year 2009; and I did just that back in 2012. The two pumpkins above are from last year, I carved them a little late, and not a moment too soon being that the one was starting to slowly decay. Originally I wasn't planning on doing two, but since there was an extra pumpkin, I went with Gresh as my second image choice. Both images were small symbols already made, I simply took these clip art images and enlarged them in Photoshop, then made them outlines. I'll speak more about the stencils at the bottom of this post. The most surprising thing is that I carved both pumpkins in one day.   

I chose Gresh as my second design choice for three reasons; one- the design was simple and would take less effort, two-his mask designs had large designs for easy cutting and more light shine compared to some of the other designs, and three- I just like his character and felt he would be fun to set next to a Vorox.

(Above) side view of Gresh, I love the glint of the candle light which shines through his one eye, like he's looking at you and winking. ^.~

(Left) close up of Gresh, the most intricate process was carving the eye lids and decorative ridges in the center of his mask. (Right) day time image when it's not lit. 

The Vorox was a challenge, but it was fun to pull off. I wouldn't have been able to achieve the full design and all its details without a little help from a family member, but I mostly needed help with the grooves on the pincers and ears. I loved making the extra grooves in the mask, and pulled it off smoothly with the help of some wood carving tools. Wood carving tools are the best friend for pumpkin carving, I just use the small saws from pumpkin carving kits to cut chunks out of the small grooves, and settle with wood carving tools for everything else. Outlining the mask and circle was the most time consuming. Overall it was a long and tiresome project, I stood at the table hunched over my pumpkins for hours, started getting sore feet and a back ache, but in the end it was well worth the effort.

Day time image

Above is the Vorox Pumpkin during the day, amazing what a little candlelight and darkness do for the carving. This particular pumpkin is the one that started to decay on the back side. I was fearful it would collapse on me while I scraped out flesh, but it held up just fine on the front. (Left) close up image to show details. As you may notice, the pumpkin had a gray, rough spot which looks kind of like a scar on the Vorox, but thankfully isn't noticeable at night when the pumpkin is lit.

Below are the stencil images used for the pumpkins, shown next to their original clip art image.

On the left, is the stencil version of the clip art images shown to the right. I didn't have to change much on the Gresh image, I just changed it into an outline and drew separation lines around the prongs of his mask. Had to have separation lines in order to to know where to carve and what to avoid. On the Vorox stencil I added extra details from the actual mask of the toy set. The original clip art was actually too simplistic for my taste, and ended up getting aid to make my stencil design even better than what I was planning at first. Once I made the stencils, I adjusted their size in Photoshop, then printed them out on paper, and transferred them to the pumpkins. I had to scrunch the paper around the pumpkin and pin it in place with thumb tacks, then ran a pokey tool along the design lines and started carving from there. You can do the same, simply by saving the stencil images and giving it a try for yourself. Have fun, and enjoy. ^.~ 

Pumpkin Patch Agori

Pumpkin Patch Agori

This illustration may hold a future purpose and place, perhaps a scene that will be included in a story; maybe even in one of my largest stories, Life of Lewa. This illustration started off as a sloppy sketch, and became something more. I constructed an interesting scene to match the figure, feeling the most appropriate place to find him is in a pumpkin patch, hence the name "Pumpkin Patch Agori".

I used several elements to make this semi spooky looking scene. First I worked on the Agori as a figure element to be added like a collage image as the main focus on a themed backdrop (I'll speak more of the Agori below). To make my backdrop, I first took a swirly patterned desktop image and changed its color and transparency; this serves as an odd sky, a technique I've used before on another art piece displayed on my main blog, Pearllight Studio. Next I made the ground by selecting an area and coloring it with brown, then used textured brushes to create land that looked like patches of grass, leaves, and dirt. To make the scene more interesting, I took a tree element and made a brush out of it; this led to a fun process of creating a distant forest with scattered trees as we get closer to the foreground. I also dabbed more texture behind the trees to make it appear hazy and darker the further away it is. After that I had fun duplicating one image of a pumpkin and its leaves to create the pumpkin patch; all I needed to do after assembling the loose elements was tweak the levels and color. Last thing was adding the Agori, and you get the final illustration.

I think the Agori needs a name at some point, he'll probably get one in the future. What he's doing in the pumpkin patch is still a mystery, but either he's a farmer of the patch, carrying around a knife to cut the pumpkin from its vine; or my other concept is that he may be a pumpkin thief who sneaks into other people's patches and takes a pumpkin for himself to carve or eat. His armor color is made to represent the shades of pumpkin patches, making the concept of pumpkin thieving all the more interesting. If you're going to sneak in a pumpkin patch, what better colors to wear than that of the pumpkins, complete with patchy designs on the armor to blend better. No doubt this Agori loves pumpkins so much that he wears the armor all year round, and doesn't come out often until Autumn whips around the corner. Future story for this quirky Agori is in order, till then, enjoy the concept. ^.~

It amazes me how far I manged to go with such a sloppy sketch. The sketch was made long ago..probably around 2008, slapped on a page with other sketches, my hand feeling lazy. To the far left is the base sketch before improvement; the sketch never had a big significance, but I figured I'd finally make something out of it since the Agori is holding a pumpkin, and now is the season for that theme. I took this terribly sketchy image and set out to display what the sketch is, since it's hard to tell at first glance. That was fairly simple, all I did was lower opacity, put a second layer on top, and digitally drew out the form and details as best I could over this scratchy mess. To my surprise I ended up with a fairly descent character, and added a few extra elements to him which didn't exist before. The bulge around his rib cage may have been his armor, but I couldn't tell, so I made it better and changed the form into a backpack of some kind; all I needed to do was add some pockets and stitching to make it look like a bag. Then there was this funny bit of scratchiness on the character's left leg, and I think it may have been excess pen marks, but I decided to turn it into a sheathed knife. These extra details and simple base outlines resulted in the middle image above. Last step was coloring; I used shades pertaining to pumpkins since he's holding one, and felt it would be cute to make him match. After adding gray, green, orange, brown, and yellow; I splotched on some texture of green and brown to add more interest to his armor, then to add depth I used the dodge and burn tool for shading and lighting. This resulted in the above right image, a reusable element which can be placed in other scenes or even turned into a printable scrapbook sticker or die cut.

I think it turned out great for being a bad sketch at first glance; and even better is that I now I have a tree brush for future use! ^.^

Jungle Matoran and Tree housing

  This jungle Matoran image dates back to around 2008 or early 2009. It started off as a pencil sketch which was then copied and colored over with Prismacolor pencils. I used a mix of metallic pencils, regular pencils, and a hint of jell pen.This illustration was made as play, and there really is no set significance to the piece; but I may be using it eventually as a snip scene for the Life of Lewa series. It would apply quite well to the series, being that this Matoran's mask is heavily inspired off Lewa Phantoka's mask design. The figure actually reminds me of a fancier version of Lewa's little boy whom he named Phantoka. So, this image may be used at a later time for something like that. I think my original intent for this picture was to display a Le-Matoran in his natural habitat, and judging by the expression, he's quite fascinated by the camera and strange being holding it. It's a fun concept to look at that way, but I also feel this scene could apply to a mischievous Phantoka, letting his curiosity get the best of him.

 To make this image better, I went and outlined it in Photoshop, also tweaked the levels. To the left is the original image before it was outlined; notice the difference of how much dimension and clarity it gets with some black lines added to it? I went through several outline choices before settling on the fully outlined image of both the character and the plants (final image choice displayed at top of post). Also, being that colored pencil has a rather scratchy feel to it, I decided to experiment with the smudge tool in Photoshop and see if I could smooth out the colors and make them blend; this resulted in the right image above. I like the way it melded the colors, but it also seemed to diminish some of the details and crispness to the image, so I chose to stay with the original scratchiness of pencil.

 Since I spoke about the quirky little Le-Matoran, possibly child, I also wish to include the image above which pertains the the jungle region as well. This image dates back to around the same time as the jungle Matoran image, and again was a pencil sketch that I scanned then colored over with Prismacolor pencils. I made this picture as I day dreamed of what Le Koro homes looked like (this was before I knew as much about the Bionicle universe); and I drew up this cute little tree home which has two huts, a stairway that curves up around the tree, and a tree home elevator. Who lives in this two part home is unknown, but I playfully like to imagine that perhaps the little Matoran shown before does, or perhaps Lewa himself actually lives here now and then. It's never mentioned that Lewa lives in any home; but if I were to apply this image to the Life of Lewa series (which I just might) I would say that this tree home is indeed Lewa's living quarters, he just rarely stays in it, preferring to sleep in the trees underneath the stars.This may connect onto the reason why his home is always a mess since he just drops stuff in it, and occasionally eats there. Any other time though, he may actually have a Matoran neighbor who takes care of the place, could be why there's a second little hut... that or in a joking respect, the smaller hut is Lewa's outhouse or shed.  One other thing I enjoy about this image is that the way I colored it makes it look like someone took a picture of Lewa's home while they were vine swinging past it.

These are the two raw images as pencil sketches before color. Left is jungle Matoran, and right is the tree home. Funny how far a little color will carry a picture.

Gali Mistika, Modified Model

 In last post I displayed what was labeled as the Gali Mistika revamp panel. http://bionicfuzion.blogspot.com/2013/08/gali-mistika-revamp.html Soon after displaying it on DA I got feed back, and to my surprise, a few critiques and pointers. Shorjok advised that I not use the term revamp, being that this model is more like a simple modified figure, and also that I should display fewer images on one canvas, for a character which doesn't contain tons of detail.  His exact words were- "I understand that this is just for fun and more of a modification than anything - so why call it a revamp? Not criticizing you for lack of parts, of course, just your choice of words. A revamp is pretty much a complete overhaul - rebuilding a canon bionicle from scratch.Given the simplicity of the build, I also wouldn't recommend trying to fit so many images onto one canvas - they're unnecessary since there isn't much detail to show. Just show what needs to be shown; the poses are nice but they don't add much to the artwork in general. For example, these mocs fav.me/d6gytz2 and fav.me/d56mba2 are both highly detailed yet the guys who made them have only used 3 or 4 pictures - because that's all it needs.So yeah, I hope this helped." 

       Soon after Shorjok's comment, I was told by MataNui2001 that the Nuva chest plate needed to be higher. In reality I knew about this problem, only it's not the chest plate which needed tweaking, it was the lower body. Both these critiques encouraged me to embrace the advise with an open mind, and a day later after receiving this advise, I found a way to tweak both Gali, and Hahli into figures with appealing build that have left me more satisfied than I was with them before; and I've playfully started calling this process (the Hahli, Gali project). I took Shorjok's advise, and now know of a proper label for figures like these, which is why I now call it a modified model, not a revamp. I also considered his advise about using fewer images to show off detail on a simple figure. This resulted in the above panel of my new modified Mistika model, which embraces minimalism, but displays detail from more than one angle, something I disregarded slightly before when creating my first panel.

 The listed images above are a few selected images I like most from the panel. The image on left side displays the simple front view of Gali with her new extended body. I'll admit I like the way she looks even more than before when she looked rather short and stocky.. To fix the issue of a wiggling body, but still keeping the Nuva chest plate, I simply placed an extra peg beneath the belly part of the chest plate, and that fixed the wobbling. The left image is a very nice angle to show off the rest of Gali, being that it displays her build from behind, and shows more detail of her heeled boots. An extra thing I also added to this improved model is a blue hand piece to the back part of her body, to fill in the gap between her body and her Matoran backpack (as I call it). This hand piece also makes her a little bit meatier, not so skeleton like. For more base images of the different angles to this improved build, you can find them in this Flickr set which contains images from previous panel project as well. http://www.flickr.com/photos/76669336@N04/sets/72157635258901907/

One other thing I decided to do alongside the main panel of this improved model, is make a sticker sheet to go alongside with the previous Gali panel (displayed below on the right) from previous post. This fun concept of making sticker sheets out of the images I clean for panel display clicked in my mind after I left a response to Shorjok's critique. My words to his comment (listed at the beginning of this post)- "I get what you mean. Honestly the only reason I labeled it as a revamp is because I didn't know what else to call it...and I'm not the most experienced in labels for this sort of thing. As for the tip on using fewer images, the only reason why I crammed all the images of the character onto one canvas is because I hate deciding which ones to use for a poster, that and if you're like me, I look at the panel as something that can easily be turned into a scrapbook supply, which in this case would be a sheet of stickers. So, that's why I put all fifteen images in; but, thanks for the advise, good tips."

After I responded, I thought to myself, what a fun idea to continue. So, I took Shorjok's advise with making smaller panels with less pictures to serve as main deviations, but I also decided to make panels of large listings for the sake of special edition packages which could be turned into personal Bionicle themed stickers, or used later for scrapbook products. I stayed true this fun concept, and made a second large panel of all eight images from the new photo collection, just to display the improved version of Gali as a sticker sheet containing one of each picture taken. New version is listed (left) alongside previous version (right) just below.

Gali Mistika Revamp

 Gali Mistika revamp. So much procrastination took place before I finally sat down and finished off this large panel, composed of fifteen images, all within two days. This revamp is quite simple; nothing extravagant being that I don't have that many parts to play with in making an extremely complex MOC or revamp, but that doesn't matter. My intent for making this revamp is simply because I wanted to make Gali look a little more feminine than that of the original set, so I could feel satisfied when looking at her. Granted her mask build is rather masculine in appearance, and that gave me all the more reason to try and feminize her structure a little more. First I gave her smoother arms, and added spike decorations to them which serve as fins and flight stabilizers; these new arm shapes made her arms look less muscular and bulky, unlike before when her arms were the same boot shape as her legs. I also tweaked and played with a way to add some original Nuva armor to her torso, which served nicely as a feminine chest plate. I also went in and replaced the small leg armor pieces with the larger pieces that look more like thighs, and therefore give her a little more hip shape. Last detail which isn't entirely necessary, not at all efficient for fighting in, nor practical for battle, is the small addition of a heel to her foot. I added this piece to her for height reasons, since Gali looks rather stocky in build once you put the chest plate on her. I wanted her to be feminine, and just a tad taller, so I added a slight platform to her boot, but kept it fairly short, so it's more like a heel to a regular boot rather than some crazy peg heel of inefficiency. The last bit of fun I had was assembling the panel together; it was a slight challenge to cram fifteen images onto one canvas, but I managed. Then to top it off I added both English and Matoran lettering to spell out her name, put in my watermark, and added her Nuva symbol just for fun... that and I put it there to balance out the shape on the left of the title.

 The process I went through to get images which looked like advertisement was first done by taking pictures of the figure on a white backdrop near a bright, sunlit window. This example of the original photograph (edited version above) before it was edited, is displayed below. To make these pictures stand out and look fairly professional, I cleaned them up in Photoshop, added them to a pure white backdrop, adjusted levels, and increased brightness on the eyes of the character to achieve that radiant glow. This resulted in fifteen cleaned images; including the one listed above, which is is one of my favorites being that it expresses more in body language, and looks like Gali is either speaking to someone, or preparing to fight.

Special edition, symmetrical revamp 1

Revamp 1 original

 Something I also tried while cleaning up the photographs is playing around with mask symmetry. I took the first picture out of the collection, being that it's mostly strait on, and I decided to experiment, and find out what Gali Mistika would look like if she didn't have a scope attached to her left mask side. All I did to achieve this was select the right side if her mask, copy it, paste it, and reverse it horizontally; then I tweaked it over the left side of the image, and used the burn tool to add a little shading. This experiment resulted in a special edition image of Gali with a symmetrical mask (above right image). In some ways she actually looks a little more feminine in my opinion, with a symmetrical mask that contains no scope.

 

 These last two images are my chosen favorites out of the collection of fifteen. The left one seems to portray a very hero like pose; something about the body language which seems to express confidence, strength, and triumph. The one to the right is my favorite over all, being that it makes Gali seem quite feminine, and expresses more of a gentle side, very much to that of her actual character. I also like the way it expresses a questioning, yet perky look in her eyes, and the way her head is tilted.

For full sized images of all fifteen pictures in the Gali Mistika panel collection, see here for the full set of pictures on my Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/76669336@N04/sets/72157635258901907/

I hope you enjoy. ^.~

Toa Nakao- coloring commission

 The character Toa Nakao, a female lightning Toa, is an Original Creation belonging to WingVinnieCustom, an online RP buddy of mine. A few years ago he tells me his friend drew this character for him while they were in art class, and he never got around to coloring it; so he asked if I could complete Nakao's color theme, so I did. The above image is the final colored result of the drawing, all achieved in Photoshop.

Toa Nakao has been introduced even in the RP tale WVC has played with me, and I was even given the role of acting her character. Curious for details behind this OC? Here's the upload on WVC's DA. http://wingvinniecustom.deviantart.com/art/Toa-Nakao-393721610 Credit goes to WVC for character design, line art credit goes to his friend, and coloring credit goes to me. ^.~

Below is the original line art spread WVC shared with me, and I simply selected Nakao from the side lines so she could stand alone from the other fun masks sketched on the right. His friend did a good job in drawing if I do say so myself.

HF- Nurse Camilla, comic panel

In previous post My designs, Camilla and Gertrude I mentioned about two of my own HF character designs; Nurse Camilla, the HF medic bot; and Gertrude, the HF desk worker. Details about their character background was given, and I stated a few of the functions Camilla contains. My exact words from previous post, "She works with other staff when needed, will come around when someone needs a shot, and commonly carries around a small energy box with a transfer wire for connecting into the quaza core port to recharge a patient who's system is very weak. Camilla also contains a super powerful, internal electrical system, built into her structure for the purpose of performing electric shock CPR." Each of the functions mentioned, exist in the three panel comic scene above, of Camilla in action.

From left to right; Camilla comically stating she'd give it her best shot, needle in hand (this quote existed before I made the image, and I found it fit perfectly into the scene, so I used it.) Middle panel is a flash scene of Camilla preparing to administer electric shock CPR, yelling "CLEAR!" (you can see her palms are what administer the shock. Right panel is of Camilla walking down the recovery halls with her recharge box, asking around to see if anyone needs a boost.

Additional functions about Camilla, ones that are an afterthought in her build, are that the ridged spots on her skirt and boots light up when she's charging for CPR; and she can also show a patient's vital signs by using herself as a monitor. If she places her hand on them, her electric charge indicators will blip and show the current condition of a hero.

The composition as a whole, came out rather interesting. Each scene has it's own unique setting to it, and is meant to display small peeks of the HF medical area; or in the case with middle panel, meant to harbor suspense. The first panel on left was rather fun to draw; I even gave Camilla a nurse hat in it. Background was meant to just show she clearly works in a place full of monitors and medical beds, with the HF hospital symbol displayed on the wall slightly. Middle panel is meant to be dramatic, like a scene where you see a flash of light, then hear monitors beeping and the pulse light ripples madly in the background as Camilla prepares to do her thing. The last panel has to be the most interesting in composition, being that everything is angled and tilting towards Camilla, so she's central focus as she walks down the hall way. I also had a little fun with drawing folds in a blanket that drapes over a patient on the right bed.

This image dates back to about 2011. Mediums used- Colored pencil and jell pen.