Buzz Core

Marker overlay version with plants (left). Buzz Core- Paper texture only base version (right).

In the thick of a swamp sat a pool of energy. The pool itself was meant to keep an actual energy source cool, that energy source was cased inside a special container that had to be removed and replaced every now and then from its unit embedded in the coolant. Normally a Matoran could do the job, but replacing this battery was a special case.

A fracture had formed on the barrel, a leakage broke out. What could be the source of the problem? A toa of air was sent to fly over the area to determine how bad the leak was. What he discovered was bad news, the swamp had become home to a species of hornet, normally harmless, but these hornets had a queen who decided to nest on top of the battery. 

These hornets liked cooler environments for their eggs, a cooling pool was too inviting to resist.

The queen hornet was none too happy when the toa landed and tried to bat her away. Bearing through several stings and having the queen bug cling to his head, he dutifully removed the broken energy pod and replaced it with a new one, then left the hornets a warning by blowing their nest away.

Dreams of the hornet lair. Sounds scary, looks pretty. Gradient color experiment with marker overlay. Has a kind of watercolor effect. I was aiming for something that looked like a quickly done sketch in a field journal. I think I’ve played around enough for this project now.

A reflective version came last. I had played around with this in the quick guide of PSE 12 to create reflections,then did some of my own tweaks afterward. The water effect added a lot of extra interest to the picture I think. This may just be the final stage of the picture.

Some details are missing in the reflective version. You can’t see the unit that holds the battery, which is submerged beneath the water.

There are also no signs of the hornets nest in the scene to show the mess built on top of the exposed part of the battery unit. The only way to make true sense of what’s going on in the scene with added reflection is that this is the broken battery which the Toa carries away from the unit, and the queen hornet came after him, summoning her swarms to pursue the attacker of her nest.

This picture didn't really have a story when I started it. It was a random illustration started with some experimenting. Details about the process and origin of the picture are shared below in the process pages.

I've recently been starting compilation process pages of projects and other subjects to remember things I used, techniques I tried, steps I took, and history behind the project too. I find I like creating digital journal records like this, and would like it even better if I could have enough pages together to print out as a book so I can escape the screen more often.

  Buzz Core-process-page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 6

There are other pages from my records, but not important pages talking about the base steps of the project. A lot of the extra pages are compilations of what I've already written in this post.

Swing Into Action Kalea

Kalea: "Yudron, a Glatorian asked me if I could swing into action. I sure can!"

Kalea enjoys her little side wood swing. This is when she feels more in tune with her internal element of air. "Swinging is like flying. Your legs dangle from the seat, and with a lean-push you go higher and higher till you feel like the wind is going to knock you into the sky." she would say.

Sometimes she'll swing so high her toes touch the tree leaves above the support branch. She especially likes it when a few fall, like green glitter that wind-drifts.

I was asked by a Deviant Art follower, Yudrontheglatorian, if I could try to draw Kalea in a different pose besides her forward stance in her design page. Here she is, swinging.

I tried adding a marker overlay to this one too. The difference is subtle.

Kalea the Wind Jumper

Another female Toa of air besides Onah. This character design came from some doodling with a symmetry brush in Firealpaca. A little selecting of shapes and merging them together gave me full body forms of a female Le Matoran, both as a Matoran and then as a Toa.

I had thought about making her into a character idea I've had for awhile, Kelekena. But Kelekena is meant to represent me if I were to make a character of the Bionicle world. I wasn't sure if the structure of this character quite held the right personality for a character that represents me. I know I fit the element of air pretty well, but still haven't decided on a design.

This character may be named Kalea, or Yolana. Both details about those names are shown in the character display sheet above. 

I'll just go with Kalea for now. Here she is as a Matoran traveling through the forest with glee. The left version is textured with paper and marker overlays. The right version is the base digital illustration.

Kalea's background and character build aren't yet thought of, but a design is a design. I only know she's a joyful, free spirited and outgoing kind of personality.

Toa Kalea.

Base digital illustration on the left, textured version on the right. I think I like the textured version for this one. The marker overlay gives it kind of windy feel, as though a cyclone is spinning around her.

The Great 'Jaller'peno-Comic

 

The Great 'Jala'peno 

It's been awhile, hasn't it? I have to say it's not till recently that my Bionicle nostalgia returned to me and I've been in a big mood to dabble in making simple comic pages.

Remember how Jaller's name was once spelled Jala? So many pun related things pop into my head, I've been making a list for Bionicle ideas mainly to make into comics or illustrations (possibly single illustration comics). 

One night I imagined Jaller with a grumpy face while wearing a red jalapeno costume. You can figure out why that happened, it's obvious. :P He's a fire type dressed as a pepper, which makes him hot in more than one way.

Originally this was meant to be a single illustration of Jaller and Takua, specifically the middle panel of this comic page. It only took moments for extra dialogue and characters to pop into my head and become a comic.

Here's a look at the outline and blue roughs of my process. A day and a half passed by while working on it, but my time spent working on it was on and off. 

Bionic Home

I've been visiting old digital sketches in my Bionicle files and tweaking them, then adding some color. This one is a Bionic home, a place that may be a manor for Matoran. Either it serves an inn, or a place of schooling for learning different art forms and sciences. It has a greenhouse, observatory tower, and large library. The Garage was crafted to look like a mask with mouth door and eye windows.

I did adjustments mostly for the background, mainly the trees, rocks, plants, and sky.

It's not often I do cloudy light settings, so this one was a first. It kind of just happened unintentionally, and I liked it. 

 

The black and white sketch was done a long time ago, I don't even remember the year. 

Bala and Bota

Bala and Bota, two more old digital sketches tweaked, colored, and given an environment.

I had named Bala soon after sketching her so long ago. It was just some random name that kind of grew on me and just felt appropriate for her. 

Now Bota, the red guy, was a completely different sketch who needed part of his head and lower legs drawn in. He took a bit more work to make whole, unlike Bala who only needed half her feet drawn in.

Before and after view of the sketches (left). Top row is before, bottom is after.

The adjustments were easy enough, and then came coloring, followed by creating a background. 

Bala has a favorite meditation spot, a large rock within a pool of water leading out to a river, complete with a relaxing waterfall.

Bota is from the volcanic village which isn't far from there, you can even see the volcano in the background. He likes to talk with Bala sometimes, and knows she can commonly be found at the waterfall.

Making the background was fun, but also kind of hard. I struggled to decide what colors to use and how to make the lighting decent. It took me more time and thought than the background I had done previously for another old sketch Citrus Toa-To the Trail. 

Citrus Toa- To the Trail

"Follow the trail."

The Citrus Toa needed a background after so many years of being a quickly colored sketch in my cluster of random Bionicle sketches.

I wasn't sure what the background should be for the drawing, and went on gut instinct, randomly slapping down lines and creating an environment that made me happy. I also had to add a bit more toe to my Toa's foot so he would look right in a scene. Quite a few of my sketches involve drawn figures with part of their feet or lower leg extending out of frame. That's fine sometimes, but other times it doesn't do justice for an illustration, hence me making tweaks to an old sketch.

Obviously this Toa is based off Lewa Phantoka, quite possibly just a different rendition of him on a day the adaptive armor adjusts itself for a new mission.

I call him the citrus Toa because I colored him with a lime and orange color scheme. No doubt during the time of coloring him, I was basing him off of what my Lewa figurine looked like with temporary orange arms. I had given him those arms while waiting a long time to replace his cracked green arm pieces. 

You can see the example of that on the left. Orange and green aren't terrible together as long as the shades are right.

The beach scene itself can stand alone, and makes me feel so relaxed that I could stare at it all day. I wasn't sure which version I preferred as a background, the one with outline (left) or without outline (right). Both are pleasing in some way, but I did keep the outlines in one version to see if my Toa figure would look natural with the backdrop.

The character was after all a cut and paste object who then had a scene built around him. I sketched out an environment first, then painted within the lines, adding color, lighting, and texture where needed. Parts of the scene were only half colored wherever you wouldn't be seeing it (anything hidden behind the foreground figure).

I did set my character on both versions of the background to test which one he looked best on. Outlined version seems to imply he's part of the environment, while the painted version makes him stand out more as a focal point.

All I know is that I want to go to the beach now. :P