Season Greeting

December is one of my favorite month because of Christmas/Holidays!!! I love wrapping myself in my blankets and enjoying the cold (as long as I am warm in my blanket), drinking holiday drinks such as peppermint Mocha, gingerbread latte, and even eggnog, and last but not least holiday presents!!! Beside getting gifts I also like wrapping gifts and giving gifts to people I love dearly. This year I decided to make a homemade card for my friends and family. Here is how it looks like:

(I got a soft spot for Polar Bear ^^)

Beside that card for the past few days I been working on a different drawing because I was inspired by a print of a Pin-Up girl drawing by Kei that one of my friend gave me. Maybe one day if I make an online store I will make this drawing into a holiday card or months later when I look back at this drawing I might think "WHAT THE HECK WAS I THINKING!!":

Zelda Characters Fully Color

A couple days ago, I did some sketch of the characters from Zelda Skyward Sword. After finishing some projects that I had line up, I decided to color the characters. So far I only finish Zelda:

Birthday gifts

I am finally comfortable enough to give my artworks as gift. I don't do it all the time but when I do I feel like I can pat myself in the back for trying to make something endearing for the people that I care for.

My friend b-day was actually last month, but I didn't want to post up pictures of her gift until she got it and she finally got it this month. I was VERY inspired by Brittney Lee paper art...I don't think I can ever do some of the stuff she does with paper...but she really inspired me to do paper art. So my friend gift was my first (and maybe only) attempt to do paper art. I love her to death. I'm so sad that I couldn't be with her in person for her 23rd b-day so the only thing I can do is to send her something special and one of a kind homemade gift.

 

Another gift for a different friend who b-day was actually today. She is an amazing and awesome girl so I really wanted to draw her something special for her b-day. I knew for awhile that I wanted to draw her with a stormtrooper (because she LOVES THEM!!!) it just took me awhile to figure out the pose and drawing an actual stormtrooper...it's quite daunting to draw a stomtrooper so prop to people who ever attempted to draw a stormtrooper. I hope I'm 85% accurate with the suit....star war fans don't kill me lol.  

Chibi: Black Cat

I'm not the biggest fan of drawing chibi characters because when I think about it I think about anime style...and...it's just not my cup of tea anymore. However, when I saw a post on the group design-a-character about drawing a chibi ver of a Marvel character. I just couldn't let that go, I like Marvel characters so I decided to do Black Cat. I don't know much about her beside the fact that she is a character for Spiderman. I just like her because of her white long hairs and black suit. So here is the drawing I did:

INK: Legionaires by Tom Bancroft

It been awhile since I inked something. A couple days ago I came across this post. I really like Tom Bancroft stuffs. So it's a real honor and pleasure to have the opportunity to ink a drawing done by him.

Before when I ink something I would go it traditional which would be brush and ink, but I wanted to try something new this time so I digitally ink this piece.  It was a great fun and practice. I just want to break my steps down a bit or my process:

1. So I used  Tom B.'s original drawing as a bg and change the pencil work to a different color that I can see better with black inking. Then I made a different layer (oh I inked on photoshop) and inked over that. I used the Pen Tool alot, because it give me perfect lines and then I just zoom in alot to erase the end of the pen tool lines to make it more like brush stroke. 

2. The inking took awhile because I was figuring out what I should do with the different shading colors that Tom shaded on the characters especially the two characters on the bottom. So I decided to color the suit black and the highlight white.

3. Once  I was done with the penciling it self, I wanted to do something with the background. The drawing seem like it was a space scene and you know what that mean, the background should be black and you can see how that didn't go too well with my with black inking:

I had to look back at some comic inking artist to see how would they deal with black inking on black background and I noticed alot just made like a white halo or white outline outside the black inking. So I decided to give that technique a try.

 

What is a space scene without stars? I added stars and maybe even a bit more from the original drawing, I hope Tom Bancroft would be okay with that.

 DONE!!!

HTTYD Costumes

Wow, it been awhile since the last time I posted. Okay, so halloween is around the corner, not one of my favorite holiday, but it's growing on me. A couple of days ago I rewatched HTTYD and decided to draw this thought I had during the movie. A toothless baby wearing a Toothless costume and I thought of halloween and..trick or treating...candy...pumpkin...okay so my mind wonder for a bit, but I still finish the drawing I was thinking of. Enjoy!!!

A project I will revisit to make it better

Over the summer I got to work with a student from AAU to help her redesign some of her character design for her thesis. This is some of the clean-up work:

I CHALLENGE YOU, ALIEN TOY!!!

I'm a big kid at heart, so I like to draw illustration of little kids playing, so when I got a weekly challenge of to draw a Cowboy vs Alien theme drawing, I can't help myself, but draw this.

I spy with my eyes a....

For the past few weeks I been working on character design project for a student at AAU and now that it's over, I  celebrated with a drawing of a mermaid (that is going to kill you because according to one of my dear friend...she has a scary look hahahah. I really didn't mean to, it just end up like that I'll try to draw a nicer one next time).

I didn't think this drawing was going to be too much time, but it took longer than I thought to finish it because I really wanted to have the mermaid to have different hair colors and different color for the shading. I was inspired with Kei Phillips vector drawing/coloring of her characters so I was giving that a try. This drawing was really fun because I learn how to mask layers on photoshop, it really make coloring alot easier.

So enjoy for now, more to come later ^^

-Thanh

Warm-up: Fanboy Captain America

So I watched Captain America a couple days ago and I will admit, it's not a bad film. So today warm-up is a drawing of a kid looking around his house using a trash can cover as the shield, cut out holes on his beanie and wear it like a mask, wears a t-shirt with a sew in star, uses his dad working boots as his shoe, and places his mom dish washing gloves for gloves.

The drawing was inspired by this: drawing

Making of the Cowgirl Illustration

I got inspired to draw cowgirl after this post by a former classmate.

I was looking around for inspiration pose for the drawing and I came across a small pin-up thumbnail painting in the book "The Great American Pin-Up" by Harry Ekman.

It was an interesting pose gesture so I design my cowgirl character around that pose, but add some of my own idea into it. I started with a rough doodle and from there I redraw the drawing using the pen tool to create the lineart:   

 

With the lineart done, I color the character using just simple one tone color to see what suit this character best for me.  

 I'm not really good with tone coloring yet so I'm just testing this style out.

Then I added some highlight and change the background and there you do, my cowgirl pin-up.

-Thanh Ma

Pin-Up Girl

Two years ago I got a book call "The Great American Pin-Up" and I felt in love with all the different styles and gestures in the book. Now I finally got the time try some of the style out and make it my own.

Ahhh within in a month and I will be out of college...I only have three more weeks of school left. It's quite a scared thought. Anyways for the pass couple of weeks now I been devoting myself to character designs for my pitch story. I learn quite a few things and I hope in the future my characters designs will get better, but for now I really need to have a pause on character designs well because I kept changing their features when I should be working on their expression and poses...XD...that is for my pitch book after all designing characters is just part of the pitch book.

I'm quite happy with how the characters came out so that why I submitted my characters design to AAU Spring show 2011. Now the chances that me getting into the spring show is quite slim, but I'm still happy with myself. I know I can push myself alot harder (That's what she (he) said). This is going to be my last submission unless I returns to AAU for grad school, but it's still a new experience for me because within my three years at AAU, I have not submit to the spring show once and now at least once I tried to submit something before I left AAU.

Inking a comic page

AHHHHHHH I spent 15-20 hours...on an inking page...INKING!!! I mean it's great practice, but I might be a bit over my head with this project for my final semester inking class because...Lee Bermejo the penciler has a very interesting take in drawing comic page, there isn't any curve, very straight lines and that's one of the reason  what I wanted to ink his page, but again I feel like I was REALLY over my head. It really take a master of inking like my instructor Mick Gray to capture Lee Bermejo penciling, but you know I try. For a person that only started to ink comic two semester ago..I think it's not bad. But yes...this page is really time consuming and hand sore. I used tech-pen more than anything because I'm still not too confidence on my brushing, I can't do straight SUPER thin lines with a brush like my instructor (he can do it like it's no one business...oh my gosh....well he been doing this for 20 years, but still gosh I'm very happy to have Mick Gray as instructor).

Sorry for that rant there, but here are some pictures of the page:

 

Some of the materials that I used are Tech Pen .05 and 025, black ink, brush, rulers

WARM-UP SKETCH

I really should start a warm-up sketch daily or weekly. I need to practice more...and it would help me looks at something else beside characters that I been working for my pitch story. I don't want to look at it too much or at the point that I hate my babies because I'm sick of looking at it T_T....it's happen...anyhow.

 

I did this, this morning and it took me about an hour or so to finish it, it's just a warm-up for the day so I'm not worry too much about details, it's just a sketch to get my blood pumping lol. The reason why I am drawing Babydoll from Sucker Punch is because I saw it yesterday with a couple of friends and so the movie is stuck in my head and I love the music is the opening. 

CHECK IT OUT: Sweet Dream

Thanks

Penelope Mortin

Another character in development.

Erwin Lourdes

On a working development for the character Erwin. I'm testing out different color study for the character.

 

My friend, Amy decided to sketch some idea hairdo styles for the characters. I LOVE number 5 XD, but it won't suit his character too well.  I will sketch some different hair style for this character later to see if I can come out with a cooler hairdo for his character.

Some pages study for my pitch book story idea. This is a character design for the mother of my story.

I kinda set a goal for myself this year as one of my new year resolution is to draw at least one fanart per movie that I see in the theater. A few days ago, I went to the movie with a couple of friends to see "Blue Valentine."

And here is my fanart for the movie: