Anhedonia Blue First Tasty Teaser

Finally things are on the Up and Up with Anhedonia! With TNPPress in it's own stable direction, where I don't have to man the boat alone as much anymore, I've finally had a chance to really sit and work hard not only on really strong conceptual art for this project! I've actually had an opportunity to start penciling in the first two pages of the comic this past week and am very please with where it is going artistically. I wont be giving any direct images of any of the pages (don't want to spoil the comic of course!), but now that things are moving, with 3 chapters (for the most part) written and the fact that production stages of art actually moving, i will be posting more often with better quality images. I hope to finally start giving everyone who is following this blog a better vision of the direction and style of this project too. Included with this post is a Desktop background Teaser for anyone who'd like to sport it on their computers while I'm actively working away to get the real thing going!

For now, i hope you enjoy the update and I'll see you back at Unconscious Ink [ui] until launch! [UI] will of course continue as scheduled, even when Anhedonia launches i will post new inklings weekly. Post may or may not decrease to once a week at that point though so that I don't get overloaded with TNP, UI and Anhedonia all at once!

Figure Study: Hands and Body

Hands, Lips, movement; Three things that give me nightmares to think about relaying correctly on paper. It's interesting to see how lips can express so much emotion if drawn correctly, yet if you draw them even slightly wrong then the whole thing suddenly feels like a cartoon and you loose the effect of which you intended. This is inevitably going to play an important role with my characters due to the fact that when i envision them and their interaction between one another, even the slightest change in emotion due to what is said will play an important role in where the story is going. So it's super important to me that I will be able to reveal these things through that.

I guess I'll just lay it out there now. I am afraid that I will not be able to paint the picture from my mind directly to canvas without my current abilities getting in the way.

So what am i doing to get around this? Draw Draw Draw! Recently I got a copy of Poser 7 in hopes that i can use this as a supplementary tool to actually going to any life drawing classes for the time being. I'm hoping to have an update soon on how I am going about using it to help me draw my characters as well as a short tutorial on how to use it in the first place. I find that as an artist I have been learning something new everyday, and would love to show/help anyone else who probably is struggling on the same things I am. Anyway, I've only played with Poser for a little bit so far and it's already proving to be a tremendous help! My next update will more then likely be a Poser post.

Delays

I must apologize for my lack of posts on here. My life has been so frantic, I moved to Seattle for close to half a year where i had to hold two jobs just to pay the rent, then had to move back to California to help out my family, and now I'm in a Design Communication Art Certificate program at UCLA; all in the last year and all reasons that I haven't had much time to work on this project at all! I have on the other hand been trying my hardest to at least get an unconscious ink out every Thursday (and possibly Tuesdays soon as well), so please come and check those out. On the upside of this whole being busy thing, i have at least been able to sit and sketch all the time on random pieces of paper or my sketch pads any chance i get. The the consistency of my posting [ui]'s is testament to that! I'm getting much better and the human figure, which is good since Anhedonia will be relying heavily on how well i can draw people but working on my inklings has really allowed me to explore the 'cartoonyness" of my art. That in mind, i felt i should give you guys at least a really goofy 'chibi' Eydis who can express the way that i feel at the moment about my progress on this project. Don't fret, i will have this project up and running at some point, and i promise to post here as much as possible in regards to that.

a world of magic

Something, I've sort of been keeping under wraps while i've been developing Anhedonia Blue is the fact that the world it takes place in has an aspect to it in which magic exists. This has been the center focus of all my sketches recently (that i haven't been posting), and the primary reason why I've been indulging myself so far into research; primarily for accuracy of what we perceive to be magic, how (if) it works, why (if) it works, etc. Reading books about witch craft...is interesting? I didn't know people truly believed magic is real till i opened up these books! I don't really want to go to far in depth with this idea at the moment, now that its out there in the open i can start posting practice sketches of magic since its been giving me one hell of a struggle over the past few months.

Every artist who draws magic draws it differently. I've been flipping through several comic books, checking people's Deviant Art accounts, searching through google images, etc see the different ways people draw spells. It's crazy how different we all picture it to be. Knowing that, I've been having a bit more fun just 'playing with fire' and seeing what i come up with. I wasn't really intending to post a picture of magic just yet, but i had to do an assignment for class the other day entirely in ink/inkwash, so i figured I'd play with it on Eydis to see what i could come up with. This took me a few hours before class... it feels a bit rushed, but for how quickly i put it together i was rather proud of it so i thought I'd share it with you all along with my quick update on whats going on with this project.

desolate city - building a setting

One thing that I am actively working and struggling with, but realizing more and more is very important, is that a strong setting will strengthen your work. The backdrop of where a character is located can give the reader a more accurate feel of the setting and mood as well as give a stronger sense of reality. Knowing this I've undergone a study in land/cityscapes. Recently I've been spending a lot of time staring at the city, taking pictures, and coming home to making an attempt to replicate it. This picture above is an example of one of the sketches i did of Eydis interacting with the environment.

Interesting side note, in doing these styled character/example sheets I'm beggining to get a sense of asthetic that i may attempt in the novel. Though i still dont have a set color scheme, I've realized something developing in my style. Working in pencil seems to give a looseness that i've grown fond of lately, unlike most of my previous work. This gives it a little less of a cartoony feel which really is ideal for this project. Talking with ali, tossing ideas back and forth, I've come to realize this is going whole concept start to finish is going to take several years, but it will be several years of growth and development; all of which you will be a part of along the way.

Character Sheet 1: Eydis (early sketches)

Ok, well I've been hiding as much about this comic concept as i possibly could in the past year because i want it to be perfect before i release it. Regardless i feel its time to start showing some of the concepts along the way... before i burst. Over all I'm hoping these posts will give me a bit more motivation to keep drawing and writing this story over the next year because seeing your stuff on the web verses scratch papers around your room really makes a big difference. If I'm not sketching I've pretty much dedicated the rest of my free time to researching different ideas for the comic, because i don't want them to be inaccurate. Also alot of the reason I'm back in school is to inhance the quality of my art, because of that this will also a blog about the developement artistic skill as i continue to create. Anyway, here's the first character sheet/concept sketch I've ever posted of any of my original characters. This is Eydis (still no last name), she is the main character of Anhedonia, which means I've been drawing her ALOT... and you will learn to either love or hate her by the time this whole thing is over.

Most of my life I've drawn women, but i've never been good at certain parts of the human figure. For instance, feet and hands have always been a struggle for me... so that means I'll be working on that a lot too. Overall on this sketch im happy with the feet though... I'm still crap at them. Shes still under development, but overall this is the basic feel of the way she's going to look. She has blond hair, blue eyes, a soft sweet look but she will go alot deeper then just a cute early twenties girl with no personality, i promise.

Ok back to the drawing board.