See You at WordPress!

Hey! To anyone who checks out the ArtzDeeva blog, I just moved over to Wordpress!

Yes, I've moved over to WordPress. Not only do I feel that its customization options are better than Blogger, but I just feel I'll be able to reach more viewers and other artists with a much bigger and more powerful blogging platform. It's a move for the best and much artsy goodness will come out of it.

So if you want to continue following my art, find me here!

We Happy Few-Islands Apart

We Happy Few-Islands Apart: It's been a while since I've put out some We Happy Few art. But now that it's coming out in the summer, that's definitely about to change. This is a piece I made after Compulsion Games teased their female playable Downer.

Tools: Pencil (outlining), Micron pens from Sakura, Mincho gray scale alcohol-based markers, and Crayola Twistable colored pencils.

Moving the Blog

Greetings from the ArtzDeeva! I've got a pretty big development happening pretty soon.
While Blogger has been very good, I feel like the blog would experience a lot more success and visibility if run on a different blogging service. So I'm simply going to be moving the ArtzDeeva blog to Wordpress in February.
I'm not going to take this blog down - I've put so much work into this version of the blog that I'll simply leave it up with a post directing readers to the Wordpress blog when it's up and ready. I've still got a lot of work to do for getting the Wordpress blog up and ready yet, but I will let you know when it's ready. From then on, the art and the ArtzDeeva journey will continue!
Also without spoiling a whole lot, I've got a lot of great content coming up soon! I'm going to start putting more emphasis on video content, ranging from things like the ArtzDeeva video I put up last week to more formal things like speed draws. But I've got a lot of fun, crazy ideas I can't wait to get started on, and I can't wait to share them with you on the new blog!
That's all I have for today - ArtzDeeva over and out!

ArtzDeeva Emerging

ArtzDeeva Emerging: I'm so excited to share with you a test for a form of new content - ArtzDeeva videos! This will be my animated persona talking about a variety of personal, nerdy, and artsy stuff in what I call the ArtzDeeva Den. Again, this is just a test, but I was so pleased with the result that I had to put it out there!

Tools: Photoshop (background), Adobe Animate (ArtzDeeva persona), and After Effects (editing).

Busting Out

Busting Out: I haven't gotten political with my art in a while - and while I don't want all my content to be political, 2018 is the year I finally allow myself to make it more frequently. I especially want to do more with the Liberty and Justice characters.

(Also, Jeff Koterba who makes cartoons for the newspaper here in Nebraska liked this on Instagram, and I'm still freaking out about it!)

Tools: Pencil (outlining), Sharpie Ultra Fine pen, and Pigma Micron pens from Sakura.

Power Couple

Power Couple: Happy New Year, everyone! What better way to start it than with new ideas and concepts? This is a couple I designed over the holiday break (most of which was spent lazing around being sick). One is all about science, the other about the arts, but in the end, they will bond together over love and the one enemy they can only defeat together - the stand in for stupidity. Who will totally not emulate Trump in any way, shape or form.

Tools: Pencil (outlining), Sakura Micron pens, and Crayola Twistable colored pencils.

L Triangles

L Triangles: I was struck with inspiration today. I was looking through the first volume of Death Note, especially adoring the drawings of L. On drawing really caught my attention. Because of how his body was folded in the crouch and the interplay of negative space with his form, I realized "He's a bunch of triangles". Excited, I broke him down into his shapes and then built him up from those shapes into his full form. This just goes to show that no subject is so complex that it can't be broken down into a simple process of building off of shapes.

Tools: Pencil, Crayola Twistable colored pencils, and a Sharpie ultra fine tip pen.

Star Wars-Previously...

Star Wars - Previously...: A little bit of Star Wars fan art I did before The Last Jedi came out (which, by the way, was amazing!). Just got myself a nice set of Prismacolor colored pencils for dirt cheap at Target, and had to use them on something. The fact that I didn't mess up any part of the drawing makes this the best inking and coloring job I've ever done.

Tools: Pencil (outlining), Pigma Micron pens, and Prismacolor colored pencils.

Farewell for Now, Patreon...

Here's what I've been meaning to fill you in on for the last couple of weeks. Please watch.

ArtzDeeva - The Start of a New Beginning

ArtzDeeva - Origins: I'm in the middle of some serious renovations on this blog and my YouTube channel, and I'm also figuring out how I'm going to work better as an artist (which is why I haven't been so good at posting lately). One of the things I'm doing is making an animatic on my artist's story. Yeah, it's easy to do a "Draw My Life" kind of thing, but why do that when you've got your own cool idea of telling your story and showing where you're headed. I will put out a fuller update on things going on soon!

Tools: Adobe Animate (formerly Flash).

Chess - Game of the Century

Chess - Game of the Century: This is it. This is my final for 3D Modeling and Animation class! The set up of the pieces, if you take a close look at them in certain shots, is based on the famous Game of the Century between Fischer and Spassky. This is also a basic rough prototype of what the arena in my actual Chess concept is going to look like.

(Sorry I didn't post last week, things have been getting crazy - I'll have an announcement out in about a week or so)

Tools: Autodesk Maya and After Effects.

Chess-Madness of the King

Chess-Madness of the King: It's finally here! I'm so happy to finally be sharing this with you all. This video starts setting in place all the blocks of story that make up this Chess concept. I sincerely hope you enjoy this one!

Tools: Adobe Animate and Adobe After Effects.

Chess Board Progress (Delay Announcement)

I'm sorry I couldn't post this sooner-I've been experiencing a lot of annoying Internet connectivity problems recently. Because of said Internet problems, along with work and school, I'm delaying the concept art video until next Saturday. I'm really sorry, but in order to make something that looks good without driving myself insane, I have to do this. Thank you for you patience.

But here, in the meantime, is what I have on my Chess-related finals for 3D-modeling class!

Chess Board #1: An overhead view of the chess board! The armies are complete and ready for an abbreviated version of The Game of the Century.

Chess Board #2: We've learned to play around with depth of field on the cameras in Maya, and now I can take beautiful shots like this.

Chess Board #3: Here's a more sinister shot of the White royalty staring down the enemy.

Chess-Madness of the King (Teaser)

Chess-Madness of the King (Teaser): I have for you the title of the new Chess concept art video, The Madness of the King, along with this piece of teaser art. Some would say that Chess is just another dimension of life, and for the White King Edward, the realities are blurring. What once were his friends on the opposite side are now his enemies, and his only desire is to have the board completely under his control.

Working fast and hard on this video - it will be out next week!

Tools: Adobe Animate (formerly Flash).

Laurie and Cumming (Plus Announcement)

First, announcement out of the way: I'm going to take a break from Wildcard Wednesdays. I've kept forgetting to do them for quite a while because of homework and my schedule, and until I'm on a better schedule to be doing them, I'd rather drop Wildcard Wednesdays and give you a crap ton of art than forget for the millionth time. So sorry about that! But the Saturday posts will keep coming, and I'll include a section called "Extras" for all the little bits of sketches and art that would normally go in Wildcard Wednesday.

But without further ado, here's some art!

Hugh Laurie: We finally started working on faces and portraiture in life drawing! We studied two faces, and one of them was Hugh Laurie. The process behind this sketch was my teacher would take the photo into Photoshop and blur it so we could only make out value shapes. Then, in two and five minute increments, the teacher would slowly sharpen the photo, and we would add more detail and information to the sketch until the photo was completely sharpened.

Alan Cumming: We all put in slips of people to study for the last face in class, and we ended up drawing my suggestion, Alan Cumming. We used the same process of drawing him that we did with Hugh Laurie, and I love how this one turned out. He's got such an interesting face, and working wildly with the charcoal and white conte in his hair added a little extra flair to the overall piece.

Chess - Bishop v Knight Test

Chess - Bishop v Knight Test: Getting the hang of Flash has been a little rocky, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of things! This was a little pencil test I did of a bishop versus a knight (definitely going to have to revisit my run cycles).

Tools: Adobe Animate (Flash).

Wildcard Wednesday #62

This week, we have: the transition to charcoal in life drawing!

Life Drawing #6: These drawings are from Monday night's session, and we were lucky to have the same model from last week pose for us again. We started moving towards charcoal, a medium I love but can find tricky at times (and definitely messy).

Life Drawing #7: One of the things I soon struggled with was medium values with charcoal. It can be hard to get any subtlety out of something as bold and sharp.

Life Drawing #8: The last piece of the evening was a subtractive drawing, where we didn't focus so much on capturing the whole body, but on focusing on the relation of shapes. I found getting the medium highlights I wanted was easier to pick up with a gummy eraser than to scratch in and blend with the charcoal stick.

Chess-Conservatory

Chess - Conservatory: In this piece of concept art, we see the Black queen Florence in her private conservatory. It was made specially for her by her husband, the Black king Alistair, and serves as sanctuary. Enemies would do better not to disturb her here.

Tools: Pencil (outlining) and Sakura Micron pens.

(Belated) Wildcard Wednesday #61

This week, we have: drawing from life! I lost track of time posting yesterday because of school, but it's just as well, because I came back from a really good session of life drawing with some improving sketches!

Life Drawing #2: Started off the evening with gestures, as usual.

Life Drawing #3: Last night was just a review of proportion tools, but unlike Monday night's session, I feel like I was finally starting to get the hang of things. The model we worked with had a lot of good poses for us to sketch from.

Life Drawing #4: This one, I believe, had less time to work on than the previous drawing. I've found that too often I try mapping out the form and setting in the hard contour lines and details at the same time. So this evening I spent more time mapping out the model, making sure the proportions and angles checked out, so that with what little time I had left, I could put in contours and details and know they were in the right places.

Life Drawing #5: Last sketch of the evening. I think I started getting a little too fixed early on, but otherwise, this just shows even more my different approach last night. I feel the most pleased about how the torso, arms, and left leg turned out.

Pitch Black Animation

Pitch Black: Short little test animation I made this week. I was in the mood for animating one of my favorite animated villains.

(I'm going to be moving over from Photoshop to Flash, or Animate, for future animations)

Tools: Photoshop.