HTK & Shift up

You probably have not heard of Destiny Child.

No, not the R&B popular group but the mobile game from Korea!

Yes, it’s another gacha mobile game.
Yes, as a player you collect characters and evolve them through some grind-type game loop.
Yes, it’s a waifu collector.
But it also is a very generous F2P mobile game and it is directed by Hyung Tae Kim.

You may know him , he’s a Korean illustrator and game designer.
He is best known for creating character designs for
War of Genesis 3 and Magna Carta, and for overseeing
the art direction of Blade and Soul.
Destiny Child is the first title produced by his own studio,
SHIFT UP.

You may recognize his handy work:

The game’s premise is simple:
In Destiny Child, you are a socially awkward demon that grew tired of life in the Infernal Realm and decided to move to the Mortal Realm, working a part-time convenience store job. Unwillingly, he is tricked into entering the Archfiend Contest, where he is one of the many candidates to the succession of the Archfiend Lucifaro. In the Mortal Realm, you must recruit “Childs”, which are demon familiars, born from human desires. For example, a miserable nurse is one of your initial targets.

Anyway, this mobile game contains some of the best artwork in my opinion and the pandering to my weeb-side truly motivated me to pick up my pencil and stylus again.

While on holidays, back when holidays abroad were a carefree and mask-less thing, I had the time to sketch out Bari, one of the “child” of this game. She originally made a pact with a demon in order to grant the wishes of the lost souls that kept gathering around her. Bari herself wishes for nothing more than the Hades Flower held by Willow Doryeong, and is constantly looking for chances to obtain it. This has made her rivals with Jacheongbi, who also seeks the flower.

Official Bari

Lore aside, this is the original character art:

For reference, the game has skins players can acquire via blood gems. This is hers:

Itchy pens

And so away I went with my pencil and ink pens!

About a year later, and pandemic boredom demanding it, I had to digitalize this. I took out my trusty widescreen Intuos3 and began the distant yet familiar process of drawing the lineart. How rusty was I? It took me a hell of a long time to get bac k into it, falling in the easy to avoid traps and missteps.

But what a pleasure to listen to podcasts or music and to fall into the trance of being in the “zone”! This pic is far from perfect and I had to redo it quite a few times, but it’s been fun and cathartic to say the least.

So here’s the raw recorded video footage. Straight from OpenCanvas6, with some music from the game itself.

The post [Art] Destiny Child | Bari first appeared on Droolings.

Recent scans of doodles spanning over the last 2 years I suppose. I don’t know, time passes and I lose track of it.

The post [Art] More copic stuff! first appeared on Droolings.

I did it mostly in OpenCanvas 6 and added the finishing effects and composition touches in PS. 

The music is from the Vinny club.

The final pieces has two versions: 

And here are some closeups: 

Much happier with this result compared to the previous attempt at the character. 

The post [Art] Sombra: faster, better, stronger hacker first appeared on Droolings.

so I sketched her! 

Original pencil sketch

Once captured digitally, OpenCanvas 6 was used to ink it. 

Followed by some experimental colouring in Photoshop! 

Boop!

Not super fond of the final outcome of her eyes. But overall satisfied with the result. 

The post [Art] I did a Sombra :D first appeared on Droolings.

This is the result of me getting back into using them! 

[See image gallery at www.droolings.net]

The post [Art] Got me some copic markers! first appeared on Droolings.

This year’s EirtaKon will be bigger than ever. It just keep growing and there are no signs of it ever stopping!  This year’s graphic designer Juli and marketing’s Kay were the initial contacts. Mark joined the fray later to ensure communication happens.

Themes proposed by the committee this year:

• Sailor Senshi Lori
• Evangelion Plugsuit Lori
• Attack on Titan Lori

The post Lori 2015 – EvaLori #02 – Rei first appeared on Droolings.

This year’s EirtaKon will be bigger than ever. It just keep growing and there are no signs of it ever stopping!  This year’s graphic designer Juli and marketing’s Kay were the initial contacts. Mark joined the fray later to ensure communication happens.

Themes proposed by the committee this year:

• Sailor Senshi Lori
• Evangelion Plugsuit Lori
• Attack on Titan Lori

There is no doubt that Lori spends a lot of time creating her costumes and loves to wear them.

The Proposal sketch:

This sketch was based for reference from a Asuka statue.  I was in need of reference for the plug suit that Sadamoto designed, albeit fairly simple, is full of unusual details. Find below the images used for more suit reference:

The inked lineart:

For the Lineart, I worked on the hurl more accurately. In the original sketch, I noticed that the angle was off as well as tits form and shape.

The almost finished colour version:

You’ll notice the eye in the almost done coloured version. It’s higher than in the final piece below. It needed to be re-adjusted to fit the viewing angle.

The final piece:

And with this, we’re done. Proud of the lighting effect here, the butt really stands out *cough*.. I mean the depth effect is created!

You can find Lori cosplaying as Rei by clicking the pic below:

For all EirtaKon information and and to keep updated on the amazing line up for 2015, check out the EirtaKon website.

The post Lori 2015 – EvaLori #01 – Asuka first appeared on Droolings.

Freaking 10! Who would’ve thunk it? And this could have only been done thanks to the fine folks over at EirtaKon.

Especially Mark.

Anyways, like every year, I’ll just list the different phases included in the making of this year’s front poster.

Given carte-blanche by Eirta-management, with the exception that we wanted to have something depicting the 10 year anniversary, I strolled down the concept path to flesh a few ideas out. And sometimes the most obvious ideas seem to be the most relevant…

Sketch – warm up

And because Lori is maturing over the years, I also tried a more mature/minx approach:

Sketch – Minx

That was rejected. Naturally  It was the sensible call to make.

So on to the final piece. No fancy animated gif or anything. Here she is, raw and with a delicious cake.

Final Lori 2014

The post Lori 2014 – Happy Cakeday! first appeared on Droolings.

This year’s EirtaKon is the biggest one yet as it will be held in the Croke Park Conference Centre, over the weekend of November 22nd-24th 2013.

Book your tickets now while you still can, you won’t regret it:

• Trading Card Game tournaments
• Cosplay blind dates
• RPGs and LARP’s
• Artist’s Alley
• Workshops
• Pub quiz
• Trade hall
• AMV competition
• Guests! Troy Baker as guest of honor and Riddle as Cosplay guest.

Seriously, there will be lots to be done, seen and experienced.

For this year’s Lori we were obviously quite excited about what we were going to try to depict.

A few ideas we’ve had:

• Lori scoring a goal against a bunch of cosplayers, angle from behind the goalposts with the ball coming towards your view
• Lori stopping a goal as goalkeeper, with maybe a close-up of her hurl?
• Lori beating the shite out of a bunch of kids with her hurl
• Lori in the front, posing with her hurl, looking smug-ish. Behind her, an army of cosplayers. Background – inside crokepark.
• Over the top action passing pose “à la” Inazuma Eleven.

I tried to use these ideas as guidelines.

The first image to be sketched out was a trifle. Something small and easy that became EirtaKon’s Facebook cover picture for a while:

We also figured out we wanted to have an official label.

I devised the Lori equivalent, useful for labeling original gear like t-shirts, mugs, crayolas…

Parallelly, other sketches were being considered for the final yearly poster pic. Although trying to make an army of cosplayers in the background would have been a challenge I wasn’t ready to face, the attempt of Lori inviting the con-goer to join other cosplayers in the background was made. It just didn’t happen in the end.

Something in the last sketch just made sense and was generic enough to still express Croke park: the swing, the movement, the idea of Lori finally being able to be in the place she was predestined to be!

So the sketch eventually was inked to this:

Personally, I was sold. Her square sword was missing so that was added.

Yes. After all these years, Lori is finally wearing trousers. Orange trousers no less. Bet no one ever saw this coming (and have more important things to think about anyway)!

Are they convict pants? Possibly. Lori has been around now and who knows what she’s been up to in between cons?

Anyway, the picture has its flaws but the overall final piece makes me happy and proud. After all these years of loyal service, she still rocks IMO. She’s grown up and has yet some maturing to do but she’s currently at a good place.

The post Lori 2013 – Swing by CrokePark first appeared on Droolings.

I made some mock-ups of a car simulation-type game, a top-down beat-them-up scroller and a side-scroll adventure-type game based on the Stargate SG-1 universe.

It was a great learning experience and a lot of fun creating these fake games screenshots.

The post [Old] Pixel art first appeared on Droolings.