Mostly done for practice! I sketched her out last month but beat around the bushed a couple of times before finally getting around to painting her today. Took about an hour to paint in the colours.

For some reason, I just had the urge to do a quick doodle of my favourite 90′s anime, You’re Under Arrest 「逮捕しちゃうぞ！」. Took roughly twenty minutes. I also decided to randomly record it using my really crappy camera on a dollar tripod instead of recording it via screen capture software! So if you’ve got twenty minutes of your life to waste, why not waste it on me sketching to some pretty music? Kudos to whoever is familiar with this anime!

Here’s the sketch, I’ll finish this eventually, I hope.

Why hello there. I finally managed to wake up slightly earlier today, at 0800 hours. It was just nice as the sun was coming in through the shutters on the one and only puny window of my basement.

One of the things I love about Alter’s Yoko is that depending on the lighting and the angle you look at her, there are subtle differences in her expression. She looks a bit fierce in the shot above.

The morning sun really creates quite a dramatic atmosphere, I should wake up earlier every day!

I’ll try and do more exciting shots next time, maybe even take my figures out into the yard for some fun under the sun.

I was going through my PSD files looking for something and noticed that I actually have a lot of drawings that I never got around to finishing. I should start getting up earlier in the day so I have more hours to do things. It was so easy to sleep at 2AM and get up at 7AM in Singapore since the sun simply burned my face, that doesn’t happen here in Canada though since my room’s in the basement.

I must say that the dust doesn’t collect as fast here in Canada compared to Singapore where it was a daily battle against dust bunnies bent on world domination.

It’s time to start saving again. Being a huge Saber fan, I just can’t pass this one up.

Well I’ve finally gotten about to changing/cleaning up my desktop. I ran into The Kobhens icon set yesterday and decided to try them out, neat thing is that it comes with the PSD file so I can make my own icons for apps that don’t have ‘em, like Tweetie.

For those of you who are interested, The Kobhens icon set can be found over at robertourso.com. I’m also using Glass Dock by Materia-Ring and the wallpaper and Bowtie skin (Minimal) can be found at Iconpaper.org.

I had initially placed a preorder on this bundle maybe…over half a year ago, give or take, on Otacute. Well, it’s finally here and I’m loving it. Opened the box to find the package plus an additional bonus DVD – haven’t watched it yet, but apparently it’s got an “interview with Rin Tosaka” in it, so whoopee!

Anyway, so the Type-Moon box comes packed with the PSP game, the soundtrack, an art book and a special edition Figma figurine of Saber in a sexy red dress. It’s quite safe to say that that’s one of the key reasons why I bought this in the first place.

Saber’s new dress is quite lovely. In contrast to her original blue battle dress, Saber is now outfitted in something a little more elegant. Excalibur’s gotten a pretty daft redesign too, it doesn’t even look like Excalibur anymore. Not too fond of that, but oh wells. One very neat thing about the Figma is that it can stand without any assistance. Most of my other Figmas(Saber, Tosaka and Haruhi) require the use of stands, but surprisingly, this one does not. She doesn’t topple over all that easily either.

Here’s the rest of my Type-Moon figures, as you can see, I’m quite the Saber fan! I have a scaled figure of Tosaka as well, but I kinda broke the stand – should probably get around to fixing that with some super glue at some point.

It. Is. Epic.

No doubt about it. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is one hell of a ride. This post has been a long time coming, I just haven’t had the time to sit down and write about (ok maybe not entirely since I wrote up the review on Gaming Union).

However, since I’ve clocked more than 60 hours now, I can clearly say that Peace Walker offers way more than what Guns of the Patriots ever did. While the fourth instalment was epic in its own right and definitely had plenty of moments for fanservice, it certainly felt as though it could’ve been better. Maybe I’m just biased towards Big Boss, but Peace Walker has so much in it that even after the end credits rolled, I still managed to spoil the game. How that works? Well, that’s just Kojima and his merry band of developers for you.

Being a sucker for anything Metal Gear, I actually managed to secure a copy of the Big Boss Bundle last month, thanks to my good friend April (Thanks again!). I’ve also purchased the novels and the Prima guide, which is really useful for the Extra Ops and collecting every possible item/weapon available in the game, of which there is a lot. There’s also the original soundtrack and single which you can spot in the photo above. That’s yet another plus over MGS4, the music in Peace Walker is really good, really engaging, especially when it hits the climax at the end.

Anyway, I’m still playing the darn game whenever I have the time to. If you’ve got a PSP, but no Peace Walker, do yourself a favour at get to your nearest game retailer and pick up a copy now.

Most probably don’t know this, but I’m secretly a senior ninja artist over at Mango Drop Games. I’m responsible for a number of event art and in-game background illustrations. Mango’s just dropped a sneak peak at one of the stages of Zenith Chronicles – harhar, see what I did there? Zenith’s a side scrolling shooter bullet-hell type of game with a pretty epic storyline (over seven endings!) and I’m pretty excited to be part of the development team.

Here’s another video, this time with the Gates of the Dead – which was pretty amusing to draw.

Anyways, enjoy the preview, hope you guys like it and be sure to keep your eyes on it! I’ll try and put up some of the promo art I’ve done for the game as well.

Hi everyone, I haven’t been updating this place as I should. I’ll make a proper post in the near future so in the mean time, please enjoy this lovely shot of a change of guard in progress that I took when I was in Taiwan. The guards were impressive, not a single one moved an inch or even blinked when they were on duty. The change of guard routine involved a long march towards the palace where they then performed some rifle drills, change guards, then march back to the entrance.

Alrighty, this here is my usual work process, from start to end, on how I usually illustrate a character. Today’s model will be the lovely Akemi, who had recently just come out from more than half a year of hiding.

(And no, I do not have a Cintiq, that’s just me wishing that I did.)

First, I start off by quickly sketching out the skeleton. I keep this step real rough, there’s no point worrying about any details here for obvious reasons. I try to focus instead on getting the pose and proportions down properly before moving on.

My lines are still pretty rough here, but at this stage, the idea is to simply flesh her out, her hair, clothes and other such important elements.

Next I draw cleaner lines with a 3px hard round brush.

Colours are up next. I like to fill the background with either red, green or blue, this helps me spot any small areas I might’ve missed out.

After I’ve added the base colours, I then paint up all of the shadows and highlights.

When all is said and done, I’ll finish her up by adding in a background and some visual effects. I honestly don’t like drawing things without a background, so at the very least I’ll paint a ground shadow of some sort. And there you have it, that’s how I usually work on character illustrations.

Really, I haven’t drawn my own character since October last year! Goodness, that’s more than half a year, I’ve been neglecting her.

Poor little bugger. Shot was taken when I was in Taiwan.

I had originally pre-ordered this from Otacute back in ye old December of 2009, that’s nearly half a bloody year ago. I placed my order simply because of the gorgeous Figma figure of the newly designed Saber, who’s now depicted in a lovely red dress and a brand new Excalibur to match, that comes with the game. There wasn’t much else details about what else came with the box at the time.

Alongside the game is the Figma, an artbook and the game’s soundtrack. The box art itself looks great! I simply can’t wait for it now, according to both Play-Asia and Amiami, the bundle is slated for a late July release this year.

Preorders for GSC’s Black Rock Shooter Animation Version is finally open! This figure looks so sweet, with this now GSC has a total of 3 scaled figures of the lovely lady from BRS in addition to the Nendo and Figma toys as well. She’s up for grabs at these online retailers, AmiAmi, Otacute and Hobby Search. I wonder which ones I should get.

Alrighty, managed to put up the speed painting vids of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker! Do enjoy.

Who’s scruffy looking?!

Practice…I need it.

More from Taiwan! So the second day took us to the place where the Queen’s Head is located, as well as Ocean World. It was quite entertaining, so many tourists were queuing up just to take a photo with the Queen’s Head and they even got into heated arguments. Lovely shite. The Ocean World performance was quite lacklustre, but still entertaining nonetheless. After lunch, the tour guide then led us to an antique town build on top of a hill. Plenty of shopping to be done there.

We even managed to take a group shot with the security guard!

Yet another tourist attraction, the Fairy’s Slipper.

The dolphins and divers made for some good laughs.