[comic] Gabriel, pg.6 [02-08-'10]

[WhiteFox]

DSOF Archives (current page) [NSFW] Occasional blood, nudity, and strong language.
Note: The DSOF archive has easter-eggs in it. These are minor elements that supplement the comic, but don't have a great impact on the story as a whole. I would request that people not publicly tell where or how to find these tidbits.
(First page)
WhiteFox Art Department Sketch Blog (Defunct)

CCC#4 Dekari: (NSFW: Pg13 nudity, Blood)
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CCC#5: Kipiru Starrider
Metalwork:
Silver bracelet, Handflower, and Gauntlet
CCC#7 Corgatha Torgaldors Kendred
CCC#8 Basilisks Darkshine
CCC#8 Bonus comic: I blame Gabi.
OSaS RP: Gabriel Cartwright
Dumpring- Hairstyles
CCC#12 danman's Vladim, bonus mini-gifts for danman and Basilisk
CCC#13 Basilisk's Baseel Wolksheem ([EDIT] And the Geurilla Warmech)
Sketch Dump CCC #13 sketches, Chassi development art, Andrace preliminaries, and a whole lot of "other."
Untitled Ciphered Winds, Prolog and Ch.1
Ciphered Winds, Ch.2 and 3
WhiteFoxes' "How To Talk To Artists" Part 1, covering the easy way to turn ass-pat blah comments into useful feedback.
-WF's HTTTA in the Long Library.
A backstory comic for Gabriel Cartwright: Steampunk, Insectis, and a little rat kid.
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So, I'm blinking tired of not posting stuff because my site isn't built yet. So I'm starting my new art thread here and now. Starting with posting what's currently up on my site. Which isn't much. More arts to follow, and updates on the forum cast image group pic thing.

For the record... I may know HTML, but I'm no programmer. Gah.

[WhiteFox]

The Group 3 draft just got sent out to those who are in it (Zina, Tapewolf, Ren Gaulen and Ryan Galen), Except (sorta) for Saist. Saist wanted to appear in City of Heros style Enforcer armor, which I thought was so cool I'd have to draw him seperatly. (he's not the only one, Drath is getting a seperate pic too.)

A couple of people are giving me trouble. Saist, for example, i couldn't draw until I had reference. Which I now do. Jouster is giving me some trouble, mostly cause I'm not used to drawing long-necked birds as anthros, and I'm  torn between going with the reference material and my own interpretation. he's pretty much the only one holding up group #4.

So... that's 3 drafts out of about 7 groups. Gee, I'm off to a good start.

Acutally, I had some medical issues to deal with two weeks back, and it's been hard getting back into my groove. Before that, I've was dithering over Saist and Jouster. I havn't forgotten this project, it's not dead, and I'm still accepting applications.

Status so far:

Group 1# (Already drawn.)
Aiyno Tajaka√
llearch n'n'daCorna√
Zedd√
Brunhidden√
LionHeart√

(IRC batch #1)
Danny√√
ShadesFox√√
Xeksue√√
Drathorin (will be drawn in biped and larger form, seperatly from the rest of the group.)
Wolven√

Group #3 (sent out for approval, except for Saist.)
Zina√
Tapewolf√
-Peace gesture
Ren Gaulen √(Appearing next to Tape)
Ryan Galen √(Appearing next to Ren, cause their names are so similar, and thus, I want him to )
Saist

Group #4 (IRC batch 2) (In progress. 75% complete.)
Tony√
janus√
Dimitri-Next to Janus√
Sofox- Leaning casually against something.
Jouster

Group #5
Valynth
Schizo
Gabi
Nelix
Mischa

Group #6 (This one will be fun.)
Keaton the Black Jackal
Hazzy
Shazzy
Sienna
Mew

Group #7
James Star Runner
Mischa
Tezkat
Cogidubnus
Thora

Group #8
Gareeku
Deeb's Giraffe



Anyway... If anyone who isn't listed wants in on this, PM me or grab me over IRC. I'd prefer you not post here, as this is my art thread and I'd like to keep it focused on that.

Just for the record, everone is going to be sent a draft (IE, Pencil drawing.) of themselves along with the group they're in. I'm not going to show the whole image until EVERYONE is drawn, inked, and colored. Cause I'm ornery, that's why.

[EDIT:] Some explainations. A √ means the character is drawn. Two means the character has been drawn, and that person has approved the drawing.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

For the record... I may know HTML, but I'm no programmer. Gah.

Heh. I dislike html archives, they're always such a pain to manage...

[WhiteFox]

Heh. I dislike html archives, they're always such a pain to manage...

I'm looking at some options for archiving., but for now I'm a patient sort.

[Dannysaysnoo]

So many 404s.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Heh. I dislike html archives, they're always such a pain to manage...

I'm looking at some options for archiving., but for now I'm a patient sort.

Heh. I have one. Don't I, Darkmoon? ;-]

[WhiteFox]

So many 404s.

What? Where?

I mean, links to placeholder pages, yes, but there shouldn't be any 404'.

[WhiteFox]

Happy canada day. Have a comic.

DSOF #11 -How Demons say "Do Not Touch"

If you're wondering why this strip took so long... every time I do a strip, I get to a point where I say to myself, "I don't care. I just want it DONE." I got one panel done on this strip (the last one, in fact) and went into shutdown mode having driven myself into the ground. Then I had surgery, which flattened me for another two weeks.

Well, I'm back on a roll now.

Work on the cast pic continues tomorrow. I couldn't work on that project with DSOF #11 unfinished, mocking me, but it's dead to me now. I might have progress uploaded and posted by thursday, but that's tentative.

[Tapewolf]

I'd have to say the feline guy is high on something here, either that or the 70 years of combat training was at the expense of his brain.  Specifically, demons have nearly unlimited stamina so unless he's many thousands of years old and experienced enough to avoid it, he's going to get flattened.
Also, there are at least two Mythos either on staff or as guests...

Anyway, that's the dialogue.  The art itself seems to have jumped up a few notches, and the last panel is beyond anything I remember seeing you do before.

[Brunhidden]

cubi do have a tendency to think that anyone else besides another cubi is just some putz barely worth the entertainment value of watching them die. i would say its not a good survival trait for cubi.


also, thats one impressive 'pissed off face'

Fie on you all!

[WhiteFox]

Anyway, that's the dialogue.  The art itself seems to have jumped up a few notches, and the last panel is beyond anything I remember seeing you do before.

That's... exactly what I was hoping to hear.

cubi do have a tendency to think that anyone else besides another cubi is just some putz barely worth the entertainment value of watching them die. i would say its not a good survival trait for cubi.

Felix is indeed quite egotistical, and more than a bit brash. He might be borderline psychotic, too. I havn't made up my mind on that point. part of his 70 years of combat training includes dealing with other creatures, however, so he might actually know what he's getting into.

also, thats one impressive 'pissed off face'

*Fist pump* Sweet.

Anyway.

Jouster, in the Group pic, has been slowing me down a bit. I've never had to draw anthro birds much before, that took me a day to work out. More problematic than this, however, is that the refrence pics I've gotten are highly stylized. I don't do well at imitating other peoples styles, so I had to sort out a "faithful" interpretation that I could actually draw.

Incidentaly, here's the design I worked out. I thought it was good enough, for a sketch, to share.
Jouster
I'm going to have to double check the profile/ref pics he sent me before I acutally draw his cast image.

I'm trying something new with shading here, I got a blending stump and I've been playing around with it. Here's a larger pic, since the smaller one doesn't really do the texture justice:
Jouster, big.
It's most noticeable on the legs. I used to hate smudging to shade, but that was because the oil/sweat on my fingers would make the pencil impossible to erase cleanly and wasn't precise enough anyway. A blending stump fixes that.

Anyway... blending (AKA: smudging) the graphite gives a really smooth look to some surfaces, and in cases like the pants, lets me combine a sort of fine hatching with blending to give texture to, say, cloth. Normally I can't get a really smooth shading since the texture, or tooth, of the paper won't let me, and I can't stand drawing on really slick paper.

Here's another example I pulled from my sketchbook, and RP character of a friend of mine. (She's an android pop-star, from the Megaman X universe.) The technique is really effective here, doing a much better job of shading a matte ceramic or rubber surface then otherwise.

Lotus, Large
Lotus, Small

Once again, two versions for those who just wanna see the pic and those who wanna check out the shading in detail.

Any comments would be appreciated.

(Why is my scanner making everything look so dark? Jeez.)

[Tapewolf]

Well, it definitely looks like Jouster to me.

[WhiteFox]

If anyone cares, I put together a quick status page for the Group shot thing. Just bare bones text, but it works.
Here.

[WhiteFox]

"Real artists ship." Attributed to Steve Jobs, but I haven't really checked my reference here.

Bottom line, an artist can be defined as being a person who makes art. Arguments over the definition of art can rage on for centuries, but that much can be held true. I consider my skills to be passable, but that's all for naught if I am not using them.

So, for the past month I've been in a slouch. Little progress on the forum pics, DSOF and TZTA4T are giving me a roadblock, and I've started messing around with inking by hand (instead of digitally) when I should be tackling either project more seriously.

I can't let myself fade out entirely. So, I'm updating here with a few of the sketches I've done over the past month for comment and critique, or for your simple viewing pleasure.

Antaas-
A character in a GURPS space RP I'm running. Antaas poses as an alien in an armored suit, but is actually a human female covert operative. She's in hiding from the military at the moment. She's one of the good guys, but right now all my players *Hate* her. That's a longer story I might share if asked to. BTW: the suit has two thumbs on each hand, the sketch doesn't really show that clearly. She's standing next to a standard "Human Marine" for scale.

FoxLeBlanc-

Quick little portrait of my avatar. I'm not really sure I want to go with this look though, or something more conventionaly furry. (See my previous art thread for pics of WhiteFox.) I havn't found a way to draw the ears that I'm satisfied with. By the way, this is pretty close to what I look like IRL.

Life drawing, Hand-
A LOT of artists HATE drawing hands, but I love em. I can understand, hands are hard to draw effectively unless you really understand them. I'm pretty good at life drawing, though, and they're such interesting subjects, so I get a lot of practice.

Portrait-
Some of my inkwork, it's a lot darker here than on paper. First time playing around with hatching... like, ever. I don't hatch when I shade with pencil. I used a very small dip pen instead of the Micron pens I have messed around with in the past, and I LOVE them. Much cheaper too.

Knot-

This is a reproduction of a celtic knot. I draw these a LOT, so I'm surprised I havn't posted any of them here yet. This was free handed, with out grid paper, so it's a little off in places. It's also about the size of a nickel in real life... yeah, you know that small pen I mentioned above? Very small. You can't tell in this scan cause scanning butchered it, but the black spaces are actually hatched.

Ryan-
Sketch of Ryan Galen, shooting at something. Rough as it is, I like how it came out. Whenever I work on the Forum Cast pic, I end up making little sketches like these. Most of them don't get finished, but I liked this one so I'm posting it. I could nitpick a few things, but I'm not gonna.

I should note to everyone in the forum pic that this isn't a good example of what the group pic is going to look like.

Also: I really like Ryan Galens work.



Anyway, That's some of what I've been up to for the past month. Hopefully, my next update will be more cast pics, or DSOF#12.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I like the knot.

Also, with the Antaas sketch, her legs are extremely thin; this implies that both her legs are thin, and the armour on them is also thin...

[WhiteFox]

Aha. I'm ahead of you on that one. In the RP, one of the players was an engineer, of sorts, and did a quick on-the-spot analysis. He noticed that it *wasn't humanly possible* to have legs that thin, or shoulders broad enough, to fit in the suit.

She's quadriplegic. The suit has a cybernetic interface.

It should be noted that I can be an incredibly evil game master when I want to be.

[Tapewolf]

Ryan-
Sketch of Ryan Galen, shooting at something. Rough as it is, I like how it came out. Whenever I work on the Forum Cast pic, I end up making little sketches like these. Most of them don't get finished, but I liked this one so I'm posting it. I could nitpick a few things, but I'm not gonna.

Also: I really like Ryan Galens work.

Just a quick check, do you mean the artist Ren Gaulen (Shades of Grey, Project Future, 'Fridge') or Ryan Galen, who isn't renown for his art, but is a sharp and insightful poster?

They're both feline, but I suspect from the headband that you really meant Ren.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

She's quadriplegic. The suit has a cybernetic interface.

It should be noted that I can be an incredibly evil game master when I want to be.

Bwahaha, that's just evil. ;-]

[WhiteFox]

Tapewolf: Yeah, that'd be Ren and not Ryan. My bad.

Not the first time I've made that mistake. Gah.

llearch: I love pulling that sort of thing on my players. I don't do it to attack the players, or screw them over, just to make things interesting.

Anyway... here's another knot. I think I might start putting one of these up with every art post I make. I should do a tutorial too.

On paper it's an inch and a quarter across.

I should give credit where credit is due: these aren't original designs, they're ancient celtic art. I did, however, draw these freehand. They're not copied or traced.

Alright. So, I'm at my wits end. I started inking manually a while back. Here's DSOF #12, on my pathetic DA account cause my FTP software is giving me hassle, in B/W:
DSOF#12: It's ten o'clock. Do you know where your demon is?
I'm looking for feedback on the inks, so I'm posting this now. I'll color it later, as soon as I figure out how. (If anyone has any suggestions on this, I'd appreciate it.)

As a note, I did mess up in a few places. Most notably, Theonor's hands in panel 2 and 3. Not to mention the scanner/compression screwing up some of the details, especially the hair. Wynk's tail in panel two is pretty messed up, too. Lastly, my hands started getting shakey by panel 4 due to low sugars. (Isn't diabetes fun?) Ugh. Any comments and advice appreciated.

On the other hand, I REALLY love my dip pen.

[EDIT] I just noticed I forgot Theo's wings in panel two. Brilliant.

[WhiteFox]

Drawing with one hand, crumpling up the page in the other.
So careful to build something, just to tear it down the next minute.
It's like chasing the dawn or grasping smoke.
Maybe I'm just mad. maybe I'm just tired.
I'm ready to scream, but all that comes out is a soft voice,
Saying "Fix it."
Pick up the pencil.
Sit down to the page.
Somethings false. Make it true. Something's wrong. Make it better.
Can't rest. Can't be satisfied.
Fix it. It's all I hear.
Fix it. Can't hear anything else. Can't hear anyone else.
It's all wrong.
Fix it.

[Valynth]

Oh crap!  Fox has gone emo!  Hide the razor blades!

[Brunhidden]

i quite like the perspective in this latest one, how he really does seem to be floating at an angle. also the paper tail of the warp aci is quite nice too

[WhiteFox]

Oh crap!  Fox has gone emo!  Hide the razor blades!

Now and then I'll go emo, that's when I feel like writing. Then I remember I've been awake for 18 hours and working for most of those hours. Then I go get some sleep.

Normally, I just delete this stuff before I go to bed. Then I'm left wondering just what I'd written the night before. Kinda feels weird, looking at it now.

But yeah, it is pretty emo. I blame sleep deprivation.

Brun: Yeah. One of the things I really wanted to avoid in the comic was "Sitcom" camera angles. I love using foreshortening.

[Tapewolf]

As for the Ren/Ryan thing, AFAIK I've done that once.  Since then I've made absolutely sure every time.
As for the comic, I liked it and look forward to the colourised version.

[WhiteFox]

Actually... I might hold off on color until I'm happy with the inks. Dunno.

[WhiteFox]

Well, you know how it is some times.

This one's a more serious attempt at inking. It probably took me a week just to figure out how to get it from the page to the 'puter in a workable state. Needless to say, I don't like  a lot of things about it, but at this point I'm just putting my foot down and shipping the product. Besides, I can't fix inking problems with shading. I'd rather get started on making the next one better then spend another week working on this.

Anyway, lemme know whatcha think.

DSOF 13: Rotary impeller, meet fecal matter.

You'll notice it's bigger. This is because I was reading a comic book IRL (The Watchmen, FYI) and noticed how much smaller the text was, compared to the size of the page, then most webcomics were.

[EDIT] Which is probably how the size of the text got mismatched. I just noticed that all the type is too large, except for Theo's first line. Also, I'd like to thank Turnsky for answering my stupid questions, it was very helpful.




On another note, I'm going to officially throw the towel in for the cast pics. It's not the amount of work that's a problem, I could draw fourty figures in three days. But what's taking up my time is the amount of research involved. It was about when I was trying to draw Keaton Black Jackal when I realized that I had never actually seen a picture of a jackal. So, I looked up pics of a jackal (one day) Drew some studies (another day) started figuring out how to cartoon them (two more days) and then actually drew KBJ (Which took ten minutes.)

So that's... the better part of a week. Not to draw a character, but to learn how to draw one. Which is what happened when I drew Janus (Looking up red pandas and formal wear.) And Schizo. And Gabi (Yeah, I can't draw foxes. Not really. Yes, I am aware of the absurdity). And Dannysaysnoo. And Tajaka. Let's keep in mind here, this is 5 DAYS per person I don't know how to draw.

I'm going to ink and post the pics I do have. Those will go up another day. I'm going to keep the character descriptions I do have, and I'll probably keep working on it. But I can't say I'll make any signifigant progress. What I did get done was a lot of fun, and I feel like I know a lot of you a little better now.

Sorry, guys.


Anyway, any comments on the comic would be appreciated.

[Tapewolf]

Pity about the cast pics.  As for the comic, it's looking good.  Presumably Jade and Felix have hidden their wings to give the other less of a target?

[Suwako]

On another note, I'm going to officially throw the towel in for the cast pics. It's not the amount of work that's a problem, I could draw fourty figures in three days. But what's taking up my time is the amount of research involved.[snip]

So that's... the better part of a week. Not to draw a character, but to learn how to draw one. Which is what happened when I drew Janus (Looking up red pandas and formal wear.) And Schizo. And Gabi (Yeah, I can't draw foxes. Not really. Yes, I am aware of the absurdity). And Dannysaysnoo. And Tajaka. Let's keep in mind here, this is 5 DAYS per person I don't know how to draw.

I'm going to ink and post the pics I do have. Those will go up another day. I'm going to keep the character descriptions I do have, and I'll probably keep working on it. But I can't say I'll make any significant progress. What I did get done was a lot of fun, and I feel like I know a lot of you a little better now.

I like the comic, though Jade's head looks a little strange.. but whatevah. I like Jade a lot.

I'm sorry to hear the cast images are taking so much of your time, Although I predicted this somewhat from the start I must say you made good progress in the meanwhile and have proven that you have been determined to complete your task. I'll be happy to see the results of your efforts, it's great that you have done this project in the first place.

[WhiteFox]

Tape: Jade's wings *become* flames when she goes into combat. As for Felix, he's shapeshifted his wings into tendrils to fight with.

Aiyno: Actually, The cast pics made me realize how limited my abilities were (Especially in terms of how many animals I can draw in a furry style). I'm probably going to continue work on the project to do just that. Only reason I'm putting it on hiatus is that I can't make regular progress on it.

[Suwako]

Aiyno: Actually, The cast pics made me realize how limited my abilities were (Especially in terms of how many animals I can draw in a furry style). I'm probably going to continue work on the project to do just that. Only reason I'm putting it on hiatus is that I can't make regular progress on it.

Hai, Tough I must mention that you already mentioned this. ( I did read prettymuch everything you said in your last post, I'm just not one to put much thought process in my posts, cake. )