New Art Time!

Well, I said I would try to get at least two posts up this weekend so here's #2.  I've been working pretty diligently on my personal project in my spare time recently and among what I've done are a couple new finalized character designs.  So here's a couple of the main concept drawings.  Here they are in rough-clean:

And here they are cleaned up:

Click to enlarge as always.  I'm not totally decided on these colour schemes yet.

Making Up

Well it appears I totally missed making a post last week, so hopefully I can get at least two done for this weekend.
First up, a bit of sad news for Dragon Ball fans.  A short time ago, within the last two weeks I believe, Dragon Ball Kai was confirmed to be ending, not moving past the Cell Games.  This alone is bad enough since it, in my opinion, ruins the point of the show; having a manga-accurate cut of an anime that leaves out an entire manga-canon arc is pretty...stupid.
More recently, on account of the natural disasters in Japan, the airing of the final episode of Kai was pushed back a week.  I can't complain about that, I certainly understand.  Unfortunately, the last episode now will not be aired at all.  Toei Animation's official website for the series no longer lists what was supposed to be the final episode (#98), now stating that episode 97 is the final episode.  Dragon Ball Kai's timeslot has already been filled by a new series.
 And, of course, I've also heard the news of the legal issues with the soundtrack for Dragon Ball Kai.  For those who don't know, a lawsuit was recently filed against Toei on the grounds that the newly composed soundtrack for Kai contained plagiarizing music.  Since then, Toei has been retroactively replacing the music in all the episodes with the original score for Dragon Ball Z.  I am not happy with this.  I do not like the old soundtrack for Dragon Ball Z, it was one of a handful of reasons I couldn't stand to watch the Japanese version of the show.
I mean, I know Toei did it as the responsible course of action and I can't claim any good reason the music shouldn't be removed (other than that it sounds better than what it's being replaced with) but I'm disappointed all the same.

So yeah...I think I might start picking up the blu-rays before FUNimation has the chance to recall them over the music issue.

On a more personal note, I have good news about myself.  School is still going well for the most part, my final film is now totally animated in rough and my other final projects, while still in earlier stages, are a lot of fun so far.
But for what's really been making me happy for the last week; I finally have a definitive direction for the long-standing personal project and I have the entire first arc for the story plotted out.  In fact, I just finished writing the script for the first chapter of the comic yesterday.  On that note:  Yes, I plan on making it a comic.  When the first chapter is finished, I plan on making it available through a friend's website, Skull Kids Productions.
I will be sure to keep my blog updated on that matter.

Oh Boy...

Well, as I said last week, I have some new art goodies to post. First off, digging up an older topic, I have a new drawing relevant to my personal project that I've been juggling ideas on for years now (and still don't have a definite direction to go with).  In any case, here's a new bit of art for a character I've shown in the past (Nelia).  Just like Rick, long before her, I finally made a coloured image of her.

She's also gone through a very minor change:  She no longer has any bangs.  I liked how they looked until one day I drew a quick doodle of her and simply forgot to put the bangs on it.  When I realized I had forgotten them, I realized I like the way she looks without them better.
In addition, here's the rough-clean version of the drawing:

So that's that.

Again, I have some more drawings to share, but they'll come in the future.  However, I'm not done with this post yet.
As much as I like looking at the work of good artists...I honestly enjoy looking at the work of bad artists...at least the ones with mind-boggling stories behind them.  Sometimes you'll stumble across a comic, published by a major company, with art so bad you just can't help but be astounded that it exists.
Probably the most well-known example of this is the artist known as Rob Liefeld.  If you're like I used to be in my pre-college life and equate amount of details to how good a piece of art is...Rob Liefeld is a good name to look up if you want to prove yourself wrong.
Why am I bringing this up?  Well I just wanted to lead in to this little gem of an article:
http://progressiveboink.com/archive/robliefeld.html
It's a very amusing read/view.
Rob Liefeld is well known among many comic fans for varying reasons.  On one hand, he helped define design trends in 90's superheroes, on the other hand...his art is terrible.
I think what I like about looking at bad art is seeing how many wrong bits I can pick out on my own.  It helps me show myself that I'm growing as an artist and gives me a good idea of what to avoid.
Honestly, I think #40 in that article should have been #1.  But I guess it wasn't entirely based on the quality of the art (refer to the comment on the final drawing in the article).

Well, for now, I'll go ahead and leave you with one other name you might look up if you're craving some poor comic artwork:  Pat Lee.  An artist of varying kinds ('comic' and 'scam' in particular) known for his work on Dreamwave's Transformers comics.  A good starting point for the story behind him and some of his masterpieces would be to look him up on tfwiki.net.

Heroes and Villains

Well, long time coming, I finished doing the digitally cleaned art for my Dragon Ball Z prints.

And that's pretty much all there is to report for today.  I've got some more original artwork I've been working on but that will be saved for another time.