Hand Drawing & Digital Coloring: Uta Hime Niko

New image, titled: Uta Hime Niko. Not sure what the name means, but it sounds cool and manga-like. Roughly it could mean Song Princess Erhu. Maybe...

I did this recently in my crazy phase after watching magical princess anime marathon on youtube. I remembered watching Sailor Moon when I was a little girl. Another reason why I did the picture was the competition posted on The Book Depository. Whoever won would get a set of manga books. Who wouldn't want that? The competition called for a drawing of your original manga or anime style superhero (or superheroine, whichever you like).

Seriously, I'm not sure what possessed me to make this design. It just happened. The costume looks a bit like latex. I was actually going for stretchy blue jeans and pink satin, but it kind of failed to look it. The boots weren't supposed to be brown (at first), but this earthy color was milder and more benign for a heroine. If the character was a villainess, I'd make the boots black with metal spikes. The style was a mix between western square dance fiddler and eastern court musician. Do you think it works?

Like most of the pictures in this blog, the first sketch was hand drawn and then it was colored using computer software such as Adobe Photoshop. So, here it is.

Digital Art: Chinese Fan Dance

A personal favorite Asian traditional dance of mine. The Chinese Fan Dance. I got hooked the first time I saw it on TV. The twirl of elegant fans coupled with the swirl of extravagant dresses was enough to captivate my uncultured eyes.

At first, the image was pencil sketched based on memory of the dance show on TV. The costume might not be accurately traditional, but I like the design. It's simple to edit with my graphic software. I scanned the picture and edited it in Adobe Photoshop, as usual. Selected the outlines, and then filled the selected area with white wash on a different layer. I tend to keep the original intact. I cleaned some mess I made in the original sketch to get clear lines. Made another layer underneath the line art and painted the whole background with black. The white line art image just pops, doesn't it?

Digital Art: Spirit of Rose

I am completely enchanted by the world of ballet. It started when I was a little kid, just beginning to know about Japanese manga. I came across this manga about ballet with the main character named Mari Saotome. I got hooked almost instantly. Now, I didn't jump ahead into the pond because I knew I would sink. But, I started to like drawing ballerinas dancing, or just standing in costumes.

So this, like any other of mine, was traditionally sketched with a pencil and inked with a pen. Then it was scanned and colored with Adobe Photoshop. The color scheme is red according to the most vibrant of rose colors. Red dresses are so pretty. The shoes are pink, as is the color of most ballet slippers. Unless you're dancing Red Shoes. Sometimes Odile's pointe shoes are black too.

Okay, ballet aside, this is not tampered with layer styles. Only pure traditional brushes and ... alright, I used blur filter too.

GIF Animation: Love Kiss

Not much can be said. I made these GIF animation to try out a GIF animation software. So these two love themed GIF animation were the first few shots at making an animation by myself.

Next stop would be flash animation. Hopefully.

I am not obsessed with all the romance and the kissing, seriously. These are just the easiest to draw. That's it. I created all the necessary elements on Corel Draw X3 for clean tidy lines. No hand drawing happened here. They were all vector images. Then I optimized the images in Adobe Photoshop and saved it in GIF format. Uploaded the image sequence on GIF animator and Voila!!!!!!

Digital Art: Girl in Kimono

This image I dubbed "Girl in Kimono". Or " Kimono Doll". Whatever strikes my fancy. Again in anime or manga style, using chibi or super deformed (SD) proportion which strikes me as cute.

One characteristic of a chibi or SD is mega large eyes. Head bigger than body. Teeny Weeny lips and less detailed limbs. The easiest to draw because I so don't have to worry about the correct body proportion or the natural flow of limbs.

Pencil sketch and manual inking as usual, with digital coloring on Adobe Photoshop. I think the colors are not vibrant enough for a digital image. Maybe I should use stronger colors. I usually like them soft, but this time it doesn't work. Using soft colors, I mean.

Digital Art: Little Ballerina

Aaaaand.... another anime manga style character drawing. The theme in this image is ballet. I call it Little Ballerina because the character is a little girl who dances ballet. And I like this Barbie-slash-Hello-Kitty blue-on-pink color scheme. In my opinion, the color combo has a cute effect.

Not much of technique is needed here. It's just an inked pencil sketch scanned and colored on Adobe Photoshop. The use of gradient fill is never mind-blowing.

Digital Art: School Girl

Yet another manga / anime style digital art from moi... Because I love the style, and so do a lot of people. This time, the subject is an anime style school girl (original character, of course... I don't want to get in trouble or anything).

At the beginning there was a picture of a school girl drawn with pencil. And then, it was inked with a black marker to darken the outline. After inking, there was the erasing of the pencil lines for a clearer scanning. Finally, the hand drawn picture was mounted on a scanner.

After that, the rest was history. Maybe a little level adjustment for an easier painting. I colored it with Adobe Photoshop as usual. I like the crisp lines and vibrant colors. The shading and highlights are as simple as possible, faithful to the anime style.

Digital Art: Heart and Wings

I made a new image. Yes, it is inspired by Card Captor Sakura.

I made this wholly on Adobe Photoshop. I was bored with nothing to do. So I doodled a bit and made this. It's nothing fancy. Just a little Gaussian Blur here and there, and a gradient fill.

It's so simple, a first grader could have done this. But I like it. I like the message attached to this picture. You know, like that song, ... "My heart has wings, ... hmmm, and I can fly ..."

Digital Art: Windance

I made a new image of a girl or fairy or angel, take your pick. Similar method like the previous images, hand drawn outline and digital inking with Corel Draw and coloring with Adobe Photoshop. Not much to be said about what inspired me to draw this image, other than I was thinking about the gale a few months ago. I did pick the title based on the Irish Riverdance.

The color green was my own opinion of the suitable color for the wind element. It's more aqua really, than true green. A mix of water and earth, I think. Earth is true green, water is true blue. Fire should be red or orange. I don't have the reference for this, so it might not be accurate at all. It just looks nice, IMHO.