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“I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”

Recently, I found an article by Neven Udovicic titled, “Finding the invisible in movie posters,” which provides an analysis of a visual technique known as dynamic symmetry in movie posters. I think this is a really interesting technique and I have also been wanting to experiment more with physical character interactions, so I decided that these would prove to be an interesting combination. Whilst this is not a poster for a film, the analyses that Udovicic provides are universal. 

Excluding her tail, Ellen’s body and left leg are nearly coincident to one of the main diagonals. Additionally, her right leg and foot lie along the lower reciprocal diagonal and an eye of the rectangle, respectively. This creates a powerful stance. The coincidental nature of the legs provides a stable ground for the character, and the straight line-of-action that follows the main diagonal portrays a sense of strength behind the action. Contrast this with Belle, whose behaviour is reactive. Her head, torso, and left foot lie along the left vertical third, creating a sense of stillness in the character. The only part of her body that does not conform to the left vertical is her right leg. Due to it being parallel to Ellen’s right leg, it creates a flow between the two figures as well as emphasising where Ellen directs her power towards. Other elements follow the armature as well. The kiss lies in the intersection between the horizontal median line and the left vertical third. The edge of the cumulonimbus follows the main diagonal. Combined, this contrast of stillness and motion makes for an emotionally dynamic scene.

Something I wanted to express was a quiet and still atmosphere; akin to a shot from a film by Studio Ghibli. I chose poses and a camera angle that reflect this. The camera faces the two figures head on and the perspective tends towards a point in the middle. Aside from Ellen, everything else is stationary. Again, this stillness, contrasted with her actions, lends extra weight to it. It would appear as if the world had seen their kiss and come to a stop; nothing else is more important.

Overall, I think dynamic symmetry is a fantastic tool. It greatly helped in guiding my composition, creating a more visually appealing image. In my opinion, I do not think I would have been able to elicit the same emotions or feelings. Even then, I have only just been exposed to this technique: Further research and experimentation is warranted.

On an unrelated note, New Eridu consistently experiences superb weather, great visibility, and an high ceiling, despite its proximity to large bodies of water and mountains. It is these great weather conditions, unfortunately, that greatly saddened me when I realized that I have not seen a single aeroplane in the game. My piece features a correction of this mistake. I would be most delighted if someone could recognise the airline, even more so if someone could recognise the model.

Udovicic’s Article: https://www.geminianum.com/blog/invisible-in-movie-posters

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"Oh? Thinking about a career change?" It has been a while since I last picked up a stylus, so I do apologize for the quality of this piece. I developed the urge to draw again around a month ago, so I have spent the better part of December relearning how to draw. Honestly, it is quite surprising how much I forgot in a quarter of a year. Trying to find suitable poses to draw proved to be quite the challenge, I suppose that muscle has also grown rusty. In spite of that, it was enjoyable to create again. I had a lot of fun trying to imagine what kind of clothes Stelle would wear if she was in the IPC's employ. I do not wish to boast, but I must say I do believe my selection of attire was most suitable. Despite how much I disliked the idea of shading, through many references found on the internet and of my own, I think I was able to provide some sense of realism and depth to Stelle. Twitter

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"It's been thirty years since we last saw each other, right, Yukong?"

Aujourd'hui, j'arrive pour offrir un croquis saphique! Whilst working on the previous fan art, I encountered a massive art block where I struggled to produce anything substantial. Obviously, I did finish it in the end, but it was not through much trial and tribulation. The art block caused most of anything I drew to fall far below what I expected of myself, and I believe that this failure to reach my goals led to me taking over a month to finish the piece. This one serves as an application of a hypothesis I developed: "If I put aside all previous notions of harmony and what I think makes art interesting to look at, would this free me focus on what I want to create?" A sample size of one is wholly insufficient to prove nor disprove my ruminations, but I still think it is important to record my initial impressions. If anything, it helps put my thoughts in legible order.

As is visibly obvious, Yoji Shinkawa's work was a great inspiration for this piece. Specifically, his concept art for the FOXHOUND unit in Metal Gear Solid helped give direction here. The broken linework serves two primary purposes: To put emphasis on certain areas, and to act as shading. It also helps out with the art block; I no longer need to think about the actual silhouette or outline of each subject, a couple lines and curves can suggest a great amount of detail. Combined with a pastel colour palette that suggests light hues, I no longer need to worry about drawing in shadows or anything of that sort. Freeing myself from these shackles, I am now able to focus on aspects that I want to create, like the intimate poses, varied expression, and faces at different angles. I conclude that even though no definitive answer to my hypothesis can be reached, I think that this approach shows promise for relieving the mental stress I have around art.

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"Those ethereals are still here… They're like our landlord on rent day!"

After a month and a day of work, I have managed to finish this piece. It was quite the challenge. In fact, I almost gave up halfway through! This is my first piece that includes multiple characters interacting with an environment, and personally, I feel like I was too ambitious with this. Really, my eyes were bigger than my belly! I did implement an earlier suggestion to use a 3D model to help get the perspective right, and that's what I did with the car. However, I felt that this essentially "locked" the work in, and if I wanted to modify how any of the characters were posed, I would have to completely restart and find a new angle to view the car from. Perhaps I am simply not implementing this tool correctly, but I still found this restriction to be frustrating.

Another struggle I had was portraying materials. Outside of some fabrics and flesh, correctly drawing materials was really challenging! Surfaces like Billy Kid's metallic body and leather jacket were really hard to grasp conceptually, all my earlier attempts ended up looking like some kind of strange plastic. Eventually, through some strong use of reference images, I think I got something decent looking.

On an unrelated note, I really like the details that the artists had put into the Cunning Hare's car! I really like how they use a really cheap car and plaster it with stickers; I think it is not only funny but also suits Nicole's personality. To compliment this, I also like how the two stickers on the car's hood reads, "出入平安," and "財源廣進," which can be interpreted as, "Safe travels wherever you go," and "Make lots of money" respectively. I think it is really cute! It shows not only Nicole's more business orientated mind, but also her care for her team, going so far as to put these stickers on their car to ensure success.

"Excellent Jade. Age hasn't slowed you down one bit."

When I heard Thomas refer to Jade as "Big Boss," I knew exactly what I had to do. Of course, in keeping with the theme, I also had to draw inspiration from Yoji Shinkawa and his wonderful works. I'm a really big fan of his conceptual art, he really shows his skills when it comes to visualizing concepts. All of his concept art makes heavy use of rough, sketchy lines, and very minimal colours and brushes. Really, Shinkawa is able to say so much about a character with so few strokes, it's unbelievable. I suppose that's what concept art is supposed to be like, but that won't stop me from thinking that it's really cool!

I think I was able to get a good approximation of his concept style here. Obviously there are some areas of improvement, like the packs, but other regions, like the inner left leg and the hair, I think they turned out phenomenal. For anything that isn't a stick or any of it's pokey flavours, I struggle with drawing them. However, I think the rifle turned out pretty well here. I was originally going to give Jade the gun that the IPC grunt uses, but that looked out of place, and I think the rifle suits her much better. If anything, the combination of military gear and musculature gives her a more commanding presence, which is a perspective that I find interesting.

"Rules are made to be broken!"

I was working on another piece but I was really struggling with the background; I couldn't seem to get anything right. In a bout of frustration, I started sketching random poses, and the end result was this pose shown by Stelle. I really connected with this one, my workflow was very harmonious and I was able to easily jump from finalizing the sketch to applying shading and light. The legs were the easiest part of this process; mentally, they stuck out the most to me. They are in the foreground and occupy half of the pose, so I guess this probably why.

In spite of that, I did struggle with some parts. My struggle with shading and detailing hair has now been overcome and replaced with leather, I am not a big fan of how light reflects and scatters across it. I personally find my execution quite unsatisfactory, but frankly, I don't have the braincells to bother fixing it. I'm also unhappy with the eyes, they look like a cross between real-life eyes and more stylized, anime eyes. Combined, I think this creates an uncanny appearance to Stelle; she looks like she is only half-awake. Two more items to put on my to-learn list, I guess.

The mental image of firefly staring up to see the shadow of a baseball bat over her struck me one day. I flew to the computer and made the second image. I have no other words to speak about for that thing.

Overall, it was a week and a half from start to finish, actually only a week if I don't count rest days. I think I was really able to expand on what I learnt in my previous work, so even though there are obvious flaws, I would consider this a success.

Thumbnail I made for RTGame's greenscreen movie night.

I worked on this from September 5th to October 22nd, and while I think some features could of been improved, I like to think that I did pretty well. I did run this through Glaze, so there are some strange looking bits of colour, but it shouldn't detract from the overall viewing experience.