Going to start using this tumblr to keep my WIP photos somewhere organized so I can find them.
Started doing the gold work for Qifrey’s cloak clasp. Couched down fine gold thread for the background, then added felt padding and started couching down thicker threads for a raised effect.
My “HOW TO SAKANA” minicomic is updating on the Sakana website over the next two weeks! It’s an EXCITING AND THRILLING look into my comic-making process, so hopefully you will find some helpful information if you are also interested in making a webcomic!
Since I’ve been posting about my puppet-building escapades, I thought I might as well post my plans I’ve made!
I originally had the idea for this puppet in spring 2015 or so, and I sketched up the first drawing on the left. It was just for a personal idea at that point, and kind of a pipe dream. Then this semester (Spring 2016) I started a stop-motion class, and our final project is to build and animate a character in a set that we’ve made; and so I jumped at the chance to make my Sue puppet a reality! Therefore I made the second drawing on the right, and I am using it as my layout/plan for fabricating the current puppet I’m working on.
The drawing on the right is to scale, by the way - Sue is going to be about 8 inches tall when finished, and so that’s how big that drawing is!
So as I was working on foaming last night, I thought it would be a good idea to take pictures of my process! As a disclaimer - this is the first stop motion puppet I’ve built, so don’t take my process as the end-all be-all. There are definitely mistakes and pitfalls in my process, as illustrated here with her arm coming off, but feel free to take inspiration or learn from this as I do it!
Anyways - I took inspiration from stop-mo artist Christiane Cegavske’s process from looking at her blog for the foaming process. I took pieces of regular green foam and hot glued them to the apoxie parts of my armature (the grey stuff on the wires in the first few pictures) while referencing my layout drawing. Then I took a pair of scissors and sculpted the foam roughly to get it into the shape I wanted! I also took some of the foam scraps from that process and used them to pad out places where I wanted more mass/fix places where I’d taken too much away.
And then, after I got her all foamed, I started to file down the sharp, cut-wire ends of her fingers and toes - and that’s when her arm fell off, because the wire had gotten too brittle from being bent. Whoops. I ended up performing triage and just cutting the arm off while I was filing, and then I went back and used apoxie to reattach her arm. Normally this wouldn’t really fly, but I think it’ll work out since she’s a pretty lopsided puppet by design. lol
Anyways - the pic on the yellow drawing pad is one I just took this morning! The apoxie has dried and her arm is firmly back in place. Woo! Now to get fabric for her skin and such!!!!
Seven Colors Series - BRILLIANT PURPLECanvas on Acrylic paint. 606mm x 727mm. 70,000 yen
YouTube >> https://youtu.be/YIBczz1TlVg
DAMN I just realized I didn’t even talk about my settings that I use for my scanner in that last post >o<
here’s a screenshot of my settings, which are basically just the default settings that come with the Mustek scanner:
The scanner bed, while being 17 by 12 inches, doesn’t scan completely to the edges - it misses about a half inch off the bottom, usually. though that’s usually not a problem for me, personally, and can easily be fixed in Photoshop.
May I ask what settings you use when you scan your art?? When I scan mine they tend to be overly bright and I'm not sure the best way to fix that
I use a Mustek brand flatbed scanner, model “A3 1200s” - one of these:
they’re big, professional-style scanners - the scanner bed is 17x11″ - good for scanning comic pages and such! they’re a little pricey though, so I’d only recommend getting one if you’ll really benefit from one.
I’m not really a professional myself, but for brightness problems I’d suggest trying to fiddle with your scanner settings first - see if you can get into the preferences on your scanner/whatever machine you’re using, and mess around until you get something you like. if you can’t change your scanner’s settings, though, I’d recommend one of two things: draw darker, or adjust the brightness in Photoshop/the editing program of your choice.
drawing darker is pretty straightforward; just use a heavier hand to go over the drawing you’re going to scan, if you can (maybe even ink it in using a pen if you’re comfortable with that). as for digital adjustments, I usually go into Photoshop and hit up Brightness/Contrast when I need to darken or lighten a scanned picture. with PS, lowering the brightness value will make your scan messier, but the mess can then be fixed by upping the contrast value and judicious application of eraser tool.
I hope that helped a little!!!! I’m not really very good with troubleshooting or the likes, but I really do hope that I helped. and honestly, I highly recommend this scanner - it’s the only one by Mustek that I’ve used but overall they’re very reliable, even if as they get older they can sometimes develop a jitter. anyways - good luck!
ALSO, because I never really do this - here’s the process I went through on that last drawing!
1 - sketch 2 - freshly-scanned lineart 3 - cleaned up lineart that has been put through a threshold to make it completely black and white, + some slight fixes 4 - flat colors + BG, minor lineart fixes 5 - highlights (I generally add shading at this point too, but for this picture I chose not to) 6 - effects layers, i.e. glow around eyes/biolights and an overlay of color to brighten it up
