Working with 3D models on Fisheye Placebo

As I've mentioned in the past, I had to go on hiatus with my comics due to chronic hand pain cause by overworking. Drawing comics is highly demanding simply because there are so many panel, a short chapter is easily 30 panels or more, while a longer one can be up to 80. So that's a lot of drawing to just get 1 chapter out. I found out the hard way that my body just couldn't handle it as I experienced pain, swollen fingers, and deformed nails from just holding the pen for too many hours a day, everyday. That's why for years I've only been posting the occasional illustrations to make a living, instead of any comics. 

For the last 2 years I've hired a team of 3D artist to build models for both Fisheye Placebo and Knite so that I can continue creating my comics. Painting over a 3D model to make it look 2D is much easier than drawing everything from scratch. It took a long time to build all of the characters and background models, but I'm excited to announce that production for the next Fisheye Placebo chapter is underway! And the new Knite chapter is mostly complete, just need a few more panels and touches. Check out my awesome team here!

I'm super excited to share my comics with everyone again in 2018! :D

Above is the paint over that took only about 30 minutes. Below is the original render. It's actually a super quick low quality render since it's just a test. The actual comic will have much better quality :)

I like fish :D

I've been wanting to paint some arowanas for the longest time and finally got it out of my system. There's just something about the way their scales glisten and how their fins flow that's so mesmerizing. 

And below is one of my older works on bettas. One of these days I'll draw allllll the fish...

Testing out new techniques using photos

One of my side hobbies is photography, and I've always wanted to incorporate this art form with my other art form. I took many photos while traveling in Japan, and some are used as backgrounds in my latest artworks. The painting below is created using a photo I took of Tokyo, and running it through Filter Forge. I used the Sketchy Paint, and Splatter Paint filters, and hand painted over other areas that I think needed touching up. The girl is completely hand drawn, as seen in the comparison with the original photo below. I've used the same techniques in the past in a video tutorial that explains in depth how I did this. You can check out that tutorial here.

A new technique that I discovered just last night is using a program called GIFKR. In GIFKR, I apply a filter called Standard Pixel Sort which creates this very interesting brush stroke effect. It doesn't always look good in all situations, but when it does work, it creates a beautiful and haunting flow. Once I've tested out more aspects of this program, I'll also make a tutorial on the possible applications. 

Looking through all my travel photos, I just really want to return to Japan <3