Which would you prefer, a sick brain that could draw or a fixed one that can't? Tough call, huh? You can't really make a proper choice until you've experienced both sides of the equation. Ideally, there would be a third choice, a healthy brain that could still draw (and do other things) well.
My brain isn't completely fixed so I'm not completely talent-less, and even if it was I think I'd still be able to do Disney fanart, but I've definately noticed that there is much less creativity and drawing going on and much more mathematical thinking and coding going on.
Anyway I did have a huge blog post written about that but I figured, who the hell wants to read that crap anyway, so this can be an art progression thread instead - but for reasons stated above plus MANY more, it will probably be the slowest progress report ever.
This month's challenge: Sea Fi.
Why are the best challenge topics always going on when I can't do them? The beginning of the month I'm still recovering from surgery so nothing too exciting happens there. Finally I'm able to get up for short periods at a time and eventually come up with the mad idea of giger-izing Ariel the Little Mermaid.
Well, the Disney Gods weren't too happy with that and sent my non-existent blood count some antibiotic-resistant double pneumonia to try and handle. When I'm finally able to get back to the computer I have the following things stopping me:
- My drawing abilities have taken a huuuge dive.
- I can't stay off O2 for more than half an hour before I have to either lie down or pass out on the computer.
- My parents can't see me doing this particular drawing as they would most certainly dissapprove of the style (as it is, I keep my Giger book inside my Disney book, like how kids at school keep their comics inside their workbooks) and I'm not even allowed to be up anyway, so I have this system where I can tell when my parents are coming by their shadow changing the light cast on a little rig halfway down the hall, so I have just enough time from when the light goes out to when they arrive in my room to change the screen to the "innocent ariel" version of my pic so when I get sent back to bed they can turn off the monitor without seeing the travesty of my twisted mermaid.
- I have to actually be awake and in condition to sit at the computer and draw to actually be able to do it, so that cuts it down to maybe one "session" a day.
- The Disney Gods are mad at me.
- I'm trying to rip off two of my most favourite things which will no doubt end up being a huge insult to my favourite artists.
- This is a REALLY hard, if not impossible, endeavour.
- I like bullet points.
All these factors make it totally impossible for me to even finish Ariel on her own by the deadline, let alone the whole scene. For once I don't have a little MS-Paint diagram of what the scene layout will be, so use your imaginations.
In the background is the shipwreck of a spaceship. Cyber Ariel and Twisted Triton are having an argument while plate-metal Sebastian and Giger-style babyfaced Flounder watch on. "Ariel, I told you not to play in shipwrecks!". Eye moves on from looking at the argument and finishes on the skeleton of a star trekker decaying in the corner.
The spaceship is the Starship because it's an easily recognizable spaceship that I have a lot of references for, since I can't draw spaceships myself. It's buried in mud at the bottom of the ocean because the doctor down in Wellington quit so all the patients had to be sent up to starship causing an overflow that weighed it down so badly that........... Oh wait, that isn't this story. Nevermind the last paragraph. Just give generously to the starship foundation (the real starship) and help prevent overcrowding. Seriously, I was in a hallway for 48 hours 
26 July 07
Music..... American in Paris
Inspiration..... Giger
I wish I was..... Rhodri McCormack
Finally have some wips uploaded, although they hardly deserve to be called that as they're just sort of snapshots of "what I've done so far" each day. I'm going for Robin's freaky-cool style and even tried using the mouse for a bit because of the control it has with dodging and burning (these are all techniques I haven't used for aaages!).
It's hard to tell at the moment since there aren't any textures, but she's pretty much made up of cables and bits of metal. Her breasts are the leather strap-on style that can be seen in the background of a lot of Giger's work.
First snapshot: Ariel Outline
Snapshot 2: "Proper" colouring for parental benefit
Snapshot 3: Roughing out
Snapshot 4: Robin-ized
Hopefully it will look better once I've finished the whole (oh, and added textures). And I do plan to trim her butt a little bit.
For people wondering about the waters effect on all that metal - well, that's why the cords that make up her hair have rusted bright red 
Here's the spaceship sketch, it hasn't been given the Titanic treatment yet:
Hopefully there will be more wips to come, as I'd really like to finish this someday...
Anonymous comments are disabled
About ChenYun
Okay it seems there is an entire page on my "User Page" where I can write all about me, so since I'm never going to get a coveted IFX interview I'll write all about myself here!!
Most of the famous artists you read about say they've been drawing since the moment they could hold a crayon, with me that is totally not true. In fact by the time I could hold a crayon my parents were really confused as to whether I was left-handed or right-handed (a problem that would haunt me throughout primary school until left-handedness was finally accepted by teachers). Anyway, my entire childhood was geared completely towards academic goals. I still had a few arts in there, I played various instruments and did various performing arts but it never occured to me to draw.
I suppose I was raised in an environment perfect for growing an aspiring fantasy artist but I used those creative surroundings more for making my own little worlds and stories than for drawing anything. I've been surrounded by fantasy since birth - from my father I learnt the myths and legends of China and great stories of heroes and dragons.
For my mother I have one of the most loving and nurturing people in existence. She wasn't one of those mums like the ones today who tell their kids to stop imagining or tell them fairies aren't real. My mum was the opposite and I believed in fairies, Santa Claus etc until much later than most people because of the way she loved to surround our childhood with magic. On Christmas eve she would run around the house throwing pebbles on the roof, gnaw at the carrots we left out for the reindeer (and even left "reindeer poo"!!) and the Christmas Tree would magically go from empty to overflowing with beautifully packaged gifts without us hearing a peep! The Tooth Fairy left us little cards with writing so small we needed magnifying glasses to read them, and there was always "magic dust" around our "fairy tree".
She got the "magic dust" from my grandmother, a rather insane old lady (I mean that in the nicest possible way) who thought she was a fairy (she called herself "Wandering Star" although "Wandering Mind" might have been more appropriate. Again, I mean that in the nicest possible way :P ) and worked for a place called "The Faerie Shop". Her entire basement was dedicated to her work for that place and she therefore had literally barrels of every colour and shape glitter or sequins you could imagine.
When my grandmother was growing up the only real job available for ladies back then was to be a wife and mother and that wasn't her thing so she aspired to be a great ballet dancer. But then the war happened and ladies were recruited to sew stuff. After that she became passionate about sewing - but especially for the fantastic. Her elaborate and lovingly crafted fancy-dress costumes got her a job at The Faerie Shop where even now, in her 80s, she still makes the loveliest fairy costumes and accessories you can imagine. They're so beautiful you don't want your toddler running around in the backyard wearing it, you just want to frame it on your wall because of how beautiful it is.
Anyway, part of her being a "faerie" were a lot of mystical crystals and other fantastical stuff around her house, so that (coupled with her eccentric taste in clothing) led me to believe she was an enchantress for most of my childhood. She passed on her secrets of costuming to her daughter (my mum), and when my older sister decided to become a ballerina, I was constantly surrounded by gorgeous tutus and princess dresses. My sister was really serious about dancing so I was dragged along to countless classes, recitals, competitions, and ballet productions throughout my childhood which not only filled my mind with fairytales but also visions of princesses and fairies, wizards and magic.
Suprisingly enough, with all this going on around me, I was more interested in school and math than in fantasy and it had still never occured to me to draw until the end of primary school when I got a sim game called "Creatures". My natural need to create and some weird talent for programming (probably the aspergers) led me to start creating objects, worlds, species and all sorts of other things for the game (It's a lot like The Sims, where you can make furniture and clothes for them). Of course you can't have invisible creatures in an invisible world playing with invisible toys, so I learnt to use Microsoft Paint. The images I constructed laboriously pixel-by-pixel in MS Paint were probably the first pictures I ever made (other than childhood fingerpainted scribbles, of course).
Around this time I also had the most fantastic teacher who encouraged creativity in all her students even the ones who thought they didn't have any talent (like me). I owe a lot to that teacher, because it was while I was in her class I drew my first pencil-and-paper picture and discovered that hey, I quite like making pictures. But my life was still very much aimed at the academic side of things, I was four years ahead in certain subjects and I was really devoted to learning.
But perhaps it was fate that sent me an illness right around this time - when I had just discovered art. The thing in my brain slowly eats up bits of information in there so soon I was no longer the genius child but just some bored kid stuck in hospital, frustrated by her inability to solve simple problems that once took an instant. So it was that while I was lying around being bored, I began to doodle my various ideas for new items/species/worlds/etc for my Creatures game. Making any of those things for the game required both programming knowledge and the ability to make graphics that other people would like.
It wasn't long before my sketchpad was filling with ideas for things other than Creatures, such as my very own worlds (which I later turned into morpgs) and I realised that game design was a really, really awesome thing. But I knew that I needed to know how to draw my concepts before any of my ideas could become reality, so my parents got me a laptop so I could do this stuff from my bed.
Fast Forward a few years to when I was about 15 and I had a wonderful period of a few months where I was in this remission stage and I was able to go to school a few times a week and for once be normal. I met my bestest-best friend in the whole wide world ever then, and she introduced me to Elf Wood. As soon as I went on that site a whole new world opened for me and my journey towards being a fantasy artist began!!
The pictures in my Elfwood gallery aren't very good but I didn't get a chance to update because when I was 16 my illness came back with a vengeance and started slowly wiping things out of my memory. I can't tell you what happened between then and now because I've completely lost all memory.
The first thing I can remember is being in hospital just after a huge brain operation. My mum had been looking for magazines for me but couldn't find the "right" one - tabloid magazines were just depressing and gaming magazines just made me wish I could afford those games. Then she saw a magazine that had this awesome picture on the cover called "Imagine FX", proclaiming at the top it was a magazine dedicated to Fantasy & Sci-Fi Digital Art. Could there be a more perfect magazine???
After reading that I was hooked and I've gotten every single one since. When I lost my genius brain I thought my life was over and that I'd never have a future but these magazines have shown me there is an alternative route - I don't have to be an engineer or a surgeon, there is actually an industry out there that employs people to design games!!
So that's my story up to now. I can't believe you read this far!! Right now I'm waiting for my illness to get sorted out and then I plan on doing a course and maybe even a diploma. Ultimately I want to end up on the design team for Final Fantasy XXVIII but who knows what fate has in store for me in the future? I may not be the best artist - in fact I have absolutely no talent whatsoever - but I'm doing my very best to learn and IFX has been a godsend. It reawoke a part of me that I thought had died of depression long ago, and it's helping me learn how to be a better artist so that even though I don't have any natural talent in that area I may one day be able to produce pictures that people like.
THIS BLOG
Comments
Beginning the Journey Again said:
Well there isn't much but my last post on her was mostly a rant with a few pictures stuck on the