Trollbabe finally finished

Last two Trollbabe images finished.

I realize this is unforgiveably terse, but I'm tired and my job is slowly draining away my life force.

Another quick Trollbabe update

So I finished another Trollbabe piece and work proceeds apace on the last two. Here's the one I finished:

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I've nearly finished number four - it's about 75% complete. I've still got the rest of the troll to finish (obviously) and some finer gradation of shading to do in some parts, but this one is going pretty quickly.

We're not playing Hero's Banner again until next week, but I'm sure I'll have art then.

Quick Trollbabe update

Work on Trollbabe is still happening. I finished another image and started another. I have just been lax in posting results.

It is late now, and I am tired from awesome, awesome Hero's Banner. So more later.

Trollbabe, part 3927

Things have been pretty busy in the last little while. Tae Kwon Do has been eating up a fair amount of my time. The investment has been worth it; after three months I have my green belt again. I'm hoping I can get my black belt back inside of two years. It's a worthy goal, but losing two to three nights a week is tough for art production.

Also, my shows are back on the air. True Blood has joined Heroes and Supernatural in the list of shows allowed to suck out my brain meats. I'm quite enjoying all three of them right now.

Lastly, I've been working on writing the alpha draft of the game that is not the angel game. It's a bit frustrating, because I know what I want the game to do. I'm just having trouble translating my notes into speech intelligible to humans that aren't me. But things proceed apace with that as well. I'm up to 2400 words, which is probably about a quarter to a third finished. Assuming I keep plugging away at it I'll have it finished and in a state to look at before too terribly long. Until then, I don't plan on talking about it.

Anyhow, all of this means I need to be a bit more proactive in finding bits of time to cram in Trollbabe shading. The more I do, the quicker I get - which helps.

Trollbabe piece number three is shaping up well. I finished the lineart, which you can see here:

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I spent forty-five minutes doing the shading and managed to do a creditable job on the face - which is always the fiddliest bit to do. So far I'm quite happy with how this one is turning out.

This image pretty much convinced me that I'll need to do color versions of these Trollbabes once I've finished up the black and white ones for Ron. Gaming needs more pinups of fully clothed fantasy women kicking ass.

Trollbabe: another finished piece

Things have been really crazy lately; I've been spending time getting ready for a rank promotion test which has meant I haven't even had time for Spore, let alone art.

I did finally manage to finish Trollbabe piece.

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Two down, three to go.

Finally returning to a normal pace.

I seem to be returning to a more "normal" level of creative output after my post-GenCon frenzy of creative activity. Much of that is due to Spore, which is an evil, evil brain that has been consuming my brain meats. But I've also been working on some other projects, which as of yet are not baked enough for me to want to talk about publicly. Almost! But not yet.

At any rate, here's another inked Trollbabe piece. At Ron's request I pulled the camera back to show a bit more of the context. I struggled with re-working with this, but I wound up pretty happy with it.

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I managed to do a few hours work shading the final result and wound up with something I'm pretty happy with - though I'm not sure how I'll handle the background. I guess I'll burn cross that bridge when I get to it though.

Watch this space for coming details about a design project that I'm almost ready to talk about that is not the black ops angel game.

Still crazy productive after GenCon

It took me a while to get back in the groove of working with hatching, but I finished my first Trollbabe drawing and consider it a success.

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I'm having a lot of fun drawing Trollbabes and am having serious thoughts about doing finished color versions of these images once I'm done doing black and white versions for Ron.

In other news I now have a second game that I'm pretty sure I'll have to write in addition to the black ops angel game that I've been working on. I blame this on Graham, as he's the one who gave me the idea. More later once I've fleshed out the idea more and am willing to talk about it.

Trollbabe: experiments with shading

So now that I've finished sketching, it's time to turn these Trollbabes into finished pieces. Here's the sketch I decided to work on first, plus a bit of added background. Before doing anything else, I just "inked" the drawing using Photoshop.

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I don't think my lineart is intricate or interesting enough to stand on its own merits, so it's going to need shading of some sort. Now, it's been a long time since I've done any truly two-color work; I much prefer the ease of greyscale. So I'm going to experiment with shading using different kinds of brushtrokes and/or hatching to see if I can come up with something that I like.

I decided to start with shading the faces and see what happened. Preliminarily, I'm going to say that I like the results - but I'm not committed to finishing the whole image. I'll keep going and hopefully I'll like it enough to finish.

Anyhow, here's the results of this evening's tomfoolery.

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Stay tuned for more trollbabes yet to come! Same Trollbabe time, same Trollbabe channel!

The last Trollbabe sketch

So here I am, sad because I've burned through all my Trollbabe already. Here it is less than a week since I started doing sketches and I've done five already.

Of course, I still have all the joy of finishing them yet to come, but it's just not the same.

Anyway. Here's the last Trollbabe, who gives me glee.

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It's a bad scan, because the sketch was really light pencil and didn't want to scan well. But oh well, I'm happy with how my troll came out. I still haven't decided how I'm going to finish them, with regards to shading and whatnot. But that will be something I can discuss with Ron.

I've decided that I need to do nice full-color prints of these and sell them at next year's GenCon.

Yet more Trollbabe

Me: Look! Check this out!

Kit: Awesome! Looks good.

Me: She's totally, like, I will f*ck you up! Don't mess with me!

Kit: Isn't that what you say about every Trollbabe?

Me: BECAUSE IT'S TRUE.

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This makes me want to do an entire series of fantasy women kicking ass. Trollbabes are SO MUCH FUN to draw.

I'm going crazy with posting!

I've been cooped up a bit more than I'd like the past week. This in combination with the fact that I seem to be having an 'on' period with my art means that I've been sketching the crap out of Trollbabe.

I doodled a pose on lunch today and then came home and turned it into this:

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I'm really happy with the drapery of the clothing, and again with the face. (Head a little less giant this time, thankfully. I think the horns wind up exaggerating head size.) I think I'll probably add some stuff to the background - probably some dudes getting their asses handed to them by a badass trollbabe. But for now, pretty happy with this.

I feel like GenCon really re-charged my creative batteries. I don't know how long this hyper-productivity will last, but I'm going to have fun riding it while it does.

First of the new projects: Trollbabe

Shortly before GenCon, Ron Edwards decided that he was going to publish a revised edition of Trollbabe. Originally, I gathered that the plan had been to have it ready for GenCon, as my husband sent me to GenCon with Trollbabe at the top of his shopping list. Apparently, Ron thought better of that and has decided to take his time in putting together a revised edition.

This worked out very well for me, as I wound up getting to spend quite a bit of time this year. I got to show Ron some of my work at the convention, and he said he'd like to use some of my art for the new edition. Aces!

So I'm in the sketching phase right now, just trying to come up with concept sketches that could work well as finished illustrations.

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I had intended to do nothing more than a horn study with this one, but I had a vague idea for a pose in my head so I went for it. I wound up being really happy with it, even if her head is too large. (I have a bad habit of doing that.)

This second piece I did just today after going home early from work (long story, nothing serious). I think the pose is a bit stiff, but the drawing overall has promise. And again, I do like the face, even if she has a GIANT HEAD.

So overall, I feel good that I've made an excellent start on planning sketches for Trollbabe illustrations. It's good to have Thou Art But A Warrior finished, but it's even nicer to have projects to work on. I'm discovering that I don't deal well with downtime.