Archive for January, 2009

First thing to come to mind this week was the idea of a flawless diamond, and that evolved into this. Sometimes it’s fun to just sit down and do a simple illustration, beginning to end, just for kicks…

In other news, I’ve decided to whore myself out for cash – I’m taking character commissions. The prices are crazy cheap! Get yer characters here! No bites yet; I’m only planning to take on a handful at a time anyhow. Gotta concentrate on schoolwork after all. The end of fourth year approaches… eep.

EDIT: I now present SEASONS 2: THE SEASONING.

The more I looked at it over the day, the more I hated it – this doesn’t solve all the problems, or even most of them, but it’s based on a few crits from class and it was a good experiment, at least.

God, do I hate green.

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Y’know, I didn’t notice this until after I’d finished, but… I’ve been known for using green in my work pretty much never. It’s just a preference – I like the colour; it’s just not my thing for my illustration. So I find it funny that I actually managed to make a FOREST SCENE mostly reds and browns.

You really, REALLY need to fullview this one.

Very experimental – I rarely draw plantlife and I think this is the first time I’ve ever taken a real shot at trees. Tried a lot of new things; it feels way too busy in parts, but overall none too shabby. And now, off to class to see what people who haven’t been staring at it for the past several hours think…

Not a lot of time for posting now – got another whole final to do tonight, and I’ve barely started it – so here, sans-explaination, have a bunch of highschool stereotypes.

Fullview would be much appreciated.

Okay, so I sort of cheated and did a combo thing this time – I wanted to do Illustration Friday and I was struggling with an idea for a valentine to submit for grad sales, so I decided to combine the two. What came out was, uh, I’m not sure, really.

She’s not as pale as I meant her to be, but that’s mostly because I got really frustrated with the sketch, anatomy issues and the like, so I scanned it anyhow and threw textures at it until I felt better. I have such odd forms of therapy…

OTHERSKIES HAS RELAUNCHED. Check it out, then come back here! Go! Go! Go!

Yes, you may have noticed I’ve not posted a thing over the entire Christmas break, but now, after a week back at school, this is what I have to show for it. No art (well, one piece, but I did that over the past couple of days) but a spiffy new site with valid HTML and CSS, built up with some PHP and XHTML to make it wicked-easy for me to update. The visual design may be mediocre, but considering I knew zero PHP and only haphazard, learned-as-I-went fragments of CSS going into this, I think the technical side is pretty damn tight. Aw, yeah. I need to embrace my nerdy side sometimes.

And here be the aforementioned new art:

I wanted to do something that captured the idea of the domain: Other Skies. I bought this domain way back when I was 15, caught up in the whole anime collective culture, and back then I wanted something that sounded nice but also said something about me… and I think it still does. This is what really defines my approach towards art, towards writing, towards most creative endeavours. What I love is, not the high fantasy, pure sci-fi approach of some other world entirely, but rather that subtle shift in reality that shows something is slightly off, slightly different. Same world. Other skies. I think this illustration reflects both that philosophy and the literal name itself quite well.

Besides. Space birds! Who doesn’t love space birds?

A couple of other deeply minor matters: I entered the CMYK annual contest, and along with the entry itself the entry fee bought me this little portfolio space for a year. There’s nothing there that’d be new to any readers of this blog, but. You know. It’s there.

Also, if you want, you can now contact me at kim@otherskies.net. It’s just a forward to the same gmail address that was linked here all along (I could never give up my beloved gmail… oh gmail, you are my one true love) but at least it looks a wee bit more professional.

Expect a good lot of art coming up. This is my final semester of my final year and I’m gonna produce a hiring-worthy portfolio even if it kills me.*

*This is not true. I cannot be hired if I am dead.