Code Geass Fanart

It's been awhile since I've posted a full-color pic. And so I decided to draw one based off of the anime series I just finished watching, which supplied me with three weeks full of thrills, laughs, and overall delights - and with a phenominal ending that I never, ever saw coming. That series is Code Geass, and to any anime fans who have chosen not to watch this series for one reason or another, I would highly suggest that you take a look anyway. I was very, very surprised by this series, and its ending...let's just say I was more emotionally affected by it than by the ending of any movie, book, or series in a long while, if not ever.
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This drawing is the main character, Lelouch aka "Zero," and it is based off a quote of his that I thought summarized his character very well - you'd understand what it means if you saw the series.

Here are two other versions of the drawing, one without a background:

...and one with text included (of the quote I referred to).

*Special* The Making of Covenant

Welcome all to a very special post I've been preparing for the sake of my blog visitors. Out of all of those who have taken a look at the first chapter of my Graphic Novel/Manga project, Covenant, many have asked me how exactly I went about doing it. Since I follow a step-by-step procedure, I figured it would work well to show pictures of one page as it goes through each of these stages, so you all can get the feel of what it is I do!
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If that doesn't sound special enough to you, the page I have chosen happens to be from the yet-to-be released Chapter Two - Sealed Fate. In fact, it was specifically chosen to serve as a preview of sorts for the upcoming chapter. So, enjoy! And if any of you have not yet looked at Chapter One - Darker than Shadow, it's still here: http://covenantmanga.blogspot.com/. It shouldn't take very long to read; please take a peek :) And if the inconvienient formatting bothers you, I promise I am still looking for an easier way for people to read it.
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So without further ado, let's begin.
The Making of Covenant
Step 1: Thinking up the Story
I can't very easily show you a picture that goes along with this first step, because it is all in my mind. This is the only step that I can do anytime, anywhere - and I do! Any time that I'm doing something that requires very minimal concentration, my mind drifts off to Covenant-land and either tweaks certain scenes I already have planned, or comes up with ideas for new ones. At the moment, I have about seven chapters almost completely planned, out of the twelve total that comprise this giant project I've decided to tackle. But anything not yet drawn out is still prone to change, which is one reason making a graphic novel is better than just working on a written novel as I so often do - I get plenty of time to tweak the scenes and twist the plot until it is ideal.
Step 2: Writing the "Screenplay"
During this step, I take the story that is in my mind and turn it into dialogue, typed up on Microsoft Word. Occasionally I add notes of what is happening as well, so all-in-all it turns out to be much like a screenplay.

Step 3: Dividing the Page
This part takes more thought than one would suspect. Once I have the dialogue all written out, I decide how much I want on each page, and then use a ruler and pencil to divide my page into sections ideal sizes for each frame.
Usually, this just consists of boxes, but as you can see on the page below, there is also the outline of a figure - occasionally, this must be done when I decide I have a drawing that I do not want to have in a frame, thus the drawing itself is the frame.

Step 4: Drawing Each Frame
Once sectioned out, I can draw each frame as I've imagined them in the previous step. This I do in pencil, freeing me to make as many mistakes as necessary before I am satisfied with the look. Dialogue bubbles are also drawn in, but remain blank.

Step 5: Inking the Drawings

A pretty self-explanatory step. I go over the pencil drawings with pen - only the lines I want to keep, of course.

Step 6 - Erase the Pencil & Add Bold Lines

Step 7 - Scan Onto My Computer
Also pretty self-explainatory. Adding bold lines is something I only recently started to experiment with. I really like their effect, and often use them to create emphasis or mood to a few frames. I try not to overdo it, however. As you can see, I have only used them on one drawing on this page.

Step 8 - Clean-up

Now we are in Photoshop. I admit this is the step I least enjoy. But it must be done, because there will always be remaining pencil lines and eraser dust on my newly scanned drawings that must be done away with before I can move on to the more interesting steps.

Step 9 - Add Flood-fill and Gradients

Now that our picture is all clean, we can add grey to the black-and-white lines. This takes lots of decision-making: I want the layout to be as visually pleasing as possible, and of course, something that portrays the story as I wish it to be told. I may not be the best at it, but this step is what really brings my characters and story to life. Usually I use flood-fill on the characters and gradients on the backgrounds.

I really like how the bold lines work well with the flood-fill greys. :)

On this page, I have also pasted in a scene from Chapter One on the bottom square to serve as a flashback!

Step 10 (Final Step) - Imputing Text

Only one thing left to do! And that, of course, is finally putting the text into those dialogue bubbles. Even this takes a bit of planning, though - I don't want the text to ruin the artistic layout of the page, so special tweaking is applied to each block of text until it fits in with the intended frame as seamlessly as possible.

And here you have it - the finished page! I'll leave it up to you to wonder what is going on here... but hopefully you have not forgotten Celia Cottonmeadow from the beginning of Chapter One. Apparently she has a big of a larger part to play in this one...

You'll be finding out the rest next August. :)

Various Recent Drawings

Well, last week was a busy one work-wise, and so I wasn't able to do much posting or anything else. And so I've decided to put up some of my drawings from the last couple of weeks, even though they have not been cleaned up and colored to perfection just yet. Because I love to draw, even a busy schedule can't stop me from putting pencil to page whenever I get a spare moment.

First of all, here is a couple I've drawn many a time, a favorite from a roleplay from years past, whose story will always be near and dear to my heart. To those who still know and recognize these characters, this one's for you :) And I will be sure to color it in the future.
"Still the Yellow Rose's Colors Will Not Fade"

No story behind this one, I just thought I'd remind people that I don't just draw romance and pretty girls all the time. ;) Warriors are fun too.
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The following pictures are part of an artistic experiment of mine. I've decided it'd be fun to compare and contrast characters by drawing a picture of one right-side-up and one upside-down, so that one can see different things from different perspectives, emphasizing the characters' similarities and differences.

This drawing is of Ruka Jojiiry from G6 and Ryru Jojiika from Covenant. What do these two have in common? Well, looking at their names might clue one in, but essentially, they are each other. Ryru came first, and Ruka is the gender-swapped version of him. Since I put them in different stories, it will be interesting to see how their lives compare to one another - and already they have taken very different turns despite their same origins!

Also, the outfits they are wearing are based off another gender-swapped couple, Rin Kagamine and Len Kagamine from Vocaloid, in their "Daughter of Evil" outfits. (Yes, I still have a strong love for Vocaloid...)

This drawing compares two couples from the G6 Roleplay, one that is more "good" and one that is more "evil" ... but really are not that different. (The couples are Lawrence & Artina, and Landyn & Ruka, respectively. Yes, the same Ruka as the previous drawing.)

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I just like the composition of these drawings, and I suspect I will continue making things in this style.

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Of course, this is not all I have made in the last couple of weeks, but the majority of my work has gone to chapter two of Covenant - and I'm glad to report that I'm about half-way through and should successfully meet my August deadline! Also, I've got something special planned in the meantime... my next post will be about "The making of Covenant" and will detail the process which I go through in creating each page. I hope you will all enjoy that.

Weekly Assignment #3 - Heroes and Villains

Hello all! First of all, I'd like to apologize for not posting for such a long time. It has not been because I have not been drawing! Actually, the opposite is true - I've been drawing all the time instead of posting, hehe. And I have tons of stuff to show you all, but I'd prefer to get them as pretty as possible before doing so. But I do have some fun things...it's my next summer assignment, which was to draw 3 heroes and 3 villains. So I thought I'd take advantage of this opportunity to introduce some of my characters to all of you.

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Just for fun, let's start with the villains!

Here are the two main characters from Black Thread (yes, the main characters ARE the villains)...and even though BT was the only novel I've started that I never finished writing, I admit I am still fond of these two.


That's right, it's a character that is both a hero and a villain! Just for a little fun. Lawrence is from a relatively new roleplay that I have ongoing with my younger sister, and has become somewhat of a favorite due to the fact I have a thing for quiet, stoic characters. Hehe. Not to mention characters with seemingly paradoxical natures. :)


It's an old favorite and a new favorite. Though Slayer of Souls was written almost 3 years ago, Drehn still ranks among one of my favorite heroines. As for the other...well, I debated whether or not to include any characters from Covenant, but I just had to draw the mysterious hero (though you can't know his name yet! :3). However, I have learned that drawing a guy in a cloak kneeling is VERY challenging!! Hehe. Oh well.

Just so you all know, I plan on coloring all of these in the very near future. I just posted them now because they were "due." ;)
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God bless, and please check back soon.

Weekly Assignment #2 - More figure drawings

Pretty self-explainatory; these are my next couple of figure drawings. Nothing great. There are actually 11 shown here, but 1 is from the last figure assignment. So yeah!

Pink-haired Characters

Just a drawing I decided to throw together one day at 2 am as it occured to me that two characters that I really love the design of both have pink hair...and hey, so does my muse.
So here they are together: Luka Megurine (Vocaloid), One-Wing, and Signum (Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha).
Such pretty characters... I will probably be drawing them again sometime.

And I'm really not that into pink! Oh well...hehe.

Covenant: Chapter One is up!!!!

The wait is over - it's HERE!! Covenant Chapter 1: Darker than Shadow is complete and ready to be read by anyone in the world that wants to.
I've created a separate blog site for it which can be found
here: http://covenantmanga.blogspot.com/.

Since the posts are in backward-chronological order, please be sure to read the cover and information post first and then move on to read the pages in order. (If anyone knows how I can get the posts to be in chronological order, please tell me!! That would be really helpful.) Enjoy, and let me know your thoughts by commenting on this post. :)

I have to say I've been a little worried about this; it is the first time I've ever posted a manga online before (though not the first one I have ever made, I put together two series during my high school years). I know the quality of the first few pages is just not that good, as I was still experimenting with editing in photoshop, etc. But the last couple of pages look much nicer, and I'm sure the quality will continue to improve in the following chapters!

As for the story, that is where the majority of my thoughts and planning was contributed to. If you know me well, you know that I love to craft together deep and intricate stories with unique characters that are both fun and relatable. I will admit that Covenant may not be my best story idea ever in that it is not entirely original and new ideas (For that, read Heartwish!!). Nonetheless, I think people will enjoy following it and seeing where it leads.

So where did I get the idea for the story of Covenant? Questions like this are usually hard to answer because I don't get ideas from one place, but from all over. However, Covenant serves as a prequel to the novel I never quite finished writing, Black Thread. The story takes place about 100 years before the events of that novel, so you won't see Vance, Caelynn, Amani, or any of the characters from that time, but those few who have read Black Thread will see more than a few parallels. Mostly, Covenant is the story that explains how certain things in Black Thread came to be... that is all I will say for now.

Again, do enjoy this! There is a lot more to this story than it appears, and I hope you are able to see that Chapter One is only scratching the surface. If I am successful, you'll be anticipating the completion of the second installment - which I expect to be completed this August sometime. Until then, check back here for previews and other fun stuff! :)