Trying Hard Seems To Be Working. I Guess.

School’s starting soon. It’s a good thing that there aren’t any lessons on Monday (especially in the morning. Argh) , for every extra day of rest is greatly appreciated 😀

This month of holidays is definitely not another waste of time. Where I would usually sit at my laptop for hours at a time playing games and browsing the internet for more cat pictures, I’m now learning the ropes of Adobe Illustrator and getting the hang of blogging, thanks to the great Blogging 101 community (I’ve recently signed up for it) and the hundreds of WordPress help pages!

I simply can’t help but find myself sitting glued to the screen for hours. 😦

The Constants and Variables of life. Heh.

For the last few days, I found myself scrolling through the Blogging 101 Commons page and reading blog after blog, and I’ve come to the realisation that I am far from the only one who’s dealing with a severe problem of procrastination. But looking at how all the other bloggers are trying to get over this stumbling block, I couldn’t help but feel inspired by them to do something more productive. Because why not? It’s the last few days of holidays!

*sighs sadly*

So, I made up my mind to do a poster with Illustrator. Yep. Completely productive. It was something that I had planned to do for ages, but I never got to it. “I can’t draw people, only things and animals”, “Hands are so difficult! Too many joints!” or “The idea won’t work, I suppose there’s always next time”.

Making up excuses for the sake of postponing things is my forte, after all.

Finally, after several long years of avoiding the frustration of drawing people, I actually tried. Just a sketch, but as long as it’s good enough to trace it on the computer, it would suffice.

Reference pictures were easy enough to get, just by typing in the keywords in Google, I got want I needed (together with hundreds of fanart). Of course, I still had to sketch it out on paper, for the proportions to be right. Hopefully.

Just to get the hands right, I took many pictures of my own hands. Sounds stupid, taking pictures while flexing your hands around to get the right angle, but if it works, then it ain’t stupid! XD  Can’t imagine why I never thought of this earlier.

 Once I got everything (somewhat) right on paper, I took a picture of it, sent it to my computer, and began tracing. After gripping my mouse tightly for such a long period of time, I started to wonder if I should get a drawing tablet. My hand still aches badly from being so tensed up, but my heart would ache instead if I had to spend hundreds on a drawing tablet and then having no time to use it.

Colouring was by far the easiest thing ever. As I was working with flat colours (I’m a noob! Haven’t tried the gradients yet 😦  ), turning everything into a Live Paint group and filling each space with colour was so fun and satisfying. All the doubts that I had during the line tracing stage got completely flushed away in the flood of colours 😀

I’m not finished with it yet. But it feels great to write down the process of how I managed to get stuff done, for it feels like I’m making some progress.

To anyone wondering about what the poster even is about, I’m here to answer you! It’s about the games Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite, by the (now-defunct) company Irrational Games. I loved the games so much that I really wanted to put both games in one poster, but I never did it until now. Still missing are a Big Daddy, Songbird, and the Cities of Rapture and Columbia.

Also, regarding the latest Blogging 101 assignment about finding a dream reader, I’m still not entirely sure as to who would want to read my ramblings. Especially since they’re about my normal life, and soon to be numerous rants about school! XD

Turns out that I draw feet worse than hands!

Line trace with base colors.

So. Many. References.

Bioshock Incomplete, The prequel! xD