Rampage speed-ink.
Speed-ink (… is that a thing?) of one of the portraits for our Con14 D7D night!
Elias speedpaint.
Speedpaint done at Conflux 12 in Canberra. Unfinished, because I didn’t get to enough panels, and… dark? Because Procreate, I guess.
Done with Procreate and iPad Pro with Pencil.
Conflux 12: The sketch post.
So because I didn’t get to many panels at Conflux 12, I didn’t get much art done. Nonetheless, I dutifully lugged my iPad around for the entire weekend anyway, and this is the result.
Still unfinished… and also super, super dark. I swear it didn’t look that dark on the iPad. What the hell, Procreate?
I survived #Conflux12 and all I got was…
(…this badly photographed pile of awesome stuff!)
So yeah. I survived my second year of Conflux; go me!
Special big shout-outs this year to:
- Elizabeth, for babysitting me and letting me crash her Dungeon World game1
- Alex, for listening to me rant about Marxism, Evil Ernie, and pro wrestling
- Rivqa, for WoW squeeing and letting me hijack her Ancillary Justice panel with my this-book-is-really-about-the-American-War-of-Independence/-Civil-War conspiracy theory
- and Elanor, for sharing my love of Paul McGann’s Doctor and rage over Children of Earth.
I didn’t end up going to very many panels this year, mostly because I kept getting sidetracked by ranting at people in the bar (lots of ranting… lots and lots of ranting). On the other hand, I did get to do a workshop on the Friday where I had to create a YA character and book plot on the fly while being live critiqued by a panel of teenagers, and that was kind of traumatising, not gonna lie, so I pretty much needed the rest of the three days to recover.
Since it wouldn’t be a Conflux without a book haul, you can find the full list at GoodReads. I’m super-jazzed about Tansy Rayner Roberts‘ Mocklore books and Kaaron Warren‘s The Grief Hole in particular (and also super-jazzed that I got them signed). Tansy’s one of those people I secretly stalk online and absolutely fail at talking to in real life because I’m too busy dying of squee, while I fell in love with Kaaron’s writing after the last Conflux because ohmigod Australian female horror writer gimmie gimmie gimmie.
My other discovery this year was Meri Amber, who’s both adorable and writes adorable geek-pop you should totally go and listen to. She’s also the one who sold me my single most expensive purchase of the con: a set of metal rainbow Level Up Dice. Because seriously nothing says “beware the DM” like when she destroys your dining table by rolling her razor-sharp, heavy-as-shit, candy-coloured metal dice across it.
Zoltan the Dungeon World Bard says, “Showing up is METAL!”
Metal was actually a bit of a theme of the con, I guess. Poor Zoltan, the Elf Bard with the power of METAL!. We hardly knew ye. (Also, I’m kinda glad you got killed off halfway through because holy shit was my voice wrecked from death growling the next day. Good thing I had no panels on the Saturday!)
@enoughsnark @lokabrenna @elizabeth_fitz "…overwhelming social anxiety"
— alex but spooky (@euchrid) October 3, 2016
Oh, and next year? Next year, we’re getting ribbons.
- Even if she did kill me. Twice. ^
So this is why I finally bought PhotoShop.
I tried using my old tablet the other day only to find it apparently doesn’t work with Windows 10. It was really old, so that’s not unexpected, but still a bummer.
I’ve had the iPad Pro sitting around for a while. I’ve drawn with it a bit using Procreate, which is a great app, but I still sometimes missed having the full PS experience.
Anyway, so my version of PhotoShop was an ancient version on my PC I’d “borrowed” from my “friend” Ms. Internet like a decade ago. It still worked, so I figured I’d try and hook the iPad Pro up to the PC. The app I tried was Duet Display, and it destroyed my computer. Like, I dunno what happened, but something about the driver did not like my computer, and I ended up having to rebuild Windows.
Which, of course, blatted that copy of PhotoShop.
So, anyway. Long story short: I finally bought PhotoShop CC and grabbed Astropad for my Mac. Eternal blessings to the Spirit of Steve Jobs, because it Just Worked, and ten minutes later I was sketching. Huzzah!
This is Elias, for the record. Hopefully you’ll be seeing some more of him later…
Lava Lash pew pew!
Cleaning up my room, finding old sketchbooks from circa 2010.
I used to be kinda okay at drawing, as it turns out.
More old sketchbook nonsense…
Other random things in my sketchbook:
- Justice (from DA:O) at a party with the caption “social Justice”, and in shuttershades with the caption “celebrity Justice”
- Karkat from Homestuck
- Agent Coulson jumping in the air holding a giant gun
- Lain getting angry at a laptop
- Lain getting angry at a Nintendo DS
- Lain running away from Slender Man
- a sexy naga
- my character from The Secret World petting a giant centipede monster
- lots of otherwise okay pictures ruined by super disproportionate character heads
- old designs for LIESMITH characters
… and pretty much a different art style on every page. Go figure.
Poor Anders…
Here’s like an entire DA2 comic. The text reads:
HAWKE: Hey, Anders? Protip: whenever I’m tempted to do something magically stupid? I ask myself…
ANDERS: (How am I still alive?)
FENRIS: (I hate everything except Hawke. And killing mages that aren’t Hawke.)HAWKE: … “would doing this force Februs to punch my heart out whilst crying bitter tears of betrayal?”
(Fenris disapproves -1,000,000)HAWKE: And if the answer is “yes”, I don’t do that thing. Try it sometime, okay?
HAWKE: Except, like, imagine it’s Ser Pounce-a-lot instead or something, okay?
ANDERS: (imagining Hawke)
FENRIS: (imagining the Sword of Mercy)