October 24, 2012

30DC-MG: Day 8: Octomaid

Octomaid. Sketches and doodles. Trying to figure out if to put the octopus part on the lower half or face... decided to do both.


October 22, 2012

30DC-MG: Day 7: Plant

This one was fun to do. Not sure why I thought "plant girl... plant princess" but there it was and then the idea for a punky sort of princess with a bird of paradise hair do. She's a little tough, a little rocker, a little warrior princess sort of vibe with the gladiator boots. She has a one shoulder sarong on with the leaf hugging her curves attached by plant magic and a belt. I imagine the back of her outfit shows a lot of bare back. I kind of wanted her to have a robin hood- peter pan kind of vibe too. I guess that's the tough and laid back attitude. Since it is Halloween soon, I gave her a sidekick patsy of a Pumpkin Seed dude. His seed body has some roots out for his arms and legs outside of his shell.
So much fun that I might do the rest as AT princesses... though there already is a Slime Princess.

October 19, 2012

30DC-MG: Day 6: Spider

I hate spiders. I'd follow that up by saying, who doesnt?, but I acutally had a co-worker once who thought they were the cutest things ever. She bred them and kept some as pets and sold the rest for apparently not too shabby profit to others who also love them.

I know in the whole circle of life thing that they area good bug, eating off the more annoying ones... but get me alone in a room with one and things will not turn out well.

So I did a good job of NOT looking at any spider reference material for this, save to remind myself of what the Spider lady in James and the Giant Peach looked like.

This day is pretty awful. Just throwing that out there.

October 17, 2012

Show Choir Logo

My husband is a teacher. I might have mentioned that. One of his co-workers asked me to clean up a logo idea they wanted to use for a t-shirt. I received this sketch:

I did a search for musical note fonts, took one into illustrator and altered the shapes a bit to get the letters. I kept the idea of the music notes as letters. I rounded off the ends of the letters to match the music notes a little better. I also took the curly-que from the bottom of the S letter to add to the C to make them look like they were from the same font. I used a different, more simple, font to keep the NCHS as a separate item visually. 


I like it. Not too busy I think. And they really liked it, so job well done! Yeah!

October 15, 2012

30DC-MG: Day 5: Mermaid

Mermaids... a popular and subject of a lot of drawings. So I drew mine. Lin Kohaku was a character that I created a long time ago for a One Piece inspired dnd game. It never went anywhere but I like her anyway.


October 12, 2012

30DC-MG: Day 4: Naga

A naga is a snake thing. Snakes dance.


Not sure why but wasn't feeling this one.

October 10, 2012

The Skees'

My husband really liked the last doodle from this post. So much so that he spun a whole story off it when talking to me about it and then asked if I could make a comic out of it for his birthday. Well, that was last month, but our anniversary was yesterday and I thought I would finish it in time.

I thumb-nailed the comic first. Then drew out each scene in pencil. We took some photographs for reference too. Then inked it when I was happy. Then scanned in all the inked panel sketches separately. Then took them into Illustrator to get vector line art. Then laid out the frames, vector art and text in InDesign. Then saved the file as an eps to keep the transparency. Took that eps into Photoshop. Colored the panels as if in full daylight. Then added a few filter layers to get the color right for a darker evening and the lighting. Added one more layer and tried to paint some backgrounds in for context.

October 8, 2012

Final Fish and Dragon Update

So I think I can safely say (fingers crossed) that I have made my very last fish hat. This final one was for my husband who has wanted one from the start. It consumed the last of several skeins so it was good to do and now he isn't left out.

Final total of fish hats made: 8

Since I was getting out a lot of yarn, I thought I would also tackle the matter of my Dragon hat's nose. Been meaning to add something to give it one to help the face feel more finished. So I started looking for a way to make the kind of cloud bubble shape I wanted. After not finding anything I liked, I then started looking for leaf patterns or tree embellishment patterns. Tried a Gingko leaf shape and didn't like it. So I went back to other leaf patterns.

Looks better with noses.
I finally settled on a maple leaf pattern. I thought at first that if it came out large enough that I would use the two lower sides of the leaf for the nostrils and leave the top for a nose ridge. But they came out pretty small so instead I made two (without the stems) and used one each for the nostrils. I sewed them down and then added black lines for the holes.

Just a shell stitch worked into the space and connections between the red and orange row.
I also added a bit of a neck ruffle down the side of the head to give the face a bit more definition and to add a bit more detail to the hat. I have a feeling that this scarf might be something that I continually add on to... Keep thinking about making the tail larger or adding legs. Or some sort of embroidery to the face, scales maybe?

October 5, 2012

30DC-MG: Day 3: Slime

30 Day Monster Girl continues...

Day 3: Slime

Looked at a lot of pictures of Slimer. Gak. Mucus. If I was a slime girl, I'd be lazy. So I'd need some sort of transportation. Thought about the enchanted bathtub that Lock Stock and Barrel from Nightmare Before Christmas had and thought that might be perfect.

I wanted the tub to feel like a dog, happy to sit and play in the goop for her amusement. Made the faucet long like a tail too. I imagine it might wag about too, since it isn't hooked up to any water or anything. Just a loose faucet in the holes it is set into.

But that would get boring fast and a slouchy pose suits a slime girl.

Boooooooooorrrrreeeeeeeddddddd.

Today I remembered I had another idea for a slime girl. Not made of slime, but excretes it. So a slug girl. So here is a second doodle for today. :)


October 3, 2012

Football Season... Woohoo?

Yeah so it's that time of year again. My husband, now being the moderator for the boys-only-noise-patrol-for-the-football-team aka the Norsemen, has to go to every school football game. Meaning if I want to see my husband before 2am the next day, I have to go to the games on friday night too. I draw the line at away games, but home games, ok. At least I am now at most 15 min from the school and can leave when I want to.

BUT, if I have to sit in bleachers for 5+ hours, I am for sure doing it in comfort of some kind.

So I decided in the interest of saving my back and butt, I would splurge on one of those bleacher chairs with the back and squishy butt. Found one at the local Academy Sports Store. Of course the back had their logo plastered across in in huge letters. Awful. Can't be seen with that.

So I fished through my husbands drawers looking for a solution. It presented itself in the form of a t-shirt for the school that he doesn't wear.

The t-shirt to be used.
I laid it over the back to make sure it was big enough. Yup! Then I made three cuts through both front and back of the shirt. One just under the neck from sleeve to sleeve and one down each side to trim off the excess. I was careful to center the t-shirt design because I wanted to keep it on the back side. of the seat. I turned the pieces inside out and marked with pins where to sew.

Three straight lines of sewing later, courtesy of my not-a-toy mini sewing machine, and I had a slip cover for over the top of the back. I flipped it back right side out. Since the t-shirt had a little stretch to it, it fit nice and snug over the back of the seat. I then took it off and proceeded to do a little doodling.

My name, the viking logo for the school team and a totoro of course and now it is MINE.

I added some industrial strength sticky back velcro dots to the bottom of the shirt to keep it on there snug, but I doubt I really needed that to keep it on there. And now I realize I ought to have made one side a little longer to wrap around the bottom and velcro to the outside, but oh well.  Still very happy, and I can always make another. :)


Total completion time: 30 minutes.
Difficulty: Easy

October 1, 2012

Daleks: Round 2

So I mentioned in an update that I would be revisiting my Dalek crochet pattern. My brother, who's birthday is rather soon, asked for one. I thought it would be nice to make it in time for this occasion.

He said white dalek. I assumed the one pictured below and got to work.

One of the first things I noticed between this one and the last was that this one, being two toned, meant I needed to come up with a solution for how to do those gold dots in the middle of white rows. I had two thoughts: 1) make a ton of crochet circles and sew them all on a finished body or 2) figure a way to crochet two colors at the same time but not have the gold show until I needed it to. I went with the latter idea. I created the body as normal following the pattern as before, but once I got to the part where the colored dot things start I added my second gold color to the mix. Using the white yarn, I established the chain for the popcorn stitch rows (which make the bumps) and when it was time to popcorn, I switched yarns. I was careful to keep the white on the outside of the piece when not using it, and the gold towards my body so that it remained inside the piece. Once I created the popcorn, I secured it with a chain in white and then continued the next three double crochet in white to create the space between each bump. Switching back and forth made an interesting look on the inside, but the outside was what I wanted! Obviously this would not work for a flat item, but since it would be stuffed the inside look did not matter.

Inside. That length is the space where double crochets were.

Outside. Look, no lines!

Switching colors for a popcorn.
Of course I got the whole body done, before I thought what if that isn't the right one?

Body done, unstuffed, no details on the arms or bottom. Guess its kind of a hat right now.
Sure enough, he wanted the new white dalek from the more recent season. Which of course, after you look at it, has different head, neck and eyelights. Still two toned though so I knew I could use my new yarn switching method.
New white dalek has different neck fins, no panels, and a foot pad.

Since this one has large sections of black and white I felt that I could a) not use the old pattern shape and b) switch yarn more often. I used a row of single crochet, followed by a row of back post single crochet to get the kind of neck vent look. Every time I switched colors for a new section I also used the back post single crochet to get that clean hard line between colors. Then I used that switching colors for the popcorns. I left the last row be a double crochet row in black to get that foot thing. Then made the bottom piece in black as well and used a single crochet to attach them together to get a kind of lip for it to stand with.

New and old for comparison.

 Of course I again made the plunger arm and manipulator arm, tried to make a gun face gun thing, and then embroidered the eyelights on since these are a lot more streamlined than the old lightbulb looking ones.

Neck vent texture, arms and face gun thing.

Another cute dalek out the door to EXTERMINATE!
The forlorn half finished one I have plans to finish at some point and make into a Christmas time Dalek. Because it seems absurd to me. :)