Lwaizedoh Update

More progress with the Lwaizedoh Adoptables that were created as a fun project for an online virtual pet game called PonyIsland

So far I've gotten the base colours down on six out of the seven adults. Next up comes the shading and all the simple background and info for each individual one. Lots of work, but fun.

Started as sketches, inked in Illustrator with the Pen Tool and then Coloured/Shaded in Photoshop.

Mostly Sketches...

But a few of the drawings I've coloured with a solid base on Photoshop, until I get around to either drawing a better or full sketch and the time to properly render it then.

Below is a random assortment of sketches, a few more Dragonriders of Pern inspired ones on one side and then a few centaur related sketches and one draconic monster.

And a few random assortment of hybrid creatures that I created for others, just for the fun of it. In the process of colouring and shading two of them, while most have been inked in Illustrator and four remain as sketches.
Still more to come in the next few days or weeks!

The Dragonriders of Pern - Character Concepts

'The Dragonriders of Pern' by Anne McCaffrey was one of the first book series I ever read, aside from the Narnia series. My obsession with it when I was young led me to discover the online roleplaying/gaming community of Pern in late 1999, early 2000 before the release of the Dragonriders of Pern game for PC and Dreamcast. These MUCKs and MUDs were text based games with themes set to particular times in the official books. People all over the world created their own characters and we'd spin off our own stories.

Over the years, I managed to create roughly 7 different characters from these games, many of them retired and only a few that I actively log in. During this time, several of these characters went through heavy development. Each has a huge history that I've written up. But only recently, have I begun to draw them. So this post is dedicated, a little, to the few concept drawings I have of two of my more current Pernese characters:

J'sek - I posted an earlier concept of him in a post down below. Since then, I've tweaked a few details, although I'm still not settled on his design. I plan to do many more of him, as he's been one of my more actively played characters and one that I have plenty of fodder to work off of when it comes to inspiration.

I also toyed around with some expressions - quick sketches done just to get a feel for his facial structure, but also because I felt I needed more practice with human expressions.

I also decided to give a try at a Pernese dragon by drawing J'sek's blue Areteth. What made Areteth even more difficult to do was that he was born with a broken front arm and foot. While the arm healed, the foot never did and several of the fingers curl oddly. I tried a hand at just putting his base colour in with no shade or highlight rendering. I kind of like the design, but I'll be going over it when I get the chance.

G'rism - Another relatively new character, I did a quick pen sketch of him while doodling on scrap paper. I went over the pose on another sheet of paper in colerase this time and did a quick rendering just to see how it would work out. I'll definitely be doing more sketches of him and maybe throw in more of his firelizard Fahren and maybe even his bronze dragon Troyseth.

The Highwayman - Concepts

I've always been a fan of the poem 'The Highwayman' by Alfred Noyes, ever since I first read it in my English class in Elementary School. Later, I discovered the song version of it done by Loreena Mckennitt and that inspired me into slowly developing yet another project. So I began to do research and slowly am I beginning to put the pieces together to either make a simple storyboard lieca reel of The Highwayman or simply keep it at character and layout design.

So far though, I've just been toying around with character design:

Above is a lineup of all the quick sketches I did of Bess. I was having a particularly tough time figuring out her hair and upper body. So at one point, I kept going over the same drawing once I figured I'd hit on something. Eventually, I settled on the seventh drawing:

The "Highwayman" - as I call him, considering he's never given a real name aside from his title, is proving to be the biggest challenge. So far, I've only managed to whip up one concept of him that I find promising that I had done in pen while scribbling on some scrap paper:

And that's all I have, so far on this project. Once I finish wrapping up a few more commissions, I plan on getting back around to this and, at least, getting some decent full bodied sketches and poses done of these two characters.

Commissions and Things...

Way back when I first started really getting a feel for drawing, spending most of my time doing fan art of a few of my favorite t.v. shows and video games at the time and heavily admiring the artwork of other artist's who's skill and talent surpassed me, I discovered not only a fandom that enjoyed my work (I drew a lot of dragons at this point too...) but a term I had never heard before - commissions.

So that's the short end of the story on how I got snared into doing a vast majority of commission work for a vast array of people with equally as unique characters. Very few, if any, were human. Most were more anthropomorphic or animals - real or fantasy wise. For years, this remained my only theme that I stuck to when I'd draw, but recently I've been trying to break that habit.

Even so, here are a few pieces of recent work that are some of my better ones, over the years:

Kittimer - This was one of the bigger commissions I've ever received. And tough too - considering I never drew foxes before, let alone a half-human one. But after many (many) revisions and tweaking - this was the result.






Gepard - This one was an exchange for someone paying for my account on a game I frequent often online (nasty habit, those things...). In return, I was offering a single character commission and this was the result. It remains one of my few favorite pieces among the huge pile of commission work I've done.

I've done a lot of commissions, from small to large and it's a pass time I don't think I'll ever give up. I greatly enjoy getting a chance to draw someone's character - no matter how simple or unusual it may be.

For more commission work done by me, including much older artwork, visit: http://zeralia.deviantart.com

Of course, not all the work I do is commission based. I do do some of my own artwork, although lately it's taken a back seat after I got swamped with my retail job and commissions. But just before C-ACE and AC rolled around, I was able to pull these two together - Honovi, the deer centaur (pictured above) and Nexi, my anthropomorphic hippogryph:

Layout Concepts - Tree Singer's Village

This layout, more or less, ties into Tree Singer. It was themed on her and I had planned on using it later for a very short animation. And I still do plan on making that animation, when I've more time. The image below is actually a collage of various stages of rendering I did with it. I haven't gotten around to completing it yet, but I hope to do more tests with different colours first before finishing it entirely. But this is what I have completed, so far.

Character Concept - Tree Singer

I’ve very little of Tree Singer, regretfully, at least for now. I do have more on her “village” though, which I’ll post next. These small groupings of drawings are the one sketch I have of her and two thumbnail sketches I have of a pan layout that I never got around to working out. Tree Singer was created when I went through a gryphon and hippogryph phase, which wasn’t helped by my growing obsession with barn owls. There’s quite the story to her as well, but I’d be here all night typing it. Again, I'll hopefully get around to doing more drawings of her in the near future.

Character Studies - Zeralia

Zeralia is the only character, so far, that I've recently worked on and have various stages of concepts to show for it. I've finally settled on a "final" design for her, yet I'm bound to redo her again in a few years. In any case, here are the stages of her 'evolution' so to speak:


First Concepts - All sketched on my Wacom tablet. This was the design I stuck with for the longest time. I played around in a few drawings as well, although one remains incomplete and the other was just for fun.


Second Concepts - Here I started manipulating her anatomy a little more and sketched a few concepts out until I found a second design I prefered over the first. And unlike the first concept, I did these by hand.


Third and Final Concept - After doing some quick animal studies and going over (and over) the last concept I did, I worked out a few issues I had with the old version and wound up with this one and one that I still am okay with today. Not as complicated as before, which is definately a plus.



And that's the 'evolution' of Zeralia, which is about roughly three or so years in the making now. I had long pauses between concepts and hopefully now that I've settled on one, I'll draw her more.

Character Sketches and Concepts

I’ve gathered quite the army of character concepts over the past few years. A lot of them I haven’t drawn in awhile, but I’ve decided to post a few of the concept sketches I do have available. A lot of them have a bit of a story behind them too, which I'll explain briefly.

Honovi - A deer centaur creation of mine that I did for one of my design finals in College. The sketch of him here, however, is a more redo.

Nyrv - Another redo of a character that was to be part of my independent film. I scrapped that, but for some reason I kept an old drawing of her around.

Emkela - Very old character of mine. She's gone over so many design changes and name changes, I don't think I could possibly remember them all. There's quite the story hooked into her too. There will be a lot more (completed) drawings of her cropping up here soon.

J'sek - One of my newer creations. He's a character inspired from the books 'The Dragonrider's of Pern' by Anne McCaffrey. I also actually play this character on a text-based game called Leading Edge. Pretty geeky, isn't it?

But that's what's fun about him. The image to the right are just a few rough concepts I have. I'm still trying to get the right look for him. This is almost it, but it still has it's problems.

Horse Feathers - Another recent creation of mine and another weird hybrid. This time I was more or less inspired by Pan's Labyrinth and as a result I created this. She's part Kudu, part horse, part...plant. And I suppose moth. I've a few kinks to work out, mainly with her living armor, but she's definately a fun, strange, thing to draw.

Character Studies

As I mentioned in the other post before this, I had done a few animal studies that were related to some character concepts I had in mind. This next image is a character study of two of those characters. One is Birch, an eastern Tarpan. The other is Zeralia, that weird hybrid of eohippus, deer, horse, barn owl and a wee bit of zebra. Someday I may go over these and flesh them out a little more, or draw them more, but for now, these are some of the few drawings I have.

Animal Studies

I’ve always loved drawing animals. It’s how I first learned to draw, actually. I started the way my mother started, which was by doing pet portraits in pastel and it grew from there. The studies below are in relation to some ideas I had a few months back. Barn owls and horses are among a few of my more favorite animals. Furthest to the right on the image, the full frontal face is actually a realtistic study I did of one of the characters you'll see in future posts. It's a hybrid of three animals: horse, deer and zebra. It's one of the few weird hybrid combinations I've done.

Life Drawing

I’ve put together two files of some of my better life drawings. Most of it is gesture drawings, with some drapery study and one render. It took forever to go through all the drawings I did. It’s rather surprising how much life drawing you can accumulate in a two year period.

All of these where done while I was studying Animation at Algonquin College.

To see the larger versions, simply click on the images.

An Introduction of sorts...

I suppose the first thing I should do is a quick blurb of an introduction to explain exactly what this blog is about and what’s to come. Basically, this is for me to post my creations – animation, art or craft wise. Some of it will be random things, maybe a sketch I’ve doodled somewhere or some concept I’m currently working on. Most of this blog will consist of my portfolio work. That is, at least, until I figure out HTML coding and get back to work on that website I’ve been talking about for, oh… four or five years now? In which case all my portfolio stuff will be uploaded there, but until now, this will be its home.

Anyways, the name ‘Mythos and Bones’ is something I randomly came up with. I was trying to figure out a good theme and title that would suit me at least somewhat. And what better then two things I love the most - mythology and bones (or to be really technical, it’s antlers and animal skulls…but that’s beside the point).

So before I continue rambling on and on, I’ll just make this nifty little list of the next posts to come, which are all portfolio related in one way or another. After this post there should be:

*Life Drawing – Gestures and Long Poses
*Animal Studies
*Character Studies
*Character Sketches/Concepts
*Layout Concepts

Unfortunately, due to my lack of good judgment, I lost my animation files after my computer died a year or so ago. Lesson learned: always make sure you actually made that backup disk that your sleep addled brain though you did … which you didn’t and only realized this while half way through reformatting. But I’ve various projects in mind and I’ll of course be posting them here!

And now…on with the actual artwork!