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I created this illustration over the course of this past week—took about 16 hours in all—as a gift for our IT Director who is leaving the company for another job. He’s been head of the department for many years and always referred to us as the “IT family”. As the department grew, we each acquired our IT family designation—some were accurate and some were just amusing. The department has shrunk considerably in the last few months, but we’re still quite a tight-knit group and, with our collective boss leaving, I felt it was important to have some memento to commemorate our time together.
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I was thrilled to discover this morning that the Warcraft comic that I began as simply an exercise to solidify my tablet skills has now won an Honourable Mention slot in Blizzard’s monthly World of Warcraft comic contest. Entrants submit under their Warcraft character’s name, so you’ll find me listed as ‘Nymeera’.
Notoriety is really the only reward for this particular contest, but I’m very happy regardless. I have such respect for the Blizzard artists and to simply have something of mine sitting on that website is fantastic.
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Just a quick note to say that I finally finished that Warcraft comic that I first started working on back in… err, September?! Yeesh.
Well, it’s done. Yay!
And even better, I’m feeling pretty comfortable with my tablet now. I got lots of practice doing a variety of different techniques which helped steady my wobbly hand. I don’t know that I’m quite at the stage that I would want to freehand sketch the initial drawing on the tablet as opposed to on paper, but I can now ink and shade with confidence.
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I had this idea for a Warcraft web comic ages ago when my WoW hunter had a crab of her own. It came back to me this past month when I was searching for projects I could use to experiment and practice with my tablet.
Obviously not done yet, but the tablet is rapidly becoming a very interesting and exciting way to work. I’ve been experimenting with brushes and layering, trying to find the best way to blend in colours, highlights and shadows. I’m now at the point where I can freehand sketch on the tablet itself rather than having to rely entirely on my earlier pencil sketch. Aside from the basic outline, the entire lower body of the orc and the chair she’s sitting on was done straight from the tablet. Not that I could sketch a pure outline in one pass. I found the easiest thing was to rough in the shape using a bright colour and a larger brush, then go back in on a new layer to draw the actual outline based on the messy sketch. It occurred to me afterward that this is how the old 2D animators used to do it as well. The first pass of rough animation was barely more than a scribble suggesting what the character was doing. These roughs would then be passed on to a clean up artist who would find the line of the character out of the scribble and it was those lines that would ultimately be seen on the screen.
Thus, in terms of my own animation work, it might be possible for me to use the tablet to do both the rough drawing and clean up inside the computer and bypass the pencil and light table desk entirely. I think I’ll need more practice though, which this little web comic ought to provide. Hopefully I can have it done before the end of the month and slip it into the October contest.
I have had a love-hate relationship with my Wacom tablet since I first got it. My parents purchased it for me while I was recovering the car-vs-pedestrian accident that I was on the wrong side of in December 2003. While I was fairly upbeat about my recovery, I know in hindsight that I wasn’t in the greatest mental state at the time. Thus when I couldn’t immediately master the tablet back then, I set it aside and simply never picked it up again. It collected dust for years because I figured it was just a lousy tool for me, despite the fact I was well aware that digital artists eveywhere were raving about how quickly and easily they could do their work using a tablet. To make matters worse, when I moved in late 2007 I lost the tablet pen, which is more than a little essential to its operation.
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