The Silk Succubus

There's a variant where the lighter-green "glow" is missing, leaving just the zig-zag behind her. The most arduous process was getting rid of the outline in places I didn't want it anymore, then filling in gaps left by uneven colors "behind" that outline.* I left the horns out: they just made the piece to busy and left no room for her hands. Or at the very least, I would've had to completely retool her arms and hand placement--not something I was eager to do at this late date. Future revisions (I ain't done yet) may yet see the addition of horns, and fattening of the 2nd wing finger at its distal end. I also fully intend to work on the other two girls--Medusa and the Harpy, but this show will have to do without both. Time is of the essence! I'll probably at least submit the unfinished sketch of the Harpy, which doesn't differ significantly from the last draft I posted.

I have just about finished the pages from Lake's notebook: they only need a final scrubbing with a bag of black tea to age them a bit more. My final piece will be hammered out today and tomorrow: a sketch of Great Lord Cthulhu, with all the interesting anatomical features detailed. Scott decided to participate, and is printing out some older digital sketches of Lovecraftian horrors. Exciting! Not bad for two weeks' work!

Silk Succubus Progression

Here's my girl with wings attached. Given the name I've given to the piece, you can probably see where I'm going with this. The right wing is cut off because she's on an 11x17" copier but her wingspan is 19." Damn!


Here she is with most of the base color. The tough part was figuring out what kind of outfit she should be wearing. Bikini seemed too cliche, but I didn't want to totally cover her up, either. Look at that figure, dammit! What to do? And what colors go with black and red? Well, I found a picture of Silk Specter that proved inspirational...


So here's what it eventually became, after about three hours of work. I'm still working on her hair and little details on the outfit, but I'm pretty close to being finished (by requirement--I have to hand in all my work on Monday night). Now you can see why she's called the Silk Succubus: it's an homage to her outfit. One of the toughest parts was the front of the corsette, and I'm still not entirely happy with it. Anyway, that's how it's going. Any last-minute suggestions? It's too late to change anything drastically, but I figured out how to do color replacements last night...

Little Something I've Working On...

I don't like Halo. The story leaves me wanting and the Master Chief is kind of an empty shell. And he's supposed to be. Bungie's whole point was to put YOU behind his visor. You are supposed to feel like the Master Chief. Well, I don't. I like it when I know who I'm playing as. Well, who would make a kick-ass Master Chief? I'll tell you who:

Brock Samson.

Incidentally, if you don't know who I'm talking about, you need to rent The Venture Bros. It is the best cartoon I've seen in a very long time. So anyway, let's talk about the picture. It is entirely digital art, dear readers. I know I promised that Cthulhu would be, but I got sidetracked. Basically, I did a whole lot of things to get this far. First, I found this picture on the Interweb to serve as a base pose. Actually, I should clarify: I found a different, larger version of that image. God, that picture is small. Anyway, I then found a picture of the Master Chief (also thanks to Google Image Search) to serve as the model for the armor. Made a new layer and starting building the armor, layer by layer. Bodysuit, big pieces of armor, smaller details, and then his head. Oh lord, his head.

I was getting nowhere fast with his head. I tried resizing my image and starting over with the head, but I just couldn't match the sheer awesomeness of Brock Samson with my own trembling hand, so I just found a picture of his noggin online, matched its size to what looked right here, and pasted it over my sad, sorry attempt. Then I added a new layer and drew some lines of continuity between the body and the head, erasing some bits here and there. I think it's turning out nicely. I employed the same methodology for the Energy Sword (Brock doesn't use guns--just knives), but it was more complicated. I did a whole lot of erasing, rotating, and resizing to get it to match my drawing. I'm still not super-happy with it, and I'll probably end up tracing over it in a new layer, which would also make it match the blackline of the main drawing.

Gotta figure out a background. Erik suggested that Brock be holding his helmet in his other hand (which is why I haven't drawn it in), which would be nice.

Anyway, as my first piece of totally-digital art, it ain't half bad so far!