Portrait of Brynmore "Mouse" Skweaken, the Deep Gnome

In my current D&D group, we're stuck in the Underdark.  To those who are uninitiated, it's just an underground world, with darkness-dwelling races, such as the deep gnomes.  My previous character, an English thug, didn't quite fit in this world.  So I've created this new guy, and had to create a portrait to go with it.

And frankly, I'm pretty proud of him.  I mean look at him, that's pretty awesome, right?  I don't do as much digital painting as I do animating, but I'm glad to see something really cool come out of it every so often.

Below is the original painting, before the parchment effects.  He's a slightly hairy deep gnome, and his thing is that he's whole-y plain.  He's not SUPPOSED to stand out in any dramatic way.  That's how he gets away with being a spy.

Genre Swap and the Anti-Grav Meteor Hammer Animation

I did a stream with Ryo again this week. The topic was genre swap, where you take one character, and remake them in a different genre. I decided to take my own spin on this, and redo a D&D character of mine as a sci-fi character.

My original idea was to do a meteor hammer animation. A meteor hammer is a Chinese weapon that is a weighted ball at the end of a long 6-foot, or so, chain. I had a D&D character that used a meteor hammer and I figured it might be a fun genre splash to bring it into a sci-fi setting.

I think this is a nice foundation for something, but this animation is just lacking punch.  My favorite part is the flow and the jump at the end.  The stationary swing could live on its own, and it's not very interesting.  The big swings are the cool part, but either the ball needs to stay on screen, or I need to change my camera.  I am going to revisit this one in the future, for sure, but the point now is that it's a one-evening animation, and I move on.

Check Ryoma's stream recap here (I'm in the top left corner): https://youtu.be/YDiwWek4zZE

And join him on Twitch, every Tuesday and Thursday, at https://www.twitch.tv/ryotazi.

Villainous Animation and Clip Studio Paint 1.54

My friend Ryoma Tazi streams twice a week, and he invited me to join him this Tuesday. While he streamed requests with the "Villain" theme, I animated my own villainous businessman who ends up putting out his cigar on a harmless fly. Goofy.

This was my first real test of Clip Studio Paint's new animation tools, just released this past week. I've been an avid CSP user since I started drawing on a Surface Pro 3, nearly two years ago. For the longest time, I have been looking for a good lightweight animation tool that works with multitouch, and also can handle the high pixel resolution of the Surface, at least with some sort of UI scaling.

I tried a number of animation softwares. Autodesk Sketchbook Pro had great tablet support, but it's animation tools were very limited. High end programs, like Toon Boom Harmony, have lovely features, but terrible resolution and multitouch support. So, I was pretty estatic when I found out CSP had animation tools coming, and they haven't left me at all disappointed.

Check out a sped up version of his four hour stream here: https://youtu.be/06ClbhcZfxY; and he was gracious enough to add sound and stick my animation to the end. I look forward to doing this again!

Also, check out his streams (currently Tuesdays and Thursdays) at https://www.twitch.tv/ryotazi