ToPComics

New 6P&S Website Layout!

By Humbug | Published August 4, 2012

I finally bashed the Webcomic Inkblot theme into something that is not so white and bland. It took far too long because I kept changing the site layout. I even drew a different overhead banner at first which got scrapped shortly after. Ah, all that wasted time, I’m too much of a perfectionist sometimes. X3

There’s still much more to be done, there needs to be a navigational menu and my comic links don’t have proper images yet. I decided against putting gigantic links on the top of the blog because it was ugly and intrusive, but one problem with making them smaller and sticking them in the sidebar is that readers will not notice them. Apparently someone could not find my comic links even though they were right there, at the top of the sidebar even! So the links is gonna have pretty brand new images which will hopefully attract your eye and make you want to click them.

Also, having that rotator in the corner that shows a snippet of the most recent page wouldn’t hurt either.

Once again, thanks to Chris "Squee"; Kuok for coming up with the awesome name for the blog. I likes it very much. Go check out his Deviantart page here

The next thing to work on in the list is new layouts for the comic pages, blargh. I hope it won’t take as long. >_>

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My Seal Stamp

By Humbug | Published July 21, 2012

Chinese Stamp

Found this neat stamp a while ago, it’s made of marble and has my name engraved on it. It’s pretty old, I remember it being a gift from my sisters when I was in my teens, most likely for my birthday. I was a little on the young side to appreciate it at the time, but it really is a lovely present. I’m glad I held on to it after all these years. It might even be a really neat way to sign my work as my signature isn’t very attractive. >_>

I hope it’s not upside down, as I can’t read chinese, hurrr.

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ToP Concepts: Arianhod

By Humbug | Published June 17, 2012

Muscle Woman (Full Body)
I’d like ToP to update more frequently than Crux, so that means I can’t do the super detailed painterly style the latter currently has going. But it still needs to look good enough to please me, none of the scribble shit that was in the last few pages of old ToP. I thought I’d meet somewhere in the middle, go for a more simplified version of the painted style that doesn’t quite look finished. This way, it should be loose enough that I don’t waste time getting hung up on the details, but still looks pleasing to my eye. I still need to practice some more, but I think this method works. We’ll have to see tho.

I’ve been tweaking Arianhod’s design. I noticed sometime back that even though I gave her “muscles” she still looked pretty damn skinny in silhouette, so I went and beefed her up considerably. I’m also trying to make her look more squat like to convey her short height, it’s more obvious when she’s standing next to F’nor, but I don’t want her build to give the impression that she’s lanky.

KillerPinkPenguin told me that her face looked too soft for her physique, which I kinda agree, so I squared up her jawline, hardened her features (more chiselled facial structure) and made her look older. I’m also changing her tattoos, it went from a minor changes to her eye tattoo to facial tattoos and then I decided to settle on body tattoos. I currently just scribbled lines on her arms and legs just to give me a feel for ’em, there is no set pattern yet.

Arianhod Paint (Portrait)

I have a thing for bee-stung lips. 😛

EDIT: A friend who had never read old ToP wanted to see how she looked previously as a comparison. Fine. This was from 3 years ago. My god, my colouring was so amazing, it looked exactly like mud! I’d also say more about my technical skill then, but I think I’ll shut up now. 😛

Old Arianhod

Posted in Six Packs and Seafood | Tagged Concepts | Leave a comment

Garwin Paper Doll

By Humbug | Published June 10, 2012

Garwin Paper Doll

So, why a paper doll?

I’ve been drawing doll bases for a series of dress-up games and it got me itching to do some of my own. I always enjoyed paper dolls as a kid, so I’m indulging my nostalgia a bit. I actually don’t like dress up games, I’m not exactly sure why, maybe I like to hold the physical doll in my hands take it all over the pace and play with it. You can’t do that with pixels.

Chris “Squee” Kuok designed the blue outfit, you can see his rendition of it here. The armor is not canon, I just wanted to design something silly and campy, it’s my paper doll after all. 😛 And I do have plans to add more outfits, I quite enjoyed working on this.

I’m quite amazed that I am able to paint and produce something that is not akin to horse shit, this would have been impossible for me a year ago, even the colours don’t look like my previous attempts at simulating mud. Can you believe this was my first serious attempt at painting? I think I started on it about 2 and a half months ago. And a little before that, I played around a bit to find out how painting works. But once I figured out the method it all just fell into place. (I’m sure some experienced painters will slap me upside the head for not seeing how obvious it was the whole time) There’s definitely lots of room for improvement, but I’m pretty proud of what I’ve achieved so far. 🙂

I have to say I enjoy painting a great deal more than inking, because it’s much looser and I don’t have to redraw the same damn line a hundred times to get it to look right.

Posted in Six Packs and Seafood | Tagged Paper Doll | Leave a comment

Six Packs and Seafood

By Humbug | Published May 30, 2012

Six Packs and Seafood is going to be the name of this blog, whenever the blog updates I will refer to it as 6P&S so you’ll know where to go when you see it. Many thanks to Chris “Squee” Kuok, another good friend of mine, for thinking up the name for me. He’s also written the fight scene that’s in chapter 2 of Crux. I totally did not forget to credit him for that. Shhh. 😉

I initially wanted a more self explanatory title, being an art blog and all, but I couldn’t pass up Sixpacks and Seafood, it is so awesome and so… me, now I need to finish up the website to do it justice. Sigh.

Anyways, I’ve decided to set an actual update schedule to motivate me to update regularly. So LTHB will update every Wednesday, Crux will update at the end of every month and 6P&S will update on Sundays. Won’t be every Sunday tho, just putting up a comic a week is already quite a feat for me. Those days of two updates a week are far behind me now. *Wistful*

This is until the script runs out, once that happens I’ll prolly use the time to update 6P&S with miscellaneous art work and some craft projects I’ve been working on. (It’s a new hobby I find myself enjoying very much. >_>)