Amy Price [46Kibahime] - Art School Journey

Hi All! I'm Amy (or Kiba, whichever)

I'm in Durban, South Africa, and am busy upskilling myself as a comic / character artist with the hope of leaving the country someday (preferably soon).

I've been drawing for as long as I could hold a pencil, but only started to see a marked improvement in my highschool years. I first started digital art around that time, finally upgrading to a graphics tablet and Manga Studio Pro... before it rebranded as Clip Studio, I guess that was a while ago?

Since then, I've been drawing for my sanity during my tenure as a clinical trainer for aesthetic technology, while simultaneously being my company's local graphics person for marketing material. I've done a decent amount of photomanipulation and illustration, but my passion lies in comics.

Last year I launched my own company with the intention of publishing anime-illustrated novels and light novels, as well as webcomics. Our first illustrated full-novel is on course for release mid-2022, while myself and the author are also developing assets for the webtoon version to start thereafter.

While the goal in the long term is to grow a team that can run several comics simultaneously, I would prefer if the company could relocate internationally first for the sake of market accessibility. That's something that is still being investigated in terms of legalities and logistics, but, it is the dream.

In the meantime, solidifying foundations and refining techniques are key priorities, and I am eager to learn alongside you all.

I'm just dropping a few of my pre-Art school pieces from last year here as my 'starting line' - not all of them are relevant to where I want to go, but they do say something for what I am already capable of, and I look forward to surpassing that limit.

[M-21 and the Awakened Cat from the manhwa/webtoons Noblesse and Eleceed, respectively]

[Atlas, from the webtoon Code Adam by Atterozen]

[Hibino Kafka, from the JUMP manga, Kaiju #8]

And finally, my BIG illustration from last year....

[Archon mode Zhongli and Xiao, from Genshin Impact]
Up till now I haven't had the time/temperament to dedicate to large, fully fledged illustrations like this one regularly, but I feel like if I knew what I was doing rather than simply floundering through the process, I could handle it better.

On a less polished note, some original characters:

Kid Renko.png4022x4022 2.36 MB

DAY 2 (after watching all of term 1's videos)

One of the things I always struggle with is stroke control, so I am totally adopting this as a daily warmup exercise.

I am still sourcing photos I like for the photomanipulation assignments - I use Clip Studio Paint as opposed to photoshop, and the majority of the photomanipulation work I've had to do as the graphics person of my dayjob has been extending backgrounds, cutting out models and products, and doing colour and lighting adjustments. I don't foresee myself spending time on photomanipulation on a regular basis, but I am still going to do the exercises.

I did however manage to do the basic proportion and figure drawing exercises today. Some things in the proportions drawing feel... off, and in the 'fancy stick figures' section I did a little bit of self critique to pay attention to, but if anything else stands out as something to be aware of, I would love to hear your thoughts. I chose a few more complicated references intentionally.

Didn't really have time the last two days, but spent this afternoon on my photomanipulation assignment. I could probably spend another six hours on this thing if I were making it for a client, getting more source images and making all the corrections on the tiny things that still bug me, but overall I'm satisfied with displaying my capacity to splice things passably believably together.

For anyone curious, this was done in Clip Studio Paint, and you can see a timelapse of my process here:

First attempt at the measurement exercise. As always, there are mistakes you only see on the upload phase. Ah well. Torso is a bit wide at the waist, back muscles a little too vertical, and legs are slightly misaligned.

Been a bit busy on IRL fronts so not getting the daily drawing time I crave, but working on making the time I do have count.

Started with the perspective exercises today. Photos were taken by me in Durban, South Africa, about five years ago.

ANNNND the big one for the day. Not going to colour it at this stage, but I'm happy that everything makes sense. I do feel the chair legs are a bit stumpy, I found that gauging their height was a bit of a challenge. I do think I put the entire table set a bit too close to the camera in relation to how deep I assume the room to be, and I think that contributed to it. Oh well.