cobalt_kat - Art School Journey

[cobalt_kat]

Hey there! I'm Kata. I've been drawing digitally for 5 years; however, I'm still pretty much a beginner as I've never taken a structured approach to studying art. I'm mostly interested in character art and visual storytelling.

These drawings represent my starting point, the phase I'm currently in. As you can see, I don't have any distinctive style or genre or anything, I'm still pretty much experimenting.

As on Discord, feedback is always welcome, you don't need to ask. Thanks!

[snakker]

Wow, I wish I was a beginner! XD great stuff!

Welcome aboard

Cheers

[patrycja.lerch]

Welcome Kata!
Great pieces! I like these colors!

[funslub1996]

Welcome aboard, looking pretty good

[Kaz_0]

Welcome to the forums !

[mitsuki-youko]

Welcome to the forums!! your art is really good!

[andysawesomemovies]

Howdy! Glad to have ya!

[daceronine]

Welcome aboard! Man, your "starting point" is already impressive. It'll be interesting to see how much farther you can go!
What's your overall goal? looking to do this for a hobby? to get into the entretainment industry?

[cobalt_kat]

Oops! Looks like I was so nervous about posting for the first time that I completely forgot to include this bit

My overall goal is to get to a level where I can do all or most of the artwork for my side projects: a visual novel that's currently under development and a webcomic that's still in the planning phase. I'm doing these in my free time as a hobby, so creating art for a living is not really among my short or long-term goals, but who knows, maybe one day.

[mitsuki-youko]

noice! what's your story about

[cobalt_kat]

Why, thanks for asking! It's very kind of you. Both stories take place in the same fantasy universe, mostly based on Chinese mythology.

The visual novel is about a lonely, middle-aged widow who goes on a journey to find her estranged daughter, and meets some colorful characters along the way who might either help or hinder her, based on the player's choices.

The webcomic is much more complicated and long, but overall it's about two sisters who had a falling out, and now try to reunite and work together to protect their city from a common enemy.

[daceronine]

Sounds interesting! As a fellow webtoon/manga creator, I'm curious on so many other points. Would this be your first work or do you have other works published online?

I can say that at least from the artwork side, you are already at a level to do both a visual novel and webtoon, and I can only see you improving from here.

Keep us up to date with all your work, I'd love to read it even if it's piece by piece. If you have online profiles, feel free to share them so we can follow along. It's always exciting to share this journey with others.

[mitsuki-youko]

That sounds pretty cool! glad to see another webcomic artist on here!

I'm still plotbuilding/worldbuilding/characterbuilding a story im working on with 5 main characters, 100s of side characters across 2 worlds with 30+ locations to build out

I call myself a future webcomic artist cus im not publishing anything yet lol cept for some animations and music on youtube and some art on ig... still got a long way to go and it might take til like 10 years before i can publish my webcomic tho but im working towards it!

[cobalt_kat]

Unfortunately, I've never published anything like that yet - I'm currently working on a short, wordless comic that I intend to send to a local competition, but that would be my very first if - if - it gets published.

Sure thing, I'm going to upload everything relevant to these projects! I don't really have a strong online presence but I'll soon make an entry in the artist contact session with my Instagram and other info. And yes, it's exciting to see other webtoon artists here!

[cobalt_kat]

Ah, yes, world building, the never-ending task. May I ask what approach you use when designing/planning the characters or the locations? I admit, I don't really have a methodical approach as IME my characters tend to be more interesting and original when I'm more spontaneous.

[cobalt_kat]

Term 1 - Image Adjustments

I don't have Ps (yet) so I did these in CSP thanks to the help of @liviuc, who was kind enough to upload the assignment in .clip format. (Normally, CSP supports .psds, but this file was an exception for some reason.)

Gotta admit, this was more interesting than I'd expected it to be, and pretty tough, especially the last one.

[daceronine]

Nice, pretty much can't tell the difference in colors. Yea, that last one also gave me a rough time when I did this one. Also in CSP. Pretty much all exercices translate well to CSP since they usually focus on fundamentals or in general functions shared across programs, though sometimes they change names.

[cobalt_kat]

That's good to hear! I did try Ps at one point way back in 2020, but I didn't really get a feel for it, CSP was much easier to figure out. I'm still on the fence about giving Ps another go - maybe in one of the later terms.

Which program do you use?

[daceronine]

Same here. PS is great for illustration (which is usually the focus for Marc), but CSP is hands down much more accessible for Manga and webcomics.

Even with their recent pricing shenanigans, I still love to use it.

By the by, it's very intimidating to upload your work for the first time, if you need any help, let us know. You should be able to upload to webtoon and pixiv with no problems.

I'm also looking to see what other sites we can upload to, and I know there are even online services that will upload your work to all sites (for a price) to simplify that part of the pipeline.

As a hobbist, it's usually better to chose a few (I only use webtoon for now, but I do plan to uplaod to other sites once I achieve a few milestones) and upload and manage them yourself.

Bests of luck!

[mitsuki-youko]

there's also Tapas!
(personally when i end up publishing my comic, i'd do both webtoon and tapas )