Lots of craziness and business these days on the real life side, so had a slower pace at this. Still was able to do some progress though.

The refernece this time is G'raha Tia from FF14 (That name... I had to look up the name spelling)
I'm a big fan of FF in general, and their designs are also amazing for the most part, so figured I would try to analyze one of the main characters in FF14. G'raha seemed to have the most... "common" clothes out of the group so to speak.

Decided to change the weapon, a hand pose, and as usual, the character, and focused on the clothes.

Body sketch, clothes sketch, inking, tones.

and finally shadows and a few small details

As usual, a good learning experience. His clothes are really something else, simple yet intricate.

Interesting enough, what I liked more about his design, are the boots. I think I'll have to study shoes more at the side. I always end up doing the standard dragon ball simple boots, but it's clear they can be much more and look so much better. These boots look great without being overly ornamental.

The pants were also interesting in that they seem to be normal baggy pants, but on closer inspection.. they seem to be stitched together from different pieces. Also makes them look better than the standard pants without being overly complex.

And another manga page. Just 3 more pages to finsh this chapter.

Took some time to understand how those anime eyes sparkles work, and spent way too long in that random hallway background. All in all, not much to say, just a small conversation scene.

Wew, need to get back into the grind. I'm off to work.

Cloth exercice from artist reference, 4 out of 5.

Decided to go for something more simple, back to Toriyama's style. Nera from Dragon quest 5. I think I've mentioned it before but I really enjoy Toriyama's simple yet pleasent to the eye designs.

I had to rework proportions a bit, since this original design has an almost chibi big head proportion to it. I know there are other versions of the design wich have different proportions and more elaborate textures for the clothes, but I wanted to go with one of the original pieces.

And so, we went through the now common pipeline, body sketch, clothes sketch, inking, tones

And finally shadows and details

Really happy how this one turned out, I think I have the pipeline for these practices well established now. I feel the character fits into the design really well too.

Also worked on the next manga page. Got some feedback about how the white outline for characters makes it feel like they are "stickers" on the panels, which is true, though I kinda had to include it to provide more clarity, since without them, the feedback was that they were easily confused with the BGs, due to the heavy use of tones and grays.

I doubled the ink ont he first panel to give it the feeling of a "tremor", though not sure if it had the desired effect.

I do plan to try a different style eventually, To try to limit myself to pure black and white (and few tones), which I think will resolve the issue to some degree, though I'm still thinking about it.

As of right now, I personally like this style, and I feel like it also makes it feel kind of different, since anyone looking at one of these pages will easily recoginze it.

Nothing urgent, I'll still try out different things and see how they work out.

Thanks everyone! Notifications don't seem to be working, so I hadn't had a chance to reply!

@mitsuki-youko Thanks! I learned a bit about making shiny lightings, it's subtle, but it's there, closer to the fist. Glad people liked the cover!

@kohkeeree I appreciate it! Funny thing, we seem to be our worst critics. I actually feel I fall behind with the amount of work I do at times, so comments like yours are very recomforting. I need to remind myself we all go at our own pace.

@gregorya Thanks! The series is indeed inspired in general by 90s anime, from the action elements to the romcom pieces and all in between. And of course I've always been a huge fan of Toriyama's style, so there are heavy influences in my work. The main character being a dead giveaway, though I do try to take pieces from different artists for different things. For example, most of the girls I draw have styles from different sources. In general I try to imitate and learn from the great ones as a basis (Toriyama, Oda, Arakawa, etc etc) and try to add a bit in between from my end on how I'd like things to be. The destruction piece was quite a challenge, since perspective is not my forte, but I do like how it turned out and environments do seem to be getting easier with every piece!

Still grinding in here for Anatomy for term 3!

First did a few of the primitive exercices as instructed. Wasn't sure on what to do, so just did random stuff and slowly drifted to anatomy, practicing some of the lessons learned so far.

Then did an exercice with Arnold, since there is little question on how ripped mister olimpia is.

Finally, since I was very excited about what I've been learning, I wanted to apply it with some characters to see how it worked out. Decided to copy the girl and remove some of the sketchwork. I'm actually surprised and how well it's all looking!

Oh, and almost forgot. Since I started work on chapter 23, here's the progress on the first page. For all I keep saying I'd like to try other styles... I keep circling back to the usual pipeline, as I really like how it looks.

Thanks for dropping! Back into the grind we go!

@mitsuki-youko, @patrycja.lerch, @snakker Thanks everyone! Sounds like it's an acceptable state, but I'll keep working to improve it.

Next in the list of the course companion guide is to do a bust from imagination. I've been kinda doing these, but I figured I would try to do a more detailed one for a change and also try to "ink" it as part of the inktober challenge.

I also needed to do a bit of a look design for one of the characters for an upcoming chapter, so it all works out.

Not sure if inktober has any particular rules other than just use black and white "ink"? hopefully it can be digitial since I don't really have physical ink.. or any practice with physical ink...
So anyway, here's the character bust potrait sketch, I'll try to start inking it tomorrow.

I assume I can also do several ink pieces. I do want to get some practice with pure BW ink and this is the perfect time to try it. The potrait is fairly simple, since it's only intended to be an exercice, but I'd like to try something more dynamic as well.

Next is Zbrush, which I'll take a look at, but most likely skip, and even more anatomy practice.

Also working hard on the manga! but only one more page to share for now.

That's about it. Back into the grind!