My 2K15 Art in a Nutshell

It's been quite a productive year, since I draw almost everyday unless I'm struck with art block or a chill pill. Now that the year is about to end, I'd like to see how far I've come this year in terms of improvement. The thing about improvement is that it's subtle, and you never really feel it unless you review your old works and side by side it to the now.



Before we go on to my Top 10 best works (according to myself hahaha), here's a bonus. I've started getting serious with pixel art earlier this year, and surprisingly, through it, I learned some art techniques (and earned a fan base on Twitter). Top 3 (starting from the oldest work):

What got people's attention toward my pixel work was my ability to render intricate detail (albeit using too many colors) while using a small canvas: 35x35 (the picture above is an 300x upscaled version).

Once I got comfortable with pixel art, I occasionally turned to making sprites on a bigger canvas. A big inspiration is King of Fighters XIII sprites.

I still apparently use to much colors for my work and pixel art purists might burn me for witchcraft. This still got me overwhelming positive feedback on Twitter tho (it's my most liked post to date haha).

Now we go to digital art! This is also not ranked by order but it's laid out according to when I made it. Starting with my first 2015 doodle:

Well technically it's not the first thing I drew this year since I finished it before New Year, but it's my first deviation for 2015 in Deviantart. It features my original characters Leif & Vina as they welcome the new year, and a lazily painted cityscape background. I like it because I was ambitious with the background, it screams of my laziness but it turned out okay.

Part of the trio of birthday presents I made for my, uhm... partner (in life ahaha //shot). Again, despite my laziness, I really appreciate my effort in this piece as I usually leave my artworks with a blank background.
This is me over the years, and a perfect example of how much I've generally grown in art through the years. And it shows how particular I am with the details.

Unlike my earlier arts with backgrounds, I was less lazy with this. I also experimented with the shit ton of brushes I downloaded for Photoshop only to delete 3/4s of it later on.

I usually try to paint effects/elements manually without relying on lens flare and other render effects on Photoshop (except blur) and this is a result of my experimentation/studies. These are not canon Avatar characters by the way, I just dressed my original characters with Avatar costumes.
My original characters constantly go through a lot of changes, from plotline to lore and this year I revamped most of my original stories, particularly Per:spective (which may change name soon too). These aren't their final designs, and I might tweak it further someday (or change entirely again) but for now, I'm content with this.

This is how I draw chibis. They don't look like the typical chibis, I know. I particularly like this piece because of Eins' (right) design including the way I color and again, the details.

Towards the end of 2015, I started to tweak my art style. I draw stiff, since my art started with anime and I have decided to break out of that comfort zone. I'm sure I can't really lose my anime art style entirely, but my aim is to have a more fluid art style (and better coloring).

This is my part of an art trade with my partner. I used a preset palette from Mangastudio instead of my usual coloring and experimented with it along with my experimental art style. It felt unusual at first, but it's something I'm willing to get used to. It turned out really nice. Also we look so goddamn cute (walang aangal).

Hmm... that's odd. There's only 9 artworks. Well actually, I'll be updating the 10th best work (and possibly my actual last artwork for 2015) on New Year's Eve so stay tuned. ;)

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