Traeyze no Progress

A visual diary chronicling my somewhat earnest attempts to escape artistic mediocrity. Instagram - @traeyzeart

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Just a fun little thing I was poking at while coughing up blood the last few days.

My small tribute to Takaya Hashi, the original voice actor for Toki in the 80s animation and long time voice actor for Slayer in Guilty Gear. Obviously a big fan of both franchises so figured a good excuse to draw Toki again.

Just Procreate using the default 4B charcoal brush, the chalk brush, and a noise layer at the end. I felt like I was getting too easily distracted by brush choices so I ignored the 10000 brushes I've downloaded over the years.

Huh? Just me in cosplay? No idea what you are talking about.

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Shiva of the Final Fantasy series, specifically as a Guardian Force in FFVIII. Ipad pro with apple pencil in procreate. Basically sketch, flat colour, and mostly done with the smudge set as soft airbrush and... yeah. That is most of it. A lot of smudge. Colouring is duplicating the single grayscale layer, putting a gradient map on it, then setting it to soft light overlay. Creates nice subtle colouring that follows your original tones. Was going to add other colours [yellow mainly as per her design] but honestly I liked it like this. FFVIII summons are the ones that I default to as looking 'right' in my mind despite it not being my first Final Fantasy game. I just love the designs that much. Thing is upon looking closer... man, the designs are wacky and really over the top. this is, at best, an approximation of the design based on the low res models and concept art but my god, what a pain. Chose to draw her in a dramatic pose becuase I thought it would be more interesting.

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Y'shtola and Minfilia of Final Fantasy XIV. Procreate, ipad pro 11, apple pencil thing. A pretty different process to what I am used to: I did the basic tones and forms in greyscale and then put a gradient map over them and then sort of worked it back from there. Allowed me to avoid the part of the process I find hardest to do: choose initial colours. Was a fun process though I spent a lot of time agonising over silly details. There is a battle in my mind over who is best girl in FFXIV. For a long time it was Minfilia for free and even moreso when she became a goddess. But I cannot deny that Y'shtola is one of my favourite aspects of Shadowbringers even though she takes a huge step back in terms of plot centrality. He outfit is fantastic and combines the best parts of Lulu and Squall, her fun subplot brought a lot of levity to the plot that was needed, she has it all. Still, they are both about even in my mind now. I could swear Y'shtola is smaller than normal humans so in my mind this made sense but now I wonder, I mean the proportions mean Y'shtola is a small child. The person I drew this for likes Final Fantasy VIII so this is a cheeky reference to that.

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Musashi Miyamoto as represented in the Vagabond manga. Procreate on ipad pro 11. Pretty long process, this is actually an overpaint of a previous image. I went through a dead patch artistically due to the lockdown my country is under and the best I could muster was to poke and prod old images. In doing so I did finally make a breakthrough though so I guess it worked out. As a process pretty basic: oil style brushes, a smudger, go to town. Takehiko Inoue is one of the artists I admire most and Vagabond is obviously a joy. I have been collecting it for over 15 years and it was always inspiring and a series I aspired to artistically but I don't think I ever really had the skill to incorporate any of it. Hopefully I am getting closer to that now.

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Pyramid Head, specifically the Silent Hill 2 version [the only one that really works, yeah fight me]. Tried a bunch of new brushes, jumped around a lot, tried some new stuff. I drew a few different versions before ending up on this one, though all of them tried to capture his awkward jerky way of moving around to varying degrees of failure. Like a lot of stuff I choose to draw it wasn't easy finding a clear reference of his helmet, but that implies I would ever have had the patience to draw it anyway. Pyramid Head is one of the most iconic monster designs in modern Survival Horror and one of the many peaks of the Silent Hill series. I think he is a creature worth experiencing in real time, as his roll in the game is part of why it is one of the best psychological horror games/stories in a long time. His presence in the other games is infinitely less satisfying but they do make him more Hellraiser inspired so part of me can't hate it.

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A collection of the drawings I did throughout 2019 in the order I drew them. I used pretty much exclusively Clip Studio Paint this year and it remains my favourite art program. I jumped around in terms of brushes, most of them being random texture brushes [a lot of 'dry brushes' to emulate paint textures to varying degrees]. Canvas size is generally 1200 by 1600 with 144dpi. Hmm, might bump that up a bit in future maybe, that was just the default for whatever reason. Still using this tiny Wacom thing, maybe it is time to invest in a larger device. I spent an average of around 40 minutes per image this year, so in essence these are all 'speed paints'. I've always tried to focus on efficiency and getting as consolidated an image within a limited timeframe as possible while also trying new things. However looking over this collection and comparing it to 2018 I can see that my fundamentals have improved but my images are much more reserved and there is less variety. Don't get me wrong, there are a few images that I do new things and I think they show that overall I have improved, but I feel like this years shows that a lot of the time I was forcing myself or rushing just to get things done. Which is true, I had a lot of large gaps in output and frequently felt I hit major walls in progress meaning most progress was done in quick bursts where I would just churn out as much as possible. So 2019 was weird. I like a lot of the drawings I did this year, I am okay with the progress I have made, but I am also a little disappointed in how safe I played it and how often I would give up on an image before it was done. I have a few ideas in how I want my art in 2020 to go so I am looking forward to another year of art.  

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Kisuke of Vanillaware game Muramasa: The Demon Blade. Clip Studio Paint, a variety of random brushes. About 40 minutes. Tried to capture the slightly distorted style of George Kamitani art that foregoes strict accuracy for stylised impact. Not sure it was successful but I had a lot of fun drawing it. Muramasa is probably the Vanillaware game I have played the least but I enjoyed it as another example of their unique aesthetic and oldschool principled gameplay. George Kamitani is one of my favourite artists and I should do more to ape his style in future, even though there are a lot of aspects I don't think I could ever really grasp. Everyone should go check his stuff out.

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Roy Batty of Blade Runner, portrayed by the late Rutger Hauer. Clip Studio Paint, mainly a rough brush I found online somewhere. About 40 minutes. Portraits based on photos and what have you are by far the weakest area of my art and something I have a lot of trouble and frustrations with. I kept this fairly loose, based on a couple of photos and sort of mooshed together because I would go insane otherwise. I am not happy with it but do klike the texture so it'll do. Roy Batty is antagonist, well sort of, of Blade Runner. It is probably one of the most iconic performances in cinema, particularly his final scene, and the passing of Rutger Hauer this year was something I was sad about, though the fact it happened to be the same year Roy died in the movie continuity is pretty amusing.

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Zetman of... Zetman. Clip Studio Paint, flat brush, about half an hour. Nothing to note about this process. Zetman is at its core a fairly straightforward series about a kid who can transform into a super being, in this case Zetman. But the series as a whole is a decidedly grim and at times outright cynical look at the genre. I grew up a big fan of Guyver so the series scratched an itch for me and I happen to be a big fan of Katsura with works like I"s and Video Girl Ai. It is worth reading, but fairly heavy. Also ends with the implication of a follow up series but who knows if that is gonna be a thing. Oh it had an anime, it is meh.

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Petra of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Clip Studio Paint process, flat brush. I confirmed drawing hair with the brush I use is difficult. Bleh, I will deal with it later. About half an hour. I was given this as a challenge to draw because of her hair. I failed. But I do really like the design, especially given purple is my favourite colour. So there is that.  

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Spitfire of Air Gear. Clipe Studio Paint using some flat brush I found online. Not happy with the result, but I drew and redrew this a thousand times trying to make it work and this ended up being the only one I could stand. It was fun drawing this, though, I was enjoying the shading. I think this version took about half an hour, I was drawing for about 2 though giving a sense of just how much trouble this design gave me. Spitfire is the Flame King and one of the more popular characters in the series. I don't think it is an understatement to say that how his arc plays out is one of the more frustrating missteps of a series that sometimes felt like it went out of its way to be weird and confusing. Still, I still found him fun even after the twist and he remains one of my favourite characters in manga just because.

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Wing Diver of the Earth Defense Force series, from 4 in particular I think. Clip Studio Paint. Gonna roll with what worked in previous images. Nothing unusual as a process, about 40 minutes because I kept messing with it. I can't remember why I went with this angle, I think I just liked the idea of drawing aviators. The true waifu class of the game, able to fly around and shoot sparkles. I've never really played as the fairy, so uh, yeah. I chose the design that I remember most, the silly dragoon helmet with the sunglasses.

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Maria Renard of the Castlevania series, in particular her Symphony of the Night appearance. Clip Studio Paint, about 40 minutes. I had a lot of trouble with this image, it was one of the reasons I took my last break because I kept hitting a roadblock with every image I drew of her. I was not going to do a black and whit image but I liked the shading. I should have done more to make it clear who it was but I just wanted it to end so I could move forwards. Maria Renard is one of the many recurring characters in Castlevania, first appearing at only 12 years old in Rondo of Blood but already immensely powerful. I have depicted her in the rendition I am most familiar with: her as a 17 year old in Symphony of the Night. Not much to say about her, other than that her romance triangle with Alucard and Richter is pretty amusing.

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Shockwave the Transformer. Clip Studio Paint, about half an hour. I find mechanical things and robots difficult to draw so this was a challenge. I cut a lot of corners, but it was a lot of fun to draw. Shockwave is a Decepticon who turns into a gun thing, similar to Megatron. In the English G1 he is sort of awkward and a little goofy, but in a lot of the other version he is the classic sociopath/emotionless robot that lets 'logic' rule all, making him a stark foil for Starscream who is more emotional and Megatron who is sort of a mix of the two. He is among my favourite designs, if only because he is purple, and I own the Masterpiece edition of him, being my only current Transformer toy in my collection.