elitetrick

Weekly Update - 73

It's still Monday, shhh.  >.>  No, it isn't -- don't let me lie to you.

Siiigh, everything extra I do takes away from drawing time, be it travelling, hanging with friends, working out, doing chores, playing video games...  It's honestly sort of stressful, seeing as how if I'm not drawing, no drawing is getting done.  Working for yourself naturally leads to a form of workaholism, partly because I enjoy the work I do, partly because I'm the only one who can do it...

Designing Gilly

Max's boss Gilly has been a tough character to nail down, design-wise, but I find he's trending in THIS general direction.

A prominent landlord who owns the most popular (and expensive) club in the heart of Kuserra's downtown, always in my head I imagined Gilly as this sort of sleazy, fast-talking, business-oriented individual. Originally I envisioned him as a comically short and fat creature, but as his role in the story took on a more serious tone, he sort of evolved into a more slen...

God Slayers - Page 109

Kiva's having a rough time.

God Slayers - Page 109 - High Res

I'm actually really happy with this page, even though I kinda had to bust my ass (and cut some corners) to get it done on time.

Weekly Update - 72

This next page... is pretty involved.  And I don't know if I'll get it done or not.

Buncha things happening this week that are eating into drawing time.  Being dragged off on a quick trip to Vegas that's supposed to be fun, but that involves finding anyone to take care of the cats first, and to make matters worse, at least one of the cats has decided to explode with medical problems yesterday/today, requiring us to find a vet too so we don't saddle the petsitter with a sick ca...

Broken Like Me

Young Riley with her favorite plush toy.

God Slayers - Page 108

All wells eventually run dry.

God Slayers - Page 108 - High Res

That. Face.

Weekly Update - 71

Unplugged for a bit last week.  But it's time to get back to work.  *cracks knuckles*

Comic This Week?  Yes!

Character Page - It's still on the long list of the things the code wolf has to do.

Max Poster - It's still on the long list of the things I have to do.

Drawing: Page 108-109, Max Poster

Playing: Cyberpunk and Binding of Isaac and Rimwo...

Weekly Update - 70

Alright, no juvenile number memes this time.  Never again, in fact.

My family is coming to visit this week!  Today, in fact.  And they're bringing my nephew.

So that means...

No comic this week!  Or at least, don't expect one.  I'll still be working on it, and I will post it if I do manage to get it done, but I don't expect to have a ton of free time between today and tomorrow, so I reserve the right to skip this week if I m...

Riley Explains how Guns Work

More writing than it is art, but I hope you enjoy. :3

God Slayers - Page 107

Anyway, here's the first cameo of our Redtail Tier supporter!  His job is guarding the border between Redtail territory and the Untamed regions.  It's pretty rare for him to have to use that gun, but every once in awhile some unruly ruffians have to be put down.

Turns out, an outpost like this is actually pretty effective when the most common enemy force is a few disorganized vagabonds with pointy sticks.

God Slayers - Page 107 - High Res

This page was a huge challenge for me, and it isn't my best work, but I really didn't want to delay it another week so I could polish up about 400 little tiny details most people probably won't even notice.

Hopefully it's good enough.  I'm still upset by how much difference the monitor makes.  What is even real.  >.<

Weekly Update - 69

Nice.

I think I already said somewhere that I lost one of my monitors this week, and I've replaced it with a spare TV we had.  So that was a little bit of a setback.  Also this upcoming page is one of the more involved pages I have planned and it's not going well.

Part of me wants to rush through it and move on, just to get it over and done with.  Part of me wants to take an extra week to polish it up to a point where I'm happy with it.  Another part of me is a...

Why is She...

One of my monitors died yesterday (my preferred drawing monitor, of course) but we had an extra TV sitting around, so ima try that as a temporary solution. It's bigger, but the resolution is all wonky so the strokes of the pen feel different and it'll take some getting used to. Thankfully, today is a sketch day, so have a sketch!

Riley is aware of the fact people think she's crazy, and I feel like, when she's in a playful mood, she might like to weaponize that to make people around her...

God Slayers - Page 106

Max sets out on an epic quest for some keys!

God Slayers - Page 106 - High Res

Max sets out on an epic quest for some keys!  But he's immediately defeated by the guard at the gate, so I guess he'll have to wait.

I'll be honest, I can't wait to hear what some of you think about this window into Max's life.  :3

New Ad!

My friends at Fenris Publishing have been dogging me to create a new ad for a long time now, so I created THIS ad for a (maybe hopefully) upcoming ad campaign on FurAffinity that might run for a couple of months or so.  This is a little bit of a different (more PC) take on our usual slogan.  It's an idea I've been rolling around on for awhile, and what better time to deploy Max in an ad banner than when he's getting his own little section of the story!

The last ad we ran on Ta...

Weekly Update - 68

D'aww, he's cute.  Is it okay for me to think my own art is cute?  I don't really know.  On the one hand, I'm proud of what I've drawn here.  On the other, I know I could do better with more practice because it is full of mistakes.  In any case, it's making me happy to see that my art today is way, way way better than my art 3 years ago.

Comic this week:  Yes.  No matter what.  If I have to work through the evenings and into the n...

Kiera Wanted Poster

Oh hi, it's Friday and I'm slacking. But I'll share this! This was actually a fun little thing to work on for Page 91. Thought I'd share it in a high enough resolution where *some* of the writing I did for it might be at least partially visible.

And again, my use of Japanese is probably, at best, toddler level, so if you spot any errors with it, I'd love to hear about them so I can learn. ;)

God Slayers - Page 105

Max's part of the story is a little differently paced than Kiva's.  He lives a simpler life.  Perhaps even a safer life.

God Slayers - Page 105 - High Res

When I was drawing this, I THOUGHT I was doing something clever with the lighting, cuz you know how when there's a bright colored light it sorta washes out all the other color in the room?  But at the end of the day I think it ended up being just a lazy looking background.

I guess Max turned out kind of okay, but I need to work on things more.

Weekly Update - 67

Well, hello there.  It's Monday.

Anyone else excited about e3?  I keep bouncing between the cynical disbelief of AAA cinematic trailers and the smoke and mirrors I know is a huge part of video game trade shows and the feeling of "EEEEEEEE OMG NEW GAEMS I WANNA PLAY!!!"

Back when I was working for a game company I had several opportunities to actually attend e3, but I never did, because hearing accounts from the actual trade show floor by my coworkers.  It was nearly...

Kiera in 3 Point

Talking with my friend the other day about one of her drawings, decided I wanted to try a really hard, extreme perspective angle on one of my characters. Just for practice.

Tried to do 3-point perspective but it could be argued this is still single point perspective just because I didn't fill in any background details that the other 2 points would affect. Drew in the horizon line though that the other two points would be on... so I dunno. It's a really challenging thing to accomplish, ...

God Slayers - Page 104

Let's see what Max is up to today...

God Slayers - Page 104 - High Res

"Privileges" and "Luxuries" come at a steep cost in a place like Kuserra.

Weekly Update - 66

Max go *YAAAAAAWWWWWW*

So yeah, officially the upper tier rewards are going to be called Kuserran Heroes from now on.  I'm doing this mostly for my own sanity, so that I can talk about them without having to describe wtf that is every time I bring it up.  Applying a label with associated definition.  Because language, yay.  In any case, I'm sticking with it.  Everyone who subscribes at the higher tiers gets a hero, that I will draw, and make a canonical part of ...

Trader Tier reward

Here's the Trader-tier Patron Reward for Robyn!  She sketched me a design and I just sort of took it and ran with it.  It was really fun, and I like this character a lot.  :3

At Trader tier and above I've been offering a character reference like this, and these characters will all be added to a persistent pool of Kuserran residents that I can draw from when I need to fill in some background character slots.  I'm considering each one of these characte...

Kiva Character Page

Rather than share my usual quick sketch today, I want to share with everyone what I've drawn for the character page.  Also I'm probably ending the poll today, since it makes the most sense for Kiva to debut the character page, and most people were voting that way anyway.

Putting up lore and site pages is a two-step process, really... and it can take awhile to get it all done.  First I have to find time to make the art I want for it, whether it's lore buttons, or full character...

Weekly Update - 65

First of all, I'd like to thank our newest Patron, Robyn Finch, who joined us this month at the Trader Tier!  That came as a HUGE and very pleasant surprise, especially considering how much the move messed with my update schedule this past couple of months, so thank you!!

Second, Happy Memorial Day to everyone!  For a lot of people here in the states, Memorial Day means a day off.  I don't get a day off though, because I'm working as an independent creator for donations a...