Let's say that in a way, this is the titular Congregation: fortune teller/writer/priest/black magician/cossack ataman/businessman/shaman/journalist/police detective
I have 3 weeks - more precisely, 3 sets of weekends - to finish the dang comic and finally send Slavic Nihilism #4 off to printers. So, of course, it's time to finally scan and compose panels that were drawn more than a year old! Hence - multiple edits:
2021-06-13 09:41:56 +0000 UTC
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Well, here's a pretty complex bomb-ass commission not based on any existing franchises or IPs ^___^ And I loved doing it! Also, it's from one of my very first patrons here. Thank you for sticking with me, you-know-who!
Now, some general maintenance news:
2021-06-11 21:05:10 +0000 UTC
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Surprise!
The girl from last week also has a golden arm! Almost like on that demented Quibi show, haha!
And check this out - The Unrotten Hand of Teresa of Ávila:
(no Thanos jokes, I beg of you!!!)
2021-06-09 14:28:11 +0000 UTC
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*innocent whistling*
2021-06-08 09:50:38 +0000 UTC
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Making this layer cake thing possible probably cost me a full week out of three weeks total I've spent in and out working on the piece. When I do my inks in digital I tend to over-complicate things and have a million layers, so you can imagine that this file was truly a nightmare for 90% of duration of the work.
Hope it'll at least look aces when slightly animated, possibly!
Also, getting the biggest single payment for a single art piece in my career is nice, too ^______...
2021-06-05 12:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Hell yeah! I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR A CHANCE TO DRAW RONIN AGAIN* FOR AGES!
In the book, Miller himself was pretty playful and daring in how he experimented in using all sorts of techniques (swiping stuff left and right, full pages sometimes, haha! The brave soul), so I was happy to go the same way and experiment with re-interpreting the patterns he used:
2021-06-04 08:42:46 +0000 UTC
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About a year ago, I've already posted her here, but for the longest time, something about her still felt off.
Here's the very first sketchbook page with her initial character sheet:
And here are some explorations for her bomb-ass hat by our friend, sir Simon Roy himself - because a simple ...
2021-06-02 15:00:07 +0000 UTC
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No words needed: it is now complete
2021-06-01 13:00:07 +0000 UTC
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A story about how sometimes you are just clinically unable to take process photos in time XD
Previous characters: 1, 2, 3, 2021-05-31 18:05:45 +0000 UTC
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And you could kinda see Wolverine's beepis! :D
See the usual screentone here? What's kinda funny is that for this piece (on a pretty rare occasion!) I had a very strict plan for how the future picture should look, down to the big-dotted screentone areas - so much so that I even included it in the "pencils" (the printout of which I then used with my lightbox):
2021-05-28 20:37:40 +0000 UTC
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For my friends from Brainwash Gang to celebrate their new game's launch ^___^
2021-05-28 13:38:11 +0000 UTC
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Lately I've been going through tons and tons of my old art, posting it on my current twitter account and trying to get back enough of a follower count there to not absolutely fucking dread my upcoming preorder/promotion campaign for Slavic Nihilism #4 (fuck you, Karla Ortiz). Naturally, I have quite a lot of unseen and unused stuff to show, and I might as well post some here, too! Maybe you've already seen some of these here, but definitely not in such volumes. There are character de...
2021-05-26 17:00:00 +0000 UTC
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Extremely happy about this one!
Just look at this beautiful bastard:
2021-05-26 08:19:11 +0000 UTC
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Back to the commissions! I have a huge batch of almost two dozens of pieces pencilled already, so June is gonna be a fun (and *fingers crossed* relatively relaxed) month filled with inking fun.
Also!
Experimented with a new look for screentones. Makes it look almost like a proper old illustration!
2021-05-25 08:31:42 +0000 UTC
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This is probably my favorite female character design I've done to this day?.. I consider myself as someone who is quite bad in drawing ladies - especially conventional "sexy" industry types and all that shebang - but still, each of my "big" comicbooks had a fun female character I was proud of: Uruku, Marta, Claire, Luo; but now this, this beefy girl right here should become the true pinnacle of my poor craft!
Now: to make the c...
2021-05-19 12:00:05 +0000 UTC
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And a lil' froglet bonus:
2021-05-18 12:45:20 +0000 UTC
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Phew! This one was a tough, but extremely satisfying piece to make:
2021-05-16 12:00:13 +0000 UTC
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What also is very interesting (if not just a bit frustrating XD) about this piece is that thanks to it we now basically have alternative versions for those three already existing in-game character portraits, and I kinda like the newer ones more???
2021-05-15 18:01:00 +0000 UTC
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You've been seeing snippets of the process throughout the last week, but now here it is, in full messy glory!
Naturally, this piece was done almost completely in digital, mainly because of the layering issues and sheer complexity of it. I'm getting more and more used to ClipStudio, even enamoured by it - terrific brushes, incredible screentone capacities, and the interface is so streamlined an...
2021-05-14 18:01:01 +0000 UTC
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How does a full week of ever so slightly overtime work looks?
This. This is how it looks! Took me entire week to go from thumbnails to the finished careful layer by layer breakdown of the whole thing in inks - because it NEEDS to be in separate layers for some future half-animated shenanigans.
Very fun, very hard, very testing! And very satisfying to see it finished (even tho I still need to color this motherfucker) and flood my patreon with the process stu...
2021-05-13 18:01:01 +0000 UTC
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Here's a fun fact: I partially cannibalized this character's design (and role) from my old "It That Must Not Be Named" and somewhat notorious (well, only 10 years ago, and only in Russia) steampunk webcomic about inquisition and other edgelord alternative history warhammer crap. Sure, he now has all the quirks of my semi-automated drawing circa 2019-2021 (curly hair, weird cloudy eyebrows and puffy nose), but it's basically the same guy!
And check out some panels of the old gee...
2021-05-12 12:01:01 +0000 UTC
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Last week we had a video of original pages from "Yesaul", my latest "unofficial" Slavic Nihilism release (while official release of #4 keeps being postponed). This week, I give you the true gem of my Slavic Nihilism collection - the entire "Bolvany" short from Slavic Nihilism #2, written by yours truly, drawn by 2021-05-11 10:00:03 +0000 UTC
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A bit more conventional piece of work for the final day of our endurance challenge! Of course, this lady is now being integrated into the bigger Clip Studio canvas, and you should be able to see the whole thing closer to the end of the week. Tomorrow morning I'll be leaving Petersburg to spend a couple of days with Katia in a tiny lakehouse hotel, so the task of finishing the humongous piece (with co...
2021-05-10 16:01:03 +0000 UTC
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An older geezer and a younger lad
2021-05-10 10:01:01 +0000 UTC
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Day 3.
Tomorrow I am going to become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds
2021-05-09 20:33:56 +0000 UTC
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Pushing it tot he absolute limit with my trusty new ClipStudio, holy hell.
2021-05-08 14:21:11 +0000 UTC
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Working on a piece of art that is unprecedentedly huge; even with the recent RAM update, my laptop is barely handling the work file, jeeez!
Most importantly, I have only 3 days left to finish the piece in inks; maybe I'll keep posting those updates live as is goes?
2021-05-07 17:48:06 +0000 UTC
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Ah, and by the way, in case if you missed the little piece of news on my social media: last month I terminated my relationships with ComiconArt. There was no real bad blood there (at least for me, haha), I just wasn't comfortable to be represented along with the known NFT coward Matt Kindt. Anyway, I don't have any original pages in substantial volumes requiring a representative (and probably won't have for a while), and my commissions list is already 30+ pieces long thanks t...
2021-05-05 13:53:19 +0000 UTC
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(Could you tell that we at First Knife Inc. really love Ghibli movies? ;) )
This innocent Hudsoni grandma is probably my favorite character in the whole book so far - and by the way, you are definitely supposed to recognize her as a Hudsoni by her garb!
2021-05-05 12:01:01 +0000 UTC
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Aaaaand that's it for now. Hope you're enjoying this as much as I enjoy sinking hours and hours of time into my convoluted and finicky screentoning methods and techniques:
2021-05-04 15:01:34 +0000 UTC
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