katoo

Head of the beast (WIP)

taking another pause on comic work to model a bust of the Wyvern, mainly for reference but also to improve on its design in some small ways. i took a different approach to the helmet and decided to try using boolean modifiers to block out large shapes and small details (see below) and i think i've got the hang of it.

if i feel like challenging myself further i might go ahead and attempt to model the body as well... something i didnt feel remotely confident doing a few months ago. crazy! remember this nightmare?

lmao! i think it'll be fun to see how well my orthographic projection will match up to the 3D model...

Prologue - Pencils pg. 6-8

this sequence is taking a long time to fully draft! as i was kinda expecting!! though my helmet model is already helping a LOT once i figured out how to correctly position it on the canvas, so i'll be making some more 3D assets to use very soon. it's a wild thought to me that up until only recently i was completely baffled by 3D modelling, and now i'm comfortable making all sorts of things. that being said, i still model from my technical drawings, so i'm glad i took the time to learn how to draw that way.

anyway, thanks for looking :)

Prologue - update, and Blender things

Hi! dropping by to say i'm still working on completing the prologue for Wyvern while i wait to hear back about the grant. it's gonna be 18 pages, i've completed the layout up to pg 11 and now i'm working on the tight-ish pencils. since i'm working by batch instead of page-by-page, i'm afraid i don't have much exciting work to show in the mean time. so i'll keep updating with you guys with WIPS of varying quality. overall this is a fairly "soft" launch of Wyvern, since it depends on how things go with the grant.

if you've checked my twitter, you know i modelled Sonny's helmet in blender to use as a reference in CSP. and it works! the model itself is still a bit rough in some areas, and now that i have a better idea of how hard surface modelling works, i may come back to revisit it at a later time. but at the moment it works excellently. here it in action:

(jake's anthropomorphic buddy jesus finally makes its in-comic debut here lol)

to set up 3D material for use in CSP, you can import any .fbx or .obj into clip studio modeller, which is free to dl if you already have CSP. fbx files are very useful because they maintain all the separately attached parts of the model, so i am able to show and hide the visor. cs modeller is pretty straightforward once you check out a couple tutorials on it (the official documentation is a bit dry) and once it's set up you can import your own models or download free ones, which is very useful since clip assets doesn't always have what ur looking for. my only recommendation is bc the lighting is fairly primitive, untextured models work best. i had to go and tweak the colours for the interior of the helmet because it was too dark and was obscuring details.

on that note, i'm also making a lowpoly model of Sonny based on PS1 graphics capabilities, since early 3D art is another thing i'm interested in.

anyway, i'm doing fine but things here in sydney are a bit shit, i've had no work for 3+ weeks and probably won't until lockdown ends (which may take months). but i'll try and post here more often while i'm stuck at home. thanks for looking, as always <3 

Prologue - Pages 1-5

Aaaand we're done! for now! here are the first completed 5 pages of the comic that will be going to my grant pitch. hopefully all of the drawing is done now, and i can focus on getting the rest written up and submitted before the deadline. and then i'll be waiting to see what happens next before i start work on completing the prologue and subsequently start serious work on part 1. i might even take a bit of time to relax lol...

thanks for reading, and i hope i have even more exciting things to show in the near future

Hair up (+ more page sketches)

Hi! work on the next set of pages is taking a while, since it'll be a whole scene (11 pages) instead of just 5. so here's a sketch of Sonny i did on the side.

this part actually occurs a little further into the story, so i'm still deciding on whether to post the whole thing or not... but here's two pages of the rough sketch/layout without context for the time being ;) thanks for looking!

Wyvern - Ch. 6 preview

next story excerpt! the start of Sonny's first day on the Astrolabe. one panel has been left blank for the time being as it's too complex and rn i don't have the time/energy hehe. of all things i need to model in blender, it is probably the space station and its interiors that are the most urgent.

i have two more chapters that i'll be sketching like this, hopefully for a total of around 20 pages. i have just under a month to get the rest done. wish me luck...

Wyvern - the first five (sketched) pages

first of all: thank you everyone for your words of support. it means a huge amount to me and i'll be working to my best ability to make this come to fruition, no matter what ends up happening.

and so, it's starting to come together! these are the first 5 pages of refined sketches for the prologue. to put together a pitch for the grant, i'm using excerpts from different parts of the draft to give an idea of style/story/tone etc so currently there will be no consecutive releases of finished pages. after the pitch is finished i will be working as normal, and will be releasing things in a chapter-by-chapter basis as that is how the story will be best read. it's very exciting!! more to come...

a change

so, i have a small and fairly personal update. Mutagenesis is going on hold for a bit, which i'm loathe to do because i started this project with the full intention of finishing it. i WILL finish it, maybe not in the full scope i wanted, and i don't know when. the reason is because i'm starting work on Wyvern, a long-form graphic novel/webcomic(??) in order to apply to a writing grant. i started writing the script for Wyvern in 2014 and its since unravelled to a 3-book draft the size of about 117,000 words. it's not an understatement to say this is the only thing i want to do, right now, with every fibre of my body. even if i don't get this grant, i intend to continue making the comic. although the only thing i can think is "why didn't i start this earlier?" lol. well...

i finished my university honours course in 2019. until this point i had never been outside of the structure of the education system. i had no plans for where i would go other than a nebulous "get a job", but in the back of my mind i knew i didn't want to pursue a career in science. really, i know i didn't study an expensive degree with the goal of getting a PhD, starting a career, and living on the unreliable but usually comfortable money that research makes. i did i because i think biology is interesting! and i enjoy learning! i'm fortunate that despite now being in debt i got to make that choice, and despite failing to find work in research i'm not remotely bitter about it any more. i enjoyed that time i had in the lab, but i won't be going back.

covid severely impacted my chances of finding work, like everyone else, and i returned to government benefits. i've been on benefits since i was maybe 18 and now i'm almost 25. i was unemployed for more than 12 months, and was given casual work by a job search provider only a few months ago. this morning i voluntarily walked out of their office and the benefit system, hopefully for good, after being coerced, dehumanised, condescended to, and threatened. this is because i refused to work the hours they wanted of me in order to roll me off the benefit and get their commission from the gov for a job well done. the required hours (5 working days) were incompatible with the time i wanted (3-4 days) that would let me work on the comic, and i knew this, so i refused them. so sitting in front of them i cancelled my payment and left the office. during the appointment i had mentioned i was an artist, that i did "paintings", and as i was leaving the suit asked if he could see them. i laughed, and told him no.

my experience on jobseeker and dealing with JSPs, and centrelink as a whole, has been sickening to my core. i felt sick and crushed as i was actively denying that system. it's an incredibly difficult thing to do, and many people in australia do not have that option. in their permanent records i'm now listed as "denying work", as having done "job sabotage". i tore off a bandaid that had been rotting and festering since i had been 18, and it fucking hurt! and now i'm on my own, the office won't get their fat cheque, and i'm free. 

the hardest question as an adult you are never taught is "how do i live a meaningful life?". and there's no clear answer to it, but i'm starting to start to figure it out. for the time being i'm still employed, but without a financial safety net this is where having this patreon becomes important. as i work on Wyvern i will eventually revamp my page and (as a heads up) the tiers. the comic is what i want to make, so i'm making it. for a long time i've ummed and ahhed about what to say to people when they ask me what i do, and i'm tired of it! i'm an artist! it's all i ever was!

i'll leave you with a short blurb on what Wyvern is about, written as part of my grant application. and as always, thank you for being here.

P.S.: Fuck the australian government

Mutagenesis - Process journal VI

i'm still plodding through this project whenever i'm not at work and still making gradual progress through the planned 35 pages. most major illustration components have been finished now, aside from the cover art. 

above is logo design incorporating the fictional language i created earlier, some final art and page layouts of the "player ships", and misc experimentation in design and my fake CRT effect. i've been studying the twitter account CRT Pixels to help me with this, which presents the way in which games used to look and how they were designed to be seen that way.

it's strange to think about how much time and effort i've placed into this when originally it was just going to be a fun little thing on the side (but i should know myself better than that by now, lol). however much of that time has been used on developing new techniques and exploring totally different artforms, learning about the games i'm using as inspiration and the hardware they ran on, and the culture of games media at the time in the form of gaming magazines and enthusiast-published computing zines. 

this, and thinking about the project and my modus operandi itself. how i'm consistently drawn to "obsolete" artforms in which the limits of digital/traditional media dictate firm boundaries on what can and cannot be made, and how those boundaries can be incorporated or exploited to create unique art. the appeal of "7.5/10"-type media: film/TV and games that dared to express interesting themes, settings, or ideas that otherwise flopped on release due to stunted execution or other problems, and become lost and buried. the influence of nostalgia that exists internally or is loaned and learned from the nostalgia of others, gradually becoming something else entirely that lives only in the interiority of others. that sort of thing.

anyway i had my 2nd covid shot yesterday and i feel rough tonight so i'm going to stop myself from writing any more. thanks for looking <3

Mutagenesis - Enemies gallery

finished this set of illustrations of the various bad guys. i decided to use just a pen and ink style (with some minor exceptions using toning) akin to old D&D monster manual illustrations and other art that appeared in game manuals of the era. all my pencils were very loose, so much of the detail was inked freehand. it was fun combining different aspects of mechanical and biological design with horror and i'm happy with the result, but my hand needs a rest now LOL

Mutagenesis - Group Shot

finished this drawing for the cast page! it took a bit longer than anticipated because after some mucking around with the flats i decided i wanted the look of a marker/watercolour illustration, so i had to redo most of the tones. but i really enjoy this workflow and i feel i've got a good method of making it look as naturalistic as possible.

edit: i forgot Arien's fucking TATTOO lol i'll have to just fix that during touchup 8')

here's a crop at 100% that displays the textures nicely

still have a lot of art and writing left to do but i'm getting there with this, lol... my main motivation for finishing this project is that i'll be able to start production on the Big Fucking Comic (Wyvern) once i'm done :')

Mutagenesis - Process journal V

not a huge amount of stuff this time since i've started a new job. it's nothing special but it means i can only do project work on my free days. i'm glad at least to have a more reliable source of income now, lol. here i have some character work, including stuff i posted to twitter recently, and i've also developed a written language to go with the zine. 

like most things i work on, worlds and settings have the tendency to become larger and less enclosed than i was originally planning, and this has been the case with Mutagenesis. this alien world and species will definitely make more appearances in my work after the completion of the zine, as i keep finding myself thinking about the world and figuring out what i want to do with it. 

i've been inspired by early furry scifi creations such as the Skiltaire, created by Mark Merlino/Sylys Sable in 1971, and various species created by Ken Sample/Ken Coug'r in the 80's. many early depictions of furries were connected to scifi/fantasy since furries first started to gather at scifi conventions, so there were many original species that were explicitly aliens or "recoms" - human-animal hybrids. others were invited to participate in these worlds and create their own characters, leading to the rise of zines featuring art, writing and other media that featured such worlds. another example is Vilous, a universe created by Mick Ono and Kiki CR which notably hosts Sergals as well as other species. i believe Vilous has been in development since 2003 and work on it is continuing to this day.

what appeals to me so much about these universes is the level of outside participation and collaboration. i've been a sole author for every project i'm working on, so i think with this setting i would like to invite people to share in it and create their own characters. once the zine is done, i'll probably draw up some finer details about the species and world so anyone can create their own characters. i'm definitely not highly ambitious about it, but i think it would be fun to see what happens :)

anyway, if you want to see my process for the fictional alphabet i've included captions on the images. the main inspiration for the "cut and paste" approach of rearranging existing characters was how Shaun Tan created a fictional script for The Arrival:

and i did not intend to write so much for this entry so that's it! thanks for reading and sticking around, as always <3

Sleepwalker - Alt vers & Hi res

Completed result of the WIP i posted a little while back. this was a fun experiment in colour and light. in the end i didnt quite achieve the look i originally had in mind, which would have involved strong underlighting, but that's okay. i'm really enjoying digital painting more now thanks to the colour jitter function :)

and now *bernie voice* i am once again asking you to click through to see the full resolution image

Mutagenesis - Process journal IV

CW: surgical imagery/gore for the last pic

an update on this thing! it's happening! with most of the writing done i'm cracking down on finishing all the illustrations i need to do for it. i have also been making more pixel art of sprites and backgrounds so i can insert fake screenshots of the game. these will all be in greyscale in the final product, so it's my treat for patreon that u get to see everything in full colour. 

i am not good at pixel art so i've been experimenting with using scaled-down drawings and images to make my work easier. to create the interior of the Body and other trippy visuals i have been using tissue histology micrographs and gross surgical pathology photos ("gross" as in "large", but also as in "gross"). click through for notes.

anyway i have been working on this for much longer than i first planned so i want to get it finished soon lol. thanks everyone for your interest and kind words on my other posts, as always!

Sleepwalker - WIP

a new painting in the works to add to the pile. after drawing mainly in monochrome since the start of the year i had the urge to experiment with colour and CSP's new colour jitter brush setting. this just started by laying down and blending random strokes.

currently i am finishing off my commission queue and then will be going back to project work. i'm also going through my archive and tagging posts by project title now, so hopefully that'll allow for easier browsing :)

Mutagenesis - Plus

Not much to show in the way of project work lately since i've been busy with commissions, but here's a character sketch i did in the mean time. I've named the four-armed android lab assistant Plus Or Minus Two, or ±2, or just Plus, after the famous psychology paper "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information" by Miller. The paper suggests that the maximum number of objects that can be held in short-term memory is 7±2, which makes the name a bit of a joke since an android is definitely not restricted by this magic number.

The article opens with:
"My problem is that I have been persecuted by an integer. For seven years this number has followed me around, has intruded in my most private data, and has assaulted me from the pages of our most public journals. [...] Either there really is something unusual about the number or else I am suffering from delusions of persecution."

Opening for B+W commissions

helloooo, i'm taking on a few commissions in this style so as promised, you guys get first dibs of the slots.

- price is $70 USD via paypal, upfront (+ extra for another character or complex props, etc),  but i'm offering a 10% discount for patrons.
- SFW or NSFW is fine!
- if interested, DM me here or on twitter.
- i'll be opening publicly either after finishing my patron-only queue or once this post has been up for around a week.
- my TOS can be found here: https://bit.ly/2UwMtjJ
- you can check your status on my trello here: https://trello.com/b/RzJuRCJG/commissions-2021 

thanks for looking :)

Mutagenesis - The Trireme (+ sketches)

The Holophor Space Defense Force space carrier HSD-4 Trireme, a ship that acts as the base of operations during the "game's" story. this illustration will appear in the intro pages.

this is 100% digital media! i used CSP's realistic watercolour brushes and some kyle brushes. not the same as the real thing but very fun to use and good enough if i cant be arsed making large/complex illustrations traditionally (which is often). click through to see the sketch process.

New digital collages

"Happy" 2021! i'm still making these things. the orange one is "Parts List", the blue is "Untitled". i want to try playing with new software next time so i might download electric zine maker.

Nightmare hobby horse

for something different and even a little bit festive, here's some design work i've done over the past while on the antagonist's mech for my story project Wyvern. this is the Mari Lwyd, named and designed after the welsh folk custom. it's an extremely large and very powerful machine built more or less from scrap by wolfgang, who uses it to assist his honest living as a space pirate. the ISA usually just call it "the hobby horse".

the first sketches of the mari lwyd were done about a year ago:

designing the head was probably my favourite part. it's fun to use a real reference and then see how far i can push its abstraction before it loses all resemblance.

As for Mutagenesis, it probably won't be finished by the end of the year but work on the draft pages is more than halfway done. in the end it will probably be 28-30 pages, maybe more if i add extra art and storywriting to flesh out the world a little extra. we'll see..

anyway, happy holidays! i hope you can all have a safe and relaxing time, and thank you to everyone for another year of helping me make the shit i want to make :) <3

Mutagenesis sample pages - Io and Arien

Character illustrations and bios for the main "player" characters. i really beg that you fullsize the images, because patreon HATES displaying anything with screentones in a flattering fashion lol. any extra spice will be added to the page design/layout later, if at all, since i'm not extremely good at graphic design and i want to keep it pretty simple. luckily for me, many of the game manuals i've been looking at for guidance also have very simple, low production appearances. 

EDIT: forgot to mention the sketch i used when i was deliberating whether to put a jacket on Io or not

Mutagenesis - A short chat

The scientist and her assistant have a conversation about the nature of their work. a 3-page comic that'll be appearing in the game manual. not the most exciting thing ever, but it was fun to draw :)

Mutagenesis - Process journal III

Work has been a bit on-off because of life things happening, my rly unreliable mental (& physical) health, etc etc, but i still have some things to show. i've started production on the actual pages and will be working on compiling all the writing and drawings i have done (and still need to do) into a coherent form. i've posted a sample above of what the pages are currently looking like. now, if things go okay i'd like to finish this before the end of the year :') 

also a big thank you to all the new patrons who joined over the past few weeks!! in all honesty knowing there is this sort of interest in my personal work is a huge motivator. more stuff is coming soon

Burning bush - WIP (CW: fire)

A new painting in the works. the car is a holden kingswood hl wagon, assembled in australia from 1977-80.

Mutagenesis - Poster timelapse video

here's the recording of the process that went into this illustration from start to finish. i've been wanting to record a timelapse video for ages so i'm really happy i was able to put this together, and i'd like to keep making videos for this patreon. this video will also go public when the zine is released. also, sorry if it's too fast to see what i'm actually doing, but i wanted to crunch the ~16 hours that went into this into 20 minutes max and that meant speeding it up by 5000% lol. 

you'll notice i tend to jump around the canvas like crazy instead of working section by section for the most part, and thats just down to how i work. its an instinctual process so i just tend to put paint down in whatever spot based on the first thought that enters my head. this is a luxury i'm afforded by choosing to work digitally, but i lose the natural aspects of traditional painting like texture, tonal variation, colour mixing etc. that i find make interesting art and i have to deliberately add those features in.

i learnt a lot about adobe premiere making this video, and its definitely not a perfect result, but in the future i'll try using different workflows to see what fits and maybe i'll entertain the idea of making 2-part videos. 

thanks for watching, and let me know what you think!

Mutagenesis - Release poster (& notes)

Completed one of two illustrations planned out for this project. please click the image to see the full res! this is a poster that would be released as advertisement for the "game". there is some more text i'd like to add to it and possibly i'll fool around to make it appear like an aged print, but i'll figure that out later. i plan on posting this publicly once i release the zine. 

i also recorded the entire process over the span of four days and will next be making a time-lapse video. would anyone be interested in a patreon-only narrated version as well?

below are the thumbnails i used for the composition. i originally had a very clear idea of what i wanted in my head, so it didn't take too much fiddling. at first i wanted Io to be leaning against the wreck of the ship, but it turned out that emphasising the diamond of negative space in the middle made an excellent frame. no doubt i'll get to draw what i first was thinking at a later time, because i love drawing the aftermath to disasters and wreckages.

below is the colour sketch. i eyedropped off this (minus any filter layers) to get my palette. you can see how different the final version is. i decided that the complexity and depth of colour i wanted to achieve in the ship wouldnt be possible if i had decided to ink and cell-shade it. i've had practice painting large objects from life (as you can see in my building paintings) but before now i'd never rendered an entire spacecraft from imagination. in the end i'm fairly happy with the result despite taking the risk!

my main source of inspiration were Yasushi Suzuki's paintings for Ikaruga.

in combination with poster art for anime that used cel-shaded characters against a painted background, particularly with that almost flat blue sky and fake photographic effects. i replicated a lens flare/bloom effect by manually painting in those bright red/lilac areas around the very top of the ship and in the areas of reflected light at the bottom. this is more apparent in my colour sketch.

production on the actual pages for this zine has started and i'm making steady progress, which i'll show in the next working journal. the next major illustration for this will be the cover art, which will be different in tone but likely use a similar style, but i'm gonna deal with that later. that's everything for now, i'll try and get the time-lapse edited in the next week or so. as always, thanks for looking <3

Mutagenesis - Process journal II

Making steady progress, though i keep getting sidetracked by experimenting on making stuff that won't appear in the final zine/booklet. but thats half the fun imo. here's a little update.

First off, some major changes to the Imago's design like i was considering in my last post. now it really has that "shmup spacefighter" look i wanted. i'm gonna stop myself from fiddling with it any more and call it complete... i also tested my rusty pixel art skills and made the sprite version of the Imago, as well as some really crunchy still frame tests. i also had a shot animating in CSP for the first time:

there are also some new characters: an android laboratory assistant with 4 arms; Io's former mentor/wing commander/maybe love interest.... now MIA and assumed killed by the Body after breaching its core; the "player 2" character, pilot of the Imago's sister ship and the youngest ace pilot in the force.

and to finish, a preview of a 3 page comic that will form an "intermission", and a written excerpt from the final section of the booklet.

things have been kinda constantly overwhelming on my end (as has been the case the entire year) but the more i work on this, the more exciting it becomes to me. i've been watching lots of longplays of various shmups from different points in time, and i've discovered a wealth of music and visuals i wouldnt otherwise have experienced. i've also been having lots of fun emulating a few games even tho i am definitely not the most skilled at shooters loL.

anyway, i hope you're all doing okay, thanks as always for looking <3

Mutagenesis - Process journal

An update on the manual i'm making for a fake game. this time, tying down specific gameplay aspects and the design of the player ship (the Imago; latin for "image" and also referring to the final stage of metamorphosis for insects). click on the pictures above for annotations. 

here's another snippet of the prologue that introduces the giant space meatball in the first picture:

the design of the Body is inspired by the morphology of cancer cells as they appear in SEM micrography. the progression of the game will involve the player gradually moving closer to the Body, entering it, and making their way to the core with the objective of destroying it.

as for the design of the Imago, i'm a bit torn. i decided to go for a look similar to a fighter jet, but i might continue to push it further. i'm drawing inspiration mainly from game franchises Xevious, R-Type and Gradius, which have iconic ship designs that are generally compact and have strong shapes that translate well to the sprite design. the general feeling is "it has to look cute enough", so you'll probably be seeing more of the Imago. the camouflage is directly based on dazzle camo. since the enemy is a biological computer/AI it is in theory easier to fight it using a constantly changing camouflage to confuse its visual/pattern recognition processes, like how cuttlefish work combined w modern anti facial recognition methods.

as for the gameplay notes, if it is a bit confusing or convoluted, thats what my goal is here. the next sections will be indexes of the main enemies, bosses, characters, and weapons, and whatever else i decide to throw in. there will be as many illustrations as i can fit in, including sprites and "screenshots".

that's everything for now. thanks everyone!!

Three different paintings of buildings

architecture is not something i'm particularly good at drawing or painting but i've always been interested in being able to do it. i kinda hate painting straight lines and repeating patterns as i don't have the patience for it, so part of this exercise is finding a way to represent what's interesting to me in a fun way.

the first was painted w/ watercolour and gouache on an easel on our little balcony. i was motivated by james gurney's videos on plein air painting, and he has a method that is extremely appealing and easy to understand for me. he is also a very good teacher. i used his method to map out the approximate gamut i could get from the 3 colours i was using and the tints produced when they were mixed with white gouache. this lets me learn about the paint and the sort of colour range i can achieve from them. the finished painting took about 2-2.5 hours.

the second is a study of a photo i took in california, and was my first attempt at using heavypaint. it was extremely annoying but i can see a lot of potential in it, and i like some of the brushes and the blending/hue jitter functions.

the third was from imagination using CSP. i used 3d models for the buildings and painted over them. this was specifically inspired by james ferraro's EP Four Pieces For Mirai (Overture) and the opening scene to End of Evangelion. i guess i find comfort or personal closure in creating scenes of peaceful/surreal disaster or post-apocalypse ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. or a sort of nostalgia for somewhere i've never been. i also just like painting water.

i have more project stuff coming soon. thanks everyone ^^

experiments in digital collage

something a bit different... i've been enjoying curating images to use in pinboards for my design work, so this was a sort of natural progression of it. i was also specifically inspired by the hand crushed by a mallet (remix) music video by Darío Alva & Weston Allen for 100 gecs. 

i'm thinking amorphously about the body, commodification of the body, medicine, biology, science as spirituality, and that sort of thing. this was a fun way to express how my "science" brain talks to my "art" brain, which are actually just the same "brain" as science and art as entities are more similar than most people think (since both are about finding understanding in yourself/your surroundings; both are equally fucked under capitalism; etc). it's nice to remember i have a background as a biomedical scientist even though my odds of finding any related jobs are at an all time low!! anyway i might keep doing this kind of art on the side

more stuff coming soon <3