3D Collaboration

Early October, I saw a post by a certain chicdead26 in Ko-fi Discord Server, "collaboration" channel. Here is the post, albeit in archived form:

Inciting incident

At this point I wanted to explore art collaboration because I did not have luck with getting commission work. It may sound strange, but I wanted to work on something with input from another person.

So I replied to the post, expressing my interest. Perhaps partly on a whim. To my surprise, ChicDead26 was responsive. Soon we were talking via Discord Direct Messages. We agreed to work on a 3D model for the witch depicted in "Broom Ride!".

The character we were to work on (the witch, not the star nor the cat)

I quickly found out that ChicDead26 was dead serious! I was just suggesting, "Oh, shall I maybe draw T pose turn around of the character?" and he already got a base mesh! Not only that, he asked many good questions about the character appearance since he only got the image above as reference. So I answered as well as I could and started drawing a character turnaround sheet.

First attempt at character turnaround sheet

I started by drawing the rightmost figure to get myself familiar with the character. I drew "Broom Ride" seven months ago; it has been a while. Plus, I have not thought of her hairstyle without the hat.

Next, I drew the front view. I struggled with accurate drawing. Then I proceeded to drawing the side view... and I really struggled to make sure elements are consistent in the 2 views. I probably made her profile too complicated; but at the time I did not realize that I should simplify. My mindset was still in stylized drawing land, not technical drawing for character sheet land.

Did I say that ChicDead26 was dead serious? Well, he was. He already got the base mesh to the correct proportion after I sent him the turnaround sheet, so I had the chance to amend my drawing. The body shape was too boyish in the front view; so I made the amendments below.

Amended character turnaround sheet

I felt bad enough about the head that I drew a turnaround sheet for the head. ChicDead more or less ignored it; but I have to show that at least I did some work (even if it was not used), right?

Head turnaround sheet

I was concerned about the head shape of the 3D model, so I drew another one more straight to the point.

Highlighting part of the head I was concerned about

So ChicDead26, being dead serious, amended the model and I was happy.

Probably you saw from the drawings that I also had the hat in mind. Well, ChicDead26 countered with a simpler idea of a conic hat that he would rig to deform, so we went with that. It was a time-saving move on hindsight. A good thing I did not insist on modeling the complicated hat, lol.

And so, after around a week, the 3D mesh was completed; then after 4 days, the UVs were ready. It was time for me to paint the textures. I had to admit I was worried because I usually work slowly, while ChicDead26 worked fast. Thankfully rigging a whole character was enough to occupy him while I wrestled with Blender UI and tried to paint some textures.

Unable to comply, texturing in progress

I did make use of this opportunity to learn the software. I enjoyed using Blender texture painting. It needs some getting used to; but I realized that it was possible for me to exclusively use Blender texture painting to create stylized textures (and never need to move to Photoshop). I also re-learned the hard way that texturing crisp geometric shapes was a pain.

Back to the collaboration, I took around 12 days to work on the textures (and the result was somewhat simple). Meanwhile, ChicDead26 was already posing the character to recreate the pose in the "Broom Ride" painting. He even set up the lighting and rotating camera. All I did was... made the lighting brighter with rim light. And here is the result.

I was happy with this collaboration and the outcome. On reflection while writing this post, I am even happier with the outcome. Seriously, ChicDead26 worked fast; creating a 3D model from scratch in 1 month. I wish you all the best, man!

You can find ChicDead26 on his socials:

• Twitter
• Ko-fi
• Linktree

Reflections 2023

I felt the need to write another reflection post because I experienced some interesting developments recently.

By coincidence, I wrote "Reflections 2022" almost exactly a year ago. My plan was to create a series of images that capture bitter-sweet feelings from my childhood.

I am pleased with the images I painted in this one year period, so much so that I replaced the portfolio on my website with some of these images: "Little Star Dreaming", "Mid Autumn Festival", "Warm Ramen in a Cold Winter's Day", "Year of the Rabbit", "Little Witch with Frizzy Hair", "Broom Ride!", "Spell Cast!", "Mermaid", and "Hi, Mr Whale!".

Along the way, I found myself liking "witch" as a theme and adopted "witch series" as a theme. The theme in my mind morphed into "draw witches with things associated with childhood".

In terms of painting, I developed the following standard practices:

• Colorize inked lines.
• Overlay a low-opacity layer of blurred inked lines.
• Invert some part of inked lines as glow lines.
• Be conscious of applying cool and warm colors.

In terms of monetization, I started a print shop at INPRNT.

I followed this plan until end of May 2023 with "Hi, Mr Whale!".

In June 2023, I wanted to start accepting commissions and had to adapt the plan. I did not get a strong positive reaction from the childhood-themed images. I need to explore adjacent ideas:

• Keep the witch theme and experiment with graphic elements in character illustrations. Outcome: "Punk Witch" and "Flame Witch".
• Draw images that make audience recall their childhood. Outcome: Cammy fanart. My logic is admittedly roundabout. Street Fighter is a nostalgia for me. Recently "Street Fighter 6" was released. so why not draw a SF6 fanart? Looking at the new roster, I liked Cammy's new design and so Cammy fanart it was.
• Draw images of special dates with children's point of view. Outcome: "National Day". In the coming months, I plan to draw one for Mid Autumn Festival and one for Halloween.

While preparing for sample images to accept commissions, I found out that I had only one sample bust image, so I painted another one, "Everything Goes According to Vegeta's Plan".

Mid August I started accepting commissions. I learned quickly why commission artist do not use Instagram for commissions. I received at least 3 direct message requests that turned out to be scams. Their characteristics are:

• The requested image is not related to my art. The requests are pet pictures, even though I do not draw pets.
• The requesters are eager to pay more than my price. A common tactic is to ask for multiple images.

The first time I received such a DM, I followed through with accepting the order and requesting a down payment. The scammer (a she) insisted on using PayPal. After I sent my PayPal link, she claimed to have sent $200. To add to the urgency, she attempted to audio call me via Instagram. She then sent this line: "The money has been deducted from my account kindly check your paypal email address inbox and spam too,the last mail I got from PayPal got hold on my spam". I did receive an email in my spam. It was a phishing email sent from a Gmail account pretending to be PayPal. I don't remember the content of the email, but I remember it saying that the payment of USD200 exceeded my PayPal daily limit and that I should click links to remedy this.

It was interesting and infuriating to learn about art scams firsthand. I know now why commission artists do not use Instagram to accept orders. Too much time wasted on scams. I still do not have a good solution to this issue.

Sadly, I have not gotten a legitimate commission order yet.

Finally, let me share another story. By luck, "Hi, Mr Whale!" got a Daily Deviation feature on DeviantArt. The effect was gratifying: I received a lot of love and comments, some of which seem legit. Of course a lot more are most certainly bots. In addition, I received a number of chat requests that are most likely scams. Some are even exact copy-paste. All of them ask to purchase one of my artworks. I do not know the aim of these requests; I simply ignore them.

I share this story because I start to see the scams as a balancer to the gratification of getting a Daily Deviation. I realize that (1) getting attention was luck and (2) many people use social media to get attention.

As for my future plan, I am still hoping to accept commissions. I am figuring out how to strike the balance between convenient ordering and filtering out scams.

Opening Commission!

I am opening a commission service. While preparing the commission sheet, I was surprised that I found only one artwork for "Bust" example. So why not draw a bust sample? It should be fun and easy.

Final painting

I wanted an image of Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z. It should give you an idea how I draw well-known character using my style. Sketching the thumbnails was more difficult than I expected. The pieces I had fun with (#1 & #4) were the ones in which I exaggerated Vegeta being cunning/evil rather than making him sympathetic.

Thumbnails

As the make-believe client, I picked thumbnail #4. I like the exaggerated cruel grin.

I then proceeded to draw the image in actual size: the square is 17 x 17 cm (around 6.7 x 6.7 inches).

Pencil round 1 

The client side of me thought I could push the drawing further, so I did. I enlarged the fist to add more depth to the image. The electric arcs hopefully added some interest.

Pencil round 2

And here is the inked drawing.

Inked drawing

The next stage is coloring. I started with rough color thumbnails. I used different dominant colors to try out different atmospheres:

• #1 is Super Saiyan Blue look.
• #2 is classic Super Saiyan look.
• #3 is Super Saiyan God look. The hair color in this form is reddish black, so I went for complementary green background.
• #4 is combination of #2 and #3.

Color thumbnails

I had difficulty choosing. Of course my numbering above hints at my choice; but it was not clear during the process. I personally prefer yellow hair; but it is too close to the skin color. In the end I had to choose what in my opinion was the better color scheme.

I am still in the process of painting this image as I write this post. I will update with my progress below.

Update on 10 Sep 2023

Having chosen the color scheme, next step was tidying up the colors. It has the side effect of defining area selections to help with painting. I do not always take this step; sometimes I want to paint loosely.

Flat colors

Add shadows

Adjust lit area; add rim lighting; shift lighting color to green

Paint background; add gradient between face (area of focus) & fist (foreground);
paint eyes; paint light pass on hair & fist; darken fist

At this point, I thought the painting was close to done because I have worked on all areas of the image. However, I felt something was missing. This scenario is difficult to tell on hindsight because on real time back then, I felt uncertainty I no longer feel now that I am writing this.

Remove rim light on lip edge, replace with shadows;
add darker shadow area; darken fist

Change lighting on hair; paint fist; brighten image

As final touches, I decided to darken the frame, background sky, and the foreground fist to emphasize the face. Further, I educed opacity of the lightning to reduce its prominence.

Final painting

And so, we have the final painting. I hope this post gives you a better idea what it is like to order a commission from me. You can do so by going to Commission page on my website.