christina's journal

Here’s my final blow in my battle with Lauren (RedLeash). Background is a pic I took down at Docklands a few years ago. Not very exciting but reasonably well executed I think. Now waiting for judgement. I think there’s a good chance I’ll end up with the mask of the Crazy Golden Banana (El Platano de Oro Loco).

I’ve reached 900 downloads. Not a major milestone but getting closer to 1000. Business this month has actually been quite good and I’ve sold at a greater rate than any previous month despite not uploading anything new for quite a while. At the rate I’m going I’ll have 1000 downloads in about a month. I’ll probably have $2000 by then too.

Meanwhile I’m spending my creative time getting right up to speed with Flash. I’m just about at the point where I can start building my character libraries and get back to producing more illustrations. For the past week I’ve just been going through the process to make sure I know how it’s done.

I’ve also bought a couple of graphic novels lately, for inspiration. 300 by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley contains some stunning artwork. The film was based on this work, apparently. Maybe I’ll go and see it some time to see how they transferred the art to live action.

Latest blow. I really like the colours in this mage and the mood it creates. I think I’ve given up my desire to get to the top of the ladder in the steel cage. I’ve just got too many more important things to do. I’d much rather get good at illustration which has some use than trying to prove to all those people who think I’m not worth considering that I’m better than they are. I think watching Lady Snowblood a lot has really brought to the forefront of my consciousness the extent to which I’m driven by something akin to revenge. There are quite a few people I’d like to be able to tell that they are not worth my time. However, time to let it go.

Latest cage blow. As for the last one I worked it up pretty quickly. I’m definitely getting better at that. This probably won’t score very well with the judges because it’s too simple, but I’m fairly happy with it.

Meanwhile, I had my first haircut in about eighteen months. I was getting sick of the long straight hair look, it didn’t really flatter me at all, and was becoming quite hard to manage. I must admit I look pretty different with the new style though. It’s a reversion to what i used to have, just past the shoulder, with a fringe, but it’s so long since I looked like this. I’m pretty happy with it really.

I’m making progress with my art, getting better at it and becoming a bit more creative. This is my recent blow in the steel cage. Not a particularly exciting image, but within a couple of hours I had thought up several possible scenarios, decided on this one, found what I needed and put it together. I think I’ve managed to implement some of the advice on lighting, colour balancing and general composition. Once I’ve got these under control I can concentrate on making more interesting imagery.

First image from my next battle. I had a hard time coming up with something, but in the end it’s not too bad. A straight visualisation of a character I  guess. The main image (the woman) is quite an interesting one. She certainly looks a bit feral.

Here is my 70th steel cage blow. It has rated quite well so far, 4.67 after 6 ratings, which means 4 fives and 2 fours. I actually don’t think it’s that good, but at least I finished the battle about as well as I could. It’s pretty tight, and the result will probably depend on Stuart’s final blow. No doubt judging will take a while, and the upcoming workshop is going to take all my time and energy for a while, so probably won’t be back in the cage ’til September.

Second blow. I stopped battling about six months ago because I got very discouraged when any interest shown at the start of my battles had almost completely evaporated by the end. I was rating my own and my opponents images come rounds four and five just to have something there. While the appeal of good designers is obvious, it is supposed to be a bit social after all. Anyway, I’ve started again purely because it challenges my creativity. I still check to see if anyone has rated or commented though. And still get disappointed. Actually I did get a few ratings on my first blow. That’s usual though – it’s the last few that no one looks at.

So here’s my first blow in my current battle with Torack. Not very exciting, but quite interesting to make. Perhaps I should have put a figure in the landscape somewhere. I did actually try that but wasn’t happy with the result. Not expecting to win this battle, but at least it should get the creative juices flowing a bit.

I’m finally accepting the realities (or rather, the unrealities) of public imagery. Here’s my first blow in my current battle. First make a nice image, then colourise the hell out of it. Heavily colourised images are very in vogue in the cage, and anything remotely realistic gets canned. Ribbons of light are big too – maybe next time.

I decided to resubmit a few images that were initially rejected with option to try again. This time I dialled up the exposure and vibrance (controlled saturation), and most have been accepted. It’s not that I can’t do this stuff, it’s just accepting that that really is what the customer wants. I’ll have to keep my natural light (and even darker toned images) for my private collection. As for the rest of the world – NEW, SHINY.

I’m pretty happy with my last blow in this battle although technically it was totally simplistic. I found (after a lot of searching) the right background image, which turned out to be a vector illustration. Apart from that and a single carryover element there wasn’t much to do except for a bit of shadow and a bit of sharpening to blend the carryover better with the vector. I like it as is, and couldn’t bring myself to add anything else and spoil the clean simplicity.