Here is an initial sketch of Yvonne Strahovski, actress on the TV show Chuck and the face and voice of Miranda from Mass Effect 2.

Ok, I am getting to know my Photoshop tools a little better, but Tali’Zorah from Mass Effect 2 still looks like a blue human female (once again, thanks to the lovely Ms. Brooklyn Decker). This is a rough sketch, although I am pretty slow at using colors, so even this took me about an hour to complete. I’ll see what I can do with this one and the previous one to make them more alien.

Since this is supposed to be an online “sketchbook” I really should be posting whatever I sketch — good or bad; pencil, pen, or photoshop. So here is an early picture of one of the characters of Mass Effect 2 without her helmet — Tali’Zorah. I have fallen into the trap that most people do when they attempt to draw Tali without her helmet on — you end up with a pretty humanoid with elven features. In this case, since she is loosely based off of Brooklyn Decker, I can see why this has happened to me as well.

She still needs a lot of work, and I still have to figure out how much hair, if any, she should have. I post more pics as it comes along, when and if it does.

It is finally done. Or rather, its as done as it’s going to get. Here she is, the overly worked, but finally done in resplendid technicolor: Lady Branwen, Ultima Online – Great Lakes Shard, Woman of Roleplay. Originally set to be part of a calendar piece (in 2008), this piece is a testament to my unwavering devotion to procrastination. Well, perhaps it also speaks to my love of gaming which recently has tilted far more towards the single player RPG than the MMORPG — that is, Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 vs. World of Warcraft.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love me some WoW, but DA and ME2 are so very, very well done. I love the community driven, modular nature of DA on top of its grand epic tale. And ME2? I didn’t even play the first one, but then I realized, “Hey, this is freakin’ Bioware, why would I NOT play it?”. Me and shooters do not get along very well — my character usually ends up splattered against a wall and my stomach does somersaults the whole time I am playing. (That being said, I would love to finish Half Life 2, but I can only play for 15-20 min stretches at a time before the nausea takes over). But I digress. Suffice it to say I whipped through ME1, enjoyed it, then proceeded to lose all of my save games, so I wasn’t able to import my Commander Shepherd. Luckily I found a web site of saved games from ME1 plus a small game editor which allowed me to continue the fairly approximated  adventures of my Commander Harrison Shepherd. Anyway, ’nuff said.

So back to the drawing above. Boy, me and colors. . .meh.  But the old adage still rings true: practice makes perfect, or at least you’ll suck just a little bit less. Something like that. Branwen herself was a stab in the dark of trying to incorporate both an illustrative and painterly feel to a picture, much like Adam Hughes. Suffice it to say I am not even close, but I did learn a little more about how the photoshop brush system works, and I suppose that is something. I also “feathered my selections” more this time, which sounds vaguely dirty, but it really isn’t. You know, I’ll post a close-up of Branwen soon and critique it. That’ll show me.

Oh yes — I just received a copy of Y.S. Hassan’s “One Land, One King”, printed by Bedside Books, a fantasy novel for which I had the privilege to draw the world map. I am only into the second chapter, but so far I am loving it. Nice work, Hassan. Sorry about flaking out with the map compass.

Ok, that’s it for now. I’ll be sending over desktop sized artwork to Alec over at the calendar website so hopefully those will be appearing there soon. (I won’t even try and vow or swear how I’ll never let this much time go by again before another update. We all know how that turns out.) Back to the drawing board. . . .

An update, after a very long time away.