EP Works

I'm looking to buy a tablet for illustrations and sketching- But I have no idea what I'm looking for. I know that a major company called Wacom makes some. That's pretty much it. So... Do you use a graphics tablet? If so- Then what type of tablet do you use? And what program/software?

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:37:40 -0400

I do in fact use a drawing tablet. I usually sketch on paper and line my work digitally, but sometimes I’ll do every step digitally. For a tablet I use a Wacom Bamboo Create that has a drawing space of 6x8 inches that I got a year ago, and it’s a good basic starting off tablet. It is, however, $200 so it is a bit pricy. I also got a wireless attachment because the usb cord is pretty short on this tablet. In terms of Wacom, they do come in various sizes and models that serve different purposes. What is most important is touch sensitivity, and how accurate you want the pen quality to be when you draw on the computer.

A few years ago Wacom essentially ruled the drawing tablet market, but nowadays there are some decent alternatives. With some research you’ll probably find something that fits your needs and your budget. I’ve always used a Wacom myself (My previous Wacom Bamboo lasted 7 years before I replaced it last year so they do last), so my best piece of advice is if you want a beginner tablet, go with a Wacom Bamboo, but there is probably a cheaper alternative out there.

As for programs that I use, I use Photoshop CS6 100%. Now this is mostly because I have a Mac. But like with tablets there are other alternatives to Photoshop. If you have a PC you could download Painter Tool Sai for free, which is a good drawing program. There is also Manga Studio, which you might have a negative impression hearing the name, but I do have a friend who swears by it. These programs are more streamlined than Photoshop (which to be honest has a lot of features that can be useless to an illustrator and can be a little daunting to comprehend at first). So my best piece of advice in this regard is to experiment. Sai is a free program and the paid ones usually have 1 month trials where you can dip in and try out. I strongly suggest doing this before investing a lot of money into a program.

I’m not very good at depicting real people, but my friend...

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:41:55 -0400

I’m not very good at depicting real people, but my friend theskypilot asked me to draw Sherlock. So I tried to draw him smoking. Cause he’s so sexy when he smokes.

"Some men who want to compliment random women on the street are genuinely good guys who just don’t..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:23:18 -0400

“Some men who want to compliment random women on the street are genuinely good guys who just don’t understand why their comments might be unwelcome. Some men who want to compliment random women on the street are creepy predators. Most are somewhere in between, and guess what? I don’t know you, I don’t know your life, and I have no idea if you’re going to leave it at “Hey, you look good in that dress!” or follow it up with “But you’d look better without it! Har har! C’mon, where’re you going? I know you heard me! Fucking cunt, nobody wants your fat ass anyway, bitch.”

When you compliment a random woman who doesn’t know you, no matter how nice you are about it, there’s a good chance she’s going to freak out internally because for all she knows, you could be that latter type. And I get that it’s really unfair that women would just assume that about you. I get that it sucks that sometimes, expressing totally reasonable opinions like “hey you’re hot” will make women terrified of you or furious at you. That’s not fair.

But if you’re going to lay the blame for that somewhere, for fuck’s sake, don’t blame the woman. Blame all the guys who have called her a bitch and a cunt for ignoring their advances. Blame all the guys who may have harassed, abused, or assaulted her in the past. Blame all the people who may never do such a thing themselves, but who were quick to blame her and tell her to just get over it. Blame the fact that if she stops and talks to you and then something bad happens, people will blame her for stopping and talking to you.”

- Why You Shouldn’t Tell That Random Girl On The Street That She’s Hot » Brute Reason (via brute-reason)

^^^^^^^^^^^^

(via misandry-mermaid)

You know, I’ll go a step further and say - there are no “men who want to compliment random women on the street [who] are genuinely good guys who just don’t understand why their comments might be unwelcome.” There are guys who pretend that they don’t understand why their comments are unwelcome. But the man who whistles out his car window at me while I’m waiting for a light, the guy who stares at me while I ride past on my bike, the guy who says “Hey beautiful!” at me and my friend as we’re talking at an outdoor cafe - none of those guys want to make me feel good.

Not a single one.

I keep hearing about this guy! The good guy who catcalls and doesn’t get how it’s wrong, the nice guy who just wants to tell you you have beautiful eyes. And every time I’m told about that guy, it’s so that I don’t react, don’t glare, don’t respond negatively. Because who knows! Maybe he really super meant it in his heart and was just trying to pay you a compliment.

Because here’s the thing - here’s how I know that the nice guy ain’t real; because I always do react, always glare, always respond negatively. I always say, “No, that wasn’t okay. Don’t do that to me again.” And a nice guy? Would come back with, “Oh, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. You’re right. I won’t do that again.” A nice guy who didn’t get it would say, “Wow, I didn’t think about it that way. Is this something that you think a lot of women feel?”

And that never happens - what happens is I get called names, or have coffee thrown at my face, or get shoved up against a wall, or get followed for fifteen blocks, or get shouted out from six inches away by a man who’s six inches taller and fifty pounds bigger than I am. What happens is that I’m shown, again and again and again, that these “compliments” are prologues to a story this guy’s just desperate to tell, the story of him scaring me, hurting me, making sure I know my place. And he can tell the story as loud as he wants, because he can always fall back on, “I’m a good guy! She’s the one who started it! I was just trying to pay the bitch a compliment.”

So stop telling me that there are good guys out there who just don’t understand, because there aren’t. What there are, are guys who will pretend to be good guys, right up until you don’t smile at them. And then they show who they really are.

(via leupagus)

———-

I don’t normally reblog things non-art related, but this happens to me so often that I can’t not reblog. I completely agree with the above response, every single time I either ignore or glare at the men and they simply continue to yell at me as if they’re entitled to a positive response. And even if there is one good intended man out there, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate it because of all the other times this has happened.

I always seem to end up doing some kind of Journey fanart. This...

Sun, 05 May 2013 18:43:04 -0400

I always seem to end up doing some kind of Journey fanart. This time around, my interpretation of what my character would look like if they had human features. Cause, well, why not?

Some images I spend hours laboring over to get the composition...

Wed, 01 May 2013 17:18:36 -0400

Some images I spend hours laboring over to get the composition to get it to look right. Some images I just don’t bother with a background element and just slap texture combinations in because I didn’t plan anything. And then I have days like this where I just say screw it and just let things happen on their own.

This is (very) loosely based off of the January Tale from Neil Gaiman’s Calendar of Tales. It involved time soldiers fighting off shadow creatures, one being a veteran and the other a new recruit. But at this point I think they are closer in vein to my thesis characters than they are the Gaiman story.

So I posted this a long time ago, and since I’m starting...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:05:23 -0400

So I posted this a long time ago, and since I’m starting to get my portfolio together I probably should start posting everything that I haven’t posted so far. This is from the Nine Peahens. You should look the story up. It’s weird.

One of those nights...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:55:04 -0400

You know, when you’re trying to get your work done, and you’re sick, and you don’t want to pull an all-nighter, and you’re liking what you’re drawing so far, but no matter what you do you can’t get ONE HAND drawn right, and it’s right out in the open so you can’t cover it up, and it’s ruining your life…

penstab: taejira: hellmonks: Put in my askbox what fairy tale character you think I’m most...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 21:53:22 -0400

penstab:

taejira:

hellmonks:

Put in my askbox what fairy tale character you think I’m most like.

YEAHHH

wow, yes please?

I’m just curious to see what people think. Might give me ideas on future images while we’re at it xD

So I figured out today that my surge of activity is thanks to my work being reblogged at...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:50:37 -0400

So I figured out today that my surge of activity is thanks to my work being reblogged at Fuckyeahstrangemythology . Seems like a pretty appropriate place for my thesis to end up :) Perhaps in the next couple of days the tortoise and dragon will end up there as well.

So thanks for the reblogs and new watchers, and go check out the blog if you haven’t. They reblog some pretty awesome images.

Why is it so hard to suddenly put what I want into a picture when they ask me to for an...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:27:16 -0400

Why is it so hard to suddenly put what I want into a picture when they ask me to for an assignment?

So we are creating posters that could possibly used for my college’s future open house, and they told us to think of something that we liked during high school. And I liked a lot of things in high school, but I can’t figure out how to compose the image where it’ll draw kids of that age in :< So I end of trying to generalize because it’s supposed to attract dancers and musicians and such as well as visual artists, but I end up with crap ideas…

*sigh* The cons of being an illustrator, trying to invest yourself in an image while trying to appeal to your target audience at the same time.

ponkita: riotsinrome: epworks: Can’t believe it took me this...

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 23:19:49 -0400

ponkita:

riotsinrome:

epworks:

Can’t believe it took me this long to get the last image up! I’ll probably end up making another post with all four anyways…

For the description of my thesis, go here- Gui Xian

Baihu, the White Tiger, represents west and its element is Metal. It doesn’t really have a particular nickname it goes by, but Baihu is known for having the leadership skills of a good General. This one was a difficult image, mostly because of the tiger. I fear I didn’t really get the element across (but I didn’t really want to draw a metallic tiger either), and the color scheme leads people to think its earth. But I do like the combination of these two, and I did enjoy it.

Other Images:

North- Gui Xian

South- Zhu Qiao

East- Qinglong

This one is my favorite out of your series. I also like the colors and details you put into it. Good job c:

Awesome! Are you going to do a Qilin/Center one, too?

Hmmm, I hadn’t really seen anything about the Qilin being in the center. In my research I found that the white tiger is sometimes depicted as a qilin instead, that there is a yellow hornless dragon named Huanglong who has the element of Earth, and some strange god-like person named Pan Ku (supposedly the center of the universe) that is sometimes depicted as the center “creature”. But he was created sometime after 4th century ce, long after the original myth was created.

Anyways, back to the original question of another image: I wasn’t planning one, but in the future I might. It would probably be separate from this series though (simply because these four work so well together that I don’t want to disturb the balance). But in my original planning so long ago, I did want a samurai but it was scrapped because I already had the mongolian archer and I needed more ethnic diversity. So if I did another warrior, it would probably be a samurai to play off of the more asian creature options… And because I got cheated out of an eastern dragon :<

Everything Happens When I Don't Have Internet

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 00:54:47 -0400

So I leave my laptop at home for two days, and I come back and I have a ton of likes and reblogs on my thesis work…

Except for the dragon. I know you weren’t my strongest piece, but I love you anyways :<

Can’t believe it took me this long to get the last image...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 10:59:00 -0400

Can’t believe it took me this long to get the last image up! I’ll probably end up making another post with all four anyways…

For the description of my thesis, go here- Gui Xian

Baihu, the White Tiger, represents west and its element is Metal. It doesn’t really have a particular nickname it goes by, but Baihu is known for having the leadership skills of a good General. This one was a difficult image, mostly because of the tiger. I fear I didn’t really get the element across (but I didn’t really want to draw a metallic tiger either), and the color scheme leads people to think its earth. But I do like the combination of these two, and I did enjoy it.

Other Images:

North- Gui Xian

South- Zhu Qiao

East- Qinglong

It's reassuring to know it's only one person, which I didn't know. I am still a little worried about stuff, but it will probably be alright... Thanks : )

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 22:26:29 -0400

Yeah, I remember going through the thesis show last year and being intimidated of the senior’s work. The whole ‘you may not make it into the show’ bit really did set people on edge (though last year it was just 2 people and this year it was only 1, so it’s not a high chance). And really, there are only two deadlines you HAVE to make to make it into the show. I mean, they set deadlines for us all the time, and they may not be pleased if you don’t make them, but everyone works at different paces and go through different circumstances. So long as you can get your work together in 4 months and they approve the final product you’ll be fine. Pick something you want to work on (and I recommend having a few solid ideas when you come in next fall), and work hard on it. That’s what matters most.

Three out of four of my senior thesis, and probably the image i...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 22:19:00 -0400

Three out of four of my senior thesis, and probably the image i struggled the most with.

Qinglong, the Blue Dragon, represents East, and its element is Wood. The dragon is also known as the symbol of the Emperor (and because these are all female warriors, this one doesn’t come out as much). This one went through a lot of changes, because I originally did intend for it to be a Chinese dragon. But since I had already used a Chinese archer in my bird image, I needed a different ethnicity so I needed a different type of dragon. Well, after a lot of sitting and banging my head against my desk, I finally came to Vikings. Because its element is wood and vikings sailed on the dragon head boats. It’s a stretch, I know, but I do like how it turned out.

Other Images:

North- Gui Xian

South- Zhu Qiao

West- Baihu

The second out of my four thesis images. This one I actually...

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 16:05:00 -0400

The second out of my four thesis images. This one I actually posted up prematurely, if you go back far enough you’ll probably find it.

For the description of my thesis, return to Gui Xian

Zhu Qiao, the Red Bird, represents south and its element is (obviously) fire. Interesting enough, the phoenix is the symbol of the Empress and her side of the family. This was the first Ely that I completed, and it was also the one with the least amount of edits along the way. And to be honest, this one was the easiest for me to create. Its a fire bird whose color is red, half of the image was pretty much in the bag :p

Other Images:

North- Gui Xian

East- Qinglong

West- Baihu

So I know it has been more than a week since I said I’d...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 20:00:00 -0400

So I know it has been more than a week since I said I’d start uploading these images. I’ll be honest I went through some bs trying to get these finished (the major part you don’t need to see here), but now I’m ready to begin showing them off to the internet!

I was going to upload them in order of when I created them, but this one was sitting open so I’ll start here. My thesis was character and creature concept art, and the theme behind it was chinese mythology. Well, more specifically each direction of the compass has an animal associated with it, as well as an element, a color, and a ranking, among other attributes. My goal was to create a female warrior (each one of a different nation) to use one of the animals as their mount into battle.

Gui Xian, the Black Tortoise, represents north and its element is water/ice. It’s known as the Black Warrior, and less flatteringly the Bastard (turtles are apparently slang for being a bastard child?). Yeah, it’s not black but color choice took a long time. Plus black would have been kind of boring, so you get dark purple instead.

Other Images:

South- Zhu Qiao

East- Qinglong

West- Baihu

epworks: We had a guest lecturer (Yelena Bryksenkova, she has...

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 11:31:32 -0500

epworks:

We had a guest lecturer (Yelena Bryksenkova, she has some wonderful work!) come in last week and give us an assignment. It was about editorial art, and the article I chose to illustrate was about height in society. It was kind of an odd article that wasn’t really factual, so I went with a non-factual idea :p Went with the story of Rapunzel, and what if the prince was so tall that he didn’t need to climb her hair. It was a pretty fun assignment overall, and fairly relaxing after these previous weeks.

Rebloging for the day crowd.

We had a guest lecturer (Yelena Bryksenkova, she has some...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 23:58:08 -0500

We had a guest lecturer (Yelena Bryksenkova, she has some wonderful work!) come in last week and give us an assignment. It was about editorial art, and the article I chose to illustrate was about height in society. It was kind of an odd article that wasn’t really factual, so I went with a non-factual idea :p Went with the story of Rapunzel, and what if the prince was so tall that he didn’t need to climb her hair. It was a pretty fun assignment overall, and fairly relaxing after these previous weeks.

the gaming muse: Ocarina of Time is racist as hell (Also sexist)

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:42:00 -0500

the gaming muse: Ocarina of Time is racist as hell (Also sexist):

fucknovideogames:

When the hero is white and the kingdom he’s saving is white, making the villain a brown skinned, huge nosed man from the desert is super, super racist.

Also worth pointing out that all major good women in the game, with the possible exception of Impa, have a crush on…

I completely agree that the game is guilty of the white hero fighting the evil dark skinned man, as well as every female main character (besides Impa) having a crush on Link to different degrees. It’s not a perfect game story-wise, no. There are, however, some things I want to bring up that may alleviate some of these points. I’m not saying that it makes the game perfect, but some things that I think make the story of the game more unique in my eyes.

1. Ganon is not the only character that abuses ‘power’: This game brings up the fact that royalty may have its perks, but if you make a flawed decision it could pretty much destroy your kingdom. That’s something I’ve found interesting about Zelda’s character; she brought about the downfall of her kingdom and she admits it. It’s far more dramatic than Zelda surrendering in Twilight Princess because that was the best decision she could have made at that time with the least amount of bloodshed against her people. Zelda in Ocarina of Time destroyed her kingdom because she sent Link to collect the Spiritual Stones and bring them back to the Temple of Time, allowing Ganondorf access to the Spiritual Realm. As a child she had an idea of what she expected to happen when they harnessed the power of the Spiritual Realm and took a bet on it. And failed. You could chalk it up to being naive, but she did go behind her father’s back and used her authority as princess to let Link do what she wanted (get into Death Mountain and use the royal song to go where he needed). The worst part was that no Hylians took this seriously, they just shrugged and let it happen. They may not have known the quest, but the fact that she’s sending a 10 year old boy alone into Death Mountain should warrant some questioning.

So now Zelda has to flee and Hyrule is destroyed. Her father killed, her kingdom destroyed, the Spiritual Realm’s power drained, and the Triforce divided all because of this decision. And seven years later, she admits that it was her fault. Not many characters admit to something like that. They usually try to find fault elsewhere, place the blame on someone else, but Zelda bears this weight and accepts it. I’m not saying she’s suddenly redeemed of being useless when she isn’t Sheik, but it does shed some light on her character. She grows up and (as Sheik) does everything in her power to make up for her wrongs and help Link on his future journey. And when she has the power to send him back to the past, she sends him far enough back so that he can stop herself from making the same mistake. I could get nitty-gritty on what this does to Link, but in terms of her kingdom she does try to right her wrongs, and I can give her some credit for that.

2. Not all of the Gerudos are evil: In fact, Ganon is the only ‘evil’ Gerudo here. Alright, granted that the Gerudo women are thieves and there are more racist elements involved here (the outfit choices, the early version controversies, etc). The Gerudos are still among my favorite race though and I’m a little disappointed they haven’t adressed them since. Well, except for their society being pretty much ruined in Twilight Princess. I can guess why.

Anyways, the problem with the Gerudos isn’t because they are inherently evil and want to destroy Hyrule like Ganon does, but they are subject to patriarchy. The fact that their society is built around this biological phenomenon that they only bear one boy every hundred years, and their government is based on that one boy becoming their king is strange. I mean, the Gerudo women all seem strong and self-sufficient without a king, and then they’re suddenly forced to follow a king that they have no clue how he’s going to turn out. For all we know, Ganon’s the only one that has turned out like this and the Hylians and Gerudos have pretty much kept peace with one another (ignoring the thieving part). Moving on from that, even though Nabooru is the one woman that openly rebelled against him, it seems like the majority of the Gerudos don’t really care for Ganon/only follow him because their society says so. At the end of the game, we see the Gerudo women celebrating along with everyone else when Ganon is killed. If they truly believed in Ganon and followed his ideals, we wouldn’t see the Gerudo women celebrating at the end, we’d see them dejected and defeated in their fortress.

In fact, this is something that I’ve wondered about. If Ganon is their king and the Gerudo women are obligated to follow him, why weren’t there any Gerudo soldiers with him? Did he use them to conquer Hyrule or did he simply use the Triforce of Power to destroy everyone? If they’re at his disposal, why did he just leave them in the desert? They’re strong and capable women, why doesn’t he use them? I actually don’t have an answer for these, and it’s probably something to do with gameplay, but story wise it seems flawed. Anyways, to summarize my point even though it’s the white guy versus the dark villain, it’s not like the whole nation of Gerudos are backing him. He’s a single individual acting in this case, and the Gerudo women themselves are victims.

————-

Alright, this has been long-winded enough, but to summarize: Yes Ocarina of Time does not have the best plot. I mean, we’re not even talking about the time travel and what happens to Link in the end, we’re talking about the specific racist and sexist elements of the game. It’s kind of dated, and it shows in more than just the gameplay. But I wouldn’t write it off completely on just that. I think that while the story is flawed, there are things to be taken from it that also make it unique compared to most games. And I still consider it one of my favorite games to date.