Saturday, September 26, 2009

Unbirthday Presents

I love getting packages that I buy for myself. Because they’re just like… well, read the title. Course, real unbirthday presents would arrive on every one of my unbirthdays, and most of the unbirthday presents that do arrive are for my parents. Not to say that I’m jealous, as they’re typically either pathetic coupons, bills, or invitations to a private retreat. Actually, that last one doesn’t sound too bad.

Well, four days ago, on Tuesday, I ordered a graphics tablet on eBay. They sent it on Wednesday, and I expected it to arrive in three days’ time. Sure enough, it arrived today. The postal system has never failed me. I don’t know why everyone makes such a deal about lost packages. Maybe that’s just TV Land.

So, I got my graphics tablet, and the first thing I had to do with it was to try it out. I put pen to plastic, and within an hour, I had created something that was actually… pretty bad. I had basically just started doing a face, starting with the eye, but no sooner did I zoom out that I realized that it was going to suck. Just look at it…

The bug-eyed eye

I started out with the basic anime-style eye, because I’d never done one before, and I saw someone else drawing it and thought, “I could do that”. And then I started shading it. Ugh. Important lesson in art styles: NEVER mix the two, except for deliberate effect. There was NOT meant to be an effect here, and so it fails. If you look at a real eye…

Google. Thank you.

… you can see that there’s no difference between the “anime cornea” and the “real-life cornea” as I imagined it. Again, the lesson here is “do your research before you do something different”.

Also, I didn’t draw an eyelid either. And the eyebrow is too low. At least I put the bridge of the nose in the right spot; that counts for something, right?

And in case you’re wondering, here’s the full picture as I discarded it:

He is watching you. Closely.

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