Mermay #15 - Finny The Yellowfin Tuna MerSo Ive Had This Yellowfin Tuna Patterned Guy And Decided To

Mermay #15 - Finny the Yellowfin Tuna Mer So I’ve had this yellowfin tuna patterned guy and decided to make him into a mer to see what would happen. I think the pattern is kinda messed up actually I wanted to show off more of that gorgeous blue these fish have, but it was kinda hard from a front-ish view XD; I had some other ways I was gonna configure the pattern on the arms but this way was the only way that made logistic sense given the patterning and I had to do all kinds of crazy things to figure out how this pattern would work on arms, including marking myself with marker to denote which way the pattern would turn with the movement of my forearm. It was interesting, for sure. XD; Still not totally happy with it, but whatevs.

A late night of derping two nights ago. First was drawing Rob from this lovely meme that utterly made me fall in love with this thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qASEKi-RMD4 (person who made this meme and video, you are wonderful.) Then some random Gumball and Darwin doodles, and of course Peepercorn based off THIS lovely video inspired from this video... Yeah, I was tired. XD

I’m alive! Here’s my first Mermay drawing for 2017, a Green Moray Eel mer! ...Not that you can tell it’s green. XD; but yeah. Went for a more eel-like approach design-wise. Kinda had trouble with it at first with a lot of erasing to get the silhouette just right, but it worked out in the end. XD; As weird as this thing is... is it even a mer anymore? I dunno. I was influenced by @enjoliquej‘s approach to Mermay and went for a more fish-like approach too. Though not quite to reverse mer level... XD;

Mermay #14 - Blue Ribbon Eel Mer Sooo I really went all out with this one. I think I shopped it too much even... XD But uh. Yeah. And I decided too to upload a bunch of other junk with it. Like a process gif (seen those here on tumblr and thought it was a great idea XD), a line, color and final version of it kinda show the progression better. Was thinking about how portfolio people like to see your process and I thought maybe tumblr people might like to see my process too so... why not? XD So yeah I usually don’t edit this much in Photoshop when I’m working traditional but I got carried away and really rendered this one out XD; It’s still got heavy traces of the traditional like that tail bit I forgot to fill in... looked nice on paper but horrible in digital. XD But what was I going to say... Right blue ribbon eels are fun. Did the generator again and after a couple dozen tries it gave me ribbon eel and though I’d sworn off eels after it gave me three in a row, the blue ribbon eel mer was way too cool to pass up. I had to change up the tail from the very early WIP (yeah, the blurry photo that’ll take you almost a minute to see for 5 seconds in the process gif if you missed it) because the way it was configured had it backwards, but I managed to get it so I could keep the pose and not have the tail be as weird... Frankly it still looks kinda wonky if I compare it to the first WIP picture and I do like the silhouette just a little bit better from that one. Was clearer and more fluid and a little less squashed-looking at the bottom. But what was I gonna say... Oh yeah and I apologize if some of the process shots in the gif are kinda blinding... I really pumped up the colors way too much at first and kept trying to downplay it. Even now it looks tolerable but before yeah it was kinda blinding XD; Anyways uh yeah. Sooo that’s the deal. I think I was going to say something else but I don’t remember and it’s late. I think I’m just gonna submit this and call it good... I think I was going to try to explain my process more instead of just babbling on... Don’t know if I accomplished that, but I guess it’s pretty straightforward. Sketch, line with pencil, sometimes I render it a bit with pencil too, then I color it which can be more finished and polished from traditional or less so like in this one where it’s nearly a flat color. Then I use photoshop to adjust colors, fix mistakes, erase smudges or color bleeds from previous pages, maybe fix spacing issues with the eyes, etc etc and to heighten the contrast between my light and shadow areas. Usually it’s minor if I’ve already rendered it out well traditionally, but this time I was pretty heavy-handed with PS because I don’t trust my blue markers that much to give me the right color... My baby blue copic is sometimes the only one that works reliably, so I worked exclusively with my baby blue copic and a cheap crayola yellow marker to produce the traditional color draft. I started out small working in photoshop, just darkening my shadows and lightening my highlights, but then I got carried away because it didn’t look like the proper shade of blue... And that’s when chaos ensued. XD It took me practically the whole day to do this pic and hours in photoshop to get the final product. I would have worked longer on it probably too if it wasn’t super late. But anyways. Sooo that’s the deal. I could probably go into more detail about the use of color balance, adjustments, brush settings and yada yada yada but it’s really late and I keep rambling. So before I type anything else that probably won’t even be read by the casual tumblr scroller I’m just gonna submit this already, put in my tags and get it over with. Or well tags first, then the submitting... You get the point. XP

Mermay #08 - Alex This here is a betta mer I adopted from CC (original design here). Once he was trained to fight in a betta mer arena. He escaped, and is trying to live a normal life now. Of course when other mers come along trying to befriend him, that makes things challenging, giving his propensity to attack other mers on sight thanks to his training. This picture was probably from when he was still forced to fight into the arena. He was still terrified, even back then. XD

Mermay #03 - Ithiel as a Mertaur/Hippocamptaur My centauress Ithiel as a hippocamptaur! XD I missed Mermay yesterday so I’m uploading this as a buffer. Behold, Mermay #03!