Hatsune Miku Portrait - A Timelapse

Seems I completely forgot to post the timelapse video here on my blog.  I've been rather quiet here lately, I know - no inspiration at the moment, though I have been picking at a new, relatively serious post concerning motivation and self-criticism.  I'm hoping I can bring up its quality a notch or two before I post it, however, so that might still be a bit far off.

Anyway, before I babble on for too long about blogpost Drafts (I currently have two), I'll cut to the chase.  These two videos are the progress timelapses for my first-ever fan-art. I posted about this image back in May, after I first completed it, and subsequently forgot to update my blog.  Cue the facepalm.

Hatsune Miku Portrait - Progress Timelapse (Part 1)

Hatsune Miku Portrait - Progress Timelapse (Part 2)

Both videos can be watched in 1080p HD on YouTube!

The music tracks used in the videos are all licensed under Creative Commons with Attribution.  I listed the songs and their respective remixers/composers in the video descriptions. All the songs are from CCMixter.org - I'll definitely be browsing through there again, they have some really cool tunes that I think would work well in both timelapses and maybe a possible Minecraft Let's Play series I've been working on.

I also have another fan-art in the pipeline - I've been calling it Miku 2.0. This time I'm going for a "full shot" instead of just a bust/portrait, and I plan on using Krita for the final lineart and colours. I've been working on finalizing the sketch in MyPaint, and I think I've made some good progress so far.  I haven't recorded any footage of the process yet, but I plan on screencasting the final process in Krita. Not sure how it'll turn out yet, but I'm optimistic.

As a quick note to any fellow Vocaloid fans and PlayStation 3 users, SEGA has released a Demo version of the latest Vocaloid rhythm game, Project Diva F, on the PlayStation Network.  As far as I know it's slated for release some time around the end of summer, so until then the Demo will have to do ;)

That's it from me for now - thanks for stopping by!

Check that off the To Try list!

So while I was working on the Fantasy Axe model I posted about a couple of days ago, I also had a smaller side-project/experiment going and I can officially say that it's completed!

This is my first-ever fan-art.  I rarely draw, by hand or otherwise, but I've had ideas for various fan-illustrations for several years and now that I have a Wacom graphics tablet (a Bamboo Capture, for those of you wondering - works absolutely great, I love it) I thought I'd try my hand at drawing something other than single-pen-stroke Triforces or Sonic the Hedgehog's face always at the same angle.  So I went with Vocaloid virtual-singer Hatsune Miku, since I'm quite familiar with her design and variations of it.  I guess you could say I'm a fan ;)

So, this is my first-ever successful attempt at fan-art of any kind, and I don't want to sound brag-y or excessively proud or anything, but I'm really, really pleased with the result!

I seriously never draw.  I had left that up to my younger brothers while I concentrated on the awesomeness of vertex and polygon manipulation (aka 3D modelling). But I saw my Wacom tablet as a way into that kind of artwork, so the Bamboo Stylus combined with a healthy portion of MyPaint and Linux Mint led to this coming out of my brain and onto the pixel-ey canvas.
This was also an experiment to try and get to know the MyPaint application.  I really love it so far, and I'm also looking into Krita, another open-source digital painting application.  Only problem with Krita so far is that there seems to be a memory leak somewhere and it fills up 4GB of RAM relatively quickly, but its brushes are really interesting.  I'll figure something out eventually.

Anyway, the piece is far from perfect; her proportions are a little off, the perspective is slightly off, my lines aren't the cleanest, the shading is still a little rough, a few too many hair strands in her twin ponytails, the collar and edges of her outfit don't have the usual zig-zag border, and a bunch of other things I could list.  But, all that being said, I'm still very happy with the result :)

I'll also be putting together a time-lapse of the drawing process.  I have roughly 8.5 hours of footage to cut together at high-speed, but it should be up relatively soon.