Hey there blog fans!

So last week I started talking about making mash-ups. After writing it I was left with the task of deciding what would be last week’s mash-ups. As you saw I picked the Ronin Warriors. In the mash-up post I said that I was a little disappointed with how they turned out. That was because in becoming overly concerned with the detail of the armors the characters were wearing, I forgot to make the designs mine so to speak. They really just looked like Ronin Warriors armors with Animus faces. This is an important point in making mash-ups. You have to achieve a balance between the two sources you’re combining.

Getting back to where I left off last week, after casting a character, I’m ready to draw. I like to find a good reference picture of the the original character I’m combining. Yahoo Images is my Go-to source. I can usually find several good pictures to use there. Below is a new mash-up I drew specially for this blog entry to show the steps.

I use MyPaint in LiberKey to do my mash-ups. There are no doubt much better drawing software packages around, but this one was free and I’ve gotten used to it (though I just downloaded an update recently and now I’m finding myself having to relearn how to do certain things that were more intuitive in the old version).In this case, I decided to do a mash-up of Todrick and Booster Gold. The source picture of Booster Gold I found on Yahoo! Images was drawn by Todd Nauck. You can find more of Todd’s work here.

I’ll leave the Yahoo window with my reference picture open next to my MyPaint window so I can look at it while I’m drawing. I have a Bamboo tablet which I use to draw everything for Age of Animus. I hold it on my lap to draw since my desktop is a little too high and I need access to my keyboard to use quick commands. That means that I have to look up at the screen to see what I’m drawing. That’s a big adjustment compared to drawing on paper on a desktop.

First I draw a “quick” sketch using the pencil brush in MyPaint, usually in red, though I have started using different colours to distinguish more easily between layers in the picture.

Once I have my sketch, I can use a marker brush to “ink” the drawing. The inking won’t always follow the pencilling as I often make slight changes. When I need to draw something that intersects with something else in the picture, often I’ll add a layer so that I can erase what’s underneath without affecting the new elements that will be covering them. That’s one of the great advantages to drawing digitally I find. When the inking is done, I make the pencil layer invisible.

When I colour a Funnies strip, I use the Fill-in tool that’s available in Manga Studio Debut (and most picture editing software). MyPaint doesn’t have a Fill-In tool (or I just haven’t found it) so I colour the pictures manually, like I would colour a picture in a colouring book. I’ll add a layer and move it under the ink layer so that I can’t colour over the lines. It also allows me to easily resave a black and white version of the picture if I make any changes while I’m colouring.

For certain pictures I’ll use different brushes to add light and shade. The Wonderland mash-ups are the best examples of that. Again, I’ll use a different layer so I can erase without affecting any of the other elements.

As I said earlier, drawing digitally means that it’s never too late to go back to fix something. I can just switch to the appropriate layer and add a brush stroke wherever needed. When I’m satisfied that everything is as good enough, I’ll save a colour and black and white version of the drawing.

I repeat the process for each character I’ve planned for that particular mash-up. As mentionned in last week’s blog, I like to pick themes that have roles for all nine Animus cast members, but it’s not a hard rule. The Ronin Warriors theme had twelve different drawings while this week’s theme only has five (you’ll have to check in on Wednesday to see what this week’s theme is).

Anyhoo, that’s how the mash-ups are made. Most of it is really just common-sense based on the tools available. If I get on a roll and the designs of the theme I’ve chosen aren’t super detailed, I can produce one character mash-up in an hour give or take. The more detailed mash-ups take longer. I think some of the Ronin pictures took two or more hours to draw.

See y’all next week for the blog!