Good little warrior, say goodbye now

Sadly, today is my last post. However, I have worked really hard on this last piece. The only shame is that you can see work coming through from the other side of the paper. Looking at this drawing next to my first one really makes me realise how much better I’ve got. I’m so hugely proud of this one I could leap right up into space. But I won’t because the lack of air and other physical factors would make me explode and I don’t want to do that right now.

My idea for this drawing was for him to be standing very proudly in the middle of a large field that is littered with mangled corpses and flowing red with blood. So kawaii. ^.^ Unfortunately I’m not skilled enough to even attempt to do a background like that so I have simply drawn him. I’ve finally managed to get several things right all in one drawing which is brilliant. The shape of both his head and hair (note the shading) are good; the body proportions are correct; his wings are pretty good; I managed to draw folds that look good in his shirt along with some tears and blood trickles; and his legs and feet aren’t too bad. So there is much happiness and jumping up and down. I guess like they say practice really does make perfect.

On a last and final note here is something really cool. This man is so amazing he has made this model of Gundam entirely out of paper. Be amazed.

Beware the attitude

Today’s drawing is simply of 2541’s head as I was focusing on trying to improve my drawing of it, especially the hair. I’m fairly happy with the result. I tried drawing a lot more hair this time and it really improves it. Having more hair at the back gives the drawing more depth and detail. His face is slightly more cartoon-like as I drew his eyebrows as triangles, which I feel works quite well. I also used a far more anime style for the outlining shape of his eyes. All of this plus the kink in one of his ears I feel gives him more attitude and character. The only thing I feel it lacks is a little shading, especially for his hair. Once more gomen nasai for the short post.

Fallen angel

This drawing is in much the same context as the one in the post ‘2541 remembers’, again he seems to be very upset and this time is actually crying. The knife has blood on it but whether it is his or someone else’s I will leave up to you; it could be either one. With him in this pose I imagine him to have fallen to his knees in shock and grief. Even I am curious what he has done to be in this state.

Well his wings are back to how I like them best. They match the feelings of this drawing, as does his limp hair. However, his hands are way too small again. I tried to make his toes look bent like they should but they still don’t look quite right to me, and neither does his head. His wings are definitely what I am most proud of here.

Fun fun fun

Now this drawing was a lot of fun. I went a little over the top with the number of weapons (11 I believe) but I swear it was all his idea. 2541 was enjoying himself slaughtering people whilst playing with his favourite toys. This drawing is obviously from when he was still in the army: note the military jacket (which even has a cut out bit so that the whole of his barcode shows), combat trousers, military boots, and assault rifle (apologies for my terrible drawings of guns).

I’m actually pretty proud of and very happy with this drawing. The shape of his face isn’t actually too bad; I’m very happy with his hair though it could do with some shading; and his wings are good except I wish I’d made them raggedy up the sides as well. I’ve always been intrigued by the roughly drawn bandages people put on their characters so I had a go at drawing one on 2541 even though he won’t need it for very long at all with those wonderful healing powers, unfortunately I think I carried it on a little too long.

Broken angel?

This drawing I’m not as proud of. It’s gone back to being too flat looking with not enough shape. Also the hand doesn’t look quite right and he looks too old for my liking. The only bit I really like about it is his wings. This style for them is greatly influenced by the beautiful drawings in an awesome manga series I’ve just started reading called Angel Sanctuary. These wings seem almost ripped up at the edges to me and also convey far more emotion. Gomen nasai for the short post today.

2541 remembers

Woohoo I am so proud of this drawing. ^.^ I had some help with the position from a friend though, she did a vague sketch of how I was sitting at the time and had me draw my character over it. It really helped even though I messed up a little on the feet and the position they’re in changed a bit. You can actually see his runes tattoo in this drawing too. By the way they mean ‘I trust you to kill me’ which I thought was nice and ironic for him. Death is a pretty big part of his life and he’s really comfortable with it.

His wings are smaller here because of how he’s sitting down and I didn’t know how I would draw huge wings on him like that. I’ve attempted to give his body a bit more shape this time by using this perspective and positioning as well as giving him muscle tone on his chest and arms and adding some shading to his wings. I think the hands are improving a little in this drawing too, so I’m pretty happy about that. Also, I’ve changed his feet so that they are more paw-like, though they’re slightly too small I think.

He’s looking pretty sad and upset in this drawing. His tail is wrapped around him in an attempt to comfort himself. I was imagining him remembering a bad experience from when he was a soldier; perhaps he was a little overzealous in a training session and killed his friend.

Here’s a coloured in version of the drawing that my friend did, she really wanted to for some reason. As you can see she’s much better at it than me and has added to the sad image by placing him on a little stool in the corner of a dark room.

Spaz day

Okay so I’m not actually all that happy about this drawing. For starters the hands are terrible as always and just don’t look right, they’re too small. The next bad point is his hair is way too straight now that I look at it properly. Also, the ears are too small, and his neck, head and legs are too thin. The wings I am reasonably happy with but I do feel that they seem too flat. So this drawing is a bit of a failure in my quest to get better at drawing, but they do say you learn from your mistakes so with any luck I will.

Here are a couple of bits of 2541 that I was just practicing drawing: his face, the eyes in particular. As you can see I attempted to draw an eye with a teardrop, though I’m not sure I succeeded in doing it very well.

Over the past few days I’ve been thinking quite a bit about 2541’s background story. You already know of course that he was created to be soldier. Well he actually quite enjoyed his life as a soldier because of how he got to kill a lot of people, like I mentioned in my previous post he’s a tad bloodthirsty. Well actually he’s very bloodthirsty, which is why you so do not want to mess with him. I’m not entirely sure how he ended up on the street rather than still being a soldier but he doesn’t mind all that much because he’s found there’s plenty of people who nobody would miss so he can satisfy his thirst with them.

That thirst for blood is quite literal with him at times too. I came to a conclusion on the reason for his fangs, which is that when his squad reached a certain age (whilst they're still teenagers) their CO had them all made into vampires so that they have accelerated healing and won’t age. This of course makes them the perfect fighters, they now have enhanced senses and healing as well as immortality on top of the superiority of their genetic make-up. The reason he has a scar is because it is from before they were made into vampires and sent out into the field on missions, he acquired it in a training session with a team mate.

On another completely unrelated but pretty cool note I discovered this treat on YouTube. It is a tour round the Nintendo museum in Osaka, complete with a couple of the men who work there and are creators of Virtual Boy, Nintendogs and Super Mario Kart.