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  Moving apartments--A* returns next week!Feb 28, 2013 2:41 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:'Cause Friday is bingo night at Earth's Revival.
 
I mangled... Hm... I guess it has some decent parts; maybe I can just fix up those other bits with some white ink... Okay well it's got a frustrated artist crease down the middle where I folded it in half and chucked it in the bin, but eh anyway here's a sketch I did today, another design sketch for an upcoming character who's been causing me some trouble; the eyes got a little too close to Selenis eyes (I'd meant them to be more like Audrey Hepburn eyes :P) but I was happy that I finally hit on a hair style I think will work for this person:
 
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Okay remember as I mentioned on Monday that this will be the last update for this week, because I gotta pack up all my junk and move it to a new apartment. I think unpacking and cleaning the old apartment and etc will probably take me through the early part of next week, but if all goes according to plan, I'll be settled in and back to regular updates in a week or so.
 
Meanwhile, you could:
 
a) Well golly it's a perfect time to flip back through some A* art and see if there's anything you'd like to put on your wall, in the form of a print (I can do them up to pretty large, poster-like sizes now) or even the one-of-a-kind original art, which you'll find to be surprisingly affordable!
 
b) Okay you pretty much have to catch it today because it leaves Netflix streaming at the beginning of March, but if you've got that service, I think you can't go too far wrong with the 1944 Fritz Lang film The Woman in the Window, starring Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett. Oh say here's an interesting factoid about it from that Wikipedia page:

The term "film noir" originated as a genre description, in part, because of this movie. The term first was applied to American films in French film magazines in 1946, the year when The Maltese Falcon (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), Laura (1944), Murder, My Sweet (1944), and The Woman in the Window were released in France.

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Today's page originally went up without the dry brush shading on the left side of the face; a reader on Twitter very politely pointed out that all the hatched shading wasn't quite cutting their mustard; I tried a mock-up of tone shading in Photoshop
 
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was tempted once again to start using clean and easy digital shading like that for the strip, then buckled down, got out the big horsehair brush, and dry brushed the shadows in as best I could manage this late at night. It's a much messier look than that temptingly smooth digital stuff, but, on the other hand, it's real. That's what I'm clinging to for now, anyway. :P
 
Well but seriously I think it's better to avoid resorting to digital for stuff like that if you can help it, because it easily becomes a crutch; even ink wash did that for me, I would skimp on the inking part and just say to myself oh well I'll just lay some washes in over there, it'll be fine, and ultimately it *isn't* and besides that your drawing skills don't sharpen up as much as they should.
 
The inking on this page *did* have problems in the first place, though. Maybe a few days off from inking'll do me some good, bleh. Also my brush finally appears to have lost its tip--it lasted a fantastically long time though. Actually...can this still have been the brush I started using when Selenis was landing at the moon base back in episode 17? ... That would be nuts. Hm I must've switched to a new one at some point since then but darned if I can remember when.
 
 
 
 
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