The Art of Blokfort

June’s Fundamentals Month has been pretty great. I actually managed to take part of most of the topics that I had made for myself. Hands, faces, some muscle work, rethinking of sketching progressions, a little bit of painterly stuff. It was time spent well I’d say. Of course, now that it’s over, I can’t help but look at new problems that arise out of it. Flow and overall ‘jankyness’ of my pieces are a major problem now. There are bits and pieces in all my sketches that don’t feel right or look incorrect, and characters will seem stiff or not animated well enough. Aside from that, there’s also the fact that I didn’t actually work on scenery very much, besides a few trees here and there. Perspective and room positioning is something that completely eludes me as well, and I’m not quite sure how to approach that particular problem. Thankfully however, there’s no rush for any of these problems to get done right away. I still have quite a lot of projects and such I can do otherwise.

At the start of the month of June, and actually beginning at the end of May, one project I decided I wanted for my stream was to have a little gif animation of Kalta, an original character of mine, flipping her tail back and forth, as well as turning her head to her right (our left.) I did this all in Procreate on the iPad Pro. It’s an experience I am very much glad I decided to keep as a project idea, and also go through with completing. The way it’s all set up in Procreate is very interesting, although limiting at times as well. The iPad Pro’s memory limits means I can’t use very many layers in Procreate. The bigger the canvas I use, the less layers I’m given. Even on small canvas, the absolute maximum amount of layers you can be given at any point is 128. This is not very much. There are many professional artists who can use more than 500 at times. There are often times where I find myself hitting the layer cap. However, I can remedy this by either merging a few layers together, or by duplicating the overall canvas and all of its layers intact, and then merging more layers than I typically would, and also remove layers I do not need to keep, such as left over sketch layers. By duplicating the overall canvas information, I’m still keeping the original sketches and layers from the duplicated canvas, in case I need to go back for something. There are times where I’ve had to duplicate the canvas three or even five times for a piece. It does take a bit of extra time to work with, but it’s better than giving up and saying “welp, I hit the layer cap, gg.” I bring up the layer cap to Procreate because I ended up with around fifteen or so different canvases for the Kalta gif. One reason for this is that for Procreate to save a canvas as a gif, is that it saves layer by layer. Each layer gets saved as a frame. So, in the final canvas of the Kalta gif, I used 125 of 128 layers, meaning there are 125 frames in the final gif. Every single layer is made for the gif, there are no sketches, no line art layers, no coloring layers, every single layer is used as a movie reel frame. The previous canvases have all the parts and sketches instead to save room. I’m unsure if creating many multiple canvases does annoyances for the storage of the iPad, but thankfully if I ever feel like it does, I can easily export the PSD files and back them up on my computer, with absolutely no help (or let’s be real, hindrance) from Apple : ) .

And with this post, I declare June Fundamentals Month complete. I will be accepting commissions again, with a few updates in pricing here and there. There are new projects I’d like to do, and this time because I’d think they’d be fun to do, rather than for the reasoning of improving. There are still some projects I still have to do at some point for the express reason of “learning how thing work,” such as various comic ideas, but I’ll be working on them bit by bit. One of the things I’ll be changing is how I conduct myself to work. Rather than accepting a commission and then trying to get it done As Soon As Possible, I’m going to give myself time on them. When I stream, I usually give myself 2 breaks, each 2 hours apart from each other. I will be changing what I’m doing after the second break, to sort of wind down the day a bit. I’ll be working on my own stuff or really whatever I feel like at the time, be it impromptu requests or projects. This will help me put out content that isn’t just commissions all the time. Variety is good. So with that said, here’s what’s likely going to be worked on in the next coming months.

• OC Heads Project – a few sketches of many original character’s heads.
• Another Kalta animation, featuring more movement.
• A “Comic Page” formatted comic, featuring an original character named Syri.
• A “Frame-by-Frame” formatted comic, featuring 2 original characters, Kieran and Ladrei.

The OC Heads Project is a sort of self-grounding thing, where I draw and re-understand what my own characters look like. Another Kalta animation, because I think it would be fun to do. And finally, the comic projects are so that I learn myself how to comic. Honestly, I feel darn dumb for pushing them off for so long. I feel even dumber when I keep saying I’ll do them too, but oh well I guess.

Oh, and here’s an album of some of the art that got completed during this time. I’m labeling the gallery as NSFW, so please be 18 or older to view it —> [CLICK ME – NSFW]