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  1. #1
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    Xero's Design Logs

    So back when Super Skarmory Forums were still its own individual thing, and back when blogs were still around, I mentioned that I may do tutorial stuff in my personal blog. Since blogs are no longer a thing, and may not be a thing for the foreseeable future, I decided to stop dicking around (re: I'm bored and have nothing better to do) and start working on this "tutorial" stuff. Now the problem is, I'm not a professionally trained artist. I'm not studying art in any capacity and I currently have no intention of going into art as a profession. Majority of what I've learned is largely self-taught and therefore may be heavily inaccurate or nigh unusable in an artistic context. However, I'm not going to let it stop me from doing something like this, so I would take everything said here (with respect to design) with a grain of salt.

    Now notice that the title is "Design Logs" and not "Tutorials". This means I'm not going to focus on "how" I achieved a certain look or design, but more of the "why". Again, this falls back to the argument that I'm not trained as an artist, not to mention art is highly subjective to the artist and the audience. Sometimes the "how" falls down to "I just imagined it, so I drew it". The "why" is much more interesting to discuss. This is inherently a retrospective of some of my past works, with a heavier focus on designs and layouts, than just simply the content as a whole.

    An archive will be available at the bottom of this post.

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    Futuristic/Sci-Fi Armor 1: Overwatch/Generic Future-Fantasy

    This is (at the time of writing) the most recent addition to my portfolio: The Tiger Claw armor. I drew this for an "Art Challenge" for the forums (here), and thought I'd go a bit more in depth with the armor design in this post. If you want to read the background of the armor from a lore point of view, you can go to the post here.



    The Design
    Spoiler!


    The Lore
    Spoiler!



    That's all I really have to say about this particular design. Sorry if it came off as a bit ramble-y, I was ridiculously tired when I started, and I needed to finish this quickly, because I have things to do. If there's any of my older works you want me to comment on, let me know.
    Last edited by Xerodragon12; 06-01-2016 at 12:46 AM.

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    Walkthrough Picture Retrospective: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

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    In the days leading up to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, I was contacted by Eyan through twitter (actually, I was on the forums, when I saw that Collette sent me a private message asking me to check my Twitter PMs), where he asked if I would be so kind as to draw him a picture for the upcoming release. Of course, me being the naive junior in high school desperate to make his name out in the world of the internet (and not wanting to look for a summer job), I accepted. Little did I know what I was getting into...

    So for this picture, the entirety of the picture was lineart, done entirely in pencil. I intended to go back and actually finish the picture, but since the game's release date was coming up fairly quickly, I decided to submit the picture as is. Of course, in the actual walkthrough, Eyan through on a bunch of actual filters that made the picture look like an engraving on a cavern wall, which I though was a good touch, especially considering the mysticism and fantasy of the realm of Hyrule. When I first drew this, I wanted the Tri-force to be the focal point, and have each of the three Tri-force wielders in that center area, with Link at the bottom, and Ganondorf and Princess Zelda to the sides. That was the original plan, then I added in Child Link. To emphasize that this game was in 3-D, I threw in the 3DS at the bottom. Of course, the intention would be to have all this stuff come out of the top screen, where the 3-D effect was, but for the sake of making it look good, I had to settle with making it come out of the bottom screen. The image still felt very bare, so I threw in the Great Deku Tree, a couple of Stalfos, Epona, and Sheik. Of course, when I was looking up reference pictures for the Stalfos, I found the original album cover art for the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Soundtrack, which looked fairly similar to my intended picture, with Ganon to the left, Zelda to the right, and both Adult and Child Links in the center.
    image credit: Zeldadungeon.net

    Coincidences aside, the album cover was a great resource, and you could see that the poses of the two stalfos in the upper left-hand corner of my picture are very similar to the stalfos in the OST album cover. However, a few years later (and by that I mean back when these forums were still young), I felt very unsatisfied as to how this picture turned out, so I decided to redraw it, this time with color:
    DeviantArt Link

    This picture is actually one of the first watercolor pictures I've painted since the summer of (I think) sixth or seventh grade. I don't know, it's been a long time between this picture and the last one I did a long time ago. As such, the colors are much lighter, since I wasn't particularly sure on how to use watercolor pencils (now I'm more confident with them, although I still don't quite understand color mixing and the little nuances that make watercolor pictures way better than my current paintings). Looking back at this picture, I honestly should have outlined it after coloring it; at the very least it would have looked a lot better, even though the colors are lighter. Of course, in this remastered picture, I had to cut out Epona and the stalfos, not to mention, I zoomed out the picture a bit. After all, I was moving from an 8.5"x11" printer paper to 11"x13.5" sketchbook paper, and I had (at the time) no concept of scaling.

    Maybe someday, I'll go back and re-redraw this picture, but for now, you guys are stuck with these two very bad pictures.

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    Walkthrough Picture Retrospective: Star Fox 64 3D

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    Sometime in October, Eyan contacted me through Twitter to ask me to do a walkthrough picture for Star Fox 64 3D, and to "Keep it a secret". I, at the time, had no idea why I had to keep it a secret, but I agreed, and we exchanged Skype information so I can send him the picture in private. Turns out, this picture was pretty much for a project that would essentially serve as Kyoushiro's (Collette's) birthday present.

    The basic layout for this picture was pretty much the four Star Fox members in the four corners, surrounding Andross's head in the center. The Star Fox logo would be at the top, and to the sides between the Star Fox members, there would be the three major ships- The Arwing, in a dogfight with Star Wolf, The Great Fox, and the Land Master (I didn't have room for the submarine, so sorry if you're a fan of the submarine level). For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea for another Arwing to be firing at Andross. In hindsight, it was a pretty bad idea, since it obscured some of Andross's face. This is yet another picture that I should have outlined in ink before adding color, but I guess I was running low on time, since he wanted the picture before the 18th.

    I actually dislike this picture, as stated in the top. At the time, I couldn't really draw animals that well, and I was worse with anthropomorphic creatures. The only character that looks remotely decent is Slippy, and that's because I found a reference picture that I could actually work with. The other reason why I don't really like this picture is because I made so many bad design choices, that I still, to this day, have no idea what I was thinking when I drew this. If I were to ever redraw this like I did with Legend of Zelda, I would probably redo the entire picture to look more like the movie posters for the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy (Sue me, I don't care)

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    Walkthrough Picture Retrospective: Super Mario 3D Land


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    As opposed to the Star Fox 64 3D picture, this one is one of my personal favorites. This is also one of the oldest pictures that I drew that most resembles my current style. I took a different approach with this one, by first outlining the entire picture in ink, erasing the pencil lines, and then colored in with colored pencils, as opposed to coloring straight onto the picture with colored pencils.

    The layout of this picture was simple: Mario running in a 3D environment towards Bowser, who's over his castle. Of course, at the time, I didn't really know the level layout, so I just took a strip of land, and then added a pipe, a star coin, and some blocks to add to the environment. Then, to the sides, I added some detail that I saw from pre-released screenshots. I added the additional detail of having Mario's shadow be Tanooki Mario, since this was the first appearance of the Tanooki Leaf since Mario 3.

    Like the Legend of Zelda:Ocarina of Time 3D picture, I eventually redrew this:

    DeviantArt Link

    Here, I redid the layout to more closely resemble the levels from the actual game, while still trying to keep the layout the same. As you can see, I swapped the sides of the desert and ocean sections, and removed the Paratroopa (since koopas didn't really show up in the game), as well as removed the outlines on the shadows (since I thought outlining the shadows made them stand out more than they should)

    Despite being one of my favorites, I don't really have much to say about this picture.

    Comments and Criticism are appreciated!

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    Walkthrough Picture Retrospective: Sonic Generations 3DS



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    So for this one, I went back to my "old" style of coloring without outlining for some reason. I'm not quite sure why; I guess it was because I was pressed for time for this one? IDK

    For this picture, I wanted Modern Sonic and Classic Sonic running through (and shattering) a mirror, and each shard would reflect (heh) a part of the game and the past, with some of the larger shards reflecting the locations in the game, and some of the smaller shards being characters and stuff. At the time, there wasn't a lot of information as to which characters and levels would appear in the console versions or the DS version, so for the picture, I just combined the both. I also added a few other "Easter Eggs" in the picture, like the Smash Ball triggering Sonic's transformation into Super Sonic and a clock (representing the entire idea of this game taking place outside of the timeline). I think I overdid it with the glass shards, since looking back at this, it looks cluttered and busy.

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    Walkthrough Picture Retrospective: Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen



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    It feels so weird talking about a picture that is currently in use, rather than a picture that was already used. What do I mean by that? I mean that this picture is currently being used for the thumbnails of Squirtle Squadcast's Chain-Play of FireRed/LeafGreen! (Link here)

    When Eyan first stated that he was going to do this project, I thought I'd get a head start and draw the picture for it. The general idea was simple: Have all the gym leaders (and gym badges) surround a Pokeball. In the background of each segment is the Gym leader's element-Water for Misty, Lightning for Lt. Surge, Neurons for Sabrina (since she specializes in Psychic types), a skull and crossbones for Kouga (a symbol generally associated with poison) and so on. This was one of the few pictures where I actually went out of my way to try and imitate the style of the official artist, in this case, Ken Sugimori.

    It should also be noted that I screwed up on Erika's badge, since the "petals" on the badge should be moved slightly so that they would rest in between the white clover leaves, rather than aligned with them. You can also see that I accidentally outlined the parts of the Earth badge that should have been covered up by Giovanni's silhouette.

    This is one of the better pieces that I've done for Super Skarmory, and also the first official piece I've done for the Squadcast as a whole (not including the Squadcast icons). It's not in my top 5, but it's still decent, and still manages to hold up today against my new style.

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    Walkthrough Picture Retrospective: Mario Kart 7



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    When I first heard that Eyan was going to do Mario Kart 7, I had a few drafts in mind. This is one of two pictures where I had multiple ideas in mind, and one of the only few where I went to Eyan for approval for an idea. Here is (half of) the sketch page that I sent Eyan when drawing this page:



    As you can see, the other idea was to capitalize on the new Kart building function in MK7, by having a custom cart be the centerpoint of the picture. However, Eyan preferred the first picture, so I went with that. The Luigi pose was actually taken straight from the promotional pictures from the website, while I adjusted Mario's pose a bit. Also note that there is actually one item block missing from the lineup, since the intention was that Mario drifted through the item block and hadn't gotten the item yet. This is one of the few pictures that is almost entirely in motion blur, as opposed to the Sonic Generations picture uses perspective to generate the illusion of going fast.

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  9. #9
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    I'm going to just be dragging these retrospectives over from the blogs from the dead side of the forums...

    Walkthrough Picture Retrospective: Pokemon Black and White


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    So this was the very first picture I've ever drawn for Super Skarmory, so as such, it holds a special place as a "milestone" in my internet career. When I started this picture, I was a junior in high school, and I drew this in my spare time. (By spare time, I mean in class, when I finished all of my work and was waiting for the rest of the class). I showed this off to a lot of my friends and acquaintances who played Pokemon and they all said that I should put this online, so I did. I then decided to take a chance and reach out to Super Skarmory over Twitter, and ask if he would like to use this picture for his walkthroughs, and he said yes. That would mark the start of a new stage in my career as an artist, and as a person, as he would become one of the few people I communicated to through the internet on a semi-regular basis.

    About this picture specifically: This picture, like most of the walkthrough pictures that I drew, was meant to feel like a movie poster. Granted, at the time (and to this day), I did not watch many movies, so I decided to just go with my gut as to how to lay this out. Of course, the two protagonists, Hilda and Hilbert, are in the center, as the focal point of this picture. Facing Hilda is Reshiram, and facing Hilbert is Zekrom. I did this because of the ordering of the colors when used in a colloquial sense (Black and White), and of course, Reshiram is on the "Black" case, and Zekrom is on the "White" case. At the bottom, we have the three starters, as a little bonus. I don't think I really intended for them to be there, or noticed by the audience, but they're there. At the top is Kyurem, right by the title. When I drew this, not a lot of information was known about the contents of the game, just the very basic stuff I got off of Serebii. At the time, we didn't really know if Kyurem was going to be a large part of the game, or if it was just the after-game (Spoilers, it's the latter).

    Looking back at this, this picture really shows how far I've come as an artist. Just looking back at how I drew people, as compared to how I draw them now, I notice that, back then, I drew Hilda and Hilbert's limbs too thin; Just look at Hilda's arms and legs, and Hilbert's arms! I also changed how I drew faces. Back then, I tried to emulate the anime-esque styles of the game, with larger eyes and smaller mouths (as per Strongbad), but it isn't really clear. I have since changed how I approached drawing faces, and while I don't draw them realistically, I, at the very least, found my own style, and stopped trying to imitate others.

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  10. #10
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    I go to the DeviantArt links and it seems like half the people who commented on them back then are banned lol

    So, does it feel like you started doing this five years ago? (i'm pretty sure i didn't see you mention that reading through, but i'm pretty bad at reading so eh)

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