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Taking A Break     My mom was in the hospital with a concussion. She's out now but that has been stressful and I've had to do a lot to take care of her. I've also had to take a break to let my wrists heal from drawing too much but intend to start trying to capture action poses with clip studio paint 3D models for reference again.      For now, here's the villain from my book. He's actually a god but takes the human alias of Mr.Rhyme.

 I'm Thinking of Getting Clip Studio Paint     So far I've just been sketching my characters on a drawing pad and scanning them. I have photoshop but it's not designed for illustration. Every rough graphite speck is picked up and it can be difficult to fill in between the lines. I need software professionals use and it seems to be fairly cheep.     For now, here's the character with two greatswords I sketched. It was a busy drawing so I shaded it. Although it turned out alright, the pose is a bit weak. I did it without any reference. It's hard to manage not one but two massive weapons. I might come back to this character.     This is Nighmarika; she's the admiral of the Legion of Sypter.

 Sketching Original Characters      Artistic character creation has its own rough draft stages. It's considerably harder to not work from a model. Like inventing the light bulb, you find many more ways that don't work before discovering the magic formula that does.      I'll invest a good amount of time figuring out the pose. Poses are hard, especially action poses. You need the proper proportions and foreshortening alongside an interesting and balanced position. This applies not only to humans but creatures and machines as well. Often times I'll not know what to do with the back arm.     Fleshing out and adding interesting clothing can be challenging as well. The face is always the worst so I try to add it first thing after the figure. Inventing new styles of clothing for futuristic and fantasy races involves a lot of knowledge and planning. Are they warriors, merchants, nobles? Are they loose with the rules and have one arm not in...

 Creating Characters     I have a very visual imagination. Often times when I'm walking I'll be thinking up cool characters. You want them to be interesting and larger than life, especially for fantasy. Character design should say a lot about their personality just from looking at them. Here's my main character, Sayth, as an example: He's a guardian dragon and someone who can freely transform into a dragon. As such, he often uses his tail blade to fight. In human form he wears a scale armor trench coat engineered from his dragon scales.     After coming up with a cool concept and design, I'll create scenes involving the character to see how they react. Often these will go into my story outline to later be ordered and added upon. Characters are living organisms that grow and evolve with your writing. You need to get to know them. Sometimes when reading or watching another work of fiction I'll insert my own character(s) in to see how they'll react to the...