butterball
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Post by butterball on Nov 20, 2024 22:02:31 GMT -5
Hello! I make things sometimes !! I've been waffling on how I want to conduct my art thread here and I guess I should just start throwing stuff up and stop overthinking it. FIRST! Some ref sheets of my characters that take up the most space in my brain...  BUTTERBALL! My main fursona! She was born in July of 2018 and has hardly changed in that time. Her markings have become symmetrical from the hips down, and that's basically it! Of course, my art style has changed a lot over that time, but her actual design as far as her colors and markings go has stood the test of time. I designed her knowing I wanted to make my own fursuit for her, so I kept her color scheme pretty simple, although I didn't consider the colors themselves and I've always struggled to find fur that matches, but I like the colors so much I just work around it. I had my first partial fursuit of her completed by that October, just in time for Anthro Southeast 2018 (rest in peace), my first convention. I might post pics of that later, but if you look me up on Furtrack you can see some old ASE pics there.  Burger Kat (Kat or BK for short) is my newest design. For the past few months I've been rolling around an idea of a cat fursona. Originally I was going for something cute and pastel minty green, having trouble settling on facial markings and eye color, but then I got stoned, went to my favorite Tex-Mex-and-sushi-restaurant, and saw a Burger King commercial on the TV at the restaurant, and it all just sort of clicked. Burger Kat. So when I got home I started researching BK (the restaurant)'s current marketing designs, as they revamped recently. I was hoping maybe they had a buck-wild design document like the Pepsi Logo, but what I actually found were the names for their brand colors (fun stuff like BBQ Brown, Mayo White and Melty Yellow) and their custom font. It was free on their press website! Really! Anyway. She represents a slightly different, more laid-back vibe from Butterball. Butterball is kinda straight-edge, but Kat has no such hangups.  Agate is Spyro the Dragon fan character, based in the Reignited Trilogy's style. She was originally designed in 2019 around the time the games came out, but I was never totally satisfied with the design, because I didn't have a solid idea of what her "craft" is, compared to every other Artisan dragon who has an obvious medium. This year I decided to revamp her leading up to Art Fight, tightening up some parts of her original design and finally settling on what her medium is: hardstone carving. The idea is she makes cute little artistic carvings that could either be used for decoration, or used by Magic Crafters or Dream Weavers for their magic. Maybe as vessels for familiars or focuses for spells or something. I heavily referenced the official art book and the phenotypes shown in the Artisan dragons to make sure she "fit". Something I really like to do with fan characters is study the source material to make something that would fit in really well. Feathered wings are rare among Artisans, but they do exist-- but they're a lot more common among Dream Weavers, so I like to think maybe one of her parents is a Dream Weaver dragon, and wanted to hint at that with the iridescence of her wings, too.  My D&D character, Isk! I made her back in 2020, and she's kind of my first serious D&D character that I've gotten really attached to. I've not played D&D in a while (when I play tabletop games, most of our friends favor Pathfinder 2e these days), but still like Isk a lot. The concept of Isk is rooted in kobolds' belief in reincarnation, and the idea that kobolds' appearances shift towards that of their patron (an idea that was actually referenced in Pathfinder in the recent Player Core 2). I wanted to play a kobold, but I needed that kobold to be good-- so of course, she must serve a good dragon. Bronze dragons have always been a favorite of mine-- I've been a big fan of Todd Lockwood's art and his 3.5e dragon designs since I was a tween-- so that was the natural choice. Isk is the de facto leader of her clan, and she and her kinfolk collect her teeth and sew them into her robes so each time she reincarnates, she's decorated with more teeth. Whether or not she's actually reincarnated is up for debate, but that's the idea, anyway. When she isn't on a quest, she and the other storm sorcerers of her clan control the weather around the island where they and the bronze dragon make their home, to hide it from ne'er-do-wells or help peaceful ships pass by safely. |
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butterball
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Post by butterball on Nov 20, 2024 22:17:23 GMT -5
Something else I really enjoy is miniature painting. I've been painting stuff that I made from Sculpey and similar things since I was a teenager, but I didn't get into miniature painting specifically until 2020 or so, around the time I made Isk. Actually, the first Isk I ever painted was the first mini I ever painted! The one on the far left was the first one I made to represent her at the table-- some art that I did, printed out and mod-podged to some craft foam and stuff. The middle one was made on Hero Forge, 3D printed by a friend and painted by me, my first mini! The end of the staff broke and I tried fixing it with greenstuff and repainting it. And the third one is a couple years old now, and she was 3D printed by myself personally. I love my 3D printer! I took the Hero Forge model into Blender and modified it some to match her artwork more closely, shrank her a little bit, and made a custom base for it with more correctly-scaled seashells in the sand.
This mini is a bit more recent, from late last year or so I think. It's Butterball! Also made in Hero Forge, after they updated the facial customization. I decided she would be a druid. My most recent miniature painting project is painting the minis for the board game, Flamecraft! It's a very cute little game where you manage a village's shops and the dragons that work in them to earn coin and notoriety as you develop the shops. I missed out on the original Kickstarter set, so these are from the second series that came out last winter. Loaf was the first mini I tried using my airbrush on, and I'm still getting the hang of it, but it's a lot of fun!    This isn't miniature painting related, but Flamecraft related. Before the minis were released, I made my own stickers to decorate the game's wooden meeples :3  |
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butterball
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Post by butterball on Nov 20, 2024 22:53:16 GMT -5
Alright, one more miniature painting post for now... In 2022, my local game store-- before the vibes there got rotten and most of us agreed to stop going and just hang out at eachothers' houses instead-- hosted a painting competition in September as part of their annual fundraiser for suicide prevention and awareness. The caveat was that the primary color scheme had to be purple and turquoise, the colors of the awareness ribbon. The winner was chosen by which one raised the most money via donations for the charity, and each mini had a number and corresponding donation box. 2022 was the first year of this contest, and limited to Games Workshop miniatures. There was a combo box of Seraphon, which are dinosaur and lizard looking guys, among all the space marines and space orks or whatever, for sale at the store, and I decided to take the plunge and flex my skills by painting the big centerpiece unit of this Seraphon box, the Carnosaur. I chose them because I was a lot more interested in painting animals and stuff than robots and mech suits or whatever. Dinosaurs are a special interest of mine, even if these aren't "realistic" at all. It was the first figure of this size and amount of detail that I had ever painted, and I think it's still one of the best things I've ever made.    I'm proud to say I won  I won last year's, too, but the results from that were never announced, and that was only a small part of the degradation of our relationship with this LGS, unfortunately. Things got pretty ugly. They didn't have a painting contest this year... there kinda wasn't anybody left to enter it. Regardless, I'm proud of my work and thankful for the opportunities I found there and the introduction to this hobby/art medium during my time there. ... I painted a lot more Seraphon after this, a few belonging to myself but most belonging to a friend of mine, who had collected an army of them back in the day (i.e. some of those minis are probably almost as old as I am) but never got around to painting them and was happy to let me run rampant with them, in the same turquoise and purple color scheme. I joke around that we have "joint custody" of our little Seraphon army. But I think I'll save those for another post, if anyone is interested in seeing them. |
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Horcat
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Post by Horcat on Nov 20, 2024 23:13:59 GMT -5
I am seriously envious of anyone with a 3D printer. Or the patience for mini-painting, especially to that level of detail! That's a pretty broad range of crafts you have. |
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butterball
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Post by butterball on Nov 20, 2024 23:24:31 GMT -5
I am seriously envious of anyone with a 3D printer. Or the patience for mini-painting, especially to that level of detail! That's a pretty broad range of crafts you have. Thank you very much! And that's not even the half of it-- I didn't want to frontload everything, but I've got a few more mediums under my hat here ;>
The 3D printer I have is an Anycubic Photon Mono that I bought during a sale that included a rinsing and curing machine as well. They have newer models that are higher resolution and larger, too. It's a resin printer, not the kind that spits out plastic filament (although I'd like one of those too someday), so it's a little more dangerous to handle the materials, but I found the learning curve behind operating it to be easy enough. I have a friend who's gone through several FDM printers since we've met, and they sound like a bit more of a hassle to work with. The end results for resin printers like mine have much finer detail than FDM printers (although they're catching up pretty quickly) but they're also more fragile.
If you get the chance, keep an eye out for sales, I have no complaints with my Anycubic! It's absolutely addicting, being able to materialize stuff into the real world from computer models. The first month I owned it, I had the thing running nonstop!  |
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meowmax
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Post by meowmax on Nov 21, 2024 12:26:41 GMT -5
Hello! I make things sometimes !! I've been waffling on how I want to conduct my art thread here and I guess I should just start throwing stuff up and stop overthinking it. FIRST! Some ref sheets of my characters that take up the most space in my brain... BUTTERBALL! My main fursona! She was born in July of 2018 and has hardly changed in that time. Her markings have become symmetrical from the hips down, and that's basically it! Of course, my art style has changed a lot over that time, but her actual design as far as her colors and markings go has stood the test of time. I designed her knowing I wanted to make my own fursuit for her, so I kept her color scheme pretty simple, although I didn't consider the colors themselves and I've always struggled to find fur that matches, but I like the colors so much I just work around it. I had my first partial fursuit of her completed by that October, just in time for Anthro Southeast 2018 (rest in peace), my first convention. I might post pics of that later, but if you look me up on Furtrack you can see some old ASE pics there. Burger Kat (Kat or BK for short) is my newest design. For the past few months I've been rolling around an idea of a cat fursona. Originally I was going for something cute and pastel minty green, having trouble settling on facial markings and eye color, but then I got stoned, went to my favorite Tex-Mex-and-sushi-restaurant, and saw a Burger King commercial on the TV at the restaurant, and it all just sort of clicked. Burger Kat. So when I got home I started researching BK (the restaurant)'s current marketing designs, as they revamped recently. I was hoping maybe they had a buck-wild design document like the Pepsi Logo, but what I actually found were the names for their brand colors (fun stuff like BBQ Brown, Mayo White and Melty Yellow) and their custom font. It was free on their press website! Really! Anyway. She represents a slightly different, more laid-back vibe from Butterball. Butterball is kinda straight-edge, but Kat has no such hangups. Agate is Spyro the Dragon fan character, based in the Reignited Trilogy's style. She was originally designed in 2019 around the time the games came out, but I was never totally satisfied with the design, because I didn't have a solid idea of what her "craft" is, compared to every other Artisan dragon who has an obvious medium. This year I decided to revamp her leading up to Art Fight, tightening up some parts of her original design and finally settling on what her medium is: hardstone carving. The idea is she makes cute little artistic carvings that could either be used for decoration, or used by Magic Crafters or Dream Weavers for their magic. Maybe as vessels for familiars or focuses for spells or something. I heavily referenced the official art book and the phenotypes shown in the Artisan dragons to make sure she "fit". Something I really like to do with fan characters is study the source material to make something that would fit in really well. Feathered wings are rare among Artisans, but they do exist-- but they're a lot more common among Dream Weavers, so I like to think maybe one of her parents is a Dream Weaver dragon, and wanted to hint at that with the iridescence of her wings, too. My D&D character, Isk! I made her back in 2020, and she's kind of my first serious D&D character that I've gotten really attached to. I've not played D&D in a while (when I play tabletop games, most of our friends favor Pathfinder 2e these days), but still like Isk a lot. The concept of Isk is rooted in kobolds' belief in reincarnation, and the idea that kobolds' appearances shift towards that of their patron (an idea that was actually referenced in Pathfinder in the recent Player Core 2). I wanted to play a kobold, but I needed that kobold to be good-- so of course, she must serve a good dragon. Bronze dragons have always been a favorite of mine-- I've been a big fan of Todd Lockwood's art and his 3.5e dragon designs since I was a tween-- so that was the natural choice. Isk is the de facto leader of her clan, and she and her kinfolk collect her teeth and sew them into her robes so each time she reincarnates, she's decorated with more teeth. Whether or not she's actually reincarnated is up for debate, but that's the idea, anyway. When she isn't on a quest, she and the other storm sorcerers of her clan control the weather around the island where they and the bronze dragon make their home, to hide it from ne'er-do-wells or help peaceful ships pass by safely. wow!!! i love your characters, these are some really charming and cute designs. your miniatures are incredibly impressive, gorgeous work! |
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Valyce Negative
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Post by Valyce Negative on Nov 21, 2024 14:54:53 GMT -5
Butterball is adorable and I could die for those chibi versions ;3; also Burger Kat, I'm weak for food-inspired designs. You have a very clean and steady lineart!
Miniature wise, I had no idea Flamecraft had full on minis! Me and husband have been obsessed with that game's style the second we saw it! Your painting really brings the sculptures to life.
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Terrible Animal
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Post by Terrible Animal on Nov 21, 2024 17:42:27 GMT -5
Burger Kat (Kat or BK for short) is my newest design. For the past few months I've been rolling around an idea of a cat fursona. Originally I was going for something cute and pastel minty green, having trouble settling on facial markings and eye color, but then I got stoned, went to my favorite Tex-Mex-and-sushi-restaurant, and saw a Burger King commercial on the TV at the restaurant, and it all just sort of clicked. Burger Kat. So when I got home I started researching BK (the restaurant)'s current marketing designs, as they revamped recently. I was hoping maybe they had a buck-wild design document like the Pepsi Logo, but what I actually found were the names for their brand colors (fun stuff like BBQ Brown, Mayo White and Melty Yellow) and their custom font. It was free on their press website! Really! Anyway. She represents a slightly different, more laid-back vibe from Butterball. Butterball is kinda straight-edge, but Kat has no such hangups. this right here? peak. love her. i want to draw her
i love the colors and brand typography inclusion, im a sucker for little things like that. the style here is also so much fun! you have a lot of great range in the art that you do and have a nice eye for color, those miniatures look so nice
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butterball
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Post by butterball on Nov 21, 2024 20:15:31 GMT -5
wow!!! i love your characters, these are some really charming and cute designs. your miniatures are incredibly impressive, gorgeous work! Butterball is adorable and I could die for those chibi versions ;3; also Burger Kat, I'm weak for food-inspired designs. You have a very clean and steady lineart! Miniature wise, I had no idea Flamecraft had full on minis! Me and husband have been obsessed with that game's style the second we saw it! Your painting really brings the sculptures to life. Thank you both! <3 Designing characters is a lot of fun. Sometimes I feel like I do more character design/ref sheets than anything else these days  I used to struggle with linework a lot more before I swapped to Clip Studio Paint so it makes me happy to hear they look nice and clean. Sometimes I worry they look a little too clean, like in a sterile kinda way, but for ref sheets you want that clarity, I guess. But I'm always looking at different ways to do them. As for the Flamecraft minis, you can buy them off of Cardboard Alchemy's online store! They're actually having a sale right now with lots of bundles, you should check it out if you're interested in picking up any accessories. I got everything in the Dragon Hoard Deluxe Bundle when it came out last winter, and I have a 3D printed set of organizer boxes and trays and stuff that I got off of Etsy. I've really tricked out my Flamecraft set  And speaking of, I finished another Flamecraft mini yesterday after not working on any of them for a couple months. A friend of mine has been begging for me to do Cole for a while so I knew I had to do him next.
 Who should I paint next? I've got two main ones left to go, and the two pink/Fancy Dragons:  this right here? peak. love her. i want to draw her
i love the colors and brand typography inclusion, im a sucker for little things like that. the style here is also so much fun! you have a lot of great range in the art that you do and have a nice eye for color, those miniatures look so nice
Thank you so much! And hey, feel free! Or if you take commissions maybe I could hit you up sometime after the holidays :> Kat took a lot of fiddling before I got her color arrangement just right... Something I noticed on the main example graphic of the new BK branding stuff was that section that was in the top-right corner:
It's like, the ratio of the colors and how they should be used, I think? It was fun to use this as a reference and try to balance the amounts of those colors in Kat's design to try and use the same ratios of each one, or as close as I could get. |
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Valyce Negative
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Post by Valyce Negative on Nov 22, 2024 0:50:07 GMT -5
Who should I paint next? I've got two main ones left to go, and the two pink/Fancy Dragons: Honestly my favourite are the bread dragons so you've already painted that, but look at how happy Starburst is with the pweseeeents :3 my vote goes there. XD As for the lineart I totally get you! More dynamic drawings (especially those inspired by most manga or comics) require line modulation as it does help with forced perspectives, but you can also achieve the same effects with colourings if that's detailed enough. My personal preference is to keep lineart as thin as possible and leave shading/lightning do the rest unless the perspective distortion is so exaggerated that it needs for the lineart to change as well. Stuff like extreme fisheyes, close ups etc. So yeah, for the refsheets? These lines are perfect! |
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I won last year's, too, but the results from that were never announced, and that was only a small part of the degradation of our relationship with this LGS, unfortunately. Things got pretty ugly. They didn't have a painting contest this year... there kinda wasn't anybody left to enter it. Regardless, I'm proud of my work and thankful for the opportunities I found there and the introduction to this hobby/art medium during my time there.
I used to struggle with linework a lot more before I swapped to Clip Studio Paint so it makes me happy to hear they look nice and clean. Sometimes I worry they look a little too clean, like in a sterile kinda way, but for ref sheets you want that clarity, I guess. But I'm always looking at different ways to do them.
