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Messages - mking

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1
Thanks Inkthinker and Miyabi!

Pretty slick, mking, you're really improving! Keep it up!!

Should his eyes appear gold, though? Steel spikes would reflect the ambient color, with perhaps a touch of desaturated blue/grey, I think.

Also, I imagine Inquisitors as always being intimidatingly large (though I don't suppose they have to be).

I don't know why I had it in my head that the spikes were bronze-ish. I didn't have my books with me to reference, so I just went with it.

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Finally got around to finishing a piece I had started months ago. Not a literal scene from the book, but I think it captured the feeling I wanted pretty well. So here's Vin in her shirt and trousers before she got a Mistcloak , with a creepy Inquistor stalking her. I also decided to go with more of the amber colored night time from the ashfall, rather than the blue I had been using lately.


http://mking2008.deviantart.com/art/Vin-and-Inquisitor-155008698

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But…is that lace around the ends of her sleeves?

Um, yeah. I didn't have it originally, but I wanted to put in a little nod to how she started to like wearing dresses after a while. And without it her shirt reminded me too much of a modern tank top.

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Inkthinker's Vin drawing rocks. (I like the eyes open.) The flaring sketch is very cool too.

Seeing his new artwork got me itching to do another Vin painting. Here's what I ended up with:


The flare sketch made we want to add a big glowy allomatic symbol to my latest Vin, but I restrained myself. I was also inspired to experiment with my color choices after seeing work by another artist on deviantArt. But then I chickened out and brought the colors back into my usual more restrained palette. If you look too closely, you might glimpse some of the more vibrant survivors. Maybe next time I'll feel more comfortable with the bolder colors.

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Right, I didn't touch Vin's pose this time around. Maybe when I have more time.

Thanks, Inkthinker! I definitely used some layers with perspective guides to help. I rushed too much near the end, so I wasn't as careful as I could have been in making sure everything was lining up. I wrestled quite a bit with trying to stay loose and my tendency to start noodling on details before the whole piece is working.

I also imagine Luthadel as a Victorian city. I used reference pictures of London and from the Mary Poppins movie.  I got tired of drawing chimneys, bricks, and roof tiles, so I skimped out on the rest of the city skyline. :-) I also wanted to have the big towers looming over all the rest of the buildings and make them stand out. So I tried to keep the rest of the skyline from feeling too cluttered.

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Thanks, Skar!

I attempted a fix at the perspective on the windows. I also lightened the image a bit because it was really dark when I looked at it from work the other day.


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Brandon Sanderson / Re: [MISTBORN RPG] Your wish lists, please
« on: March 11, 2009, 05:43:20 PM »
While I personally wouldn't want to play a Steel Inquisitor, I think it should be an option. There's some opportunity for some epic tragedy there that could be appealing for some stories and wouldn't be the same if played as a Mistborn. Not being able to control your actions is an interesting wrinkle. There should be a way to resist Ruin's influence, especially so that the player can do something extraordinary at a pivotal moment, like in the books.

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Ryos: Thanks for that great quote! It really encapsulates what I wrestle with whenever I move on from one project to the next.

GreenMonsta: I appreciate your explanation of why the windows might look that way. But I have to admit that I rushed to finish and messed up on the perspective. Mea culpa. You are right that if I spent some more time on the painting I could work out many of the issues. For now I'll be happy that I mostly captured the mood I was after.

Reaves: I don't mind the critique--I think you're right about the perspective and I also wish my Vin were better. Thanks for using constructive language. It helps me figure out how to improve.

Wolfstar: I've been practicing for a long time, so the speed has gradually developed. Plus I read lots of tutorials on speed painting and pick up tricks and tips.  There was a stretch where I was playing an Amber RPG and my weekly contribution was a painting of either a character portrait or a scene from the game session. I think that more than anything taught me how to allot time to something and be forced to move on.

I think this painting ended up being about about 6 nights spread over 2 weeks where I got about 30 minutes in for the night. And then I got a 2 hour block to finish up on Sunday. Most of Sunday consisted of trying things and erasing them because they made the painting look worse than my original rough block in. Then I kind of rushed to the end and spewed out most of the foreground details like the windows and roof shingles. Believe me, after painting all those shingles and bricks, I was so ready to be done!

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Thanks, everyone!

Yeah, the list of issues goes on and on. Perspective is hugely off. Vin's proportions are off and the pose is stiff and kind of flat.

Ideally I would spend more time on my art. But I'm lucky if I get 5 hours of free time per week to paint.  And if I have the time, sometimes I don't have the energy to focus. If I let myself, I think I could work on these for months and never finish. I've got a lot of other things that I want to make progress on, so I sacrifice some quality in order to do so.  The artist in me cringes.  The pragmatist in me says to keep moving forward and do better next time.

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Here's my painting of Vin flying over Luthadel.

Lots of stuff I'd like to fix, but I'm capping my time on it at 5 hours.

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I started on a painting of Vin in mistcloak flying above the city.

The Terris robes sound interesting. Does anyone happen to know which book and chapter has a good description of them?

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Brandon Sanderson / Re: [MISTBORN RPG] Your wish lists, please
« on: February 25, 2009, 09:09:08 AM »
I've been gaming for a while now and find that I enjoy games with lighter mechanics that focus on the storytelling and characters. Part of that is due to my ever shrinking amount of free time.

One thing I'd like to avoid is becoming too reliant on die rolls for the outcomes of things.  I hope it would be possible to re-create situations like when Vin fought the more experienced Shan in the first book. It would be nice to have to allow players to pull off the "impossible" every once in a while without worrying about how to make the die rolls work out.

Another thing that was important to the Mistborn universe was the influence of Ruin upon people and the gradual revelations about how pervasive Ruin was. I'd like to see that incorporated into the game somehow.

I think a lot of people, myself included, would want to play a Mistborn. It seems like that a party of Mistborn should be possible, even though in the books the Mistborn are very rare. So I realize this is unrealistic in the world of the books, but for me it would be one of the big draws to the RPG.  Maybe in the game it's just a lot tougher to level up as fast as Vin did in the books.

While I'd be curious about the history of the universe, I'd like the time period of the game to be during the Final Empire, shortly before Kelsier's revolution.

I would hope the system would encourage non-melee encounters and scenarios. While Mistborn fights are very cool, a lot of what I liked about the first book in particular was the intrigue involved with pulling off the plan. So if there were sometimes campaigns that were all about a heist and there was never a melee at all...  I think that could be fun.

That's all I can think of right now.  Thanks for being open to our ideas!


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Thanks for the comments, everybody!

Any suggestions for the next painting? No promises that I'll be able to do any of them. But I'm kind of looking for some inspiration at the moment.

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Inkthinker and Skar have inspired me to speedpaint a koloss. It turned out more icky than scary, I think. I was hoping to make it more threatening looking.

I applied some things I recently learned about color (from work and from the latest ImagineFX magazine). I think they prevented the image from feeling monochromatic and helped the blue skin really pop while still feel like it is being lit.

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Yep, Inkthinker, those sure are creepy! I looked at the line work, and I think the details read a little better there, especially the squished nose of the tight-skinned Koloss. Blue skin is always tough to do and make feel natural. I like what you've done, and the contrast with the muscles underneath is pretty cool.

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