Of spells and crimson

"There'll be ash and dust to bury us but I will keep you clean."
- Dashboard Confessionals "Alter the Ending"

Cahaelynn Amell

My human mage slash Grey Warden character in Dragon Age: Origins - Cahaelynn. I honestly tried, but she still ended up looking so Asian.

DA:O is an awesome game by the way, though I had to get pass my initial prejudice towards Western RPGs and their horrid, horrid character design. Really, under normal circumstances I wouldn't even give the game a single glance having been absolutely spoiled by pretty boys  of the Square Enix variety. The charm of the game lies in the writing and characters. The dialogues are abundant and entertaining. Also, the fact that some characters are romance-able is a strong point of appeal for the 'otome' gamer in me (even if there's only one whom I'm actually interested in... Alistair!! <33). Being a mage is so much more fun than the other classes (though I'm being totally biased and not speaking from experience of playing other origins here... XP) We get better wardrobes (or at least mod wardrobes) and get to fling awesome spells from a relatively safe distance. Alas, the mage ending is just..... *depressed stance*. I hate it when game outcomes get too realistic on me. Bleh.  

I saw a few tutorial vids on digital colouring on Youtube. They make it look so easy. Lies. All lies. =__= The original drawing was bigger than this. After much frustration, and wrestling with SAI and Photoshop, I realized I needed to start on a smaller scale so I cropped it to this size. My mind just couldn't process it before because there was just so many things to consider. It felt a lot smoother working on a smaller canvas. I need to learn to set reachable goals. >__>; I'm trying to comprehend the grayscale shading technique the uber pros use in which they shade the characters in monochrome and add soft touches of colours on top of that layer. It seems to work remarkably well (for them). Appears simple enough too but... ah, I should have known.  


I still think markering is far simpler than this by a long shot. But there are things that markers aren't able to emulate no matter how skilled one is. I think there are certain... looks that can only be achieved by a single, distinct medium.