Inktober 52 - 2021, 19
For a physics major, I'm not actually very engrossed in astrophysics. It's just never quite appealed to me like smaller stuff. Anyway, even I have to admit that it produces some of the most beautiful pictures of nature. Satellite images and artist's renderings of planets and galaxies probably look great on any wall. That being said, I don't really look at them often. My own personal lack of interest has confined my memory of planet images to our own solar system, so the prompt "Planets" had me somewhat stumped. I wasn't really sure what I could do with it, mainly because I have neither the skills, nor the artistic vision to make a picture of a planet look like anything. Writing this, I realize I could have made a landscape shot of a planet, but at the time, I tried the cover-image approach. While thinking back on imagery incorporating planets where they don't necessarily belong, I stumbled over memories of a show I watched.... over five years ago. Yikes, time goes quickly, doesn't it. The winner of Anime Mirai 2013 was developed into a show that was pretty good, but maybe not good enough to be remembered universally five years later. Somewhere in that show, there is an exposition scene underscored by what I can only describe as "planet billiards" and isn't that just a very visually stimulating concept. So planet billiards it is. It's not going to be as good as it was in the show, on account of my limited character design experience and rendering capabilities, but you know... an attempt was made.
Honestly, I've struggled with the perspective a bunch, mainly because of the hunched-over position people adapt playing billiards. Even with references, I couldn't get the composition down, and if I can't draw the composition, nothing after that gets made. I'm just kinda bad like that. The sketch is kinda meh, I suppose, and you might already notice something I didn't until the middle of the inking process, i.e. when it was basically too late. I didn't include the edge of the table. Whoops, there goes the element that makes billiards interesting. (Also, ignore the eraser lint in the upper left, I forgot to clear it off the paper before taking the picture)
Working on the planets was mostly fiddling with textures. In black and white I was struggling a little with implementing the directional texture, but I think I figured something out. The planets are obviously not to scale, because it'd be non-conducive to the aesthetics.
I used a broader marker for much of the shadows, which streaks a good amount more than the fine-liner I used the last two weeks, but it's a much better experience in comparison to inking the larger areas with a 0.05 point tip. Ultimately I probably spent ten minutes inking this, which is no comparison to the previous two pieces. Shows the difference the right tools can make, doesn't it?
I did a little more shading on the character and the table, so the piece is less flat, but that's probably the extent that I'm going to work on this one. I should start looking into more formal shading techniques, as I do like that look pretty well, and since it's much less of a hassle now, there's really no excuse not to look into it.