Louistrations

This started out as drawing practice for poses. I was whining to Artie about how awkward it was going to be to draw clothing on this particular pose. She suggested that I should leave the drawing as it was because she thought Chipper had a cute hiney, hehe! So it's ended up as a picture of Chipper rolling around in tea leaves whilst in the nuddy, just like a cat rolling in catnip! It seems like the kind of thing she'd do, the girl loves her tea!

Stereoscopy version below:

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This is a 3D anaglyph image, to view the image you'll need to use the standard red and cyan 3D glasses. Other versions for use with different glasses are at the foot of this post.

If you have trouble focusing, please try sitting away from the computer.

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An art collaboration with my friend Artie; she drew the original pencil drawing and I created the lineart and coloured the piece. Artie made my character Chipper look so delicate and floaty, I love it!

Look at these dinky lil' Chipper badges that I had made to give out to people at the Aya Revolution convention.

The badges are from Wee Badgers who give really incredible service. Like, really incredible! I created my order at 10pm in the evening and they were made and sent by the morning; They arrived the following day!

Yay, it's Chipper! And she brought her underling with her this time!

I'm sorry that it's been awhile since Chipper's last appearance, this picture has been a long time coming. I've been working on this piece on and off for several months now; in fact, I started work on this way back in December! So if it feels a little wintery, you'll know why!

There isn't really much I can say about this; it's Chipper, and she's sat on a post box. Admittedly though, there's something quite enchanting about trying to make the mundane into something beautiful!

This is a 3D anaglyph image, to view the image you'll need to use the standard red and cyan 3D glasses. Other versions for use with different glasses are at the foot of this post.

Anaglyph images fascinated me when I was little. In the early nineties I used to try and make my own using red and green pens, with limited success. Anaglyphs have seen a resurgence lately and I figured I'd give making my own another go. The difference being that this time I have a computer.

If you have trouble focusing, please try sitting away from the computer.

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The next page in the seemingly random Chipper's Tea Room series. You'll notice a pattern emerging though!

This is the first appearance of the support character Brandyn, he'll be appearing in all of the following comics from this point. He gets formally introduced next time.

I didn't realise how cute these two would be together! If these weren't pre-written, maybe they could have become an item later on... C'est la vie!

Once again, I've posted snapshots of the piece at various stages below. If you're inclined to see my many mistakes and edits, please feel free to take a look.

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A slightly different take on a Summer scene. I wanted to focus more on the warm Summer breeze rather than beaches, bikinis and barbecues. More of a realistic British Summer you might say.

Chipper's outline was created as a vector image using the pen tool, whilst the background is basic pencil on paper. Some finer details were added directly using Photoshop, so there's a bit of everything really.

I drew the background whilst watching Wimbledon on television, which is probably why I spent so long drawing it. The background consists of several layers, a lot of what I drew isn't even visible in the final composition. There's an entire hillside - but you can only see the tiniest portion between Chipper's legs.

You don't want to know how long it took to complete; I was worried I wouldn't even get in finished for Summer!

Wow, that's a lot of dialogue! I hope that it all makes sense, I've been looking at the page for so long that it's lost any meaning for me!

After experimenting using only pencil, I ended up using ink after all. The page was made in a very similar fashion to the previous two pages.

I made a really bad job with the inking and had to redraw a lot of it using my graphics tablet; Something that I don't like doing and that I'm not particularly good at. I wanted to scrap this piece on numerous occasions.

For the next page you get Chipper in kindergarten, it's also the first appearance of the support character. Although I'm currently working on a stand alone picture, so that will probably be posted beforehand.

Once again, I've posted snapshots of the piece at various stages below. If you're inclined to see my many mistakes and edits, please feel free to take a look.

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This picture was made for my deviantART front page. It's a relatively simple picture of Chipper drinking from a mug. In fact, you could even go so far as calling it a mug shot of Chipper. Da-dum-dum-tish!

I realised that I didn't actually have any pictures of Chipper other than those on the comics. The image currently used in the top-right of the website along with it's earlier incarnations (including when she had bright pink hair) was lost when I inadvertently forgot to back-up my websites folder.

You'd be right in thinking that this seems a little familiar, it's the same basic comic as the previous one but in an entirely different setting. It also took longer to complete than the last one. I started working on it a little over three months ago, admittedly it's not been everyday; but it still feels like I've spent forever working on it. It's hard to justify putting so much time into a single six panel comic strip. Regardless, I'm happy to say it's finally finished and move on to something else.

If you're interested, I've posted below snapshots of the piece taken at various stages of it's creation. All the way from the initial scribbles to the final composition.

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Who's this? You'll probably recognise her as the girl drinking from a mug in the top right-hand corner of the web-site.

She's been there in various different forms from early on in the development of the web-site. She's named Chipper, which is actually the project name I gave to the web-site which she inherited. During my time coding the web-site and doing menial database work I came up with a handful of tea related comic pages about her. You see, this is what happens when I get left to my thoughts for too long!

This page took far too long to finish, a lot longer than I had anticipated. Although it's all my own doing, it's very much an experimental piece. I tried out a lot of new techniques, most of which failed horribly. Most notably was my brilliant idea of inking directly on to tracing paper; I could have lovely clean lines without the original pencil lines interfering! What was I thinking? Ink doesn't take well to tracing paper, I got ink everywhere! What a noob!

I did have success in a few areas though. For instance, this was the first time I've used masking in Photoshop.

Update: I've gone back and compiled snapshots of the piece at various stages like the subsequent pages.

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