Return of Etsy!

Yup, I am returning to Etsy - well, to be honest, I never left.  I simply 'shut down' my Etsy site while I was busy moving across country and trying to acclimate to life here in Las Vegas.  I would have done this sooner, but we also had a wonderful family reunion gathering in Toledo, OH, hosted by my 'big sister' and her amazing family.

But things have calmed a bit and if I'm going to be completely honest, the money from selling jewelry would be really very helpful right now.  So, I'm opening the shop up and will get back to posting something new everyday and possibly some new items that aren't from my inventory.  But I'll talk about that another time.

If you want to check out my Etsy site now, you can do so: Stormwolf Studios: Art, jewelry and more!

I will try to also post more to the blog because I do enjoy writing.  As another 'big sister' of mine pointed out, it would be a wonderful idea for me to do more of it.  Its something that has bubbled in the back of my mind from time to time and yes, I have thought about writing an actual book, but of course, the plot eludes me even though I have many ideas that pop in and out.  Perhaps it will happen one day, perhaps not.  Till that ever happens, I am going to start writing more.  I do have a lot of thoughts and things that I would like to share with people and I have this Blog, so why not use it?

My Red Engine classes are moving along and I'm finding it a lot harder than I thought it would be.  Part of it, or perhaps a lot of it, is working on the computer to create my art.  Yes, I've done that before, but never in such a concentrated manner.  And I'm not as fast as I would like to be with it.  Also, I realized that when I worked traditionally, I was more physical about it.  I didn't stay sitting at a desk staring at it - I was standing sometimes, leaning over it, walking around the piece, getting close, moving further away before coming back in to make a change.  That process doesn't translate well working on a computer.  Also, my wacom is to the right of my screen, another thing to get used to because I feel a sense of disconnect from the image I am trying to create and my hand.  Perhaps one day I will be able to afford a fancy computer tablet thingy where I can draw right on the screen, but that isn't happening anytime soon.  Add to that, the fact we are also doing some work in Modo, a 3D program and I am running uphill some more.  Its a lot to take in and we are now reaching our 'mid-term' so to speak with session 6 happening this week.

Our assignments were an environmental design and a character design.  We had to do 9 of each in basic grayscale for the environments and mostly silhouette for the character.  The characters were a lot easier for me than the environments (in fact, I had to do the environments over again...).  

Once we were ok on this part, we had to choose 3 environments to do a more painterly study of and 3 character designs to develop.  I won't show all of them, just the ones that I think I'm moving forward on (still not sure). 

Its supposed to be a forest but the feeling of the game I'm sort of creating these for is Industrial, so I'm trying to create an 'industrial feel' to something that is meant to be organic.  On top of that, I have to use Modo to create a 3D environment and then paint in Photoshop on top of that.

And here is the character.  One of the things I was told was that it is hard for players to connect to a main character if they don't have any sense of their 'humanity' so I lost the full helmet to reveal more of her.  Which was nice because I really like the hair. 

I have to develop these further into more final images.  We aren't going to be doing them in color, just the grayscale.

So... that's where things are right now.  I'll be working on more stuff, both for my classes and jewelry.  And of course, trying to blog more because I find myself coming up with things to write more and more as my mind moves forward. 

Another reminder: The Etsy shop is open so go check it out!: Stormwolf Studios Etsy shop!