Rhapsodies

Well I missed the deadline on the Character Design Challenge again, next time I’m really going have to look up the date next time so I can start at a reasonable time rather than rush it unwittingly after the fact. So this month the theme was Vikings and most of the entries didn’t look like them at all. Don’t get me wrong, they all looked great but they all looked like fantasy northern barbarians and valkyries. Having lived in Sweden for a year in high school I can be a little pedantic when it comes to valkyries, no horns and all that… so after looking at all the pictures I decided to do a more accurate Viking woman. (though maybe now I’ll be seen as sexist drawing a seventh century housewife rather than an empowered warrior.)

But what really excites me about this is that it is the first image I’ve done completely on Manga Studio/Clip Studio Paint!

It’s been slow going and obviously I have a long way to go. It’s not that it’s particularly difficult it’s just that when you have to finish something on time you go with what you know. Despite this I’ve been finding it much more intuitive for sketching even though sooner or later I’d move the image over to photoshop to finish. So to have sketched, inked and colored this on Manga Studio in one sitting on my laptop was a really nice feeling. It’s going to be a bit longer before I switch over completely but this feels like a nice first step.