So now we move onto my favourite art of 2000 and 2001 — this post covers the smallest amount of time I’ll be doing this week, because there was SO MUCH ART these two years. At this point I had 2 issues of SunDowner under my belt and finally felt like I was getting comfortable in my drawing style – and I was on the verge of getting into Harry Potter so these 2 years should be fun to reminisce over.
January 4, 2000 – ART POST: EDEA (FF8)
Starting off with a bang! I had been a fan of Mucha for several years by this point but this was the first overtly art-noveau-inspired thing I did. I was super proud of this for several years.
January 19, 2000 = ART POST: ISSUE 1 COVER RE-DO
I have always been intrigued by revisiting old things I’ve drawn, and redoing them to see how far I’ve come. Here’s an early one — I decided to redraw the cover of SunDowner Issue 1, which I’d just done less than a year before. It really does show how much stuff can change in a year.
(1999 version left, 2000 version right)
January 21, 2000 – COMIC POST: SUNDOWNER, ISSUE #3
And we’re already up to issue 3. Man I was fast back then (or wasn’t busy enough. Somebody should have told me to go do my homework a few times in between this stuff…)
February 3, 2000 – ART POST: PIPER (SUNDOWNER)
So I very rarely ventured out of photoshop… but occasionally I’d give Painter a try.
March 5, 2000 – ART POST: SUNDOWNER GROUP SHOT
And occasionally, I’d give cell-shading style a try.
March 21, 2000 – ART POST: SAILOR URANUS AND SAILOR PLUTO
So I was a little slow getting on the Sailor Moon fan-train. For a couple of years by this point, my cousin Cath had been begging me to watch it with her, including trying to get me out of bed at 5:30 in the morning while we were at our grandma’s for spring break to watch it with her (because that’s when it came on.) She finally wore me down and of course I loved it, and of course there had to be fanart.
March 25, 2000 – COMIC POST: SUNDOWNER, ISSUE #4
Literally, I have no idea how I managed to put a 4th issue so fast. But I did it. This was Piper (and Indy’s) first appearance.
April 4, 2000 ART POST: LING XIAOYU (TEKKEN 3)
Another re-do; this time redoing this pic from 1998 that I included in my last blog post. (I don’t like to talk about my lens flare)
April 18, 2000 – ART POST: SAILOR NEPTUNE
More Sailor Moon fanart: I always liked this one but I could never get the hang of drawing the skirts.
June 16, 2000 – ART POST: HARRY POTTER
My first finished Harry Potter art! Of course this was pre-movie, so I was going on the Mary GrandPré art and book descriptions.
June 17, 2000 – ART POST: OCHA AND BRITAN
Look I did a real background!!!
June-July 2000 – THE SUPER FREAK OUT 1
When we went on a week long beach vacation that summer, I took a brand new sketchbook and managed to fill the ENTIRE thing. I didn’t scan it all, but I did scan a lot of it, which became “The Super Freak Out 1”. A lot of these sketches went on to be finished over the next couple of months.
July 23, 2000 – ART POST: THE TRIO (HARRY POTTER)
My first time drawing the trio! (and look a real background)
July 23, 2000 – ART POST: BEACH PARTY OCHA
One of the Super Freak Out sketches – I did a whole series of the SunDowner characters at the beach. This was always my favourite of them.
July 25, 2000 – COMIC POST: SUNDOWNER, ISSUE 5
Up to issue 5 of SunDowner! I think this was my first time bringing some grey tones into my usual black and white.
August 8, 2000 – ART POST: MCGONAGALL (HARRY POTTER)
It’s so funny to look back at all this old Harry Potter stuff and see how I used to imagine the characters. Somebody once told me early on that McGonagall reminded them of Quistis, so that’s how I ended up picturing her, too. And Sirius was young and hot, Snape usually had a goatee… funny.
August 20, 2000 – ART POST: HARRY AND FAWKES (HARRY POTTER)
Harry and Fawkes! I always liked how this came out, and it’s another one I redid a couple of years later.
I had multiple people ask me why I drew the sword of Gryffindor as a curved scimitar-like sword…. it’s because that’s how Mary GrandPré drew it in the chapter header!!
August 20, 2000 – ART: BEACH PARTY SUNDOWNER
At this point I’d transitioned into a very heart-shaped face with button noses.
August 31, 2000 – ART POST: DUMBLEDORE (HARRY POTTER)
I was never good at drawing old dudes. But for Dumbledore I gave it a try.
Funnily enough I love drawing old dudes now…. which sounds super creepy!!… but I like drawing people with some character these days.
September 6, 2000 – ART POST: URANUS AND NEPTUNE (SAILOR MOON)
Dad gave me some really fine paper that worked well for markers, so for a few weeks I really dug in with doing some marker pieces. For this one I was trying to make them look a BIT like the actresses from the live musical…. which gives them a different look than everything else I was doing at that point.
October 1, 2000 – ART POST: THE TRIO (HARRY POTTER)
I very rarely do stuff in full pencil. I’ve never liked it much (unless it’s coloured pencils, of course). So here’s a rare fully-pencil pic of the trio:
October 1, 2000 – ART POST: RON (HARRY POTTER)
I was so enamored with doing this tree shadow.
October 11, 2000 – ART POST: HARRY IN THE RAIN (HARRY POTTER)
BUT Y DOES HE LOOK FRENCH
(One of my fav elfwood comments of all time.)
October 12, 2000 – ART POST: X-MEN
Getting back to my X-Men roots once again.
October 27, 2000 – HAPPY HALLOWEEN
I always liked to do a Halloween picture of my SunDowner characters dressed as other characters. This year it was Trigun.
October 28, 2000 – ART POST: MORRIGAN (DARKSTALKERS)
In yesterday’s post I included the original version of this and mentioned I redid a couple of years later — well here it is, the redone version.
November 9, 2000 – ART POST: 100K! (SUNDOWNER)
I apparently didn’t do anything special for hitting 50k or 75k… but here’s my thanks for 100,000 hits pic.
November 19, 2000 – ART POST: JAMES AND LILY (HARRY POTTER)
I decided I wanted to make a Harry Potter 2001 calendar. (Not printed — these would be for wallpapers for computers, with the dates on the corner.) I did actually get a few of them done, this was the first one I released – Lily and James. Although the only version I have uploaded now is the one I added the Valentine’s Day text to for the HP V-Day Project later on.
December 1, 2000 – ART POST: SAILOR MOON
I rarely paint, I don’t care for it, but I had a massive cut of illustration board that was too much to use markers or coloured pencils on, so I did a gigantic painted Sailor Moon.
December 10, 2000 – ART POST: GRACYN (SUNDOWNER)
I always liked this piece of Gracyn. The bad guys of SunDowner rarely got art all to themselves.
December 18, 2000 – ART POST: SUNDOWNER
I always liked this one; I used it on the front page of my Super Freak Out main site for a while.
December 24, 2000 – ART POST: MERRY CHRISTMAS 2K (SUNDOWNER)
My online Christmas card for this year – I’m mostly including this one because this one got ripped off SO MANY TIMES. I can’t even count how many times I saw a trace of this.
January 19, 2001 – COMIC POST: SUNDOWNER, ISSUE #6
This was the last online issue of SunDowner I did. Not on purpose; I just never got around to finishing Issue 7. The crappy thing is, I found where I had almost done pages of it… but I can’t find the script, so even if I wanted to finish it I don’t know that I could. I did turn around and start working on the print version after this, which was a re-do of Issues 1 and 2.
January 29, 2001 – ART POST: HAGRID AND NORBERT (HARRY POTTER)
So there was a Harry Potter Valentine’s Project I participated in every year back then… fanartists would all draw HP-related valentine’s day cards, and people could email them from the website. This one (along with the Tom & Ginny the next year) were always my favs I did.
February 17, 2001 – WHEN THERE WAS A POLL
This was classwork. But I always liked it. I rarely liked my lineart, so that was nice for a change.
I just wish I could have reined in the out of control poof of hair jutting off his head. In this and everything I did back then LOL.
March 4, 2001 – WHEN I WAS BORED
I won one of the monthly fanart competitions (this one was the “MOB” – Monthly Original Bishoujo I think?), so in January, Piper was the character of the month and I got all kinds of really great submissions from all kinds of artists, it was so fun. And my friend Ann is the one who won. So since she won, her character was up next and I wanted to do something really nice for her — here’s what I did.
April 7, 2001 – WHEN I DID THE PLAY POSTER
My uncle was the theater director for a school, and in fall the year before he asked if I’d draw the characters of that play in a sort of comic-style for a mini-poster. It went over well, so I came back the next semester to do a full-fledged poster this time – for A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum. It turned out well and I got to sell prints, so that was nice! The play poster became a regular – I did 2 a year until 2006.
It was always super stressful – especially as I started trying to get better likeness of the actors. I rarely had references until the week of the play and had to have it for opening night – I was usually pulling an all nighter to finish it in time.
April 18, 2001 – ART POST: ONE OF THESE DAYS (SUNDOWNER)
I had this on stuff at cafepress. I still have a bag somewhere with this on it.
April 18, 2001 – ART POST: SUNDOWNER FIGHT! PART 1
I actually don’t know EXACTLY when these were done – I never entered them as a standalone art piece in any of the galleries. I did this for a redesign of the SunDowner site, for the character selection screen. It was one of my favourite designs I’ve done – there was a frame across the top with small pixel versions of each character, and when you hovered over it, they popped up int he bottom frame like on a fighting game character selection screen. Stupidly I never took a screencap of this or anything. I’ve thought about rebuilding (I still have the HTML files) it just so I can take screencaps.
April 20, 2001 – WHEN I DID CLASS ASSIGNMENTS
So for my final project in one of my illustration classes, we had to design a movie poster, for whatever we wanted. Only thing is, my teacher said – NO CARTOONS. So I approached him with the idea of doing a movie poster for my own comic (SunDowner of course), but “casting” the parts and doing it in a realistic style. He approved, so I did some groundwork in these coloured pencil pieces.
May 3, 2001 – WHEN I MADE A MOVIE POSTER
And then in the next class when I showed him my progress, he said… “you know what, this needs a cartoon style poster. Just go for it.” So I did a GINORMOUS “SunDowner: The Movie” poster. The final thing is 24×36. It took me FOREVER because the file was so huge, everytime I did anything I had to sit and wait on the computer to think about it.
The Japanese text was absolutely NOT my choice; my teacher thought it would look better. So I just picked stuff. If he hadn’t brought it up it wouldn’t have had that. Still the one thing that disappoints me about it, otherwise I love it… it still sits in my parent’s dining room to this day.
May-July 2001 – THE SUPER FREAK OUT 3
I traveled a lot the summer of 2001 — starting with going to my first anime con with Catherine (Animazement in NC – end of May), followed a week later by our Disney World trip with Ash and her family, followed by a beach trip with my aunt and uncle, and then to Chicago, and then I was supposed to fly to Niagara Falls on 9/11. Geez. Anyway — I kept a sketchbook that entire time, just like I’d done on vacation the year before, only this time I wanted to do it in colour. I’m not going to post them all, there’s a TON… so the above link is just for the tag for all the entries.
(The front was a taped-on colouring book page from our hotel we stayed at in Orlando)
June 21, 2001 – ART POST: BLACK AND WHITE HARRY
This actually wasn’t part of the Super Freak Out 3 book, but it was done around the same time, for the front page of my Harry Potter site.
July 2, 2001 – ART POST: SUNDOWNER
These colour block versions of my SunDowner characters were some of my fav things I did.
July 21, 2001 – ART POST: MERMAID
Just a random mermaid. Kevin named her Tish.
August 31, 2001 – ART POST: PIPER AND INDY (SUNDOWNER)
Trying something new.
August 31, 2001 – ART POST: HARRY AND THE DRAGON
An entry from SFO 3, and was always my favourite.
The colouring I did on all of the SFO pages was prismacolour marker in some areas, and then crayon. In some cases I overlaid the crayon over the prismacolour so it looked fuller. I liked the bright, kind of chunky look it gave to the colour.
October 20, 2001 – ART POST: LOTSA MTAC STUFF – VIDEO GAME EDITION
In fact I liked it so much I decided to carry it over to do some pieces for sale – in November, Ash and I were heading to MTAC in Nashville for the first time (Ash’s first con!) and I had an art table. So I gathered up all my extra pieces of illustration board and did several pieces in this marker/crayon style.
November 8, 2001 – ART POST: MORE MTAC STUFF
I probably overall did about 10-12 pieces just to sell at MTAC. The one I was working on onsite (a morrigan and lilith) sold there and I never got a photo of it. My favourite though was this very large Vash the Stampede… he didn’t sell at MTAC, but I put him in the art auction at Animazement the next year and he sold there.
December 3, 2001 – WHEN I POSTED SOME ISSUE 7 STUFF
Character designs for the ill-fated issue 7.
December 14, 2001 – ART POST: 200K!!
A year later another 100,000 hits. This was the last time I celebrated my hit counter!
Next up we enter the… “hey maybe I like sewing more than drawing… ” years….