JEFF NIXON

For this sketch I started to experiment with more intricate clothing. Drawing on the iPad is starting to get easier! Although I still can't do small details with the stylus I have (like the fingers on hands).

For this third sketch I tried an action pose. I used another photo as a reference and it actually came out pretty good.

Gonna keep sketching and improving. I've already made a TON of progress since the first sketch.

Another drawing with the iPad. This time I took a photo of myself, set the opacity way down, and drew over it. I really need to get better at both anatomy (as you can clearly tell by my first sketch) and clothing, and I think this is a good start.

I'm worried my iPad stylus won't last much longer, and it's really hard to get fine detail with it, as the nub has to be pressed down in order to register. It's working ok for now though, and It was a cheap stylus. I'm just wary of buying an expensive stylus until I've actually tried it, because it could turn out to be not much better than the cheap one.

Anyways, I'm gonna keep at it for now, and continue to use reference photos underneath my drawings. Hopefully this will both improve my drawing and give me some ideas for stuff to start working on using my computer with my bamboo tablet.

I recently got a decent stylus for my iPad and decided to start drawing on my train commute to work using the SketchBookX App.

It's not the best stylus out there but it's decent enough for some basic sketching.

For now I'm just getting back into drawing, getting used to the iPad stylus, and just messing around. Hopefully this will motivate me to actually start drawing full comics, doing the rough drafts on the iPad and then going over them in Photoshop with my bamboo tablet.

So I went and purchased this new program called ComiPo! over at Crunchyroll [link]

And I must say, it's actually quite good! The fact that you are given 3D model anime characters to customize and can rotate them in many poses makes it very easy to make your own manga however you want.

While the clothes/hair selections are pretty limited, there's still quite a lot of customization you can do. Hopefully soon they'll implement the "import 3D model" feature that the Japanese version has so that models can be fully customized.

This page here is just me testing out the customization and making a simple action page. Literally took me like 30 minutes to make this whole page, that's how simple it is.

Since there isn't much real detail customization yet, I'll probably end up using this as a "skeleton" creator and then draw my own manga on top of it (anatomy is one of the things I'm worst at, and this program could help me skip that step completely). Also, if characters become fully customizable using this, then that just feels like cheating.

For SEGA Community Contest: Get your art in Phantasy Star Portable 2!

[link]

Based on the design of the main HUmar of Phantasy Star Online. I traced over the basic body structure, and changed the hair and clothing, and colored it to be like my original character, and added the Yellowboze emblem. The wing like things are a variation of the Angel Wings mag, and I gave him a red sword. After coloring it, I shaded it a little, and added some effects to make it more vibrant. The background is a high resolution image from the caves in Phantasy Star Online.

This is a drawing I did about 4 years ago. I just never uploaded it, and I'm uploading it to compare it to my newer work. This piece was to experiment with the CutePet Coloring tutorial that I ordered. Which is great for scanned work, and was really helpful, but not really necessary now that I use the tablet.

Anyways. This piece is pretty good for being 4 years old. The eyes and hair are a little funky, but I did some decent shading. Also, the reason there are no feet is because I draw this on a piece of paper (before I scanned it and colored it digitally), and the legs hit the bottom of the page.

I have some other old pieces that I might upload at some point, along with more new stuff that I'll draw with my tablet.

After the first "Tablet Breeman" I decided to go ahead and attempt a full body drawing.

The result came out pretty good, and I worked hard on getting the anatomy relatively correct (although that's still an area I need to improve on, and will only improve with practice). I also tried to get better at drawing clothes and folds.

I used a lot of shading, which is easy with the tablet, but I still need to get a better understanding of folds, and how they're shaded. But It's a start.

I'm going to be drawing a lot more, so this is just the start of whats to come.

So I finally got around to starting to use my Wacom Bamboo tablet more, and try to get a good feel for it. I drew my "Breeman" character, just a headshot (too early to start attempting bodies with the tablet) and it actually came out pretty good. I'm trying to draw more loosely with it, and kinda scribble and sketch out a rough outline to follow, lower the opacity on the layer, and draw the detailed final layer on top.

Coloring and shading is so easy and fun with the tablet, I just do a paint fill for the main color, fill in the white spots that the paint bucket missed, and then make a new layer with low opacity for the shading.

I'm going to be practicing more and more with this, because eventually I'm going to start a manga that my friend Dwight is writing. Hopefully I become good enough with the tablet that I can produce pages quickly enough to get some chapters finished. Also this will give me a chance to try out Manga Studio Debut 4.0, which will enhance the way my tablet works.

This is the full image of the final version of my Breeman character for the Becker Game Ad. Touched up the shading a little in Photoshop (Illustrator's mesh tool tends to add some unwanted lines sometimes)

I hope to make many more Anime pieces digitally like this one, soon.

This is a character I drew for my first job at my Internship at Eri Design. The character was to be used in an advertisement for Becker College's Game Design program.

This is an image showing the progression from sketch, to Illustrator tracing, to colored in Illustrator, to shaded in Illustrator.

My first Anime submission in a long time, and definitely my best! Illustrator rules!

So I was designing a Tattoo for my girlfriend in Illustrator, and you can see the outline of the Tattoo behind all the black ink in this image, but I was applying brush effects to the lines on the tattoo to make it look cooler, and then happened to select this ink one that just totally exploded everywhere! Thought it looked so neat that I made a desktop wallpaper out of it. (1280 X 800)

Second painting in my series of Okami paintings. Not as large as Okami 1, but the picture came out better (I'm gonna retake pictures of both at some point with a better camera.)

Large scale painting for my Intermediate Painting class. A little bit cropped cause the camera took a crooked pic of it and didn't get the whole thing. Original work is 24 X 30. Looked at Okami art for reference.

Older Tetsu from the 5th Peacemaker Kurogane manga (Japanese version). Man, I hope they hurry up on the releases of the manga in english! I've been waiting forever!

Anyways, I just got bored and drew this, since my original work has been sucking lately... I'll post some decent original drawings soon... maybe i'll photoshop em first.

This is a pastel drawing from a photo of my friend Michael... I actually have yet to meet him in person. Anyways, this is one of his myspace pics, and I promised him I'd do a drawing from one of them. I think it came out pretty good, I like how the hand came out, and how it stands out really well.

This is my brother Jon, his new myspace picture. (I like drawing from myspace pics). I think it came out pretty good. Didn't spend as much time on this as the drawing of Ben, plus I just wanted to smudge all the pastel everywhere so I could go wash my hands >_<

I like working with pencil better, but pastel isn't bad, colors came out nice.

This is a drawing of my good friend Ben. The assignment was:
Make a drawing in which you use foreshortening (and possibly perspective) and a value to make the human figure (or some part of it) seem monumental.

I used a photograph of Ben, his recent default myspace picture. When I first saw it, I knew it would be perfect for this assignment! The picture of it didn't come out as good as the original, because it was taken with a camera. Overall I like it! I succeeded in making the left arm and hand look big!

My first self Portrait in my Life Drawing class. Used a 5H pencil first to get the basic outline, then used an HB pencil for dark lines and shading. I was looking at a photograph Petri took. The photo was really bright and blurry on the right side. I think I did a pretty good job with this one, I always do good from photographs.

This was an in class assignment, that I ended up finishing after class. We had to find a photo of a person with a lot of light/shadow contrast. Then use charcoal to accentuate that effect. I did the basic outline in pencil, then I used a very thin twine charcoal. For the shading I just used different pressure with the twine charcoal, and used a smudger and eraser to blend it. I'm very proud with how this came out, and while I was working on it, Petri (my professor) walked by to see how I was doing and said, "That's perfect.. I have nothing to bother you about, keep it up!" For some reason I work better from photographs than I do looking at live models.

This drawing was done like, the last week of school, the coloring done today.

This drawing was done in Computer Programming class, during one of Mr. Betti's boring lectures... (This was drawn on a piece of paper with some program on the other side of it XD ) At first I was just sketching, then I started making some really spikey hair... then I added some spikes to the outfit... then I went insane adding spikes everywhere!!! Lots and lots of spikyness! I then thought, hey, this might look like Alzeros if he was an Assassin. So I start coloring it, making it all Sin like, and using similar colors as my Alzeros The Crusader picture. Then I bring out the brushes again and... brushybrushybrushybrushy ::Scene of a guy dressed in a santa suit getting punched in the gut:: ...anyways... Decided to go with a different texture background on this one, one of the default Piant Shop Pro fills. And I think the finished result it pretty cool!

This is a drawing I did for my concentration for AP Art. I like the effect I used on the bg, and my shading is starting to look nice. Soon once I take out my whole AP art collection of drawings, I'll scan a lot of new stuff!

This is my character Alzeros from Ragnarok Online! This is fanart cause I used a reference for the whole body (except the head). I'm pretty proud of the results, this would be one nice loading screen in Ragnarok ^_^

I tried out a lot of different brushes in Photoshop while coloring this one, looks pretty neat.

Same as my Kakashi Blue desktop, with Winamp minimized...

SO MANY PROGRAMS! O.o

This is my current Wallpaper/Desktop/Winamp skin. Kakashi with a matching blue Winamp playing Dream Theater! (What else?!) I also have a screenshot of this entire desktop with winamp minimized.

A drawing I drew a while go, finally decided to color it and put it up. Colored and shaded in Photoshop.

I came up with this brilliant idea last week. A got milk ad with Kimimaro! He uses his bones as weapons so it's perfect! But I didn't have a good stock to add a milk mustache to, so... I drew my own! I'm finally getting the hang of shading with Photoshop. Background is from my Naruto art book.

This is a drawing of Breeman I did for my art concentration project for AP Art. Since I am concentrating on Anime art for what I want to work on in college, and during my career. Colored in Paint Shop Pro there are 3 other color versions I experimented with.

This is a drawing of Breeman I did for my art concentration project for AP Art. Since I am concentrating on Anime art for what I want to work on in college, and during my career. Colored in Paint Shop Pro there are 3 other color versions I experimented with.

This is a drawing of Breeman I did for my art concentration project for AP Art. Since I am concentrating on Anime art for what I want to work on in college, and during my career. Colored in Paint Shop Pro there are 3 other color versions I experimented with.

This is a drawing of Breeman I did for my art concentration project for AP Art. Since I am concentrating on Anime art for what I want to work on in college, and during my career. Colored in Paint Shop Pro there are 3 other color versions I experimented with.

This is another Breeman - Alzeros drawing. Alzeros drawing upon Breeman's powers. I drew this pretty fast, and then colored it on the computer, and I could make a good background for it, so I decided to put down a whole texture for the background, and apply the colored drawing on top. Then I changed the overlay settings, and it came out all bright and awesome! ^_^

I'm proud with how this came out, I think it's my most successful computer coloring yet!

One day, Breeman happened to run into Ed Elric. Breeman beat him up and stole his clothes.

Then Breeman stumbled upon a man named Guts. Breeman beat him up and stole his sword.

The End.

(Third attempt at computer coloring!)

Fanart! W00t!

This is a nice Suzu drawing I did from the new Peacemaker Kurogane manga. This is an older Suzu than in the Peacemaker anime, since the manga sorta changed from the anime. I like Suzu even better now that he's an insane murderer wanting revenge for his master.

Anyways, this is actually a photocopy of the pencil drawing I did, because the whole fur coat I did with pencil, and it looked very sloppy before photocopied.

This is my second coloring of one of my drawings using the computer. This one of Alzeros. I added the cloud background, and I really like the way it came out. Some of the glare marks I added look a little out of place, once I learn better ways of coloring I'll be able to do those parts better.

My first computer coloring attempt!

I think it came out awesome! I had no idea Paint Shop Pro 7 was capable of this! I gotta start coloring some more of my drawings!

Another drawing of Breeman wearing a cape. This one is a couple months old, and I never scanned it because I didn't like the way the cape came out.

I picked it up not too long ago and added that twist to the end of the cape, and decided I liked it.

Its sorta a different style I was experimenting, and I think it looks nice.

Yup, another Papa Gino's moment.

I drew this one a long time ago, it was acutally the last Slash drawing I drew for a while.

I was eating at Papa Gino's pizza resauraunt one saturday night with Brandyn. Whenever we eat there, we grab a pile of the coloring activity papers, and a cup of crayons, and draw on the blank side of the paper. Usually, all the crayons are very dull, and it's very hard to draw something good. But, sometimes, the drawings come out awesome, despite the lack of good resources (we just get bored while waiting for food, and try to draw really good stuff with crappy crayons).

My brother was using the only black crayon, so I took a dark blue. And I started drawing Alzeros. I drew this entire picture of Alzeros using a blue crayon, and an orange crayon for the skin color. I think it actually came out really well, and it's awesome for something drawn with an incredibly dull crayon.

Also, when I scanned this drawing, I edited it in Paint Shop to make it black and White, I will upload that picture as a seperate Deviation. It looks like a cool charcoal drawn Alzeros or something.

This is one of my best Breeman drawings. I wanted to try drawing his full cape, and it came out pretty nice

"Slash all Zeros!"

This drawing combines the first original character I created "Slash" and my most recent original character "Alzeros". I think it came out pretty, good, and I wanted to try out a new postion, with an outfit I've never done before.

This is a drawing I did, while looking at a picture of the character class I chose for my Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles game. I spent a lot of time on detail on this drawing. I was inspired to draw this by the Art of The Month winner in Nintendo Power volume 178.