A-Kon Art Submissions

So just what have I been up to with these illustrations? I'll show you ;)

A-Kon is an anime convention held every year in Dallas. It's really geeky, but I've gone a couple times with friends (who are geekier than I :P), and it's pretty fun. Every year they also hold a t-shirt design contest. I've meant to enter for a couple years now, but tend to put it off and/or forget about it until it's too late. This year I vowed I would enter! So I did ;)

Though I've done a lot of work in both hand-drawing and computer illustration (and enjoy doing both separately), I'm still pretty new to converting hand drawings to digital. Annnd I kind of ran out of time, so I mainly played with live tracing options in Illustrator, rather than completely retracing them.

I had a lot of fun drawing the girl. This one is the third iteration of the drawing. Of course, the penguins were really my favorite part! Aren't they cute?! [And do you see the little comic book reference? :D] I scanned the drawing into Photoshop, traced it in Illustrator, and then colored it back in Photoshop. I need some more practice, but I think it's alright for my first real try at digital coloring.

The second drawing was a fast one. I actually just thought of it yesterday, made a full-sized sketch this afternoon, and just changed it into a digital drawing :-) I had to do a little fancy selection work in Photoshop before I could trace it in Illustrator. I went ahead and did the text in Illustrator, since I was already there. I'm pretty happy with it :D Alex says it's his favorite drawing of mine yet!

*whew* Sorry if that's lon-winded, but I thought someone may want a bit of detail on how I made them. Happy last day of March!! Sleep well ;D