December 7th, 2018. Focus: Concept Art & World Building

Alrighty, continuing where I left off, we have mid tiers.

Mid tiers are levels 6-16. I gave the most amount of levels to the mid tiers because I wanted mid tiers to have the most variation in magic potential. With any level over 6 being able to use their specialty proficiency. As well as level 6s being able to weakly use any type of magic with a catalyst. Level 16s would be able to use any type of magic with a catalyst and be proficient with magic types suited to them.

Levels 17 through 23, high tiers, would be proficient with all types of magic with a catalyst and have mastery of their specialty.

The last 3 levels would be impossible for a humanoid creature to be categorized in. Creatures at this level would be able to use most if not all types of magic without a catalyst. I created these levels because in the story world, mythical creatures such as elementals, chimeras, and wraiths exist, to name a few. I'll go through the different types of creatures in the world in a later post.

In the lower and higher tiers I gave less levels because there would be less variation in those levels of magic capacity. where as I gave more levels in the mid tiers for more variants in capacity.

I left a lot of things about the system open for my own freedom. Such as what qualifies as proficient and the complete details of each specific level. I didn't think this was necessary to outline, because A: It will never be mentioned in the story, and B: It's always good to leave yourself some freedom when writing a story. The purpose of doing world building is to keep from falling into plotholes when writing. Not to limit yourself in what you can write.

I have yet to mention the research I did into magic systems before designing mine. I have watched and read about a lot of other magic systems over the years from reading and watching fantasy. I learned a lot from just paying attention to other works. I also watched videos about it online, while I won't go through everything in the videos, I'll embed them here...







That's all I have for today, in the next post I'll go into either catalysts or the types of creatures in the world.

December 6th, 2018. Focus: Concept Art & World Building

In regards to the magic system, I have the base types of magic that can be used. As well as the idea for how it can be activated. Not much more though, so I got to thinking about what I need to expand on. What I concluded was I need to develop...

-what magic uses as a source
-how catalysts actually function
-how the magic leveling system works
-what influences how a person can use magic
-what types of beings in the world can use magic (humans, fae, animals, elementals, ect)
-ect

I think first I'll go through the magic I have and how specialties are decided. When I first started deciding what types of magic there would be, I had trouble with the huge amount of possibilities. So I set 2 categories of magic in the world: physical and principal. Physical Magic is all magic that affects physical substances in the world: water magic, light magic, solar or planetary magic, ect. Principal magic is magic that affects the laws and nonphysical aspects of the world: gravity magic, necromancy, memory magic, ect. With those 2 categories I went through multiple lists of magic on the internet and used anything that was applicable with the types. From that I got the following list.

Magic:

Physical: Principal:

-material manipulation -cycle

-alchemy -animancy(life)

-construction -necromancy(death)

-destruction -time

-corrosion -chaos

-elemental -order

-air -luck
-smoke -mind

-vacuum -moral manipulation
-earth -dream

-crystal -emotion

-dust -information

-glass -memory

-lava -sensory manipulation
-metal -sleep

-mineral -space

-mud -dimension

-sand -gate

-wood -void

-plant -sense

-electricity -illusion

-light -precognition
-color -dowsing
-laser -soul sight
-shadow -Magnetism
-vibration -temperature
-sound -inscription
-water -enchantment
-bubble -enhancement
-ice -technomagic
-snow -force
-vapor -weight
-weather -motion
-fire -inertia
-heat -purification
-explosion -quantum
-plasma -contract

-solar

-environmental

-paper

So onto specialties. They are a magic type that a person can use naturally, without a catalyst or relic. A specialty is decided by what their soul color and personality, that's why the list of magic is color coded. The soul colors are...

-blue light dark

-green light dark

-yellow

-orange

-red dark

-pink

-purple

What color a character's soul is depends on their personality. This is where I answered my first problem, the energy source for magic, I'm going the easy route and saying it's powered by energy in the soul. People who have smaller souls have weaker magic, where as bigger souls means stronger magic. That's all the info I need for energy sources, since in the book it won't need or make sense to have an in depth explanation of the magic's source, it would be unnecessary exposition.

That leads into the question of the magic's leveling system. Since the ability to use magic and how well you can use magic is variable. If I don't define power levels it will leave the story open to plot holes. My friends and I picked 26 at random to be the level cap, so levels will range from 0-26 in magic capacity.

Starting at 0, these would be people with no ability to use magic. They wouldn't have a specialty, and they wouldn't be able to use catalysts. These people would be classified as non magical.

People through levels 1-5 would have weak magic abilities. Ranging from 1s, able only to barely use their specialty. To 5s, able to use their specialty, and with a catalyst use other abilities suited to them (the same color as their soul). These people would be classified as low tier magic users.

I'm going to stop their because I'm out of time for today, I'll continue tomorrow.

December 5th, 2018. Focus: Concept Art & World Building

Alright so the speedpaint finished uploading so here's that....



The ships capacity was the hardest part. Since I made the ship so big it really depended on A: how I wanted to use the space. B: how many people would be needed in the crew. And C: how many people would need the ships as long distance transportation. I already figured out how the space on the ship would be used in general space use. So I decided to part B first, I did this by categorizing what people would be on the ship.

-Magicians                                         -Spare Magicians
-Catalyst Engineers                           -Attendants
-Passengers

For part C I had to estimate the world's population and how many people would be going between territories. Honestly, I have no clue how to set the population. So I'm just going to guess that about 300-700 people travel between the territories by airship a day. This includes people working on the ships. That's a pretty small amount considering how many probably travel by plane in real life. In the world I'm building though there firstly isn't as many people in each territory. Due to both size of the territories, the worlds cultural norms on gender and sexuality, the amount of different humanoids, and how prevalent war was in the worlds history. My friend who I'm creating this worlds with is in charge of the history so I can't really say specifics. Secondly there aren't as many reasons for someone to go between territories, due to again the differences in culture, and strained inter territory relations. So yeah, not many people go between territories. I'm going to guess that every air ship has around 150 people at max.

 On the ship there would need to be...

-Magicians                                         -Spare Magicians
-Catalyst Engineers                           -Attendants
-Passengers

So now to figure out how many of the first four would be on the ship. Firstly Magicians, due to the fact the ship can't function with out them. I'm going to just say 35 Magicians and 20 spares, why? Why not is my answer. That leaves 95 spots, next Catalyst Engineers. Once again I'm choosing a number that feels right, 17, leaving 78. Onto attendants, a ship like this would probably need a ton of people doing general work so... 36, leaving 42 spots for passengers. (This probably looked like I randomly decided but I actually put a lot of thought into the balance of people. I have no clue how to explain that though, so just know that this wasn't random.)

-Magicians     35                                    -Spare Magicians     20
-Catalyst Engineers     17                       -Attendants     36
-Passengers     42

So that's all the info needed in the story for Airships. I'm out of time for today so tomorrow I'll probably start on flushing out the worlds magic system.

December 4th, 2018. Focus: Concept Art & World Building

So I started by finishing the edits and added music. Currently I'm waiting for the program to format the file into an mp4 file. That will probably take a few hours. So onto the research aspect now that I have the design down.

Firstly I think I'll start with the ships functions. In the world I'm making there is magic. However, people can't use more than one specialized type of magic without a device called a catalyst. Catalysts allow the use of up to six forms of magic per device. The more specialized a catalyst is though the more powerful. Though a catalysts power also depends on how high of a capacity for magic the Magic Technician, or Magician, using it has. Airships, unlike planes in real life which have a fuel engine, are instead giant catalysts. These catalysts specialize in force and air magic. Using the sub category of force, weight to manipulate the weight of the ship and cargo. Accompanied by using air magic to manipulate air currents and speed. To activate and continue using magic the catalyst must be constantly absorbing magic energy. So as well as having multiple magicians using the catalysts in shifts, I wanted to add magic batteries. These devices would store magical energy and could be activated to automatically keep a catalyst active. This could be used on it's own or along side a Magician. That's how the ships would work.

Security for the ships was the simplest to figure out. It would be effectively the same as real life with additional rules for stuff that doesn't exist in real life. People would have their magic specialty and capacity on their passport. Catalysts would have to be in the governments official registry and the owner would have to have permits for their catalysts.

The general use of space on the ship was easy as well. The lower back of the ship would have the catalyst functions and magic batteries. The bottom middle and most of the front would be storage areas. With a small area for a bird view of the planet in the bottom front as well. The top of the ship would consist of viewing decks, eating areas, social areas, and either solo or 2 person living compartments. Ship staff and guests would have separate areas.

The next part was getting the actual size of the ship. I looked up airplanes online and found too much information. There are a ton of different types and variations of planes. So I googled the average size of a football field (450 ft), and converted it to meters (137m). That gets me the ships length about. To get the width including wing span I multiplied the length by 3.5, I chose this because birds in real life have something similar to this in wing to body ratios. That got me 479m in width, to get the body width alone

I estimated that the ship would be about the length of a foot ball field, which, according to the internet is 137.2m. So to get the other dimensions of the ship....

For width...

-The total would be 137.2 x 2.6 = 356.7 (I figured that the ship would be 2.6 times the length)
-The body would be around .6 of the total so... 137.2 x 2 = 274.4    ,    356.7 - 274.4 = 82.3

For height I want it to be about 3/4ths of the width...

82.3 / 4 =20.6    ,    20.6 x 3 = 61.8

The video finally finished formatting, now I'm just waiting for it to finish uploading to YouTube. I'm out of time for today so I'll do the ships capacity for people tomorrow. As well as post the speedpaint once it's finished uploading.

December 3rd, 2018. Focus: Concept Art & World Building

So as I said in my final post I'll be focusing on concept art and world building for this month. I'll be working with a specific world in my focus of world building and concept art. The world being for a story some friends and I are working on.

In the story currently I need to figure out how air ships will work in universe. when we first created the base of the world we made a list of the magic usable. I haven't completely flushed out how it works so I'll do that some other time. Here is the list though...

Magic:

Physical: Principal:

-material manipulation -cycle

-alchemy -animancy(life)

-construction -necromancy(death)

-destruction -time

-corrosion -chaos

-elemental -order

-air -luck
-smoke -mind

-vacuum -moral manipulation
-earth -dream

-crystal -emotion

-dust -information

-glass -memory

-lava -sensory manipulation
-metal -sleep

-mineral -space

-mud -dimension

-sand -gate

-wood -void

-plant -sense

-electricity -illusion

-light -precognition
-color -dowsing
-laser -soul sight
-shadow -Magnetism
-vibration -temperature
-sound -inscription
-water -enchantment
-bubble -enhancement
-ice -technomagic
-snow -force
-vapor -weight
-weather -motion
-fire -inertia
-heat -purification
-explosion -quantum
-plasma -contract

-solar

-environmental

-paper

I'll explain the magic system more at a later date, right now I'm working on air ships. I'll start with the design.

I did a rough sketch in my notebook and I drew a better sketch in my sketch book. I'm going to try and do an illustration in CSP now.
Normally I draw in a very line reliant comic style. Illustrations in concept art are in a more classically artistic style. Trying to draw in a completely different style was difficult. I did it though, took me 5 hours to draw.
I recorded all 5 hours so I'll speed up the recording and use that to show everything in depth. I'll post that in tomorrows blog since I haven't finished editing it yet.

I started off by tracing the pencil sketch on my computer. Then I used the colorize function to do a gradient for the sky. I then did the clouds, after I did a fine line work for the ship. I colored in the ship and did shading and highlights. I used the colorize function again to adjust the colors. Deleting the previous colorized layer, replacing it with a gradient layer. It took me a while to get the colors and textures on the ship right.
Editing the speedpaint video was a pain on it's own. I had to find a good editing program firstly, it took a bit of browsing but I found a program called VideoPad. It had good reviews so I downloaded it from the Microsoft Store. It's a good program, it works well and has a bunch of useful functions. Mostly, I just imported the video files and merged them together, then sped it up by 650%. I plan to use it's sound editing functions to add some music to the video later as well.

I spent 5 hours drawing it and 2 doing the edits so I'll finish the rest tomorrow. The rest being: -finishing editing
-research into planes
-uploading the speedpaint
-ect.

November 30th, 2018. Final Post!!!

So this month I started a comic series on Webtoon . It was a fun little project, and I learned and tried a lot of things in the process.

On the 1st...
-I researched the recommended sizing of a Webtoon, 160px by 151px per page with a max of 499kb of information
-I learned how to download and install new fonts to windows

On the 2nd...
-I learned how Clip Studio Paint's asset downloader works and used it to download multiple new materials and tools
-I used said materials and tools to finish the first 2 pages of my comic

On the 5th...
-I realized that I had drawn the designs for the main cast in grade 8. So I decided to redraw the first 2 characters that would appear in the comic.
-I drew the 3rd page of the comic, shading it with tone layers and using the air brush tool to add depth.


On the 6th...
-I posted my first chapter to Webtoon and started chapter 2
-I explained how the comic panel tool works
-I drew a distance view of the character in their room, using a texture for the carpet
-I shaded everything and used the airbrush tool to add depth again

On the 7th...
-I released the comics URL on the blog
-explained a bit about how the comic discovery system on Webtoon works
-I discovered, learned how to use, and explained the story function on Clip Studio Paint
-I worked on chapter 2 for a bit


On the 8th...
-I did a comparison of one of my rough sketches vs the final line art for it
-I found a cool short cut for the story function
-I found some cool selection settings when I right clicked a layer
-I finished one of the images
-I used empty panels to do a scene transition
-I sketched hands

On the 9th...
-I found some new settings for the mesh transform tool
-I decided to add another image of the character on page 2
-I moved the coffee cup image to page 3
-I finished the coffee cup

On the 13th...
-I started to work on the additional image for the second page
-I finished the additional image
-I downloaded another font

On the 14th...
-I explained the speech bubble tool
-I found reference images for perspective shots

On the 15th...
-I found more references images
-worked in my sketch book
-created a slideshow
-studied videos on exposition and cinematography

On the 16th...
-I finished my sketch in the sketch book
-I tried and failed to use Clip Studio Paint's rulers
-I finished a rough sketch of the table and chairs on my computer

On the 19th...
-I couldn't draw due to my hands being shaky so I studied tropes in writing

On the 20th...
-Once again my hands were too shaky
-I used story planner to make character outlines

On the 21st...
-I drew and redrew the perspective multiple times
-I used 3D models to get the positions and sizing of the characters right

On the 22nd..
-I did the drawing for the rough anatomy of the characters
-I drew the rough sketch for the main character

On the 23rd..



Next month I want to work on concept art and world building as my focus. I'll be designing things like the look of the world, how the worlds magic system works, and culture. I'll be creating this world for a story me and some friends are making. My art work previously has had a more comic style so this will force me to learn more traditional styles of art. I'm also bound to learn a ton of things while researching world building.

November 27th, 2018. Project: Make A Webtoon

So since the next image will start this scenes dialog, I figured I should script it before hand. So that's what I'm working on currently. I'm just writing it on a random page from my notebook.

So I wrote the first version of the dialog, I was focusing on the content of the conversation. Because of that it doesn't flow very well so I'm going to go through it again. This time with the word flow in mind. With flow being it's naturalism, would a person actually speak this way.

I'm having one of the character's speak unnaturally for comedic effect. As well as to make them seem uncaring. I think I've made the other character sound good though. So now onto the drawing process again.

I'm currently working on the first sketch for this page. Since it's mostly close up shots with simpler perspectives it's easier to draw. This sketch took me around 15-20 minutes. I think I'll do the next image's rough sketch then stop for the day.

I finished the rough sketch for the next image.