Paging Dr.(_____): The Soren Project Part 1

As some of you may recall from my introductory post I made a few accusations that I promised I would elaborate upon, chief amongst them my opinion that Ryuu, while not without talent as an artist, was letting his talent go to waste. Yes I went there. I meant It then, I do now. I'm also very aware that those were some real big fightin' words, so tonight is when I "put up or shut up," as it were.

This in mind I decided that I would take an example of Ryuus work and give it a once over to illustrate what I find could be improved upon in his work. So I took the first piece from his deviantART gallery linked to me (Snow-HEAD-Boarding) and redrew parts of it, shade da great deal of it, and generally finished the piece. In the end turning the original, into this. Please take a moment to compare.

I had the presence of mind to save my progress in stages so I could best explain how I went about my work, and make commentary on the original. However those are for future posts as I feel a quick Q&A is in order to answer some burning questions.

Q: How dare you edit this without Ryuus permission!
A: I'll admit it really would have been best to secure his permission to alter his work. However given the reason I was altering it in the first place I don't think I would have gotten it so I did it anyway. Still I do feel a bit guilty, so should Ryuu remain a good sport about the whole thing and make a bit of effort towards improvement I would like to offer it as a gift to him to show there's no bad feelings on my part.


Q: What did you use to do the work?
A: I used a free program called MyPaint and a graphics tablet. MyPaint is a very good program, especially as it's free and I highly recommend it if you have a tablet.


Q: No fair! Ryuu did this by hand, and you used a digital program!
A: A fair point, and one I considered as I worked on this. That's why I restricted myself to a single brush setting which emulates a 2B pencil (pretty well I might add). While drawing digitally allowed me a fair amount of neatness, there is nothing I did that is not reproducible with real media (such as pencils & pens) and a steady hand. Ryuu may need to acquire better paper and pencil/pen stock, but it's not anything that requires a computer to do.


Q: Why not edit one of his newer works?
A: I'll admit It would probably have been better to do so, but I decided that this was a good example of his work, as he hasn't drastically improved or changed since then. So I feel this one serves just as well. Other than that, no particular reason.