Now with 10% fewer hairballs!

I don’t know, I had 20 extra minutes during lunch at work.  I put stylus to tablet and a satyr came out.

Also, I’ve gotten myself embroiled in real roleplaying finally!  Normally I just waffle about on forums and pretend to be le fancy writer when really we’re just a bunch of giddy girls partaking in interactive soap operas.

Nope, this is REAL roleplaying, I have a character sheet and everything, I had to do MATH to calculate HIT POINTS.  This is srs bznss.  Long story short, it’s a Changeling game set in a steampunk San Francisco, the year is 1891 and my character is best described as a tall thin birdman with lurid, multi-hued plumage.  He looks as if he had fallen into a mad painter’s palette and barely escaped with his life.  He is part owner of The Lucky Bird Gentlemen’s Club with gambling downstairs and willing bed-warmers upstairs.  The GM calls it a brothel.  He HATES that, but it’s much better than the monikers the rest of his motley offered up.

Working on a character portrait of him.  Now, I’m no fashion designer, and I usually just draw my characters without clothes because… well… I’m BAD at it. There, I said it.  I am bad at drawing clothes.  It happens.  Thing is, drawing naked satyrs is plenty fun for 20 minutes on lunch, but if I want to make anything of myself as a character artist I need to confront and conquer that which I am bad at.

For you non-artisty types, that means practice and lots of reference.  I love reference.  I believe the right reference can fix anything.  So last night after I sketched out my character without clothes to make sure I was getting his anatomy right, I went hunting.  I found a lot of great things and I’m amazed again at how wonderful a thing the internet is.

Yeah, hello, internet? I need as many examples of men in fancy dress from the late 1800s please and thanks.  And there it is, at my fingertips almost instantly.

The only thing left to do is to draw:

Observe the elusive reference peeking into frame!

THAT, my friendly faceless constructs of internet ether, is just a teaser.  As of the writing of this I’ve got his whole outfit sketched out and I’m starting on linework. (Spoiler, he’s wearing spats)  One thing I would like to say about men’s fashion is: Really? I mean… REALLY? Exactly how many shirts do you REALLY need, seriously?  After a bit of research I’ve concluded that dapper gentlemen walk around with so many shirts just so they can take them off and offer them to unsuspecting damsels in distress, or something equally ridiculous.

Anyway, this Changeling game is played over Google Hangout and the GM broadcasts it live to youtube!  If you like that kind of thing go ahead and follow me on twitter.  I’ll tweet when we’re live.  Last Friday was character gen, and this Friday night we should be playing our first game.  I’m pretty excited.