Far From Neutral Notions - Philippine politics, culture and stuff

A few months back I was contacted by Karl, UK Ronin on the L5R boards, to do a commemorative artwork for the upcoming LA Kotei that they’ll be having. It’s for the Suicide Draft event, and the artwork will serve both as an All-Clans’ stronghold (Shiro no Name) and a commemorative piece. For those not familiar with the concept, Suicide L5R is a fast paced booster draft L5R tournament, where you keep playing until the cards are gone. You keep the cards you win and play again, or start with a new booster pack each game. The winner is determined when the cards run out, by simply measuring the stacks.

And if you played in the Kotei, get in touch with me, I’d love to hear what you think

Popularity: 1% [?]

Daigotsu Eiya is a fallen Crane duelist with awesome stats and even better abilities. This is a quick concept of what I think he used to look like. Pose inspired by the Samurai X manga, the battou-jutsu, which is similar to the L5R mechanic of Iaijutsu.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Mirumoto Chojiro is one of my most favored personalities in the L5R collectible card game: decent stats, killer duel ability, good traits, and cheap. His ability to more easily fetch you the card Legendary Confrontation is what makes him superb in honor-runners, hence the name for this piece of artwork.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Kinuye’s a personal favorite of mine, a really sinister character from the Legend of the Five Rings CCG and RPG. Here I did a version of the card “Lessons of Pain”.

The only part that I actually put any detail into was the face:

Popularity: 2% [?]

I didn’t have anything better to do, and since I’m always on their case for being mountain-climbing hicks (I’m sorry, I couldn’t even climb the Shaw MRT station…), this is my way of giving back.

It’s not finished yet.. maybe just 10% done, but this is fun

Popularity: 2% [?]

In my endless pursuit to distract myself, I recently bought a Wacom Graphire tablet, something I’ve been meaning to get oh, for the last five years Thing is, it’s been so long since I last drew *anything* that I’m admittedly rusty. Anyway, here’s what I’ve done so far:

Both were done in Painter IX and Photoshop CS, and I did the guitar in Illustrator CS. I used the FHM 2004 calendar as a reference for Francine, and relied extensively on the watercolor, artist’s oil and blender brushes (Painter). I used Photoshop mainly for the detail work, with the burn/dodge and smudge tools. For the self-portrait I tried something new, something that I’ve been dying to do, and that’s paint using only the palette knife. I didn’t have a photo reference so I kept going back to the bathroom mirror to see how I look like. I *eherm* accidentally made myself look thinner (honest!) but it doesn’t really look like me

Popularity: 2% [?]