sonicwindartist

Hey Guys !!

Well I've FINALLY decided to rewrite this section !

Hmmmm where do I start ! I'll get the usual boring stuff out the way first, my real name is Jem (Short for Jemma, but no one ever calls me by that unless I'm in trouble ;)), I'm a girl (I hope you didn't need me to tell you that !!), I'm 24 (Though I like to try to forget that small fact :P), and I'm 5ft9 tall. Yep, I know that's fairly tall for a girl, but I love it ! I have very blue eyes, and my eyes are always what people seem to comment on first about my appearance. I've always been a confident friendly person, and I'm not afraid to speak my mind and stand up for what is right, as anyone that knows me will know ! If I think something is unjust or wrong, you will know about it ! I am also exceedingly stubborn/refuse to give up on things, which can either work IN my favour, or get me in a lotta trouble :P Quirky fact: I have pretty big canines and they stick out a little onto my bottom lip when I smile XD ! I'm told it's cute but eh :P Also, I get on FAR better with guys than I do girls. Always have done, less drama and bitching I think :P And I have far more in common with guys it seems. Only one of my best friends is a girl, the other 4 are guys XD I only have a very small group of best friends who I know I can completely rely on, and I'm happy with that, I don't feel like I need a massive following of people to feel happy, I would much rather have a smaller group of awesome friends than a huge group of superficial ones who don't even like me. This is also partly due to trust issues as I've had a lot of problems in the past with people who I thought I could trust/rely on that completely screwed me over, also my circumstances make it very difficult to find people that I can totally trust as well. I live in a small town in the South East of England, where I have lived all my life. It's in a pretty awesome location, smack bang in the middle of a 2 hour train journey to either London or Brighton. It's in the countryside and is the highest point in South East England, and so has a stunning view over the surrounding area, and although it's roughly 25 miles from the coast, on a really good day from certain points you can actually see the sea ! One of the downfalls of being so high is we DO tend to have our own little weather system going on that always seems to be totally different to any of our surrounding towns or what the weather forecast predicts XD ! Whatever weather is predicted, we always get the extreme :P

I have been drawing as long as I can remember, art seems to be a family trait, with my Great Uncle being a pretty well known artist where he lives in Malawi, both my grandparents are also amazing artists, as is my mum and my little cousin (You can see both of their deviantArt profiles here - lottisha & FabulousFoxx), and then there's me too of course ! So yeahh, it DEFINITELY runs in my family . Though me and my younger cousin are the only mainly Digital artists (I say mainly because I still draw my sketches with good old fashioned Pencil and Paper and scan it in to colour), the rest of my relatives are Traditional, with their main medium of choice being oil painting. As well as an artist I am a HUGE gamer (Which I'm sure you can probably guess just by taking a look at my profile !). I have been ever since I can remember, most of my childhood memories consist of either playing on a games console or drawing ! I may not draw so much Sonic art anymore (Well, none at all), but that doesn't change the fact I grew up with Sonic, and he always has been and always will be a major part of my life :). I owe a HELL of a lot to that blue guy ! We've been through a lot together.

For a long while now my favourite game series has been Ratchet and Clank. Though that is my favourite series, I still play pretty much any other game you can think of ! My favourite games other than Ratchet & Clank or Sonic, I would say probably would be Dead Space 1, 2 & 3, Wip3out HD/Fury, Forza 4, CoD (YES, I play Call of Duty, I don't care if you think its a 'faggot' game, it's fun to play ! :P), Left 4 Dead 2, Pokémon, and many many more :) . I play on all consoles and own most of them, including the retro ones ! My main gaming account is my Playstation one though, and I'm not ashamed to admit I'm a bit of a trophy whore/plat, if I like a game I will not stop until I get 100% of the trophys and a platinum to go with it, no matter how hard it is ! Sadly most of the games I DO like are notoriously hard to achieve a platinum in XD But that makes it all the more worth it :) Gotta admit though I am pretty damn stuck on finishing Dead Space 2 on Hardcore mode.. and I'm not even gonna attempt to get the trophy for Hardcore mode on Dead Space 3, finish THAT whole game in one go with no deaths or save points ?? DS2 Hardcore mode is enough of a joke with THREE save points let alone NONE XD !

My other general interests/hobbies include listening to music (I am a MASSIVE audiophile XD I pretty much have music on 24/7, I listen to electronic/house/trance music mostly, but I will listen to pretty much any genre). Watching movies (I love sci-fi/action, but again, I'll be happy to watch anything really :) ), ANYTHING to do with technology, electronics, engineering and mechanical stuff interests me, I'm a massive nerd in that respect ! (Well.. I'm a bit of an all round nerd/geek really :P !). Running/working out (I absolutely LOVE running), and of course spending time with those closest to me :) I love animals/nature and love being with my pets/watching wildlife programmes :) Same with anything to do with Space/the universe and science too, stargazing is one of MY FAVOURITE past times. I can never get bored of just lying on the ground staring up into space, I feel home Oh, and my favourite brand of clothing is CyberDog !! If you've never heard of em look em up, they're amazing !



'What do you use to create your artwork, and how long does it take ?'
Well, firstly I always sketch out my idea with pencil on paper. I just use a mechanical pencil and cartridge paper for this, Of course you can use ANY old paper, but I find cartridge paper much better for drawing on than say printer paper, which just damn well rips and smudges when you go to rub anything out ! I can't do this process digitally, I have TRIED. And I just can't do it, I cant get the motion right and the lines I want with a tablet like I can actually physically using pencil directly on paper. Great for you if you can, but I personally prefer the fluidity of doing things traditionally for sketching :) After I've got it looking how I want it (Or roughly how I want it), I then scan it in (I don't have a fancy scanner, just a basic Canon one), and open it on Photoshop (I use Photoshop CS2), if I feel some bits don't look right, I change a few bits round on there, and I also fiddle about with the contrast a bit to make the lines clearer so it's good for uploading onto here.

From this stage onwards I use my tablet, which is the Wacom Bamboo. You don't have to use a Wacom, but I HIGHLY recommend it, it is industry standard for most digital artists and it's not hard to see why, it's unrivalled in performance. You don't have to go all out and get the fancy model, my Bamboo is more than good enough and it was only £50GBP. :)

After this I then create the lineart over the top of the sketch. For this I use the pen tool, it gives nice, clear, accurate and equal lines. If I tried to do this freehand it would look like someone had spewed up on the screen ! You don't have to do this stage but I find it generally a lot easier to do the base colours, which leads me into my next step, BASE COLOURS XD This is where I fill in all space between the lines with the basic colour I want to have under my shading when I start it. This is a really important step in my opinion, it's kinda where you select the colour pallete for the picture, and therefore determine what mood it's gonna be. For example if I used dark, dull colours you would assume it's gonna be a fairly dark themed picture, and if I used bright vibrant colours it's gonna be a bright, cheery picture ! That's the general rule anyway.

Once I have finished the base colours, it's then time for the shading/details ! This is personally my favourite part of doing artwork, it's where you get to bring it to life and really add your own stamp to it :) This is also the most lengthy part of the process. Once this is done, I upload it onto here for you fine people to see !

Now, as for times.. I would say it is as follows (On average anyway):
Initial concept/Sketch - 30 mins-1 hour (Including scanning/slightly editing on PS)
Line Art - Depending on the amount going on, anywhere between 1 hour - 4 hours.
Base colours - 1 Hour - 2 Hours
Shading/details/textures - Depending on background/complexity (Which can vary A LOT), anywhere between 4 hours - 20+ hours.

All of these are solid work times, and don't include breaks/sleep ! Which make it take even longer.

So, there ya go ! That's pretty much all I can think of ! If you wanna ask me anything else please go ahead and either leave a comment below or send me a note ^^ Thanks a lot for the support as always guys, it means a lot to me, and I would NOT have thought I would ever reach 25K views !! I remember not that long ago when I reached 1k and I thought that was amazing, so to get a quarter of the way to 100,000 is just for me something I never thought would happen. I went through a really bad art block in 2010/11 as I'm sure some of you know, where I literally did NOTHING and was totally inactive for the whole time, thinking I was rubbish and I would never improve. Eventually I thought I'd get off my arse and stop wallowing, and try actually getting back into it with some Ratchet and Clank art and try improving myself. In this last year, I feel I have learnt SO much, and my work and technical skill has come on in leaps and bounds compared to what it was, and the amount of interest in my work has gone through the roof, I believe I have gone from about 10k to 25k pageviews in one year alone., and it's all down to you guys. So thank you all SO much for helping me to get back into something I love, and helping me to believe in myself a little again

Love always !

sonicwindartist

Oh, and if you're interested in adding me up on any of the following consoles, feel free :) ! Just don't cry if ya get an ass whoopin' ! ;) :
PSN: Lightspeed_1992
Xbox LIVE: M1ss0f0wnag3
3DS: 4639-9074-0404
Steam: Lightspeed_1992