Welcome back!
2025-04-22
Wow, the real release of my website. Complete with a domain and just how I like it, that's gotta be somethin' lol. Anyways, feel free to take a look around my portfolio website and see what I got in store! I was supposed to write up an example of what a normal design highlight blog post would look like nowadays, but the college life is still kicking me down right now. So, have this motivational thumbs up from our sweet and dear Appleline! She's always there to lend a hand :D
Cosmic Design Portfolio Site: Complete!
2025-04-20
YESS!!! It is finally completed! After hours upon hours, time spent through 3 weekends, my Portfolio Website is finally complete, just the way I like it!
So... What's New?
Well, uh... there's a balance of not much but just enough to be quite different! There are now actual design portfolio galleries to check out my most proudest works yet, overhauling the blog layout, and much more. Aside from that, I also did some cleanup of the code on the backend and frontend now that I have a better understanding of NextJS and Javascript (still not a whole lot, but it'll get me by for the time being lol)
As for any more announcements. Check back on the blog every Tuesday to see what I gotta say! This can include a highlight of recent or big projects I worked on, more info about Bygone Lands, and some fun personal stuff in general. This is genuinely a good place to better understand my creative mindset and processes when it comes to designing, so stay tuned!
Brave the Unknown: Bygone Lands
2024-03-17
Howdy folks, and welcome back to my art blog. Today's post is all about going into the little details in crafting my recent artwork for my graphic novel, “Bygone Lands.” This novel has been in the works for 6 years (Man, time flies by!) and I'm super excited to finally be able to finish it this Fall after all this time. Anyways, one must wonder how I made this pleasant little cover, and I'll tell you just that!
What's Bygone Lands all about?
This story is all about exploration, as our protagonists hear about the legends of a world filled to the brim with imaginations that span into infinity, beginning their adventures into an old and forgotten civilization. Once I had a good description of my story, I started thinking about how I wanted to present it to my audience cohesively. It needs to be gripping, enticing, and initiating curiosity in reading such a mysterious novel.
Ideas to Cover
Moving to the second step, I had to find out how I could compact all of that into one presentable cover. I sifted through the page sketches of my graphic novel, finding the “moment” that I want to represent as my graphic novel cover. Soon, I landed on said moment, which is when the protagonists are swept away to a forgotten civilization. Traveling through this mysterious portal, streaks of light fly around the air and the skies of both worlds seep into the portal stream. It was such a fun and miraculous way to describe and picture in my head that I had to sketch out that moment!
This is where the fun begins! I started sketching out some thumbnails for the cover and eventually moved to the big sketch with my perfect thumbnail. It was originally going to be the protagonists floating in the portal stream with the rifts opening up, but I thought the sketch was still too empty. Then, my gears started turning, thinking about the details of world building as a whole! Eventually, I added sky lanterns into the mix of illustrations, as a means of representing the festival's culture in the novel with wishes sent to the other side to become a reality.
Time for Illustrating!!
With my sketch completed, I began to work on Procreate where I ink and color in the artwork. Getting used to the software and using each stroke elegantly, this was an art piece I had the most fun in while challenging myself critically in making choices in this artwork.
The biggest challenges were drawing the building structures in the portal rifts and balancing my contrast of colors. I'm not all that proficient in drawing buildings, but this artwork is giving me a push into diving into that category, along with strengthening my color choices. Regardless of these challenges, the aspects that I had the most fun with outshine my struggles, with parts such as the unity of the elements in the cover art and the entire spectacle of the finished product.
In short, this cover has seen many renditions and hard challenges in the process, but the overall result is so satisfying to see and compare to my previous covers! I'm still very excited about the progress I've made on my graphic novel after all these years and am looking forward to wrapping it all up!
If you're interested in learning more about “Bygone Lands,” feel free to check out my Instagram, or my Twitter to catch up on updates of my graphic novel!