Comments: Thankyou for giving me this oppurtunity, although in my last submission i did promise (did i really?) i would be a regular contributor to this fantastic site. But the strands of fate had other plans and left me empty of ideas, as well as alone to fend off the hordes and hordes of busy'ness (dat isn't a word isn't it? i could've sworn it was), both work and play related. I started work on my Raziel pic a couple of days after it was announced and i went through a couple of 1/2 ideas before i made my final
decision. Then I left it to breath in its own filtiness, before i tackled the difficult job of CG'ing it in Photoshop 6. It took around 2 weeks to colour, doing a little every second night on top of my other concerns. The biggest drawback in my final submission's slow production, was the stubbornness and senile like behaviour of my computer. Which for some reason slows down so much dat i literally have to paint and touch up, in regular intervals between the moments my comp 'freezes' for about 2 1/2 seconds and sometimes even longer. AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!! IT HURTED SO MUCH! I WAS READY TO GIVE UP! :( but of course every now and then it gave me some slack and behaved...

my initial drawing of raziel was done on A4 with a 0.5 mechanical pencil (pacer) using 2H leads, then going over most of the lines in HB. It took around 2 days to draw, but in the end the final product turned out better than i'd hoped it would. I was really unsure how the whole CG art would stand out with too dark shadows, cos i wanted to make my pic very gothic and almost surreal atmosphere to it. i then decided to keep the pic 'illuminated' to the point that the character and composition would be visible yet not taking out the 'dark gothic' feel i wanted in it. Also i should really invest some money towards a wacom tablet cos on top of my computer slowing up, i coloured the pic using a mouse. Which really strained my hand at times as well as my sanity, but i'm happy dat it's over and more importantly i'm happy dat i liked the results.

well i'm going on too much, i'm thinking my comment's gonna be the biggest comment in this months submission. everyone's gonna think i'm some big air bag, all proud and puff. but i'm not! i promise you dat! really! well again thanks for giving me the oppurtunity to display my work, and yes i've said it before and i'll say it once again...i'll see you in a month.

- alvin