Sketch 9: Diabolos

Okay. So you look to your friend next to you, flash him a toothy grin and nod slightly. You squeeze your facial muscles and try your very best to put on the game face. As you are stretching your neck and shoulders, you notice your friend running to the bathroom and you hear him turn on the sink. Seconds later he comes back with water droplets dripping down his chin.

You skid right past the corner and runs past the NPC. You look around for that save point. Ahh, there it is. You approach the blue-and-yellow rotating orb looking thingy and mash the X button. Yes, save. Yes, overwrite. Yes, load all you want. You start to feel uneasy. Sweat start pouring down the sides of your face. You reach for the tissue but the save is complete. You grit your teeth and wipe your face with the side of your sleeves.

This is it. You open your inventory, search for the item you want, and hesitate.

"Come on, this is killing me," Bob uttered with his quivering voice.

You gulp noisily and stare at the two huge words: MAGIC LAMP.

***

Sorry for the long and irrelevant (except to those of you who has played Final Fantasy VIII) intro :P

Diabolos (or Diablos) has been one of my favourite optional bosses and Guardian Force. Come on, a bat-like creature with the control over gravity? If that's not badass I don't know what is. 

As usual this piece has taken up quite a huge amount of ink. And I sincerely apologise to my Artline 200 red inked pen. Also, here's the latest addition to my family of pens. Meet Artline 0.1: 

Ain't she a beauty? :3

Alrighty, let's get to work.

EQUIPMENT: Mechanical pencil 0.5mm, Eraser, Pilot G-2 pen 0.5mm, Pilot G-3 Gel 1.0, Pilot G-2 pen 0.38mm, Artline 200 Fine 0.4, Artline 0.1:

So I started with a rough sketch of Diabolos, which looked somewhat like this. This took me about 15 minutes:

It took me another 20 minutes darkening the lines with pen:

This sketch was different compared to my previous ones in a way that the details are much lesser. In my earlier sketches such as Bahamut or Adrammelech, the details were overwhelming, however for Diabolos, what made it difficult was the amount of black ink I had to use. In order to properly portray a body of black and not make it look like a clump of shadows, I had to improvise. And this took up quite some time.

Here's a close up of his (or its, if you prefer it that way) wings after it's done :)

After about 3 hours or so of shading and coloring, I finally managed to get it done. And thanks to Mr Procrastination, of course those 3 hours weren't consecutive. Here it is, the final product:

Hope you liked it :D

And I guess its time to buy myself a new red-inked pen.

P.S.: A shoutout to those of you who played and loved (and still loves) Final Fantasy VIII. Here's my favourite line from Squall : " ......."

Cheers! And may I quote John Green: DFTBA!

Sketch 8: Bahamut (Fury)

Here's another one that I stumbled upon while browsing through the Final Fantasy Wikia page. I was sitting at a table in my University's library when I decided to pull my sketch book out.

We all know that Final Fantasy Aeons are badass and cool, but if you haven't already acknowledge the existence of Bahamut, trust me, be prepared to be blown out of your seat (that's assuming that you are sitting down when you saw this).

This was what I came across:

And as you know, I sketch only using black inked pens or pencils, so the golden was out of the question. I considered adding some green at where the orbs are, but I couldn't find my green pen. Oh well.

So without further adieu, let's begin!


EQUIPMENT: Mechanical pencil 0.5mm, Eraser, Pilot G-2 pen 0.5mm, Pilot G-2 pen 0.38mm

I began sketching a draft for the sketch. This took me about 10 minutes:

Next, I started to sketch out the details. I started out, as usual, with a pencil. This took me around 1.5 hours. Here is what it looked like:

 Next, I spent about 50 minutes inking the sketch. Here's what it looked like:

I was considering leaving it like this, but I thought to myself: what the heck. So after 1.5 hours of shading and hatching, this was the final product:

The outcome was actually not as bad as I thought it would be. Although this (like my other sketches) took me a long time and effort to do, I still enjoy it.

FUN FACT: Bahamut (Arabic بهموت Bahamūt) originated as an enormous whale in ancient pre-Islamic Arabian mythology. Upon Bahamut's back stands a bull with four thousand eyes, ears, noses, mouths, tongues and feet called Kujuta (also spelled "Kuyutha"). 

Source: finalfantasywikia