AbbieSTABBY @ The Gaming Day Fundraiser

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Here is some footage graciously acquired by my friend Chris during the Gaming Day Fundraiser, put on by the Games Design department. The footage he got was of me completing one of the many commissions that he paid for on the day! He had filmed everyone’s activities throughout the duration of the event – but was kind enough to let me nab the footage of my work from him so that I could put it up on this blog.

At my table (which I shared with Cayleigh from Interactive media / Web Design), I sold ‘Itty Bitty’ portraits for £2 a drawing. Putting it at this price definitely seemed to do the trick for drumming up interest! Usually I charge £5 for the individual drawings, but seeing as it was a fundraiser and I wanted the pricing to seem cheap and fair, I went with £2. Plus, £2 is a lot more coherent as ‘walking-around’ money, rather than the probability of people having to pop to the cash machine for the money, or being put off by the notion of paying £5 altogether.

In total, after counting up the total which I had raised, I had just over £33 – which is absolutely fantastic! I had no idea at all that I had managed to raise that much! Cayleigh and I both managed to raise around the same amount (I think she may have even raised a bit more than me – selling cakes and drinks.). At the end of the day, each of the disciplines which were helping out during the fundraiser – from Animation, Games Design and Interactive Media, put the money they had raised with each of their stalls together. With all accounted for, total earnings were around £120 which was incredibly satisfying. That will help a great amount with getting the total amount required for rentals and purchases for the End of Year Degree Show.

W.I.P Vlog – Week #07

So, what do we have in this weeks video?

1. Completed Commissions at the Beginning of the Week.
2. Colouring ‘Scotty 2 Hotty’.
3. Colouring ‘Ca$h -VS- Boom’.
4. Completed Commissions at the End of the Week.

This week was mainly dedicated to completing some fun miniature-portrait commissions for the lads at NGW – New Generation Wrestling (https://www.facebook.com/NGWrestlingUK). For the entire week I’ve been inundated with suggestions and requests from some of the wrestlers – not that I’m complaining, mind! They always have such quirky ideas for me to work with. Never a dull moment when collaborating with them!

Whenever I go to wrestling shows that they put on now, I usually bring artwork to give out to people. This has resulted recently in some wrestlers, who I have not even met, approaching me and greeting me enthusiastically with:

“Are you Abbie that does the drawings?!”

As it turns out I’ve become a bit of a commodity at these shows. It’s really quite uplifting! I’m proper pleased that I’ve started making a bit of a name for myself now! In fact all of the people involved with them in general are such welcoming and entertaining people, and it has been brilliant networking and making a few new friends in the process.

I got a request from a buddy of mine to draw a portrait of 90’s WWE star ‘Scotty 2 Hotty’. It wasn’t until I had completed it and posted it online after showing him, that I had realized that he had tweeted it to the man himself! The most amazing part was that the guy liked it! Now that really did make my day!

I had to make a mock doodle of my two bestest buddies from NGW having a scrap too. The chemistry they have with each other whilst performing is one of the funniest things I’ve ever had the pleasure to watch! Tried to put some of the old Japanese lessons I used to do to practical use with this drawing too. I definitely have to look into seeing if there are any Japanese language courses on offer this coming semester – I miss doing Japanese!

Drawing Dara Diablo

After I recently went to a wrestling event put on by the brilliant guys at NGW – New Generation Wrestling (http://www.ngwuk.com/home) in my hometown, I was contacted by several of the wrestlers who I know through some mutual friends. I was asked to do various pieces of artwork and portrait pieces by one or two of them, and since completing those I’ve been quite in demand with their circuit! Every other day I’ve been sent requests for artwork, for personal and commercial use!

One wrestler from the event in particular, “Dara Diablo” (https://www.facebook.com/dara.diablo) asked for quite an elaborate chibi-esque portrait of him in character. We bounced several ideas back and forth between each other during the ideas stage of this project, and compiled a list of things to include in the finished piece, with the concept of “overt manliness” in mind.

For the production of the video itself we decided very early on that it needed an “80’s Montage” vibe to the soundtrack, to mix together with the extrovert style and subject matter of the artwork. We compiled a list of tracks which we would consider putting in and then I picked from that list after editing the video clips together.

I am going to have to order more ProMarkers after completing this image. I’ve had to shrink down the size of any other commission portraits I’ve had since purely to economize on what little ink I have left until I can order in some more! Luckily there are some quite cheap deals on multi-packs which you can get on Amazon. Such a useful website!

It has been quite a while since I have had an “Itty Bitty” style commission of this magnitude and detail, so it was a lot of fun to get stuck into. It was upon completing and publishing this one online that I started to get a flood in of other similarly-themed requests!

I had drawn the image and coloured it first before asking whether he wanted to include any script. There were quite big blank spaces left so I thought it would be good to fill those with something else, be it more artwork or some script to really round off the overtly-stylized manliness of the image. I waited for Dara, my commissioner, to think of something he wanted to include and I got right to it. Writing out script, as fun as it may be, was incredibly and utterly tedious. I’m just glad that the font I chose to replicate (from font website http://www.dafont.com/) looked very nice upon completion. I liked the slightly Latin-look to it, which complimented his wrestling persona quite well.

I feel that I could’ve positioned some aspects of the drawing a bit better, but other than that I am very pleased with the final product, and Dara Diablo himself was very pleased as well! That is the most important thing!  He’s said that he’s all set to go out and buy a frame for it when I give it to him this coming Saturday at the next upcoming NGW event!

He’s also recently asked me to help with some potential designs for his new wrestling costume. So, here’s to future endeavors, everyone! Watch this space for more commissions which I will be uploading in the coming week!

“Dara’s Diablo” © 2013 AbbieSTABBY

W.I.P Vlog – Week #06

So, what do we have in this weeks video?

1. Drawing Dara Diablo.
2. Eldritch Freezer Abomination.
3. Writing-Up a To-Do List.
4. Drawing Kev & Coral as Kittypillars.

Most of my creative mojo this week went into completing the “Dara Diablo” artwork. It was an incredibly fun (and quite silly) commission by the NGW Wrestler, formulated after a brainstorming session during which we bounced ideas back and forth until we came up with the final concept. A quite heavy amount of my markers have suffered because of it though, so I’m currently in the process of ordering some more. Looks like I’m back to pencil-based work for the foreseeable future!

Check out the NGW homepage for upcoming shows and awesome merchandise:
http://www.ngwuk.com/home

Included the bit of my freezer because it made me laugh too much not to. The souls of the battered chickens I like to eat were screaming at me as I opened and closed the drawer, haha!

The pencil version of a Kittypillar portrait of my super bestie Kev and his lovely missus Coral, is based on a marker drawing I had previously done for them. I thought it would be good to include the design in my sketchbook. Concept art left right and centre!

© 2013 AbbieSTABBY

W.I.P Vlog – Week #03

Lots and lots and lots of cross stitching in the past week in order to get my Benedict Cumberbatch pattern finished! Loved the pattern in last month’s issue of Cross Stitch Crazy, and I’m a fan of some of his stuff, so I set out to try and finish it in under 2 weeks. Did it in 10 days which I am proper chuffed about! Posted the finished image of it to the magazine’s Facebook page, and they emailed me saying that they would put it into the upcoming issue! So proud!

You can check out the progress of that piece on my cross-stitch blog “Betty Baileys”: http://bettybaileys.wordpress.com/

Also got asked to do a few commissions from several peers this week, which has really given me a boost! My PayPal account is looking quite beefy now, haha! So, with those in mind, I decided to get a bit of footage whilst I was working on one of them (doing the outlining).

Decided to be a bit self-indulgent as well, and create some original character art. It was nice to take a break from Uni work for a bit just so I could do something a bit different! Plus, I need to get the practice in on so many aspects of facial design and so on. I’m not too brilliant at drawing a face in profile with out a little bit of photo reference for help!

So, what do we have in this weeks video?

1. Cross-stitching Benedict Cumberbatch.
2. Typing a blog post.
3. Cross-stitching Benedict Cumberbatch.
4. Colouring an Original Character: Bob.
5. Outlining a commission piece: Callum as Iron Man.