So, earlier this year, I sketched a picture of Asakura Yoh from Shaman King and decided to submit it to DeviantArt, but before I did, I obviously wanted to edit it a little bit so it didn't look boring. Around the same time, I met this guy from the library named Edward and I found out that he used DeviantArt too, and made some AMAZING photos.

I asked him how he edited these photos, and he said he used GIMP. I used to have GIMP, but I never knew you could do THIS with just a photo and GIMP. He showed me the original version of one of the pictures and then showed me the final product and it was AMAZING. So I decided to redownload GIMP to edit my new Asakura Yoh picture. Nothing impressive, but looks much better if I just decided to Paint.Net'd it.


(note: this is still way before Spring Break)

Okay, now we are here at Spring Break. I was grounded as usual, but only from video games. I knew I would have a lot of free time, just like last year. You know what I did last year for Spring Break? I did this:

I probably spent more than the actual Break on this, and I felt fantastic with how much work I feel like put in it. Now, I really don't like it as much as I probably did back in the day, I could seriously do much better with this now, but hey! It just shows progress, right?
So, I thought, "I'm going to do the same thing as I did last year: Do something above the call of duty, make something and put in 110% effort into it" and I knew that just a plain sketch wouldn't cut it. I also knew that things that are different are things that I do best, like my favorite drawing ever since I sketched it, "If I made an action anime char" (image on the right). So I chose to sketch somebody probably no one I know recognized, but would still be an awesome person to draw. I chose Kagamine Len, the twin brother of Kagamine Rin and both cover kids for the voice synthesizing software Vocaloid. I really don't know much else other than watching and listening to a couple of songs made by this synthesizer (it's like an Asian singing Microsoft Sam!) but he looks awesome. He also had pretty unique clothing as well, with torn sleeves and shorts that had belts almost everywhere.
I worked on a sketch, and I thought it was okay, but I could do much better. As much as I didn't want to but knew it was neccessary, I decided to start on a second sketch of Kagamine. Halfway through it, I decided to stop because I looked over it and everything seemed to piss me off about it (his hair was terrible, and he was inhumanely tall with irregularly short shorts and small belts). So once again, I made the painstakingly hard decision to work on a third (and I promised myself, FINAL) sketch. It was the same model, but everything seemed sooo much better in this one! I fixed the perspective problems with the belt, and the hair was much better, but he still seemed a bit too tall.
After a couple of hours of hard work and sketching, I came out with this:


After another couple of hours sneaking in some Team Fortress 2, I finally decided to start the agonizing step of coloring. Luckily enough for me, I don't have to say anything about the process. These pictures will say everything!

Starting out, I'm actually pretty impressed with how well the hair came out. I know that the eyes could be much better!

With the mouth and the eye-outlines, it's starting to look more and more like a face!



And now I move on to a somewhat baggy shirt!

3 hours pass, and out comes a face, neck (with shading!), a tie, eyebrows, and eyeballs! I also added a little detail on his hair to make the headphones a little more realistic. If you look up at the top right, you can see that I started watching episodes of the final season of Avatar: The Last Airbender! :D

Thirty more minutes, and I add a border to his hair, and some shading under his hair! Also, more Avatar!

And add one more hour and out comes an ARM! Also some pants, and added the small microphone! Also, the episode I was watching was so amazing that I had to expand the window.

I stopped taking screenshots after that, but a little more details, an arm and a background, and here was the final product!


See this and more on my DeviantArt page!

I'm finished, and I'm happy. :D