1920×1200 | Illustrator
I managed to escape from Azeroth for long enough to actually complete a vector again. This time it’s Touko & Yumi from Marimite. I tried a slight variation on my usual style and used coloured lines. Not sure if I like the effect or not. I initially thought this was going to be easy, but the source was a lot worse than I thought on closer inspection, plus there’s a fair amount of detail obscured by the giant falling snowflakes and the elaborate gate / fence thing which I ended up leaving out. I also ended up having to sample colours from some promotional material of the pair too, since the colours in the source image were completely whacked (purple hair?). I’m still not 100% happy with how this turned out, but I think it’s reasonable enough. I’m also not sure why this is, but the usual colours of their hair ribbons are reversed - don’t know if that was deliberate or a mistake.
I upgraded to Illustrator CS4 and greatly regret doing so. The ‘enhancements’ that they made to the path / anchor system included making anchor points you put down snap to the edges of previously drawn paths. Sometimes that’s cool. Most of the time it irritated the hell out of me because I generally don’t want that when I’m colouring. Unfortunately in true Adobe fashion, there’s no way to turn it off. Every iteration of Illustrator leaves me more and more convinced that the development team hate their users. For every annoyance they fix, they add one or two more. 
EDIT: I found out how to turn this off.
Can’t be bothered cropping this to 1600×1200 for the rapidly shrinking 4:3 crowd. Sorry, you’ll have to do that yourselves.
1920×1200 | 1600×1200 | Illustrator
Finally got this one done. I’ve been working on it off and on for the last week and a half. There’s not a huge amount to say here, I think this one’s turned out reasonably well. I had to do a bit of fiddling to get the 1600×1200 one to look okay, including moving the girls closer together. Not that anyone minds if they get closer to each other, I’m sure. Also, I’ve linked the thumbnail in with the new gallery software I’m using, so you should get a fun clicky lightbox thing popping up at you if you click the image. For consistency and convenience I’ve left links in too.
No idea what I’ll do next. Probably another Strike Witches one, there are three more shots from the ED that are possibilities.
I came to a realisation yesterday - I started doing vector traces back in September 2003, though I didn’t release my first one until October. When exactly I started is still a mystery, however it’s five years ago this month. As such, I got off my lazy arse and added a gallery of everything, which you can find here or in the link above. My intention is to further integrate the gallery into blog entries in the future as well. If you encounter any wierdness - and you probably will, I can’t test everything - then please drop a comment here and let me know.
Expect a misty-eyed retrospective entry soonish. It’s amazing how much I sucked back when I started this stuff. Also, I’m open to suggestions for a 5th anniversary commemorative vector. :V
1920×1200 | 1600×1200 crop | ai
Another Strike Witches trace, this time it’s everyone’s favourite pair of pantsless germans. It’s been ages since I had a show that I was enjoying enough to want to sit down and trace some stuff from it, and isn’t broadcast in true HD (hard to justify tracing a shot from a show produced in HD). I didn’t spend that long on this, so I’m extremely pleased at how well it turned out, especially given that the source image was covered in text and I had to basically redraw an eye on each of them, among other guesstimations. I’m not much of an artist but it seems that I’ve been doing this for long enough that I managed to be able to pull it off pretty well.
1920×1200 | 1600×1200 crop | ai
New vector, first one I’ve done in ages. I spent longer on this than I was originally going to - once I got to Charlotte’s horrible ugly set of pilot wings in the original image I took some time out and actually went hunting for a real set. Charlotte is based off Chuck Yeager, who had command pilot wings. I took the liberty of tracing the photo from wikipedia and using that as the basis of her wings rather than that boxy looking number with the big blue ball on the top. I think it was worth it. I also think I may have OCD.
Oh, and to save commenters the trouble: MAN STRIKE WITCHES SUCKS HOW COULD ANYONE ENJOY WATCHING THIS UNLESS THEY ARE HUGE GIANT CREEPY PEDOS WHERE ARE THEIR PANTS OH GOD IT’S NO WONDER GONZO ARE GOING BANKRUPT WE NEED TO NUKE JAPAN AGAIN LOLOLOL
