Mira's Practice Art Log

[metamira]

Hey! I'm Mira, dev for A Very Full House. I'm a programmer by trade and training, but a porn game without porn art is a poor affair indeed. That's meant a lot of practice in the last few months, with a lot more still to go. I figured posting my practice sketches every two or three days would help motivate me to keep my practice consistent, which is key to improvement!

The goal is for each sketch to take about two hours. Early sketches were B&W , but lately I've moved onto taking the extra time for colouring (and sometimes animating!) things.

My personal favourites list (updated as we go!)

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Want to support my drawing? Head over to Patreon!
You can also find the full practice log over on Reddit!
I also post everything to Twitter!
A Very Full House has an official Discord server!

Here are my first efforts: some proportions practice featuring some busty elves!

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Constructive criticism is always welcome, as are suggestions of what other themes to base my drawings on!

 

[runingman69]

good job

 

[metamira]

Seems like I big titty elves have grabbed my muse for the moment (Oh no, the tragedy!), so here's another one! A more complex pose this time, with a little bit more fluff for the environment.

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Probably going to stick to this theme for the next few days, so feel free to make suggestions for poses/outfits/situations!

 

[metamira]

More busty-elf practice: A fair elven warrior this time! I'm enjoying the theme of "just clothing to be impractical", I hope you are too. I think these elf babes have had it too easy though, next practice piece will be about how they handle defeat! (spoiler: it's a good thing these outfits are easy-access!)

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[metamira]

I'm getting more comfortable with my sketch workflow, which means more time actually putting digital ink to digital paper and less time fiddling around with settings. Some more complex pose work in this one, plus a few dicks at various angles. Fun stuff all around!

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How do people feel about the gentle colouring? I'm liking it as a quick-and-dirty way of giving the sketches a finished look, without needing to spend a ton of time colouring+shading.

 

[Kesil]

The gentle colouring is nice.

 

[metamira]

Elf Barmaid (Do I need to keep adding busty, or is that implied at this point?) Noticed a slight problem while working on this one: big titty elves are fun, but their fun-bags obscure their torso, which means I'm not getting any good practice drawing them.

Solution 1: Draw other things. Basic. Boring.
Solution 2: Invent reasons for their tits to be out of the way. Creative! Exciting!

Elf bondage gear? Elf levitation magic? Handy boob-lifting shoulder fairies? Tune in next time to see what I try!

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[metamira]

A changeup for today: a non-giant-titty elf! I wanted to get some more torso practice, so they needed to be a bit more reasonable to prevent them from obscuring everything. So here you go, an elvish-wizard!

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[metamira]

Had a lot of fun with the colouring in my last drawing, so I thought I'd check in with our elf wizard again and see how things are going!

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Turns out magic isn't as hard as he thought, and turns out she should have locked that book up better! Oh well, they both seem like they're having fun!

Next drawing will be something to get some more torso practice!

 

[metamira]

This sketch ended up taking a little more time than normal, mainly because drawing solid objects requires a little more precision than squish-and-forgiving elf bodies. Definitely worth it though, designing and drawing these elves and their "armour" has been a lot of fun!

So here we go, a confident elvish warrior, pacing towards you on the battlefield!

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...I'm sure everything is going to turn out fine for her.

 

[metamira]

Another practice sketch, working with a more dynamic pose for our latest elvish warrior. Drawing the same accessories and keeping them consistent between poses and in perspective is fun practice!

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This makes 10 practice posts so far too, so yay for that! I'm going to shift gears for the next post and do some colouring practice using one of the sketches I've posted already - if you have a preference for which one I should do let me know!

 

[Kesil]

I'd pick either the throne one or the tied-by-magic one.

 

[metamira]

Revisiting a previous sketch to get some colouring practice today! I decided to go with our elf-wizard, bound and suspended with magic. It had very strong and directional scene lighting that I thought would be interesting to tackle.

I took a fairly simple three-tone approach: one for the base skin, a darker shade for areas with lots of ambient occlusion, and a highlight hade for highly exposed areas. The lighting layers include three light sources: an ambient source that lights up everything equally, the magical purple glow focused around the crystals/bindings, and a yellow sunlight cast from the top down. I put a layer of highlights over all of this in sharp white, catching the edge of anything that is wet/sweaty/shiny. I also recoloured the base sketch lines to a skin tone and bumped down their opacity so they fade into the colouring a little more, without losing all definition.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how this turned out! An unexpected bonus to this technique, which makes the programmer in me happy, is that each effect is highly decoupled. I can change the skin tone, lighting colour, lighting intensity, etc. independently and everything just sort of works. Seems like this will be a good workflow for colouring future sketches and getting good results!

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Oh hey nested spoiler tags work. Neat! Here's the Original sketch for comparison.

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[metamira]

I took some inspiration from the Superbowl and decided to add a little bit of modern flare to our lovely elf ladies (or maybe she's a Bloodbowl cheerleader). This was some good practice for more kinetic poses - I think I could have put some more arc in her torso to make it even more dynamic, but I'm happy overall with how it's turned out!

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[metamira]

Last sketch's modern tilt gave me a few fun ideas, so I think we're going modern-fantasy for the next little while. You can still expect big tits and elves, but now we're in the era of push-up bras and classy lingerie! (Don't ask about the inclusion of fantasy condoms in previous pictures, I just think they're hot accessories)

So, to kick off the show: A lovely elf secretary! So well dressed she's nearly safe for work!

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In related news, I've started a subreddit: r/MetaMira! It's going to get all of the same practice art that I'm posting here, minus most of the my actual comments about why/how I'm drawing stuff (sorry Reddit, you make it inconvenient to post pictures along with comments). So if Reddit is more your thing, or you want to help me get more eyeballs my drawings, swing over and take a look!

 

[metamira]

We're checking in with our busty elf secretary again today! This sketch took a little longer than normal, partly because I needed (okay, wanted) two versions, and partly because it was a surprisingly challenging pose/angle to draw. Happy with how it turned out, although managing the separate opacity layers was a pain in the ass.

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Head office isn't sure why, but morale is way up since they started hiring elves!

 

[metamira]

Another modern tilt to today's drawing: an elf gym bunny! This was some good practice for drawing hair; I still need to get better at up-dos, it's hard to capture the feel of swept back hair!

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I've been toying with the idea of doing some choose-your-own-adventure style polls over on Patreon for what happens next in these practice sketches. Options like "She gets fucked on the bench.", "Her post-workout shower", and so on (maybe with an option to spend extra time colouring an image). Is that something people would be interested in?

 

[metamira]

Some dick drawing practice today, plus a low-angle perspective to make things trickier. Today our elf gym bunny is presented with a very interesting workout offer.

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I'm also running a poll on patreon for what happens in the next sketch! It's free and open to everyone, so pop on over and leave a quick vote, you'll get to see the results in a couple of days! https://www.patreon.com/posts/elf-gym-bunny-62939207

 

[metamira]

Back in the gym today, and let's see if our gym bunny is up to the multi-disciplinary workout she's signed up for! Getting the construction for four characters even remotely correct took a fair amount of time, but that's what I signed up for when I put "Gangbang" on my list of options I suppose!.

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I realised that I was started blocking out image sections in grey to more quickly apply colour shading, and that I might as well cut out the middle man and just go straight to using skin tones. What do you think, improvement over the grey+colour?

 

[metamira]

Trying out a new brush for my sketch for today. This one has more of a marker feel vs the construction pencil I've been using up until now. I had to be a little more purposeful with my linework, but that's probably a good thing for my practice anyways. The cleaner lineart makes colouring a lot faster (and look a lot better, IMO), so if I stick with this style I'll probably transition to doing this sort of mostly-flat coloured drawings.

Anyways, that's a lot of preamble to introduce today's drawing: An Elf Goth!

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My initial plan for this sketch had her with black hair, but I decided to go with bleached platinum hair instead. Somehow that felt even more goth to me, let me know if you agree!

 

[metamira]

More new brush+colouring practice today. Drawing lace lingerie is time consuming - lots of mirrored patterns that look very wrong if you try and cheat at them - but boy is it fun to look at! So here you go, an elf MILF in her bedroom lingerie!

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[metamira]

I have something particularly fun for today: some elf twerking animation!

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If Twitter is giving you a low res version you can see it in full res version on imgur

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1499303878109675523

And if you want it, here's the static image that I had before animating.

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View attachment 22097

A combination of extra time on my hands + my brain not being in the right space to do any coding for A Very Full House resulted in me putting about double the amount of time I normally do into my practice art. About half of that time was spent on the static drawing, the other half was spent rigging things up in Live2D to animate it.

I'm particularly happy with this because I didn't put in a ton of prep work to animate it ahead of time (like drawing the butt/torso/head on different layers, etc) and the results still look decent. Most of the movement is driven by the Live2D physics system as well; I set up the deformers for the butt, head, shoulders, etc. and then hand animated the hips X and Y position (and camera position), everything else is driven naturally from that.

Side question, does anyone know of a convenient way to embed mp4's other than linking through twitter? It seems like there should be a more straight forward way, but I don't know one!

 

[metamira]

Back to some static art with an eager elf nurse sporting some highly practical footwear for being on her feet all day!

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Blond hair is surprisingly hard to get right, but I'm happy with how it's turned out this time! The last few drawings have also been really good practice for drawing/adding new outfits to A Very Full House once I'm done with the current coding work.

 

[metamira]

Two things I haven't practiced a ton of in the new colouring style are breasts/nipples and rolled fabric, so I put both of those together for today's piece of practice art! She's a little shy, so she didn't want to show her face. Definitely no identifying information at all...

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There's usually a period of time when drawing/colouring these where everything looks absolutely terrible (I've noticed basically every artistic process has this period too. It even happens with code). That feeling hit particularly hard this time; I nearly abandoned the drawing after I put down the flat colours. It's not perfect, but I'm glad I kept working at it and got something finished!

 

[metamira]

Today's art comes with a Choose Your Own Adventure poll, it's free so swing on over and put in your vote! https://www.patreon.com/posts/cyoa-value-brand-63571572

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I wanted to get some dick colouring practice, so I thought I'd put that center stage for today's piece of practice art! I'm also still trying to figure out a good cum drawing method, so if you have any tips or suggestions for that let me know. If you want to see some pregnant elf art make sure to swing over to Patreon and put in your vote!

 

[metamira]

The votes are in, and at 40-2 it's a landslide! Seriously, you managed a vote ratio that would make a dictator's sham election look balanced and fair! So knocked up she is, and since you can't get double pregnant she plans to enjoy it!

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I tried a different method for drawing cum (no hard outline), but I'm not entirely sold on it. Cum practice will have to continue!

 

[metamira]

Quicker piece today as I try and fit in a little more work on A Very Full House. I'm also planning to be adding a swimsuit outfit to the game in the near future, so this was good practice for that!

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[metamira]

More work on A Very Full House hasn't left me with a ton of time for practice art and I want to do the idea behind this current drawing justice, so I've gotten up to the the stage of colouring in the flats, I'll be doing the shading and fine details for my post in two days! Excuse the rough edges, this is very much in the "looks like crap" middle stage that every piece of art has to pass through (at least I hope it is!)

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Semi-related to this: I think "The Girls of St.Elf's" might end up being a game-within-a-game in A Very Full House. I need some sort of porn game for the nerd character to be playing throughout the game, and this seems like a good way to add some bonus content into the game without a lot of extra drawing.

 

[Tomboll]

Did you start practicing art from zero recently or did you have previous experience with drawing(outside of sex) ? I am very impressed if you just started your art endeavor from scratch.

a porn game without porn art is a poor affair indeed.

Well, I only tried Fall of Eden and Corruption of Champions so far. But they do not have any sex art. I found the text sex scenes enjoyable.
edit: I guess one might argue those two games are smut games rather than porn games.

 

[metamira]

Did you start practicing art from zero recently or did you have previous experience with drawing(outside of sex) ? I am very impressed if you just started your art endeavor from scratch.



Well, I only tried Fall of Eden and Corruption of Champions so far. But they do not have any sex art. I found the text sex scenes enjoyable.
edit: I guess one might argue those two games are smut games rather than porn games.

I picked up digital art as a pandemic hobby since I had some extra time. The earliest bit of practice art I can find dates to December 2020, so it's been about a year and a half since I started. I know it seems obvious, but consistent practice really helps - I've seen more improvement in the last two months doing these semi-daily drawings than I did in the previous year of on-and-off practice. All of this comes from basically no art background at all. It helps that I've decided to focus on exclusively character art (note the lack of any backgrounds!) and I'm only doing digital drawings.

So thank you, glad I'm impressing someone!