Inktober 2025 Artefacts Volume 1: Starfish Suit

The last few years, even while I am churning out drawings for Inktober, I always have a few that I wonder what I could with if I had just a little bit more time to spend on them. I started experimenting with AI tools for manipulation for the drawings, though I always feel like they need some further editing. This image started as a simple sketch of a starfish, but I felt like the starfish needed to transcend the limited mobility of its existence...so I made it more mobile. 

After Inktober ended, I felt like I could use Vizcom and a bit of digital 'overpainting' with Sketchbook Pro and my XP-Pen tablet monitor to flesh out the character further. The combination of SketchbookPro and the XP-Pen screen allows for a fairly simple interface that I can draw right onto.

The final version of the render from Vizcom with the edits looked like this:

Vizcom does an excellent job of preserving the overal shape and detail of a simple sketch, the text prompts are auto-generated and editable, and you have many render options. Maybe my favorite feature, though, is the ability to convert your render to a 3d object and then export it as an .fbx, .gltf, or .usd file that can be modified through 3d tools. I usually take it these exports into Blender, to check the scale and whether the texture map and overall geometry look ok; for this model, I repainted the faceplate in SketchbookPro for a new 3d output, as the starfish, though pretty detailed, was on the outside of the helmet, which was not what I wanted. With the newly exported .gltf, I decided to use Adobe Substance to just generate a .PNG file with the background knocked out so that I could make a composite in Photoshop using a Firefly-generated background with a prompt. It's not perfect, by any means, but it's interesting to see how AI tools can augment the conceptual process. 

Tan Beholder via Procreate

I have been doing more sketching recently, just pena nd ink and occasionally a bit of color, but the texture of the fur was just not coming along how I wanted. I picked up the family iPad, and decided to bring the sketch into Procreate for the fur and a bit of color tinting. I had forgotten how much fun using Procreate can be, and how intuitive the application is! 

The Sharing Pair

One of the advantages to being out of work for a few weeks is getting the chance almost daily to draw or sketch. It's a challenge to get back into the habit, I must admit. My plan is to make a digital version of these two, maybe even add a third character.