Introduction
A "day in the life" is an articles whereby the artist gives an outline of his or her day as a creative.

=transfuse is an amazing digital artist who's style varies in many ways. This is quite a long read but I assure you that you'll learn something since it's very detailed.

Once again, I hope this was insightful for you.

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Note, throughout the course of the Summer, my schedule has been all over the place ranging from a typical 9 to 5 schedule or me going to sleep at 7 or 9 AM and getting up at 3 to 6 PM or the following schedule that I’m about to describe. I live in a 3-bedroom apt. and for the past 4 months have been doing commissioned art from my room, which is currently a mess as I prepare for AnimeFest 2006 happening this Labor Day weekend in Dallas.

Also note that any opinions expressed here about Texas A&M University and The Battalion (A&M’s student-run newspaper) are strictly my own and, although they may be accurate, do not reflect those of A&M or The Battalion.

For brevity I’m gonna use *cpm* for “cue porno music of the bow-jika powow persuasion” ‘cause it seems to happen… a lot.

And final disclaimer, if you’re offended by the words breasts, cooter, jizzums, child pornography, or anything of similar apparently objectionable collocation then you probably shouldn’t read this… otherwise:


6:00AM: Wake up and go for a jog. I like to listen to Akino Arai while I run, but lately I’ve been listening to the Cirque du Soleil album, Solarium/Delirium, which has a lot of cool songs. After that I shower, and eat some breakfast.

7:22AM: Check my email and Deviantart messages—although I don’t reply to all my dA messages, I do read every single one. I also glance over the galleries of everyone who watches me—if you got something that grabs my attention I’ll peruse and if I really like your stuff then I watch back.

7:44AM: Get on that commish! Yesterday I finished the lineart for the commissioned drawing I’m currently working on. This dude asked me to draw two of his characters having sex *cpm* and just emailed me the go-ahead to start coloring the image. I’d show you guys the lineart, but I’m sure dA would block the link… and probably ban me. Just know that it’s purty hot. *cpm* :3

7:45AM: Fire up good ol’ Photoshop CS2 and start coloring this hentai (Japanese-styled pornographic artwork—for the 4 or 5 dAers who still don’t know) pic. *cpm*

Lately I’ve been using the Pen Tool in Photoshop to make my base colors. I used to use the lasso, but I find it much, much easier and faster to create shape layers with the Pen Tool because shape layers are easier to edit and it’s easier to make curved shapes, too. I plan to one of these days make an easy-to-follow Pen Tool tutorial so keep an eye out for ‘er.

Since these kiddos are naked, I just make a base color for the guy’s skin, one for the girl’s skin, and one for the guy’s hair and one for the girl’s hair. If they’d been wearing any clothes, I would’ve made a shape layer for each of their clothes too. No, I don’t make a separate shape layer for the dude’s weiner… *cpm*

8:57AM: Once I’ve got areas of base color layed down, I make a new layer, link it to the base color by holding the Alt key and clicking between the layers, and then begin the 2nd stage which is laying down general shading with a soft-edged brush for the girl. I start with the girl ‘cause she’s on top—physically and visibly. *cpm* While I add the general shading I keep a separate Photoshop window open with the reference pic I used for the pose that I found on the /s/ boards on 4chan. The people in the photo are pretty ugly—well, you can’t really see the dude thankfully and the chic’s got an ok face, but damn her boobs are ugly. Ladies, if you’re gonna get boob implants, make sure to do plenty of research first and go to a doctor who can make your boobs look natural and not like gross balloon sacs taped to your chest.

Anyhow, enough about ugly boobs, I only needed the photo for the general skin shadows and pose. And for those who are wondering, yeah, I use photo references of people doing it for a lot of my hentai drawings. I always use a photo ref for the big, expensive commissions ‘cause when people pay the big bucks I want them to get a fuggin’ badass drawing.

10:12 AM: Now that the general shading is finished, I’ll go to the next stage and refine the shading (note, I’m still working on the girl’s skin). I’ll turn up the hardness a bit on my brush… *cpm?* …and start coloring in darker shadows like under her neck and underarms and the deeper creases of her skin like the areas where her legs meet her torso and under her breasts and around her coochie-cooch. *cpm*

11:55 AM: Now I zoom in on her face and really bring out the details of her eyes, nose, and mouth. I’ll also zoom in on her hands, feet, and poonanie to get those pesky details nailed down, but good. *cpm…?*

12:57PM: Whoo! Man, most people don’t realize it, but making a cooter look good is hard fuggin’ work! It’s like making a painting of a tropical, skin-colored plant. Anyhow, I’m pretty much done with the girl’s skin so I’m gonna get some grub… aw crap and I forgot that I gotta go to an orientation meeting for my college newspaper today at 1:00. Damn it, I’m gonna be late…

I work as a graphic artist for The Battalion, Texas A&M University’s student-run newspaper. As you might expect I tend to draw the sexy babes for my graphic assignments and get more than my fair share of complaints from the student population that reads the paper and doesn’t like the fact that that excessively hot girl’s shorts are too short for her to be a chem-e major. It’s south Texas, people. It’s hot out here and I draws ‘em as I sees ‘em. *sigh*

Anyhow, the new semester’s about to start and I gotta go to this meeting on campus to do the usual boring semesterly orientation crap and get assigned new graphic orders.

1:18PM – 3:00PM: I got some McDonalds right quick for lunch (which I try to avoid ever since watching Super-size Me) and went to the orientation meeting at the Batt office, which was pretty uneventful as usual. We had the usual boring lectures and introductions from noobs and we got new graphic orders, too.

A graphic order is basically a sheet of paper that a writer gives to the graphics department stating a brief description of what they want drawn for their story. Our graphics editor takes all the orders submitted by the writers, reads them out to the graphic artists, and then everyone calls dibs on what they want. If two or more people want the same graphic, then we have what’s called a “FACE-OFF” (it’s usually yelled like that) where the winner of the FACE-OFF gets the graphic.

A FACE-OFF is a highly anticipated extravaganza where everyone who works at the Batt office drops what they’re doing and crowds into the graphics room as the two graphic artists duel in a display of guts and excess bravado on two white boards. The room divides in half and chants “FACE-OFF, FACE-OFF!” while the challengers are each given a description of something to draw. Each half of the room has to scream out answers to what their artist is drawing and the first side to correctly guess what the artist is drawing wins. It’s basically Pictionary with extra blood, sweat, tears, taunting, and screaming and with drawings that always try to spell out something bizarre. Something like: “Elvis Presley pooping on Martha Stewart’s collection of nuclear reactor cores while donkey-punching a government liaison wearing a Canadian tuxedo and a squid hat,” is not uncommon. Needless to say, face-offs are the high point of the graphics meetings.

And wouldn’t you know it, we had a FACE-OFF! It was pretty exciting, but unfortunately I wasn’t one of the competing artists. ☹

I did get two graphic orders this time though. One of the articles is about “Aggie online gamers” and the other is about “the objectification of children and encouragement of child pornography due to children’s beauty pageants”. As you can tell, one of the topics is pretty laid-back while the other is a touchy subject that I need to be careful with what I draw. For the Aggie gamer graphic, I’ll most likely draw a busty night elf wielding a sword and shield with some A&M emblems adorning her borderline-sexually-explicit outfit. For the beauty pageant graphic, I’m thinking of a dolled up little girl looking solemn and being held up by puppet strings. I’ll most likely get complaints for the elf babe, which is good ‘cause both the paper and I love attention. Bwa haha! :3

3:10PM: After the Batt meeting, I head over to Hobby Lobby and pick up five 22 x 28 poster frames, which I’ll be using for some posters I plan on selling in the AnimeFest art auction. If you guys are gonna be in Dallas this Labor Day weekend, feel free to drop by the Hyatt Regency Hotel and put a bid down for one of me fine drawings in the art auction. These five will be on display:

1. [link]
2. [link]
3. [link]
4. [link]
5. [link]


Please help this starving artist fund his need for bread and water!

3:37PM: Ok! Back in the sanctity of my apt., it’s time to get back on that commish! Now that I’ve got this babe’s skin pretty much done, it’s time to make her look all hot and sweaty. So I’ll add a “Highlights” layer and start glossing her up. This part’s fun. *cpm* ☺

5:03PM: Now that she’s lookin’ all hot and bothered, it’s time to get that hair. I’ll once again go through the same process of making a new layer above the hair base, link it, add basic shading, add detail shading, and then add highlights.

5:41PM: Now that I’ve done the girl, it’s time to do the guy. *cpm* So I do the whole process I did with the girl, but on him now. And I’ll skip ahead ‘cause nobody really wants to hear about the guy. :3

7:00PM: I’m almost halfway done with the dude, but I’m feeling pretty tired so I’m gonna make some dinner. I watch an episode of Fist of the North Star (the old anime from the 80s) whilst I eat. I hear that the god-awful filler is about to end in Naruto so I’ll be watching that again once episode 200 rolls around, but for now I’m watching FotNS ‘cause I never got a chance to watch it all and it’s a classic most anime fans should watch even though it’s very very old school. Omae wa mou, shindeiru!

7:22PM: I’m still feeling a bit lazy, so I’m gonna play a little Dune: The Battle for Arrakis on a Genesis emulator. I just started playing it yesterday ‘cause it brings back memories of the good ol’ days. Love the soundtrack.

9:13PM: I’ma play some Guitar Hero now. :3

9:59PM: Heh, I’m in the mood for some Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 4—that’s the Naruto fighting game for the gamecube—which is in my opinion a lot more fun than the Naruto fighting games for the PS2.

11:15PM: Ok! Now that I’ve lazed it up, it’s time to get a quick snack and finish that commish!

11:20PM: Actually, I think I’ll check dA and my emails again right quick.

11:53PM: Alright, now it’s time to get back to work.

12:00-3:03AM: I don’t know why I don’t feel tired even though it’s fuggin’ 3 am, but I’m done with the dude and now it’s time to merge the guy’s layers and girl’s layers together, save this as a new psd, and do a quick background. I try to make a fairly simple, fairly generic background so it doesn’t distract from the characters. The commissioner requested that I draw them in a forest, so that’s what I’ll do. I usually just make one new layer and do the whole background on one layer. Sometimes I’ll make an extra layer or two for the sky or for foreground objects that I intend to blur considerably to give the illusion of depth. I find that blurring the backgrounds and tossing in some really blurred foreground objects puts a lot of focus on the main scene.

4:10AM: Oh damn, I forgot that the commissioner requested that I do two versions of this pic, one with the girl’s hair up in a ponytail and one with her hair down. So I make some new layers and make a hair-down version since I’ve already go the hair-up version done.

5:20AM: Everything looks finished. I just need to tweak the lighting a bit, add a few more highlights here and there and then add some jizzums on a separate layer and we’re all set. *cpm*

5:54AM: All done with this commish! I don’t usually neglect sleep to finish a drawing, but I still don’t feel sleepy so I figured I might as well finish her up! It’s just about 6 so I guess I’ll go for a jog. And since it’s been 24 hours since I started this log I guess I’ll cut it off there. If you didn’t stop reading by around 8 am then I hope you at least either were entertained or picked up something useful/interesting. ☺