Omega

The members of the Archive spoke with an overwhelming voice this month to choose the Featured Artist: Omega, whose vibrant and powerful character designs bring a larger-than-life energy to the products of her vivid imagination.








In the Artist's Own Words:
“  Oh... I don't know what can I say...O.o... It's a great honour for me to become an Artist of the Month! I love TLK very much... I love lions and other cats, so it's my life! They changed my life! And I really like it... My first pic was uploaded in 2005 year. Here it is - Omega.jpg . Mmmm... It isn't very good. =) I worked hard, but it was really enjoyable time for me, as I found there a lot of friends and I want to thank them... Thanks a lot for all of you!!! =^^= I want to wish you good luck! Don't worry if something came out not so good as you would like to see - it's your own dreams and it doesn't matter how it looks - if you create, it's perfect!!! And "never give up hope"! :)

”





It's a real treat perusing Omega's gallery: each picture jumps right off the screen at you, with its sharp angular line style and its smooth, almost glistening coloration and shading giving her computer-colored work a "punch" that much of the material created by artists using similar tools lacks. Just about every one of the finished works she's posted has the ability to grab the viewer's attention, whether it's with the details of leaves or grass, the energetic dynamism of angular chins and ears, or the unexpected gleam of sharp teeth lending more to the character's expression than any straight-up Disney-style face can convey. Mixed in with this is a rare sense for compositional techniques like depth of field, as the pictures on the left (with their softly blurred foreground elements) convey: you really feel like you're "in the scene" with Omega's characters, which only enhances their impact.

But there's been a movement among certain circles here on the Archive to recognize those artists who work in real physical media, and not just Photoshop. Leaving aside the argument over what the choice of media has to do with the quality or value of the artwork, it has to be pointed out that no matter which side of the computer-coloring debate you come down on, Omega's work is a wonderful choice for the spotlight this month, because it's not only her digitally-colored work that's stunning: she's also tremendously skilled with media such as brush paint (as can be seen in the pictures to the right)—which she sometimes blends seamlessly with computer-colored characters to achieve the look of a Disney cel, with a richly rendered background matte painting and a smoothly or digitally cel-painted character overlaid on top of it. Few artists go to these lengths to find the best expression of their artistic ideals, and the effort that goes into creating a picture with physical paint on board or canvas is a real testament to the dedication of an artist like Omega.

The same can be said, though, for the black-and-white, crosshatched pen and pencil drawings that also apear in Omega's gallery. Some of the most lifelike, energetic pieces she's posted are done in this minimalist medium, and one can hardly help but think that completely coloring them would rob a lot of them of their raw power and emotion. Crosshatching lends an image the immediacy and looseness of a storyboard panel, while allowing 3-dimensional surfaces to be blocked in with rough shorthand that evokes characters carved rapidly from blocks of wood or sculpting clay. Just as with the sculptures of the fine-art masters, just because a piece is rendered in this rough medium doesn't mean it's any less "finished"—and in the case of these pieces by Omega, to refer to them as "sketches" is to rob them of a unique variety of completeness that they possess and completely colored pieces never can.

Do yourself a favor and treat yourself to a run through Omega's gallery this month. It's the kind of art that gives you a little electric buzz every time you look at it, and sometimes there's nothing better for one's own inspiration than that.

Visit the featured artist's gallery!