It's looking fantastic. Looking forward to seeing how it progresses.

Thanks Marcos!

Today I've begun testing some shading on the ostrich.

It's probably obvious that I don't know anything about motorcycles. :) I'll have to find some reference images.

Invisible riders are *very* scary.

I think the perspective of the bike is great, but it's always good to use references.

I guess it's Ghostrider. 🤔

Cool arts @bleke, Sure you'll rock the shape-builder tool (currently in development)

Few things to point out...

You're using a flat style on the Ostrich, with blend modes/gradients applied, why use hard shadows?

How about blurring the shadows a little or to a suitable degree?

Also, the flat style and the 3d perspective on the Ghostrider... A little thought on it...

Yeah, the shape-builder looks awesome!

You are right about the shading. Honestly I've felt quite ambiguous about it, hence the mix of gradients and hard shadows. It would be much easier if you could set the blur per node and not just on an entire object. Right now I'm feeling that maybe I should only use hard shadows.

I did try a little blur earlier and didn't like it because it just looked blurry as if it wasn't intentional.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! :)

End of day 3

Thanks Jelly! I see what you mean but in that case I'd probably rather keep working on it in a bitmap editor. I hope to bring some of the appeal back as I work on it.

However, I just found the perfect background assets that this image needs! 😉

Trees and giraffes ©Jelly Fish

Worked a bit on the motorcycle today.

Hey @bleke Loving the progress through your artwork!!! 💪 Nice use of DOF

On the "Ostrich's" Back fit... noticed the two toes with a black outline... just curious if it's the art style or something to fix

Haha, thank you Donald! 🙂 Nah, that's just indicative of my messy workflow. I stay working on something until I get bored with it, then I skip over to some other part, then a third and a fourth etc. Then I hop around among those parts I have started until I get something that begins to look somewhat finished. Inevitably there will be overlooked things that I have to clean up at the end.

@Jellyfish The giraffes are awesome! :)

Sorry for the late reply. I was going to do a few more things and post an update and see if you liked it better. Unfortunately an extension in the Generate From Path menu deleted half of my objects. Not apparent until I reopened the file. At least I'm pretty sure the extension is responsible because the objects I was working with using Scatter and Pattern Along Path disappeared without a trace and undo wouldn't bring them back.

Anyway, luckily I made a backup file a couple of hours earlier. 😌

From the 1.2.1 release notes:

Inkscape 1.2.1 is a maintenance and bugfix release, which brings you an important fix for a bug where a loss of data occurred, that could only be discovered when the file was saved and opened again.

Seems like the extensions were innocent for the loss of data. Anyone who still uses 1.2, upgrade to 1.2.1 asap! :)

A first few trembling steps toward a rider.

This is dope!!! 👌🔥 @bleke

Loving the progress💪

Trying to figure out how to convey leather clothing with vector shapes.

Fantastic. But I think you should be careful about adding too much realistic detail to the biker because the ostrich is in cartoon style 🤔😉

You're right! Kind of works without the blur though.

Thanks for keeping me in line when I get carried away. :)

Fluffier feathers

You are making great progress, keep it up 👏

Backpack

Nice! 👏

What happened next?

Yeah, it was a delivery.

Please excuse the sloppy sketching... I'm recovering from a quite severe hand injury and I'm out of practice. First time drawing anything for almost a year.

That twist is just brilliant! 💯 😱 Take care of that hand and get well soon 💙

Thank you Marcos! 🙂 I have almost full range of mobility in my fingers again, but I still need to work on strength and dexterity.

I'm very lucky to have any fingers at all, let alone move them.