Chosen as one of the top 3 students for character design challenge!!!

Absolutely stoked to be recognized as one of the top three students for this awesome course through Skillshare. It is a real honor. Super stoked.
And yes, a bit more meme and then that's it I promise, but here is the certificate for completing the course...YAY!!!

As always, thanks for visiting and if you want to find out more about Skillshare check it out here. Also if you want to see some of the art I created as the result of doing this course, please click here.

Mini Chewie

Final 30 day character illustration completed!!!! YAY and whoooaaa!!!!
As I had previously done this lesson some months earlier I was encouraged to re-submit or tweak the design from that lesson. So I went back to the future (oh yeah) to re-submit another Chewbacca.
It was a busy weekend so this concept (above) was quickly hashed out old school - on paper with pencil. Took photo on ipad and imported into Manga Studio 5. Also used Sketchup for a little help with the gun.

Thanks for visiting and take care

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• Star Wars Fan art and Characters in motion

From Concept to final artwork - finished piece

The final image. Hooray!!!

Did a very basic background that was setup in Illustrator. More texture was applied to the floor.

The speech-bubble was done in Manga studio 5. Manga has such a flexible, intuitive setup for doing speech bubbles. Way more so than Photoshop or Illustrator.

Thanks as always for visiting. 

Last lesson for 30 day challenge by the super talented Patrick Brown to follow soon.

From Concept to final artwork - colour tests

From the previous post (see here) - I now have coloured up the above image in Photoshop. Also have added some yummy textures. There is certainly a lot more to this piece which can only really be covered by checking out the tutorial by Matt Kaufenberg here. Awesome, seriously check it out.

For these next examples below I colour corrected (played around) with the colours to find a pleasing colour scheme. This was done in Photoshop using Hue-Saturation.

 

How's about some gradient

This was a new technique that I stumbled upon. I had selected the outline of the boxer character and filled it in with a flat colour on a new layer. In this case it was yellow. Then I selected the filled shape and did a gradient with a purple colour. Also on a new layer. The gradient was set foreground to transparent. From there I played around with the mode settings for each of the respective coloured layers to get the above look. Overall I was stoked with the outcome. Super bonus.

Thanks for visiting and take care. Will post up image with background soon.

From Concept to Final Artwork

Next 30 day character challenge (Lesson 2). Create a character and complete to Final Artwork by the amazing Matt Kaufenberg through Skillshare. Course found here.

The above characters were just quick roughs to flesh out a character to push through to final design. So I went with the bottom character (mr big nose), a.k.a  boxer.
I referred to Matt's style to hopefully capture elements from his artwork and infuse into the character design.

Once you had a character idea, it was into Illustrator to get the shapes of the character which were then saved out as paths and exported into Photoshop. This wasn't a process I was familiar with but have found it has some real advantageous. I really must one day put up a little tutorial regarding this process.

Well, thanks for visiting. Next post coming up soon.

Building character with basic shapes final

Finally finished up 'Diva Karate Pirate'.

This course through online 'Skillshare' was brilliant. Challenging and very concise thanks to Brian Shepard the tutor. Check out the course here

Two great lessons

The first lesson for me was learning the importance of silhouette. And secondly was developing a character based on keywords that guided you towards a finished idea. 

As always, thanks for looking. 

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• Build characters with basic shapes
• Build characters with basic shapes continued

Build character with basic shapes and silhouette

Building on from the previous post here. The 'Diva, Karate Pirate' was starting to take some more shape. First thing for the chopping board was his initial hairstyle (top left). I felt that it didn't read well as a silhouette. After some investigation online I found the perfect solution. My little pony. Yes. Those gorgeous curls. So he got the 'DIVA' curls.

Silhouette

If there is one thing that I cannot stress enough. Is good silhouette. I think I have managed to design a pleasing read for this character. The funny thing is I have heard this term plenty been voiced online regarding character design. I now understand why. Must have good silhouette.

Final design next post. 

Thanks for visiting.

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• Build characters with basic shapes
• Build characters with basic shapes continued

Build character with basic shapes continued

Building on from the previous post here. My hero character was based on the primitive shape of the circle. As a part of the course you had to come up with 3 keywords to build upon the character.

I chose 'Diva, Karate and Pirate'. Bit of a crazy combo. 

So I went online and google image searched under these keywords. Came up with some great creative startups.

Still a nice guy

The main focus going forward was the general 'feel' of the character. So emphasis was placed on that he was a 'happy, approachable fellah'. I felt with the top 4 heads with no pupils made them a little scary. So adding the pupils made him nice again (YAY). 

Next post I will show some developments of the basic body shapes and silhouette exploration.

As always, thanks and take care.

Build character with basic shapes

Hello everyone. 
Just started another great course through 'Skillshare'. Called 'Build a fantasy character with a shape language' by Brian Shepard. So recommend it.

Skillshare is an online education portal that offers many courses which you have access to by paying a monthly subscription fee. Well worth it. Find it here Skillshare
I had only recently finished up a course there by Patrick Brown (amazing artist). Find my finished art piece here (star wars fan art).

Pareidolia
Pareidolia what? Yes, thats what I thought at first glance too. Actually I had to wiki it to get my head around it. Very cool concept. Basically you as an artist take very basic primitive shapes like the square, circle or triangle and arrange it in such a way that you can create a pattern. That pattern may hopefully look like a face. Look at that wall plug socket in your home. Kinda looks like a face aye?

Circle equals nice guy and triangle, the antagonist
All rules are made to be messed up somewhat. But a general rule is that a character that is more generous in the round department is going to be nice. Jolly and worth a hug or too. The angular. Well they are something again. Little edgy (hehe) and more dangerous.
I experimented with these concepts (as above image) to develop some basic ideas. I worked within Illustrator CS3 which lends well to manipulating and arranging shapes into pleasing compositions.

Next post will be some more developments of a chosen character with three 'keywords' to help create the personality.

Take care and thanks for visiting.

If you liked this post, you may also like the following;

• Star Wars fan art  (Overview of lessons with Patrick Brown)

Tools used

• CS3 Illustrator

Star Wars fan art illustration

It is finished - whoooaaa!!!!This has been a labor of love and hate as I have worked on this for the last month and a half. So glad I persevered. Probably the greatest lesson I have learned is if something is bothering you, get rid of it. That walking carpet (Mr Chewbacca) was edited and re-edited sooooo many times till I got the fur where I wanted it. Full respect to artists who do furry creatures. Seriously!!!

I will post up soon a basic little run over of the basics in this piece. Hope some stuff in it may help.

As always, thanks for visiting.

And a big shout out to the awesome artist Patrick Brown. His tutorial online through Skillshare was awesome and helped me so much. Thank you Patrick.

Tools used:

• Photoshop CS3
• Wacom tablet
• Sketch up for AT-AT Walkers
• Illustrator CS3
• a mumbling plea of "this wookie will not get the better of me"

Star Wars Day_May the 4th be with you

 

Another step towards finishing this tutorial with Patrick Brown through skill share. Seriously check him out here.  

So here's to a little Star Wars fandom with Star Wars Day. Like a lot of fans I got a little giddy with the release of the recent teaser trailer Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Can't wait.

As always, thanks for visiting. Take care and God bless.

And hopefully will post up soon the next installment update of this tutorial.

Star Wars fan art_Concept completed

Han, Chewie now all setup with background elements (AT-AT walkers). Next is to ink these guys up following Patrick Browns tutorial. Then it's onto colouring. Really looking forward to that.

The AT-AT walkers were sourced from Sketch up and finished up in illustrator.

I am thinking probably a Endor feel for the colour palette (forest colours).

As always, thanks for visiting. Happy Wednesday!!!!

Star Wars Fan art_Chewbacca Sketch

Continuing on from a previous post  - click here - I have developed Chewbacca. I will post up soon both Chewie and Han together in a background. As I love the AT-AT walkers from Empires Strike Back, they will definitely be in the shot somehow.
Thanks for visiting, hope you had a nice easter. Love holidays!!!!

Bye for now.

Star Wars Fan art_Han Solo Sketch

Way back in January of 2015 (in a galaxy far, far away) I said about doing a post for Han Solo. Ta-dah..here he is!!!
This sketch is for the next awesome online course through Skill-share by Patrick Brown, awesome artist. The course is called Characters in a scene - Sketch to digital. Recommend enrolling in it.

Next to follow is his partner in crime, Mr Chewbacca. Arrggghhhh (wookie sound).

As always, thanks for popping on in.

Characters in Motion - Patrick Brown part II

Alright, last image for this tutorial 'Drawing your character in a scene'. The previous post I felt that Chewie's pose was not that dynamic. So I played around with a few rough pose concepts before arriving at the above. 

For the background I went for an interior of a spaceship. This was roughly put together in Photoshop.

I can imagine Chewy launching onto some stormtroopers. Emmm, now there's a thought.

Next to post up is Han Solo, awesome.

As always, many thanks for visiting this blog. Any comments, thoughts, wishes or just to say hi please feel welcome.

Tools used:

• Mechanical pencil
• Soft 2b pencil
• Photoshop CS3

Characters in Motion - Patrick Brown

I found Patrick Brown (digital artist) during a Pinterest search and was instantly hooked with his work. So when I found out he was offering online tutorials I was super excited. Currently I am working through his first tutorial - click this link, Characters in Motion. 

The challenge is to come up with some characters in a dynamic pose. You had to choose fan art or something of your own creation. Hello Chewbecca and Han Solo. I loved these guys as a kid. Riding in the millennium falcon, nailing stormtroopers. Kinda modern sci fi pirates.

So I have started on Chewbecca. For the tutorial I have started on 'Drawing dynamic action poses' and 'Drawing convincing facial expressions' as above. The last part of the tutorial is 'Drawing your character in a scene'. I hope to have this up soon.

After Chewie is sorted I'm onto Han. And once this is all done (phew) I will go onto the next tutorial of Patrick's - Characters in a scene: Sketch to Digital. Can't wait!!!

As always, thanks for visiting and may the force be with you. I just had to say that.

Tools used: 

• Mechanical pencil
• Soft 2b pencil
• Battery erasure
• Normal clutch erasure
• Star Wars YouTube clips playing...oh yeah!!!!