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. 

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

• 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.

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

• 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

Pandora character with background

 

Have tried a new technique. Not so many outlines (dark that is) for the background and main character. Am really happy with the result as it feels softer.

Colour schemes

Only in the last day or too I have been studying up on different colour schemes. One such colour scheme that is in the above image is called 'Analogous'. This wasn't intentional either when I did this background. So it was very interesting for me to discover that I am naturally doing this. Kinda cool I reckon.

Definition of a 'Analogous' colour scheme as follows; '..are colours that sit on the Colour Wheel and have a common hue'. Example for above image is the dinosaur (mr bluey) in which he has 1-3 contrasts of that blue hue.

Helpful link for colour schemes

I would thoroughly recommend to check out this artist (on Deviant art) and there helpful tips regarding colour schemes.

As a side note, I have really enjoyed pushing the character design further by way of a background. It just gives so much more context of story for the character. 

Take care and thanks for visiting. 

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

• Comic character concept - Pandora  
• Comic character concept - Pandora 14 years old 
• Pandora comic - model turn-around sheets: Front and side profiles

Tools used

• CS3 photoshop and illustrator
• Wacom intuos 5
• Reference for visual style (Brittney Lee) 

Pandora comic - model turn-around sheets: Front and side profiles

I firstly have to acknowledge this fine artist Luis Escobar for his comments on the power of the turn around model sheet for character design. Check out page here for his take on it too.

The above character 'Panda' short for Pandora is one of the protagonist's for my comic I am slowly developing.  So I just knew that I would have to get a model sheet underway to help. As Luis has said on his web page, having a turnaround takes out the guess work for every time you are to draw a character. Already I have found this to be very efficient when drawing the character.

The 'rig' like skeleton I created has also helped to quickly nail proportions and poses. Artist Andrew Loomis in 'Figure drawing for all it's worth' which I highly recommend to check out used this technique of a mannequin understructure to set up a character.

And finally there is an awesome iPad app called 'Skelly' which you pay a few bucks for. It has a fantastic feature to set up a quick pose by articulating the major joints on a skeleton structure. Not only that but you can also pan, zoom and move the view around to nail some awesome shots for a potential character pose. Below is an example of one such shot. Think of the time that saves you...AWESOME!!! Also, yes there is more. Been able to see the bones in the app helps so much when trying to work out location for muscles. Get this app!!

As always thanks for visiting. Take care

Links as follows; 

Luis Escobar 

Andrew Loomis online 'Figure drawing for all it's worth' (This takes you to download of PDF)

Skelly