Comic Character Designs

As I said in that last gigantic post, here are the character design sheets for that comic.



The goal of these was to get a feel for the characters before actually drawing the comic. This way, when I started drawing the panels, the characters would come more easily and naturally, and they wouldn't look stiff because I hadn't thought out how they would look from each angle and how they would move. Expressions are important as well - without them, a scene can seem very flat as all characters need to be able to interact with their surroundings both visually and verbally. The visual is even more important when there are no words in the comic.

End of the Semester!

It's finally here, the end is in sight! Just have one more project to turn in, one take home test to do, and two finals to show up for, and I'm done. Exciting, is it not? It also explains why I'm a week and a half late on my post.

Well, this one's another doosy, so get ready.

The first thing I'm showing today, is the comic project I just finished for my Image Design class. We were to choose a childhood toy (technically our favorite, but any would do), and draw a comic about that toy. I chose one of the stuffed animals I've had since I was little (Ok, littler than I am now at least): Piggy, my stuffed pig. Now, Piggy's a bit beat up, he's had some adventures in his day (entirely innocent, I assure you), and so I thought a comic on one of his adventures would be a great story.

Now, I decided, through the course of making the comic, that it would probably be best to leave it without any dialogue (You know, the fact that the dialogue I had planned was more a tribute to my geekdom, than anything else had absolutely nothing to do with it. ) The story told itself without any of that, and I felt that adding in the speech bubbles and words would just clutter the design up - so I left it free!

Also, when I was working on the comic, I wasn't sure if we were allowed to use greyscale or not, the assignment sheet specified black and white, but nothing else. So, in order to get greyscale without breaking the rules, I found some screentone patterns and used those, which I discovered to actually be really helpful, because it limited me and kept me from going overboard. It also made it much easier to keep my greys consistant between panels and pages.

The way I put the comic together was panel by panel. After laying the story out, thumbnailing, and then laying the panels out in a computer program, I printed the panels one by one, and did my pencils and inks straight into that panel. When I was finished with that I scanned everything in, toned all the panels individually in photoshop, and then put them all together into the pages. Each step (pencilling, inking, toning) took anywhere from 6-14 hours. It was kind of crazy.

Anyway, enough of me babbling on that. Just read it!






As I promised, here's the children's book (Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree). This was done with cardstock hand-cut and glued together. The 3d effect is given by separating the pieces into layers by using small pieces of foam core. I made the paper for the tree, itself, because I couldn't find a texture I was happy with; so I took a brown paper Kinko's bag, wrinkled it up until it was soft, and then sprayed spray adhesive to one side of it, and glued it onto a piece of dark-brown cardstock.










Up next: Character design and sketches.

That time of week again...

End of the semester stress and craziness is starting to kick in -- A.K.A. for some reason, I picked the most busy time of the semester to do a project that, by it's nature, would take up all my time (and my paycheck, for that matter).

We're doing illustrations for Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, and I've decided to do a kind of 3d-like cut paper style. I saw it here and just couldn't resist (And if you check out the example, you have to check out the rest of her work, it's simply amazing.). It may be time consuming, but I'm absolutely loving working on it, it's so different from what I've done in the past, and so much fun.

I should be able to have pictures up on it next week.

For now, though, I have what I was attempting to scan last week (Still don't know what was wrong with my scanner, but it's working, so I'm happy). It's nothing too special, just more practice, this time more realistic. Done from the image Josiah by brandonwitzel on Deviantart.

It certainly isn't perfect, the face is a little too narrow to match properly, bu it was good practice and it felt good to do something more realistic for a change.

Next up

Well, I was going to post up another drawing I did this week, but seeing as my scanner has decided to rebel...that's not quite possible. So, instead, have some photos!

These were taken at McConnell Springs in Lexington, KY. I'd love to go again when everything's green, and not just the water plants. The second image has been colorized for fun.

It's about time

So, I've been missing for a while, school (or lack of it as was the case during Spring Break) has gotten me off track. Waaay off track.

So, since I've missed so much, I'm posting much more. I won't be explaining much in this post, so feel free to ask if you have questions! (I like answering questions)


Inspiration comes in the strangest places sometimes, and can induce attempts at world-building. Like this, the idea beginning at some clouds I saw outside of the window of a plane I was on.
More sketches for the same world-building attempt
Sketches of some characters of mine. Ignore the bad attempt at a gun. I'm working on that.
Hand done type assignment for my Illustration class. It's an invitation to come see a documentary that's being shown at a film festival in Rwanda.
More fun with those grey markers on brown paper. Also white gel pen this time.
Quick mermaid sketch.
Character design sketch.
Practice at drawing poses, dresses, expressions, and fabric, done from the stock photography of Faestock at DeviantArt
Practice at drawing expressions, done from the stock photography of Faestock at DeviantArt.
First of three illustrations done to Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.
Second Metamorphosis Illustration. Tatting shuttle, a pen, and a needle and thread
Last image of the Metamorphosis illustrations. This is the final version of the one from previous posts.

Another page in the life of...

Hmm...It's been a while, hasn't it? Perhaps I should set a specific day to update on. Maybe that would get me updating more consistently...

Have a page out of my sketchbook. Done with pencil and grey markers (which I've found has a really nice effect on brown paper)

She's a little long (face, legs, torso...everything really), but I really like the effect of the marker. *Ahem* I think the effect of the marker on the brown paper works well.

Process Contiued

Two posts in three days? Unheard of!

Anyway! Today was a beautiful day of 8 inches of snow and no class, so you all get another post.

So! The second step! Inking the bottle. This is fundamentally different from the watch because it relies much more on the form of the bottle and on the lighting than on specific things on the bottle itself. Inking the glass bottle is something that's a little bit more fluid and allows for more flexibility because other that the outline, it's all up to me to decide how my bottle is going to look as a (fake) 3D object.

The first image is the base outline that I did prior to taking photos. You can see my pencil sketch underneath the ink where I'm giving myself an idea of where I want to draw my lines to define the form. The sketch is rather loose.

In the second image I've followed my sketch and placed outlines in the basic spots to show the thickness of the glass, as well as the base of the bottle.

The third image you can see where I've added lines to form the top of the bottle, to show it stepping up to the neck. I've also thicked the outlines to show which side of the bottle is in shadow as well as to give more dimension to the glass. Having lines all one thickness on an image makes for a very boring image.

In the fourth image I've thickened a few lines a bit more to show form, but I've also added some hatching to indicate form and shadows.

The last image is the finished product, everything hatched, shaded, and inked.