First post in a while, I know. I've had a lot on my plate but now I shall be pressing on for the final stretch of this course.
Anyway I've gotten myself back in the zone by drawing the 'profile picture' we had to do for the student Look Book, using FireAlpaca and Photoshop:
I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out visually, all in all, and I definitely feel like it represents me! Next thing to do is write a short description of myself as an artist and choose my top five pieces of work to go into the book.
The model sheet itself is going to have a decidedly grungy look to it. I've made the background using a pre-existing, royalty-free texture, some gradients and a colour background and blending modes. I like how the transparent body of the character really shows here.
For the pantone references I've stuck to simple smudgy shapes with added strokes to make them stand out more, and an old-fashioned typewriter style font.
Result so far:
I think this font works pretty nicely because it lends to the dark tone without being too obviously 'spooky'.
Using the guides has been a great help for laying out my character sheet and allotting specific space for each piece of information.
To make my model sheets I've used a range of different programs for different things. I started off by scanning in a light sketch of the front, back and side views of my character complete with proportion guidelines.
Firstly I drew out the linework in FireAlpaca. I like using this program for lineart most because of its simplicity, user-friendliness and the correction feature.
Then I decided to bring the drawing into Paint Tool Sai. This is my preferred software for colouring because it's designed to lend a painterly, traditional look to your art, whether it's markers, pencil or paint. I set the eraser to the same brush settings in order to get that smooth but streaky look to the body of my character.
With the initial layer of colouring done, I chose a fuzzy setting on the watercolour brush and painted beneath the layer, darkening it up and adding more texture.
Since the hands and head are a lot more solid than the rest of this character's body, I chose to colour those in block white with the standard pen. I temporarily turned the lines white to make the cleanup of messy edges easier.
The result so far:
At this point I brought the image into Photoshop. The fully black linework makes the design look a little flat so, locking the transparency on the line layers, I've used a soft, chalky brush on white to make certain lines stand out more; also towards the bottom of the body I've done the same so that it looks more transparent/spectral.
The result:
At this stage I'm ready to design the model sheet itself!
This is the first time I've drawn this character entirely digitally, and although I love the scrawly style of my traditional drawings I feel as though I've gotten too carried away, when in fact the smooth, stark tones lend this character a more sinister presence. The lack of detail in the body also makes it look more 'ghost-like' than before.
As far as the background goes, playing with various textures and blending modes has yielded a nice result. I'd definitely like to make the model sheet for this character dark and grungy, though I'll be experimenting with some mixed traditional media in order to make it truly unique.
