Online bullying monster

In this post I'd like to share an advertising campaign I've been working on for design class. Above you can see the campaign art and message, along with two mock billboard applications.

We were required to design a campaign around a (thankfully) hypothetical Facebook "dislike button". A fairly abstract brief, but I was determined to have some fun with it. I decided to focus on the button's potential use in online-bullying, also its potential effect on the mental health of children.

The concept was to have a memorable blue monster that would grow larger and larger as children were nasty to each other online. Anyone familiar with Studio Ghibli's films will surely notice the influence in the design of this monster - its body shape heavily inspired by the grotesque 'No Face' in Spirited Away.

Below are a couple of the visual development sketches.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of my illustration and design process. If you'd like to see more of this type of thing, please do let me know in the comments below!

Walter Chipwitther re-design

This was my re-design for the final week of my class back in March(-ish). I haven't yet had a chance to incorporate Stephen's feedback or add colour. Hope you like him. 

Mr. Hyde in colour

Hyde character final

My final Hyde design. The next step is colouring, then expressions & attitudes.

Mr. Willy Wonka

Trying to put my new understanding of character design to work on some more characters. This is one of my favourite characters from one of my favourite films (I haven't read the book). I love both the original and the more recent Burton version, but being an 80's kid, Gene Wilder will always be the real Willy Wonka to me. For this design I wanted to forget both of these films. 

I based it loosely on Frank Lloyd Wright.

One of the things I loved most about Wonka in the original film and wanted to capture was his ambivalence. I remember as a kid not quite knowing whether he could be trusted or not. I hope that my design has some of that quality in it.

Jekyll & Hyde - WIP

 

Here are more design process sketches for Jekyll & Hyde. Doing all this research is a worthwhile discipline which I'm not used to doing as thoroughly as this.

Jekyll & Hyde gestures

 
I still have quite a bit of work to do in clarifying the designs, but I thought it might help to flesh out their personalities if I did these quick story/gesture sketches first.

My idea for a fresh take on Jekyll & Hyde was to make Jekyll a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor who's obsessed with potency herbs. Hyde would be his wild party-animal state after taking the concoction of herbs.

4 weeks in, and the course has been a lot of fun, a lot of drawing, and a lot of eye-opening. My biggest challenge has been simplifying the design and making it read clearly. The biggest eye-opener has been thinking more of shape than anatomy.

more character sketches

 

 

Here are some of my other ideas for the Walter Chipwitther character back in week 1. You can see the initial sketches here for the designs I chose to take further.

Bowler hat gentleman

If you caught my last post you'd have heard I'm enrolled in fundamentals of character design at Schoolism. I always knew there was something missing in my approach to character design. Over the years I've managed now and then to intuitively fluke some of the principals I'm now learning with Stephen. However just 3 weeks in I already feel I have a better grasp of these principals. Now when I revisit my favourite artists' character designs I understand much better why I like them and I know my own process will never be the same again.

'Walter Chipwitther' character design

 It's week one of my character design course with Stephen Silver. I was really anxious about submitting my homework as there is so much talent in the class! I remind myself to not compare. My homework was to come up with a design for a character called 'Walter Chipwitther', a jolly, wealthy entrepreneur in his 60's. Here's two of my more finished versions. The idea with the rats in case you were wondering was to make him a kind of wealthy eccentric with his unusual pets.

Secondary characters

These are a few of the secondary characters I designed. Even though some of them only appeared very briefly I wanted to make each character as individual as possible.

Character designs - Legends in their own lunchbox

These are the main characters I designed. My set in the series was written by Australian author Paul Collins. He created some really loveable and recognizable personalities. Lucy, who is on the end (right side) ended up being toned down a bit. Specifically her buck teeth. It was felt they tended too much towards negative stereotypes.

Self-portrait

Random character design

Exploring shapes for a random character design. She's a bit rough around the edges and scary when you first meet her but has a good heart.

Style guide

After quite a lot of anxiety filled experimentation I finally came up with this piece which will serve as a compass as I finish off a long overdue collaboration with author Jennifer Poulter. You can see some more experimentation with style in this earlier post. I really liked the sparse pen & watercolour of some of those pieces, but in the end gravitated towards this more vibrant, textured look.

Still alive...

A nine-ish month project has just concluded so I'm looking forward to resuming regular posting. Here are some oldies until I dust off my sketchbooks.

 

anger-eating demon concept.

young lady in heels hopping over a puddle.

Four frogs

 

 

Experiments with different techniques and colour schemes. At the top is the final piece rendered with graphite pencil on watercolour paper.

Drover with horse

 Another experiment with the loose pen style. More practice at hatching will do me good. I had to fix a few spots in Photoshop and the horse didn't fade away into the background quite like I'd pictured it.

The Ghosts of Nagasaki

Here's my final illustration for The Ghosts of Nagasaki. It depicts Inoue, one of the characters in the novel. Daniel has a real knack for interesting imagery.

Book illustration

Friend and budding writer Daniel Clausen has asked me to provide a chapter illustration for his new book The Ghosts of Nagasaki. Here's some visual research and concept sketches for it.