Mini outdoor pastels

I've been making a regular exercise of getting out and doing quick small pastel studies. Hopefully I can keep this going. The biggest challenge is often finding a spot to paint. There's a lot to think about - how's the light, the shadows, am I being too conspicuous, is there a shady spot to sit, etc. But it's also kind of fun driving around looking for inspiration. If you enjoyed looking at these, I'll be posting more regularly over at my facebook page, here.

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. 

Crystal Cave

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.