Minions!

Recently I visited a few people in NYC who have young kids. I brought along a drawing, hoping it'd be a nice gift from the out-of-towners. I remember loving the custom gifts I got as a kid, so it seemed fun to pay it forward.

I'm pretty out of touch with what kids are into these days, but I gambled on the Minions from the Despicable Me films. Everybody loves those guys, myself included. Plus, they're fun to draw. My goal for this was to keep it simple and fun, much like the spirit of the characters. I felt lucky that the characters themselves were designed with simplicity, and most often their character posters were just on a white background. I've always loved how the designers proportioned these guys, and how they kept details sparse to enhance their body language. Knowing this stuff helped me streamline the piece quite a bit.

My idea was to have two Minions on a simple white background, each holding a balloon. This was a nice, simple composition that still left some opportunities for cute character details.

First, I looked for reference images. Mostly I was referencing details on their costumes, like how their goggles and hair looked. Also, I wanted to see how the animators posed them out, since I wanted mine to be arcing their backs a bit. It was interesting to see how they handled the 'spine' of these guys, since they're essentially gumdrops with arms and legs.

I knew this was gonna get printed out, so I made sure to create the image at 300 dpi and CMYK color. I rarely ever have this kind of foresight, so it felt good not having to scramble with formatting right before I printed. Working with CMYK colors can be a pain, though; it's very limiting. Sometimes it's easier just to create your image in RGB and adjust when the piece is complete.

The next step was to sketch them out, so I played around with some different characters, costumes, and poses and eventually landed on these two.

I decided to create the final lines in Flash, where you can get a thick, clean final line that stays nice and sharp because you're dealing with vectors instead of pixels.
 

Once I was happy with those final lines I blocked in my colors in Photoshop and began adding in little details. I didn't want to make it too detailed or polished, so I stopped myself after the subtle highlights and shadows.

I was happy with how these turned out, especially since I didn't labor over them for weeks. I know for sure the fun would've been sucked out of the piece if I tried to make it too polished and perfect. The kids loved them too, which was a great payoff.




Until Next Time.

Mars Attacks!

Recently I've gotten a Contiq, Photoshop CS6, and a whole bunch of new brushes. I was eager to experiment with all these different tools.

I started just by sketching for fun, and eventually I drew a Martian from Mars Attacks! There was really no intention to make this into any kind of final piece, it was just me monkeying around.

I liked the drawing enough that I wanted to clean up the line work instead of just painting that initial draft. That's something else I've been training myself to do; not settling for an initial sketch as my blueprint. Drawing over and refining a sketch can improve it in a hundred little ways that we wouldn't even think about.

 I then painted it all up, treating it almost like coloring a line drawing for a comic strip. The biggest challenge here was most definitely the brain folds. I looked over a lot of the original Mars Attacks! cards to see how they handled it, which helped a great deal.

I decided it deserved a better background, so I kept adding and tweaking  ideas until I ended up with this final piece. The end result is a combination of a ton of different brushes, mainly the pencil and the chalk, with some ink marker thrown in. There are also quite a few vector shapes and specialty patterns hidden in there too.

 It was a surprising challenge to design a full background around a drawing that was initially done on its own. There was quite a bit of back-and-forth to make sure the Martian actually fit into his surroundings. Picking a dominant color definitely helped, and I was lucky in that the setting (the very red planet Mars) was an obvious one. I had fun making the background elements extremely subtle to my character wouldn't get lost in the shuffle.

The last step was to add a subtle text treatment and a border to really make it feel 'finished'. Overall it was a very encouraging experience and I'm eager to jump into the next fun experiment.



Until Next Time.

Fancy Fish

Back after much, much too long with another fish painting.

Anyway, this was just a fun personal thing I wanted to try after learning a new painting style at work. It's a great style to use for sharp, graphic elements and it makes the process go super-fast. Also, it's easy to edit the piece if edges need to change or something needs to get resized.

I started with a sketch I liked...

Then tweaked that sketch in Photoshop...

From there I painted it up, using all kinds of cool tropical photo reference. I wanted to give this thing crazy bold color design...

After I felt satisfied with my first draft...

I sent it off to my always insightful coworker Bob Rissetto, and with his help I was able to take it to a level I really liked...

I also got an inspired suggestion from my girlfriend about a funny alternative interpretation. I had to see what that looked like too...

I'm happy that I ended up with a group of these; I feel like I was able to fully explore its potential.



Until Next Time.

Robofish 2.0

A while back I'd illustrated a robotic angler fish for a friend and detailed the whole process on this blog. I wanted to use that piece in my recent C2E2 show, but I could see it was in need of an update. I'd learned a few new tricks by then and my skills were generally sharper, so I dove back in. Here's that original one again...

It was just looking a little...flat. It needed some more rendering in some key areas, and I thought a secondary light source could really bring out his dimensionality. Plus, I threw in some new little odds and ends to give the machinery another level of intricacy. Here's the latest...

This one just feels more fully-realized to me, and it felt good that I could sharpen an older piece without sacrificing the spirit of the original.




Until Next Time.

Regular Show, Regular Update

Shortly after finishing the Adventure Time commission sketch at C2E2, I was approached by a guy that wanted a sketch for his son, featuring the son's favorite characters from the Cartoon Network cartoon Regular Show.

The guy had a cool idea; he carried around a sketchbook to different conventions and had each page filled by a different artist. The whole book was a gift for his son, and each page had a different character his son loved. I was happy, and a little nervous, to contribute. Just like the Adventure Time sketch, I was handed a reference image:

This guy actually wanted a pretty specific scene with these characters, which I preferred. That way I can focus more on getting the characters to look good and set the scene in an appealing way without spending time thinking about what they should be doing on top of that.

I did a few practice sketches and felt good about their direction. Just like the Adventure Time sketch, these guys' designs were accessible and fun. And again with the noodly arms and legs!

Anyways, I set to work in the sketchbook. He had a friend standing by to do ink and color, so once the final lines were in place I handed it off. I snapped a pic before it migrated to another artist's table:

Until Next Time.

Adventure of the Adventure Time Commission

At C2E2 last weekend I was approached by someone to do an Adventure Time pencil sketch. Man, I had no idea how popular that show was, what with the cosplayers and the stuffed animals and the ricketa racketa. Oh, and he handed me an image for reference...

 

I was given free reign to do whatever I wanted, as long as it was a drawing of the show's two leads, Jake (the dog) and Finn (not the dog). So I set about with some practice sketches, just to see what would stick.


 

 

I like the way these characters are designed; their style was easy to adapt. It got me out of my comfort zone a little and forced me to draw some really noodly limbs. In the end, I settled on a combination of a few poses I'd sketched. I liked the idea of Finn bending down to talk to Jake, so I bend his noodle legs really far down into frame. I snapped a pic of the final sketch before it was handed over.

Until Next Time.

See Two Eee Two Doodles

So I did my very first art table at a convention last weekend, and it was a blast. Got to meet a lot of cool people and see some great stuff. It was encouraging enough to make me wanna do it again...at some point...

I had my trusty sketchbook with me the whole time, and I had time to draw a few things.










I also did a couple commission pieces, which I'll show soon.





Until next time.