May the Fourth Be With You

Happy Fourth of September.

This is an illustration I finished this past July for both ISM:10 (celebrating ISM Gallery's 10-year anniversary) in Fullerton, CA, and San Diego Comic-Con International 2012. 

I have included a couple of process shots to show how this one evolved.

(1) Super rough comp completed in Photoshop over an even rougher pen sketch:

(2) Cleaned up line art. I really do a lot of my designing at this point, making sure all the volumes and forms read clear. For me, when using line art it is really important to control your line quality and weight as well as ensuring that the overlapping forms are not confusing.

(3) Final Color (refer to the image at the beginning of this post). Excuse the cheesy 1-2-and-done steps. For this one I didn't save any layers but next time I'll make sure to show a better step by step for you all. 

Thanks again for looking and....May the fourth be with you!

AKIRA

So for the class I am teaching we are doing a retelling of the classic Akira. I am making them redesign Kaneda and Tetsuo but for the demo I was doing my take on the clown gang leader. SInce this class is for both gaming and animation students I did 2 different style for them to show some of the similarities and differences when designing for games and animation.

Gaming

Animation



One of the main differences for animation is line economy. You want to make sure there is a reason for every line and shape you put down, this goes back to old school 2D animation principles.

For gaming I take a slightly more realistic approach. I still caricature a tiny bit with features to add personality but I need to make sure things feel proportional and that everything has grown from the bone structural in more or less a realistic manner.

I will show the evolution of this character in the next few posts so you can see how I develop one from start to finish. Next up, some costume iterations.

LEGO TEST

This was an illustrationtest for lego. Not sure what happened with it, so I think I was the kid not picked for dodgeball and have to sit this one out. Ah well, there's always next time!

Thumbnail.

I still like the energy in this one, hate it when it gets lost in the final!

Final Illustration

Leggo my eggo! In my head that's what the human is saying.

THE TURN

Doing turnarounds is a real pain in the butt, however, it is part of the production process wether it be for animation or gaming. Everyone I know hates doing them and most teachers I have met hate teaching it. As a teacher I always try to pass things down to my students that I wish I had been told in school so instead of avoiding it I integrate it into my class curriculum. Every term I ask the students to take one of their characters and do a 5-point turnaround. Nowadays for games and animation most orthographies (turnarounds) can be pretty simple because of how good the 3D artists have become.

Nevertheless, what I tell my students is that if you can visualize your character in ever angle possible and are able to communicate that idea clearly to the next person in production, that makes you a more effective designer. Also, if you can do a 5-point turnaround a 3-point is cakewalk.

Below are turnaround demos from my class, the second one has some notes that I gave my students and hopefully will benefit some of you out there.

Best of luck.

By the way, I demo the turnaround 4 times a year and I still don't like doing it....lol.

Zombo Process Part 1

OK for those of you looking for some insight into how I work I'll break it down for you as much as I can with this one.

The topic was pretty open ended, just El Zombo. For me it was obvious that I do zombies. Usually you see me do all this fun kid stuff which I totally love doing, however, as most of my close friends know zombies are by far my most favorite genre.

I started sketching around with Photoshop and this was the first composition that came to mind.


Nothing beats a scary bus stop in the middle of the night, right? I think I was watching thriller on YouTube when doing this so I would not have been surprised if a zombie with a red, thrashed jacket appeared in the final iteration.  This version was looking OK so I went to bed with the feeling of accomplishment and in the morning would rock out a cool piece.

Next morning hits, I sit down at my computer and start to do some studies and break down the scene. I do this to establish a visual vocabulary so that when I get to the final drawing I have already choreographed the shapes and visual language that I want to put down. This helps to maintain a fresh, loose feel to my line work.

As I was about to begin the lineart I stopped and said to myself, "I really do not like this." To me it felt flat, no suspense and it was hard to read the 2 characters at the bus stop. I took a break from it and I started hashing out ideas for a new piece. What I usually do is a few rough sketches and show my wife. If she goes meh I pass it up but if she looks at me with a thumbs up I start to flesh it out more. She knows what my style is a little more than I do at times so I am fortunate to have that second pair of eyes. Anyways, this is the first thumbnail, not much there at all but I just have the basic shapes in place. Think of this as the gesture of my illustration.

 I scan it into Photoshop and I start doing some quick lineart figuring out the layout and flow of the piece. Now I am adding a skeleton or framework to it.

Now is the next stage of cleanup, I started with the focal point, El Zombo and the girl, and I worked my way around them. I did this because it helped me to create a path for the viewer from every corner of the image to them. Controlling the viewer's eye is very crucial in illustration. I have seen very strong draftsman detail out every single corner of their drawing. Technically it is flawless, however, emotionally it is flat and boring. Be very careful not to detail everything, only detail areas of importance that you want the viewer to stop and look at.

On a separate layer I start working on all the zombie kids in the arcade. I kept them on another layer so I could move them around. Again, thinking about flow and spacing I was designing the zombie kids to lead your eye around the page.

This is just a rough perspective grid that I would turn on and off during my process.

Lastly, I print it out, tape it to a lightbox and redraw the final lineart you see below.

Hope that gave you some insight into my process to this point, if you have any questions please let me know in the comments section.

-Patrick