Abstraction/Character Design Project

I drew my earphones with the fancy retractable thingy...

I liked the way the chord wrapped around the retractable thingy, so I zoomed in on that made it more abstract...

I liked the way I drew the chords in the last drawing, so I made 'em look more fluid and organic...

...and came up with this as my character. (the ray gun was inspired from the original earbuds)

The assignment was to draw an ordinary object as realistically as possible, zoom in on a particular area of the drawing, re-draw that area and abstract it, then repeat again. Then, take whatever you came up with and create a character out of it. Here's what I came up with.

Character Design - Group Pose

The robot sidekick, cyborg villain, heroic mechanic girl and her sister (a.k.a the "other" character)

This is a composition (with color, obviously) utilizing the hero, villain, sidekick, and the "other" characters from the design assignments from previous weeks. I'm still learning Photoshop, and anyone who knows Photoshop could easily rip this to shreds...but I had fun painting this thing.

Learning how to do lighting...

Much thanks go to Laura Nettles!

I'm trying to help out on the BYU student film "Butcher'd Meats." They are in need of lighters and so... I'm attempting to learn more about lighting. Laura Nettles (who is amazing) helped me light shot C-20...which is the bell that starts the fight between the protagonist (Clarence) and the antagonist (Paddy).

Character Design - Good Girl Gone Bad?

VERSION 1 - When I first drew her, I thought her shoulders were a little hunched-looking

VERSION 2 - pretty much the same as version 1, but with more relaxed shoulders and different shoes

My drawing teacher, Jared Greenleaf, suggested that I add another character to the traditional "good guy, bad guy, side-kick" line-up. He mentioned how in most Japanese manga or anime, there's a character that turns from good to evil or vice versa (a la Darth Vader). This character design is meant to be that very character. I see her as being the big sister of the hero who ends up becoming a bad guy and then at the last minute, becomes good again. Instead of a giant wrench, she has a screw-driver sword...keeping with the "giant tools as weapons" motif.

I might color her with Photoshop, or even draw her "evil" version...but who knows.

Character Design - Action Poses

Sidekick...

Good guy...

Villain...

These aren't action poses...but I wanted to draw spaceships that looked like the style of the characters. (short attention span)

The assignment was to take the characters I designed not to long ago (the good guy, sidekick, and villain) and think about how they would move if I was to animate them.

The spaceships were just...well...for fun.

Thunder Unicorn! Holy Wow!

Lapsing into total geekness, I found a picture of a creature called a Thunder Unicorn from the Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh card game. It's the coolest thing I've seen in a loooooong time.

(NO I DID NOT PAINT THIS...even though I wish I did)

Canned Unicorn Meat - http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/wacky-edibles/e5a7/

My roommate pointed me to Thinkgeek.com, a lovely website where they sell canned unicorn meat. There are two things I love: lightning bolts and unicorns, and seeing this picture made me giddy. The website has lots of cool (and geeky) stuff and I strongly recommend a brief visit.