Fun with sketchbook mirroring!

Played around and made some aliens in class last week! Here they are:

I like the first one more I think, but they're both pretty cool. :3

In class work: Cartoony car

So in class today we were all working on taking a type of car that we had been assigned, and then make it cartoony. I got to select between a van and a sports car, and somehow I managed to resist drawing an old Vanagon... Somehow.

I decided to cartoonify my favorite sports car instead, the Ferrari Modena

Photo:

Cartoonified:

Hideout

The assignment this time around was to create an environment following a theme, and put a character inside of it. I was assigned the hideout and I had an idea that I felt would work well with it. :D I created a decent small story to explain the setting, a human character, and an anthropomorphic character. But before I get to the story, here's the inspiration refs for the room and Rika:

                                      

The thumbnails: 

Rough sketch of the room and character placement:

And the final product!

Year 2020: Pressure is rising within the military to create an intelligent and mobile weapon for what the world feels could be another world war. Branching into medical science, a secret laboratory base has commenced research into genetic mutation in the hopes of getting a head start. Research has already been conducted upon which DNA would best be mixed together to create new life. There are hopes that a new highly controllable species can be created to fulfill the militaries purpose.

Year 2080: The experiments started sixty years prior had succeeded in testing multiple breeds of dogs which culminated in the selection of Rottweiler, German Shepherd and Doberman DNA to be mixed with hand selected human genetics, using mans best friend to fulfill their needs. After a few tricky first generations, the perfect balance of DNA was found and the program began the refinement of the new species. Dubbed on paper as simply S.C.'s (Specialized Canid), the new species flourished and met all expectations in the controlled lab tests. This resulted in them quickly launching the department into perfecting the new species as well as beginning field tests, Requiring specialized personnel. "Handlers" were quickly trained on the care and maintenance of this new breed of "working dog" and their unique needs before being assigned a partner. In the most recent litter to mature, there were six Doberman type S.C.'s born; five black, and one female "fancy" color. The fancy pup was one of a short list of off colored Doberman units in the program, possessing a dilution gene that resulted in her being dubbed a Blue. Early on in the project, all colors had been tested, but it was found that when the dilution gene mixed with the human DNA, it resulted in specimens with too many health issues. This was later removed with further perfection of the DNA mixtures, but at that point the dilution gene had almost been removed from their sample pool and the focus shifted to simply keeping a single color to keep them all uniform in appearance. Naturally, it was debated by the lab technicians if the blue pup should be kept at all, but upon determining that she was healthy and without serious flaws, they allowed her into the program. 

Present year, 2098: Having matured completely and fulfilling her basic training, the young blue has recently been released for field testing. Her handler, Adam Branford age 27, has proved to be very skilled at working with the blue during controlled tests and has been permanently assigned to her; and is already very attached to his new working partner, naming her Rika. He has been scolded on multiple occasions for spoiling her slightly, treating her as something of a younger sister at times with occasional gifts of toys and treats, but as this never had a negative effect on her or her performance during missions it has been allowed to slide for the time being. Having just been assigned their first field mission, Adam and Rika are currently getting established in a nearly abandoned, rundown apartment building that will serve as their hideout and base while watching their mission's mark. Waiting for the predetermined date a month from their arrival doesn't seem like a challenging thing to do for them at this point, and their minimal supplies seem like more than enough comfort. Once they attack their target and complete their mission they won't leave any evidence of them living there behind. Keeping Rika quiet and entertained in the rickety building takes up most of Adam's time aside from his observations of the target and reviewing the mission brief, and both of them are optimistic for returning to base successful and receiving another mission. 

All in all, I really liked this assignment. I think I achieved the grungy look I wanted in the room, but I think it could still be improved upon. I really like the story though, and I would like to pursue it further. 

New styles - Forest and Childrens Room design

So, part one of our assignment this week was to redo one of our previous environments in two new styles. I chose to do a painterly one like Brother bear, and a simple flat colored one based off of Wiley Coyote.

Inspiration:

Painterly:

Wiley:

While the Wiley coyote one kinda reminds me of the Simpsons/Futurama a little bit in the color scheme, I think it turned out pretty well. :3 I'm not normally that angular. As for the painterly one, I think it's safe to say that I just need to practice at it a lot more. I feel my foreground and background in that shot to be pretty nice, but I loose it in the middle somewhere. Something to keep experimenting with for sure!

As for the second half, I have to say I just sort of jumped into making a room, so there aren't any thumbnails to share outside of the preliminary sketch since I knew where I wanted to go with it right away. My bedroom design was for a budding equestrian, who is naturally horse obsessed. There are a lot of smaller details I would want to add in the color phase, but that's for a later time. On to the inspiration!

Inspiration, grabbed from my mac preview:

The sketch:

And the final lined product:

Some things were added, and some were removed or changed entirely, but apart from some little issues, I'm rather happy with how this came out. :3

Backgrounds

This weeks assignment was to paint up two specific scene themes: A Lighthouse, and a Forest. Considering I haven't ever really worked with backgrounds, this assignment was pretty challenging for me, but I was excited going into it, and I hope to work on this kind of exercise a lot more.

First off is some inspiration images:

And now on to the thumbnails:

And the colorized versions:

I personally think I need a LOT more practice with this. I feel more comfortable with the black and white than I do with the color, and I really need to break out of that.

Costume Assignment

For this weeks assignment, we were to design a new character and cloth them in three costumes/outfits. First we were given a past/period to make a costume from, and were told to also complete a normal modern outfit and a more futuristic one. :3 My historical outfit was Neanderthal, so naturally that was the first one I completed, followed by a pretty basic slightly boho style modern outfit of a t-shirt and skirt, and then I just went crazy with the future one, mixing elements from a few other styles I liked, a trend or two that's going on at the moment, and the rest I just ran with. So here are the pictures!


First is the inspiration images. I pulled some for my other outfits as well. :D

And some sketches from two of my outfits. Somehow the neanderthal one was deleted. :/ So no outfit sketch for that one sadly.

And the finished product! Some final lining and very light coloring later and here we are!

This assignment was pretty fun. :3

Expressions assignment: Eve

So our assignment this week was to make an expression sheet containing eight expressions and one full body pose of a character. I settled on using one of my pre-existing personal characters who seemed like they deserved a little extra love, and who happened to be an animal. Animal expression sheets are so much fun. :3

First off is inspiration! If you aren't inspired to make horsey things after looking at google chrome for hours clicking on all the horse pictures, then I don't know what to tell you. XD Here are some of my favorite horses from my favorite farms! << I totally have a folder full of these and know all the names and what state they're in so... Yeah... *coughHorseNerdcough*

Next the sketches! I kept most of these, but there were some revisions made for the final process. :3 So much fun to do!

And lastly the final version! All flat colored with the exception of the full body shot, which has some shadows added on.

So there's Eve! A character of mine whom I love to death, and who desperately needed something like this. XD The little blurb at the bottom is a little summary about her, she's a normal horse so she hasn't done anything spectacular or crazy, and all those little clovers are references for all the colors used to paint her. :3 Also, she's not some weird blue horse or anything. XD She's a blue roan tobiano gypsy vanner import. :3 Her tobiano markings are a little crazy, so I wouldn't be surprised if she had a little recessive sabino or overo in there. Blue roan doesn't happen in vanners very often, so that makes her an extra special mare. :3

Enjoy!

Zodiac Assignment: The Rabbit

For this weeks assignment we were each given an animal from the chinese zodiac, and I received the rabbit sign. The goal was to make a human and an animal character that reflected upon the signs key traits; one with the positive traits, and the other with the more negative traits.

The rabbit for the most part is a friendly, compassionate sign, that is rather outgoing and makes a good friend. But it can get very timid and shy, and grow introspective. This can lead the rabbit into becoming very introverted, and it can appear to be aloof to others.

With this in mind, I developed two characters, a timid human girl who was far too shy, and a very friendly rabbit spirit, who decided to take a true rabbits form to become the girls closest friend. :D

Now on to the images. First is the inspirational photos from my research. I settled on a type of rabbit I liked, as well as a period for the clothing for the girl. I thought something that felt victorian would suit her well.

Next are some silhouettes for both my human character and my rabbit character. I selected my favorite from each to move on to finishing.

For the girl, whom I named Angeline, I selected the seated silhouette, and aimed for a more detailed "Painted" look. I need to work on this technique a little more, but I like where it's going.

Next for the rabbit, which I named Buttons just for fun. X3 I picked two, since she's a rabbit spirit and I wanted to make something of a transformation image, and tried for a loose, line-less style that I've been wanting to try for a while. I think it turned out alright, but I once again would like to improve upon it, and maybe try a more cutout style next time. :3

And some story for the both of them:

"A young human girl named Angeline spends her days sitting around her home, too shy to play with the other girls brought to play with her. One day, while sitting in the shade of the garden, feeling particularly timid while hiding from visitors inside, a small form moved in the grass near her. At first she was afraid, but still she felt compelled to look upon it in the end, to find a delightful surprise hidden in the soft grass; a small, friendly, spotted rabbit. She spent the next several weeks playing with the elegant little rabbit, which she named Buttons, and the two grew quite close.

When her parents tried to convince her to leave Buttons alone to play at first, she would quickly withdraw once again and hide herself in a room to talk with only her rabbit friend, but slowly she would be more willing to follow their wishes under the condition that Buttons was with her. Her parents would notice that with the rabbit around, their daughter wasn't as shy as she was before, talking about Buttons as if it were a trusted best friend and telling everyone she could about it. 

What none of them really knew was that Buttons was herself something quite special, because she was in fact a rabbit spirit, who had felt very sorry for the shy girl when she had come upon her in the garden. She had decided on that day to hide in the form of a living rabbit so she could look watch over the girl as close as possible, and to slowly start opening her up to others. Once the girl had learned the positive traits the Rabbit spirit had to bestow on her, she would reveal herself and leave the girl to grow with her new gifts."

So that's all I have. :D Enjoy!

Character number one: Bayani

So our first big assignment was given out before break to create a character fitting the description given by our teacher, and to depict them in three different styles. I was assigned a young, male, Filipino, bounty hunter and ended up coming up with Bayani here! I wanted to have a little fun with this assignment, so while researching some things I remembered one fun thing about the Philippines... Civet Coffee.

In the Philippines, they grow coffee and make a few blends, but by far the strangest would be their Civet coffee, or Kopi Luwak. In case you didn't already know, a species of animal they have running around the forests called a Civet happens to really like coffee plantations. Now, these little buggers are cute, and come in multiple color variations, but it's what they do that makes this coffee so weird. Civets like to eat raw coffee, which looks like a strange red berry, and they digest all of the fruit away leaving the seed, or coffee bean, to be digested. But is it digested? Not really. Yup, these cute little things just push them right back out after their gut treatment. You can see where this is going. The coffee farmers then go around and gather up the lumps of beans left behind, clean them, process them, and ship them around the world as a rare specialty coffee! That's right, people are in theory drinking civet poo for coffee. Fun isn't it. :D

So I worked out a little backstory with Bayani and Coffee that isn't nearly so gross! He's an apprentice to a special type of Bounty hunter in his world, where coffee is illegal to own by anyone who isn't certified. A lot of illegal plantations of coffee spring up by farmers looking to make a quick buck selling the grounds, but the bounty hunters are usually tipped off before long, and head into the forests to catch the perps and tear out the plantations. :3 It's Bayani's job in particular to collect all the plants and sweep the area for loose beans and anything that's connected with the plants, and he takes it very seriously. He can't wait for the day when he can do more than carry the confiscated "contraband" and can actually close down as many illegal farms as he can. Cute little guy. :D

So on to the important part! Some research pictures and drawings! First some inspiration from my research:

Then some quick practice sketches:

And the most important one! The final product!!!

He's so cute I want to hug him FOREVER! I used my normal style, a cartoony style and a felix the cat inspired style. :D Because Felix was a boss. The cartoony style ended up being used twice, one sketchy and painterly and one lined and crisp because the Felix version wasn't really a coloring style. >> But I love every single one!!! I'm very happy with him!

Self Portrait

So we were also told to make a self portrait, which I don't do very often so it's good practice. I ended up drawing in my normal style, and shading lightly in my newer shading style, as well as sketching and quick coloring a toony version in a style I'm playing with for a future assignment off to the side. :D Yes, I own and frequently wear that hat, my mom and I made it and it's my favorite winter hat!

I totally think I need to draw myself more for practice. But that cartoony one is just about right I think. :)

Colored faces!

So out of all those sketches, we were told to pick our two favorites and color them in a particular way. :D It's kind of close to my normal style, and I love getting to practice shading on my wrinkly old lady face. Never enough chances to shade a human face like that!

Another post coming up with a different project!

Random shape faces

So a really fun thing that the class started on Monday was this fun exercise, where you take a random shape and turn it into a face, and I have to say I ended up drawing quite a few faces I would have never thought up otherwise. I scanned in my sketch pages and cleaned them up a bit, removing the ones I really didn't care for at all in most cases, and moving them to fit in a much smaller space. Here they are! Sorry for my poor scanner, it tends to eat the edges.

Welcome to my blog!

This new blog of mine will be used for documenting all of the research, in progress sketches, scenery and character development for my Characters and Environments class at CCS! Please expect to see at least a couple new posts every week with updates on what I'm working on.

Enjoy! :D