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. :)