Sea of Ghosts

I have been tasked with reading the book Sea of Ghosts over the Christmas break and I need to take note of the descriptions of different characters as I will be drawing one when I get back.

I love reading so I am looking forward to it!

Five piece Portfolio

I put together a portfolio of the work I have done so far. It is made up of my best five pieces, I think my art is slowly improving but I have a LOT of work to do before I get to a level I'm happy with.

Heroes and Villains

In this task we studied the differences between heroes and villains appearances, looking at the key factors that differentiate one from another. Such as colours: villains feature darker tones and deep colours such as red whilst heroes have bright vibrant colours, shape: villains often have pointed and jagged features such as sharp facial features whereas heroes are often round and curved.

I brainstormed ideas for different heroes or villains and decided to go for something completely abstract; a samurai ogre. So I made a quick moodboard to help get an idea of features and weaponry.

Based off the moodboard I created a final piece and gave the character a brief backstory and name.

Clay Model Shark

After getting hold of Sculpey and Aluminium wire, I was asked to sketch a character. I chose to be a bit different and rather than a simple generic humanoid I chose to create a dog-like shark.

After getting my sketch done side on I got to work creating the creature in clay, starting off with a basic wire frame, adding aluminium foil to pad out the frame and then added clay on top. Once I got the entire shark modelled I carved some details like gills and teeth.

Here is the final result when baked:

Silhouettes

I was shown a technique to create a character that was an alternate to line drawing a basic shape and developing it. Instead I was asked to create basic silhouettes out of simple shapes and develop it into a final piece. It is an excellent method for quickly creating unique and striking looking characters or creatures without focusing on the fine details that can get in the way of the creative process.

Creating a silhouette gives the added benefit of having a unique, distinct shape to work from. Many recognisable characters from games feature a strong silhouette. From the silhouettes I created a line drawing which I coloured in. I am still not the best at colouring yet, but find cel shading simple enough and good looking enough to use.

I created a small robot and a deformed dragon using the silhouette technique

I call shotgun!

After creating my first character, I moved onto the next one, which I decided would be a man on the edge in a zombie apocalypse; taking aim with his shotgun at somebody he suspects is infected. Whilst I didn't get round to drawing the helpless victim, I am quite pleased with my progress with this character. The body proportions and line thickness are starting to get better and I also added colour, using the cel shading technique. I thought about the light direction and where shadows would form and after adding a base colour I added highlights and shadows.

I chose this technique because I am not very good at shading in, and cel shading isn't the most difficult technique to use. It also looks good and is effective for what I want to achieve. I chose to do him in a stance rather than just front on to make it less flat looking.

First character

We were tasked with creating a character skecth in a digital form for the next lesson. It could be anything or anyone, but I decided to play it safe and go for a knight, rather than something crazy like a multi-headed rhino monkey!

Here are the steps I took to get from A to B from the rough initial shape to the final simple sketch