Illustrations

Hare - Earthsea Character Design

My most recent illustration project was a redraw of my design for the character Hare, a drug-addled wizard from the Earthsea books.

Each of these drawings are a few years apart, clearly displaying my progress from a stylised cartoon style to a more three-dimensional painterly style. My second piece, focussing on just the head, was actually my first try at lineless art, and it's quite clear I didn't use enough references for eyes, hair or hats. In my newest piece, I tried to imitate the style of the show 'Arcane', finding as many references as possible for similar characters.

This illustration took a lot longer than I'd expected to get to a place I was content, partly because of a busy university schedule and trying out a new process to fit the Arcane style. I had also been practising my fundamentals at a society, which meant it had been a long while since my last full illustration and I think my eye for anatomy had surpassed my comfortable ability. The folds in the cloak were particularly finnicky, but after redoing them a few times and finding decent references I found a good balance between hard and soft shading.

Despite the lengthy process, I am pleased with the result and hope to improve on it further in another few years. Perhaps next time I will finally give him a detailed background.

Games Wallpaper - Detailed Collage

My most ambitious illustration to date is this wallpaper I designed for my phone, packed with characters and symbols from my favourite games (and Elden Ring).

On the left you can see my process of rough sketching and blocking out colours, after which I shaded each character one by one (with small additions and adjustments) until it felt complete.

For such an extensive project, I use a consistent rendering style with just a few blending layers, which I then merge to reduce the file size. This method of shading is fairly efficient and ensures the characters look cohesive.

I intend to keep adding more games to this piece every so often as I play more, but at some point I may have to stop due to limited space and time.

There are currently 66 games here, see how many you can spot :)

Bowie Tribute - Detailed Landscape

Bowie Tribute.mp4

Above is another drawing crammed with obscure details and references, this time to David Bowie songs.

It is also a redraw of a much older piece based on the song 'Oh! You Pretty Things', shown on the left. Comparing the two, I think my newer one has much improved perspective, lighting and texturing while retaining the surrealism of the original.

In particular, my rendering of the food looks more appealing due to softer shadows and hue variation to imitate subsurface scattering. I also really enjoyed using layers to create a strong sense of depth, while also leaving open the possibility of turning the piece into a semi-interactive version using parallax. The juxtaposition between the mysterious hand and its environment is also a lot stronger and seems more intentional than in the original.

Perhaps in the future I'll redraw it again with some new interpretations of Bowie's works and further improved fundamentals.

Spidersona, Blixen & Trollsona - Fandom Characters

This detailed drawing of my Spidersona appears at the end of my Spidersona animatic, but it's also a piece worth displaying in its own right.

The hardest part was getting the anatomy of the pose down, due to the lack of references for such a dynamic pose and my neglect to practise fundamentals at the time. I think it works, though, and am especially proud of the vibrant shading which matches the feel of the Spiderverse films while helping the character stand out from the environment.

For the background, I referenced screenshots of Croydon from Google Earth, then used the polygonal lasso to block out the main shapes in layers before shading without too much detail.

This drawing is shows a Star Wars original character I call Darth Blixen, who uses a unique lightning-saber.

Inspired by the 'Star Wars: Visions' anthology series which showcased a variety of animation styles, I tried out some new techniques for this piece. Specifically, using the polygonal lasso to define rigid shapes which I shaded using a smooth brush. This gave the piece a more iconic feel, but some of the details from my sketch were lost. So I used a pencil brush to draw back in select details in the face, hair and hands.

I based the pose heavily off a reference of a dancer, which made anatomy much easier. But the harsh red lighting didn't blend well with the green, so I adjusted my rendering for those sections to make it work.

Another solo character fanart, this piece displays my Homestuck trollsona.

My main focus for this piece was drawing a cool dynamic pose and including as many details about the character as possible. I think I achieved both of these well and especially love the way his weapon frames his head while imitating the shape of his horns.

However, the head doesn't look quite right anymore, along with the proportions of the hands and feet. if I were to remake this, I'd definitely spend more time getting the anatomy right using references and studies of foreshortened dynamic poses. The shape and rendering of the hair could also be improved to look more natural.

Overall, I'm still proud of this piece, but may remake it with improved fundamentals.

Syndicate Of Oz - Character Designs

After watching the second 'Puss in Boots' film, I was inspired to design the Wizard of Oz protagonists as a crime family from the same world, similar to Goldi and the Bears.

I enjoyed trying new rendering methods to try and match the saturated, painterly art style of the film, and loved designing corrupted version of the main characters. The pose of Dorothy looks slightly off so I probably should have found some better references for her, but it's not enough to ruin the piece.

I also remember being too scared to merge my layers without duplicating the project first, which ended up making my device run slower and impeded my workflow. I've since learned to be more confident about merging layers, and have found better workarounds for editing after merging.

The background was less important to the piece, but I think it's also what could be improved the most. The high saturation of supposedly distant objects reduces the sense of depth, along with the over-detailed textures of the poppy field and grass.

Nevertheless, I'm extremely proud of the piece as a whole, and it was an important project that allowed me to learn new techniques and styles to employ in my future works.

Brave The Elements - Character Designs

One of my oldest and most complex pieces depicts five elemental characters, inspired by a 4-colour-pen drawing I made prompted by an art challenge in a Jazza video.

My original drawing and digital painting are below, with the sketch for the updated piece on the left. It's quite a stark improvement, mostly because I spent a lot more time planning the poses and elemental effects, using plenty of references and tutorials. I really enjoyed designing the unique aspects of each character and using a variety of brushes on my new tablet to achieve new effects.

If I were to improve this piece, I'd fix the lighting in a few spots such as the Earth woman's feet and the overly-blue water which doesn't reflect its surroundings enough. I might give the Earth woman a slightly more dynamic pose as well, or at least a stronger stance. When I made this piece, I was trying to improve my realistic rendering, but nowadays I might try and give the piece a more stylised feel inspired by some of my favourite animations.

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