Having been enthralled by the latest series of AMC’s “The Walking Dead”, I decided to embark on a little character design based side project. It was also thought up after a rambling conversation with a fellow student about how we would combine our efforts and survive the zombie apocalypse – should the need ever arise.
Over the course of about a week at University, whenever I had a spare moment free, I did a few odd sketches of this as-of-yet nameless character in each of my several sketchbooks. It proved to be a fun little endeavor to do between seminars and lectures. In fact one of the mornings I went in early, there was actually a lively discussion between myself, one or two other students, and several of the tutors, about the benefits of doing small, menial tasks between projects (apparently it helps the brain produce inspiration at a much more effective rate!).
Once again, I must highly recommend the use of the UNI JETSTREAM 101 (1.0 nib) pen. It produces very nice matte black line work – incredibly useful for both writing and creating art alike (I won a pack of them along with other art materials at a competition last year).
The first few sketches were done in my A3 sketchbook. These are initial sketches, in which I tried to figure out the sort of look I wanted for the character. I apologize for the atrocious proportions of the body – after all, this isn’t supposed to be a pristine piece of concept work. I decided to make him look a bit war-torn, a bit bruised and battered. Using various cross-hatching and shading techniques, I tried to create the impression of blood seeping from the corner of the mouth, and a black eye. I also attempted to create the impression of a scar across the characters nose, by using faint strokes, and it seems to have worked quite nicely.
One specific factor which the co-creator of this mentioned during our prolonged conversation about apocalypse survival, was that he had to have a Japanese sword. And why not? I think they look pretty damn cool. Who doesn’t look bad-ass with a sword? Unfortunately, I wasn’t in a room at University in which I could just log on and get a reference picture, so I had to be a bit cheeky / lazy and draw the impression of one, in a position that looked convincing. This is often a dirty little tactic used by countless artists, when the need arises to draw hands. I should know – I’m guilty of it too!
I drew the character from both front and profile in order to gauge more of a sense of how he would look. I think I am I need of a bit more practice in drawing faces in profile – whenever I compare them to a front facing view of the same character, it just never sits quite right with me. I realized about half way through drawing the tie around the characters head on the profile view, that I also really need practice in drawing clothing and accessories too. If I decide to do any more on this project, then I will definitely take those aspects into consideration.
SKETCH SHEET #01
After drawing the first sketch of the character face-on, I elaborated on it a little bit. I wanted to change the expression from that seen in the first one. I felt that it looked far too soft for the type of personality and demeanor I wanted to show. I made him look a bit more rough-and-tumble in the second version. I made the jawline of the character a little bit more prominent too. I have really gotten into a fascination lately with drawing strong, manly-jawed males. Haha!
The second version was drawn on a slightly larger scale. This was partially so that I could fit it more fine detail, but also because I was working in an A4 sketchbook, so I decided to fill all the space that was available. I try not to be one to waste paper! I should’ve tried to keep the proportions of his face as straight as I did on the first one. But, again, this is only for practice purposes. Then again, I could attribute the positioning of the jaw to the fact that he may just be trying to pull a macho-look…
The shading and form of the neck has me much more impressed with the second image. I really experimented with the shading, and just giving the impression of form with it, as opposed to drawing every detail on, straight-forward. I seem to enjoy drawing the neck / collar bone on characters quite a lot – who knows why?! I like this part of character anatomy on both genders – males for their more solid, block structure, and females for their more fluently contoured body lines.
I’m particularly happy with the tie in the re-done version. I took a bit more consideration into how it would physically sit around his head. Instead of using shading to give off an impression of volume, I used the pattern in the tie as a way of showing whereabouts the creases would be. I think it turned out pretty well! Makes it stand out much more against his head! I’m usually not very good at creating creases in materials when drawing, but I feel that this time round it turned out half decent!
VERSION #01
VERSION #02
When the drawing was finished, I was either going to use the other half of the page to draw a third attempt, or draw a zombie. Instead, I started just doodling little zombies – with no regulated forms (just completely freehand) – and carried on with some other little doodles until it became a full concept doodle. In it, we see some badly drawn zombies and a horrendously drawn background. That is supposed to be smoke behind him, by the way. I know, need to sort some of that out if I flesh out this piece anymore…
My favorite little zombie is the one stood at the very front. It is probably because he seems to have the most personality in comparison to the others. I also put a bit more effort into him, so maybe I’ve got a bit of a soft spot because of that. His arm turned out pretty well – it’s not great – but I actually think that it is one of the best doodles I have done anatomically, when thinking about all of the other non-serious doodles I’ve created. I think we decided on the name “Dennis” for him. He’s the special one, he deserves to have a name!
SKETCH #02
The first A3 design sheet was done an evening prior to the others, may I just add. So, I had a night /early morning to mull over what other ideas I wanted to tackle with this character. The third sketch, below, was sketched out about an hour after the one above (Abbie STABBY had to get herself some lunch!). Someone actually pointed out to me that the below image had “Some sort of Walking Dead vibe…”, when I was near to finishing it, which isn’t too bad – I could always double it up as some form of fan-art! (fan-art / fanart / fan art?).
I like to use the hatching technique on any sketches that I do. Though it makes it look quite stylized, it gets the job done when trying to create a basic form of depth and shape on a face. I like how scribbled and quick the third sketch looked as I was making it. One thing I do not like however – which became much more apparent to me after being pointed out by my tutor, Dom – is the size of the characters head. As it turns out, if you look at it with logical proportions in mind, his head is far too small / flat. This is one thing (as well as jawlines and eye-distance) which I have to rectify in future designs. Shoulder joints also seem to be quite a problem for me, so I reckon I better start consulting some reference images so I get more of a feel for it.
I really enjoy drawing half-and-half drawings of my characters (either showing character comparisons or personality differences). I draw them whenever I get chance! I decided to draw our nameless zombie-fighting friend here joined together with one of his zombie foes. This could act as a possible front cover for a comic or simply as a promotional piece. Originally, this started out as just another plain drawing of his face, but a slip of the pen half-way through forced me to take some drastic creative license and magically shape it into something else. Again – not one to waste paper!
The heavily black scribbled areas are intended to be that way – they just did not look right left with minimum detail. I actually found this out as I was scribbling away. I wasn’t originally going to colour this concept piece, but being sat around in the Web Design suite with a few people who had a box of Crayola’s on the desk, I couldn’t resist adding a little more. Because there were no ready-made skin-tones in the box of colour pencils, I had to use my intuition and fashion a flesh tone out of an orange and yellow base, with a small amount of brown for the darker areas.
I went for standard zombie green for the zombie half of the image. I would’ve experimented with a grey / green tone, but the black in the pack of crayons did not mix well with the green at all (was not aesthetically pleasing by any means). I like how subtle the grey of the beard stubble looks (even though this scan is quite bad, you get the essential idea of how it looks). Let it be known – I am a massive advocate for beard on characters, and on men in general…you just can’t beat it!
I added a subtle shading of red beneath the eyes of the human side of the face, to give him that look of being sleep-deprived or beaten. There is also a very tiny area of it on the cheek, to make it look like there is an old, faded scar. This is a feature I use on quite a lot of my drawings anyway! It has become a small personal trademark it would seem! Yellow was added around the outline of the character to give a sense of background / lighting, and I was done!
SKETCH VER.
COLOUR VER.
AbbieSTABBY 