“Bruce” Colour Guide

During some free time I did a quick drawing of my character “Bruce (rhymes with juice)” in action, for the purpose of having an image with which I can create a colour guide. Colour guides are a standard in the industry, and tend to help everyone in the design department keep to a set of colours for consistency and designs purposes. This was done using my vastly growing collection of Letraset ProMarkers, because of the uniform colour it produces, with next to no overlap-lines. This was also just a fun little exercise with which I could create something to add to my portfolio at the end of the academic year.

I coloured each segment one-by-one, adding the scribbled square of colour at the side as I went. This is usually how I tend to go about my colouring business anyway, so it was all completed easy enough. I usually start with skin-tones, working my way through the hair and then onto clothes and accessories. There was a bit of a waiting period required when colouring the characters face, as ProMarkers tend to be quite “wet” pens. I waited until it had almost dried on the skin base, before adding the blush, otherwise it would have blended in too pale and not have been as prominent. In this instance, it didn’t work quite as well as I had hoped, but it is still noticeable regardless.

In the same fashion as Windsor Mccay, I decided to have a thicker outline going around the silhouette edge of the character and the book he is carrying. This really makes the character stand out against any potential background setting, and just adds something unique to the character itself. This is a little technique that I picked up a few years ago, purely through experimentation. I didn’t realize how popular a design choice it was with a lot of artists until I started attending university!

This settled nicely into my A3 sketchbook, bit I might consider taking it out and putting it up on the wall of the animation room as a reference point, and to fill up some space in the meantime (the walls are very bare of work in there – it needs to change, haha!). Once again, I absolutely adore using ProMarkers because of the vibrancy of their colours. They really bring an image to life, even when just used as flat, block colouring devices. For presentation purposes and skills development, I highly recommend you creative types out there invest in some and have an experiment with them! You will not be disappointed, that is for sure!

“Bruce” (Rhymes with Juice) Character Sheet

So, after essentially settling on my final idea for the “Bringing Literature to Life” brief, I got cracking with making a character design sheet. I decided to make a main character with a simple design, consisting of bright colours, which would appeal to children and teenagers alike. I gave him a name which rhymes, because children are more engaged by rhyming text, and because it makes it that little bit more memorable.

I have given him an outfit consisting of typically trendy clothing from the past year / current year, in order to appeal to the slightly older demographic of my audience. I opted out of the generally quite plain colour scheme which tends to accompany the clothing, so bright colours were substituted instead. I used a multipack of Derwent colour pencils to finish the image off. Derwent is a fantastic brand, which I strongly urge anyone to give a try.

Rather than my more semi-realistic style, I used a much simpler one. This is a style I started to experiment with back in late 2009 / early 2010, after  returned from an exchange trip to Japan. It has had significant changes since then, and I have finally settled on something I can make good use of. I think that this style will be popular with a young audience, as “cutesy” seems to be all the rage at the moment. That, and a concept known in Japan as “Kimo-kawaii” which literally means “ugly-cute”. The subject matters I use with this style often adhere to that, so this is all good, as it appeals to both age ranges.

I tend to use a very bog-standard, simple shading style with these types of drawings (only when using colour pencil, though) – dark on the outside, light towards the centre. This gives a very simple 3D look to the characters, without making them look too complicated. This is important, especially when trying to appeal to a young audience. The less complicated the image, the more appeal it will gain, in essence.

As is standard practice, I drew Bruce from the 4 main angles – Front, 3/4 view, side, and from behind. This gives animators an idea and reference point of how the character will look visually when moving in different positions. I always find it strange doing character sheets for little characters drawn in this style, because they are never drawn from a sideways view when I draw them on commission. It just seems too flat and expressionless. Regardless, I think the little hint of a mouth protruding from the face is quite cute. I’ll have to practice some more at drawing them from this angle!

I added a colour chart to the side of the reference sheet as an extra feature. These are usually done as a separate feature for character sheets, but this is more for personal use rather than a presentation use. As well as that, I did some rough pose and position sketches along the top. I will be doing plenty more of these, as well as some quick animation tests along the same vein. I plan on doing some movement and gesture tests an uploading them here to my production blog.

Here is a sneak preview of the finished character sheet. I will be making a presentation copy using an editing program later on during the project. I have a lot of fun making these character sheets, as they help me to understand my own characters even better than I think I already do. In total, there are several features on the chart pictured below, including:

• Character Positions
• Colour Chart
• Pose Sketches
• Small Accompanying Illustration
• Expressions Chart
• Alternative Costumes
• Logo / Title

Movember: Individual Moustaches

Here are some still shots taken from my Movember animation, which I released last month. The Lemmy moustache was by far the most work intensive to animate! The cramps in my hands after finishing all of these were near-on unbearable. I worked on this project during a full day, non-stop from start to finish. So glad with the outcome though, it must be said!

LEMMY

GEORGE MICHAEL

CLARK GABLE

CHAPLIN

POIROT

DALI

MARIO

Alex at Work

Here is my wonderful classmate Alex (http://mrteaandcreamcrumpets.wordpress.com/) during a session at University during the week. He was commissioned to create a Movember based MLP parody, and so far it is looking sublime! He is a great guy to work with, and has a real flare for putting humor into his pieces. He’s promised to give me a few pointers in using Flash, and has agreed to help me with background design on any future animations which I create. What a guy!

Spring Awakening Collaboration

It has certainly been a bust Summer for me already! During the past two-and-a-half months since I’ve broken up from University, it has been non-stop requests and commission work from various people and businesses. It has been really nice (albeit a little bit hectic) being so in demand! This isall quite new to me – but either way, I am absolutely loving this creative streak, and I’m getting so much portfolio work done because of it.

After I had completed the t-shirt commission for James Ramon Baker (director and starring role in the local production of “Spring Awakening”), and seeing my work debuted in a professional setting, I was asked to contribute more towards this theatre production. James commissioned me to create an individual drawing of each of the actors / characters in the musical. These would go towards being put on an album cover for the cast recording (which is available for purchase now from Hull Truck Theatre).

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As well as being grouped together on the cover, each individual character has been put on individual pages in the inside booklet. In total, there were 16 individual characetrs drawn for the cover (one character had to be re-drawn due to an innacuracy in the costume). Each character was drawn separately, and edited together for the full group image using editing software. They were drawn up and coloured using my standard tools:

• Mechanical Pencil
• 0.8 Pigment Ink Fineliner
• Copic Markers

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ROW #01:

• Fraulein Knuppeldick
• Wendla Bergman
• Melchior Gabor
• Herr Knochenbruch

ROW #02:

• Martha
• Ilsa
• Moritz Stiefel
• Georg

ROW #03:

• Rupert
• Ernst
• Hanschen
• Otto

ROW #04:

• Dieter
• Anna
• Ulbrecht
• Thea

Hope you enjoy those little doodles! Thanks to those being commissioned, I’ve gotten many more requests since! One of my payments for doing this project for “Spring Awakening”, was free entry to the local production of “Footloose” – which was equally as amazing! Anyway, I’ll keep you all updated on the projects I participate in in the coming weeks! For now, enjoy a preview of the cast recording! If you like it, please don’t hesitate to buy a copy!