Spots illustrations that focus on characters for my portfolio - critique please
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I made a bit of progress with my little nerdy gardener character. I gave her a more prominent glasses, and change her outfit, hope this helps to add some more personality. Still working on putting her to other scenes. I am struggle of drawing her in 3/4 view
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Personality: quiet, nerdy.
Emotion: amused - (in her happy place).
shapes: I try to use the mostly round shape for her.The character is based on a friend, who loves language, table-top role-playing games, and gardening. I try to imagine what she was like when she was a 6 years old kid.
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Practicing drawing this little character in different pose and angle. I have never done character turn around before. I know that I need to get all the details matching. But do you think the overall portion works?
Looks like I am focusing on working with character design this month.
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@xin-li I love the new energy you've brought to the updated version. There's more of a sense of storytelling happening, compared to the old work. Keep up the pace!!
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Yeah I think the new image has way more life.
One thing I noticed about myself is that I tend to need some kind of project in order to effectively go outside the lines so to speak. It was pointed out to me that a lot of my work has the exact same perspective on almost every image I was showcasing. When I was doing a project, I automatically built images with numerous perspectives because that became really obvious when I had a string of images on the same subject. But when I was doing one single piece at a time, I kept defaulting the comfortable perspective and ended up looking really monotonous.
I'm guilty of the same thing for characters. One thing that jumped out at me in the creating backgrounds class in SVS is the guest Will had on had such a huge dynamic range of characters he came up with on the fly and it really illustrated to me that I do NOT have a vast array of characters in my head to draw from and that's something I'm really trying to work on now.
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@Tom-Shannon thank you so much for the encouragement. I always thought that I am only work in children's book, not animation, I can avoid doing character turn around by faking it. But now I see how valuable it is.
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So cute! I love this character. She's looking really good to me. I'm thinking her center of gravity is not quite right in the stance where she's leaning toward the bug, almost like she wouldn't be able to balance quite like that. It's not very noticeable though, and I wouldn't want you to lose the dynamic quality it has, but it's just a thought.
Since her description notes that she loves picking berries, it might be nice to include some berries into the vignette of her eating at the table. (maybe that is already what you had in mind?)
Now that you have this character, it will be a good basis to be able to contrast against when you're desgining your other characters. Can't wait to see who's next.
Website: www.tessawrathall.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/tessawrathall_art/
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I met a girl with this outfit at the bus stop today. It is so Oslo in early spring. I do not know the story for this character yet, just want to capture the outfit, for now, also a good practice for turn around.
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Such fun and whimsical sketch lines!!!
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@TessaW thank you so much for the critique. I think you are spot on with her being unstable. I will try to re-draw that pose :-).
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Finally finished my little gardener painting. Any final comments on this piece?
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working on the next piece: 3 spot images with the same character.
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It’s perfect @xin-li!
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Very cute @xin-li! Captures the imagination perfectly. Inspires me to make some spot illustrations too.
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@xin-li Your little gardener illustration is adorable! Loving this whole thread actually!
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I am trying out a different technique with these spot illustrations.
Here is a one I did with pencil on watercolor paper, and colored digitally. It is not completely done with digital coloring. But I am curoius if any of you guys have tried similar technique, so we can share tips?I am looking at Christopher Denise, and Birgitta Sif's artwork recently, trying to figure out how they do digital coloring - it is a bit difficult to figure out the details since thre is no videos of their process available online. I ended up fiddling around in Photoshop.
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Gorgeous work! It looks like you already have a good handle on combining the pencils work with digital colors.
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@xin-li said in Spots illustrations that focus on characters for my portfolio - critique please:
Christopher Denise
I think this looks great!! I'm wondering what you're doing, because I have tried fx color overlays and I notice that they line quality just isn't the same. Plus, color overlays are rather technical and thus they are a pain to do accurately. Somehow half the time I end up with the color that I had used in the previous one.
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@LauraA I got rid of the backgorund by using Channel selection in photoshop. Then I use alpha lock on the linework layer, so I can color the line directly. So the result you see is not FX layer on top of pencil line. I wonder how others doing this, I know Christopher Denise separte his pencil work from the background in photoshop as well, but I could not completely figure out how he does the coloring.
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@xin-li Oh, great! I'm glad there's another way to add color, because I would really like find a better one than color overlay layers. I know how to select line work with channels, but I have never heard of an alpha lock. I'm going to have to look that up! Thanks!
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@xin-li I think that WAY back in Christopher Denise’s instagram feed there is a process video or two. I love him too. His characters are so cute and I love his color.
I’ve been experimenting too. I want my pieces to look traditional but I enjoy the convenience of digital.
I love your style and have been enjoying seeing your work evolve.
Edit: sorry I lied. There are no full process videos on his feed. There are several partial ones but not for color. But I know I did see one at some point. He was coloring a bear. I’ll have to look because now I NEED to see it too.
