February 16, 2007

Character of the Week: Burglar... PLUS BONUS!

(Posted early because I'm too tired to stay up until midnight, and dishonestly post-dated because I am a liar...)

My friend Rick is teaching a character design class at Cal State Long Beach--he has created a blog for the class, and each week he's having his professional friends participate in the assignments along with his students. Well, somehow Rick totally overlooked the fact that I'm way unprofessional, and has allowed me to participate as well.

This week's assignment was a burglar. The entries can be found here. And here's what I cooked up:

click above for larger view

I took a little time to design this character's build and costume, did a quick rough in blue pencil, and tightened it up in the inks. My "sketchy" ink style is starting to get cleaner the more I do this--I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing overall, but in this case it worked, because the inks turned out pretty clean on the face in particular, so I was comfortable leaving the lines black, rather than softening them with color, as I have mentioned before. The coloring on this one was again done with the Nina technique, rather than the Skeletor technique. Surprisingly, I think the Nina technique is faster sometimes! The biggest difference on this piece is that I actually added some lighting effects from the gem's glow. The lighting effects are a little sloppy and a little inconsistent, but for a relatively quick sketch, I'm okay with it. And hey, for me, any lighting effects at all are an improvement, yes?

And as an added bonus... last week's assignment from Rick was a lumberjack. The entries can be found here. This is mine:

click above for larger view

I didn't quite have time to finish a new lumberjack illustration, so I sent Rick this, which was originally commisioned by my friend James Bates for an animation pitch a few years ago. This is a pretty good example of the anal-retentive style that I often make reference to. Extremely tight pencils and inks, but not many details on this one, because I was going for a simplified look, knowing that this was supposed to be an animation design. Looking back on it, I wish I had made slightly different color choices on the skin and undershirt, but overall it holds up OK, I guess.

Post Script: For those who did not notice--I posted a couple of reviews. Scroll down to the previous post to check 'em out!

4 comments:

Atomic Swan Serials and If - E - Zine said...

These are clean and well polished. My earlier remarks on sketchiness were meant for u to persue and think abou tthe process and better understand what ur doing, but for animation and such yo need a much tighter, cleaner and easily copied/drawn design. n that you've succeeded with the lumberjack.

As for the burglar, she can rob my place any day. I like big butts and I cannot lie...


Did yo ever watch that Disney show (I think it was Disney) called "Even Stevens"? Shia LaBeouf's character in one episode founded a lumberjack club at his school for the strict purpose of eating pancakes. INGENIOUS!

J.Ho said...

lord shen! thanks man... stay tuned for more "character of the week" entries... the next one is gonna be a sexy mime. fo' real!

illgnosis said...

nice burgolds.. but you're a slacker.

J.Ho said...

yo mama is a slacker!