Sci-fi

Skaadi Reborn

| Rolo

Well, I did it, I managed to redraw Skaadi’s legs and I can happily say that she looks like she belongs in the environment. It was not an easy task, at all. I asked my girlfriend to pose for me again so that I had some god first hand reference to draw from and even then I struggled; the position that the legs needed to be in meant that I had to use some foreshortening which is something I always try to avoid. I think it took me about 5 attempts to draw the legs in a way that they would make some sort of proportional sense, but it’s done now anyway and I guess it was a good learning exercise, I can’t avoid using foreshortening forever, especially since I hope to go into comic design someday. I think I need to practice doing foreshortening more, my attitude towards it isn’t the best and I managed to do it this time, so I should practice more so that I can get better and not struggle with it so much when I need to do it for a project again.

  • Stage 1 of Skaadi’s new legs.
  • Stage 2, the leg line work.
  • The colouring of the legs.
  • The finished product.

I’ve managed to finish my development board now too, I took what my tutor (Sarah) said to me in mind and decided to layout Skaadi’s character poses and weaponry in a straight line across the centre of the page, they look really uniform now and I’m quite pleased with it. My second board primarily has Skaadi’s expressions on it to show the different sides of her, from her brave elven side to her horrific demon persona. I wrote a few paragraphs explaining each part of Skaadi in detail so that the audience could really understand her and hopefully feel for her because she is in such an awful predicament.

  • Final Character Board 1
  • Final Character Board 2
Character Boards

I feel like I’ve come a long way as a person and illustrator since I was last on this course over a year ago, I’m more willing to adapt to using digital art methods and try new things, things that I was rather stubborn about not using in the past. I’m realising that I don’t always need to make things difficult for myself, and that I’m not as bad at art as I used to think. I still have a long way to come with my confidence but at least I feel like I’m getting somewhere. This project is coming to a close soon and I’m not so worried about getting everything done on time, my sketchbook is up to date, though it could look a lot neater and my work could be presented in a better way. I really need to work on my sketchbook presentation skills, I feel like a lot of the pages look grimy where my pencil sketches have smudged on to the other page, or where glue has stuck to the wrong parts of the page. I do try to make things look nice but I quite often get so caught up in actually producing the work and writing the annotations that I don’t focus enough on how I put it all together on the page. I hope I don’t miss out on too many marks because of this. Maybe I should start wearing gloves when I stick things in my sketchbook, it would stop me making marks on the page where my fingers have touched, or put pieces of scrap paper over pencil sketches to protect my sketchbook pages. I guess a fixative spray could work too, but it’d have to be one that wouldn’t change the colours or anything about the sketches. I should really look into getting some fixative spray and maybe write a review of it on the blog… is that something I could put on this blog?? I don’t know, why not.

Hopefully by the end of next week I will have handed in the project and everything will be all well and good, after which I’ll be straight on to the next project, there aren’t many breaks in 2nd year I’ve noticed, even when we aren’t in uni we’re doing some sort of project.. well, I am anyway, I’m not sure how other people on the course work but for me it’s pretty much non stop. I guess I like it that way, it gives me something to do and I feel like I’ll be able to become a professional illustrator someday if I keep putting the work in.

Well, that was unexpected.

| Rolo

This week has been a bit of a mixed bag, on the plus side I have just about finished colouring up the Skaadi side pose on Illustrator and Photoshop and I have also digitised some of the essential items that Skaadi carries with her. What hasn’t been so good is finding out that we yesterday morning that our Thursday class isn’t happening any more due to a teacher training day, and also that we’re off all of next week for a reading week; followed by a tutorial on Monday the 28th of October. Normally this would be fine, however, I still feel a bit rusty with Illustrator and Photoshop (having not been on a course doing digital art for over a year now) and I have so much I need to do and very limited idea of how to do it. I guess I am going to have to watch YouTube tutorials on Photoshop processes and figure out how to finish this project to a high standard.  

  • Coloured in Photoshop with a Wacom tablet.
  • A Family heirloom handed to Skaadi by her mother before she died.
  • A sword forged by the forest elves before their collapse a long time ago, this sword is oozing with elven magic. Skaadi found it after the sword called out to her in the forest.
  • Skaadi carved this weapon herself from the wood of an ancient ash tree, it was one of the first weapons she ever owned and she hasn’t parted with it since.

While I am rather shocked at how little notice was given about not being in Uni today, I have at least managed to do the digital line work and colour for the Skaadi side pose. I did this by scanning the initial sketch on to the computer, opening it in Illustrator and using the pen tool to trace the sketched line work, similar to how I created the line work on Skaadi’s dynamic pose previously. As I mentioned on my last post, instead of colouring my work in Illustrator as well, I exported the line work and opened it in Photoshop to colour. I found this process a hell of a lot easier than colouring it in Illustrator, partly because I have painted in Photoshop in the past. It is just so much quicker and allows me to spend more time on doing details and shadows/highlights, the use of which I have learned from researching how Fiona Staples creates them in the Saga comics.  This is subsequently also much easier for me to do in Photoshop. I have cautiously high hopes for how this project is going to go from now on, I do feel as if I am improving a lot with digital art and it is quite surprising because a year ago I wouldn’t have even attempted to get good at using computers for art. I do still love doing traditional art and digital could never completely replace it for me, however I am final seeing the benefits of using Photoshop and Illustrator to create and enhance art and hopefully I will continue to do so in the future.

Skaadi Side Pose

I do have one small qualm about the way I have painted Skaadi so far and that is that she doesn’t quite look alive yet, like she doesn’t pop out of the page or look like she is a living being, this is something that I really need to rectify and quickly because she is such a complex and active character and I want to portray that life and spirit in the illustrations of Skaadi. Hopefully over the next week I will be able to push myself to learn more about how to use Photoshop and also what alterations to make to Skaadi to give her that bit of oomph, all without my tutor’s guidance. As well and adding life to Skaadi, I really ought to figure out what kind of environment Skaadi is going to be in and design it. I mean, I know she lives in a forest and I know in my head what the whole world she inhabits looks like, I just need to show it in my art. It is certainly going to be a busy week.

Skaadi Returns!

| Rolo

After a week of absolute manic panic, I handed in the Fat Lass Preserves Project, which, to me went really well and I am happy enough with the final outcome. I have finally gotten back to doing the project I really enjoy doing, the Skaadi Project. Unsurprisingly, my fat lass design didn’t get picked by the company owner, which to be quite honest, doesn’t bother me because it was the first time I have ever attempted to draw and finish a larger person, so it was always going to be a learning curve, yet I am definitely feeling more confident about drawing larger characters again in the future and also in my ability to create plus size characters of my own.   

  • Initial plus-size superhero sketch.
  • Developed version of my plus-size superhero sketch.
  • Final version of the Fat Lass superhero

This week I have focused on digitising one of my dynamic Skaadi sketches to put on to an A2 development board that we have been asked to create as part of our final outcomes. I sketched out a variety of character poses last week during the fat lass project; they were really rough and sketchy and didn’t really look like Skaadi at all. To rectify this, I scanned the sketches on to a computer and opened them in Adobe Illustrator, I then used the pen and pencil tools to trace over the line work, while slightly changing the proportions of the Skaadi sketches to fit how I see Skaadi in my minds-eye. Once I had the line work I proceeded to colour Skaadi in Illustrator using the paintbrush tool, I decided to focus on colouring the dynamic pose because I am really happy with the proportions and I am considering using the dynamic pose on my final comic panel. I took photos of my girlfriend to use as reference for each of thew poses because I am still getting used to drawing humanoid characters and having first hand reference really helps me figure out the proportions of my characters.

  • Dynamic pose Reference
  • Skaadi Dynamic Sketch
  • Skaadi Illustrator linework
  • Skaadi Illustrator colour
Dynamic Skaadi Process

I found colouring Skaadi with the paintbrush tool very awkward and fiddly, it was extremely time consuming to just create a basic fill layer, whereas I know that in photoshop, it is possible to fill entire areas with simply one click. It wasn’t until today (Thursday) that I found out from my tutor that there is a much easier way to fill colour in illustrator and also that we don’t actually have to complete the whole design in Illustrator, I was under the impression that it was an Illustrator project based on the content of the computer sessions so far. I guess I could have found out differently earlier if I had found the confidence to outwardly ask for help. Nevertheless, I will be using Photoshop to colour my designs in the future from now on and I will keep to Illustrator for the linework. I’ll probably take the dynamic Skaadi pose over to Photoshop as well because, while I am happy with the pose, proportions and the colour choices I have made, I am just not satisfied with her face and she looks rather flat, I feel as if it will be a lot easier to add highlights and shadows in Photoshop.

Overall, I am rather happy with my progress on the project so far, as well as how I have chosen to manage my time, especially without the support of my tutors, having been on a reading week.  I definitely need to work on my confidence and anxiety, I should ask for help and information when I need it instead of just struggling unnecessarily for ages. I am so pleased to be working on the Skaadi project now and my character is finally starting to come take some sort of shape, I’m aware that time is running out to do this project but now that I know we can use Photoshop as well as Illustrator, I am fairly confident that things are only going to get better from here.

Things are finally happening!

| Rolo

This week we finally began to develop our summer comic projects even further, we were told that the final outcome of this project would be a fully finished singular comic panel that showcases the main character in a scene from our story. This is going to be a lot easier than completing the whole comic by November so I am rather happy with this, the comic will be finished during another project at a later date.

The main focus of this week was facial expressions, continuing on from the expression work given to us during the first Illustrator session, we were handed an expression sheet that contained 25 boxes and the names of 25 different expressions that we needed to draw. The purpose of this exercise was to make us think about how to draw different expressions that we may not have done before but may need when it comes to drawing our characters and comics. I wasn’t initially very pleased with this task because I really wanted to focus on improving the design of my characters and also develop the environment that my comic would be set in, I’ve had the idea to show Skaadi either in the middle of the forest fighting a demon, or to show her standing guard in the middle of a blasted heath, protecting what little forest remains; the fire demons and light elves having already destroyed  swathes of her homeland. However, after a while I began to realise the importance of this task because as a comic illustrator, I will have to express the emotions of characters that I draw through recognisable facial expressions that readers will be able to understand. I can’t just create emotionless characters that never show how they feel; I have to be real about this. I definitely found this task quite daunting and difficult when I started it as I am not used to drawing faces and I am certainly not used to expressing emotions through faces. To make it a bit easier we were asked to take selfies of ourselves making the facial expressions that we were asked to draw so that we had accurate reference to draw from; to be perfectly honest I found the prospect of this even more daunting than the drawing itself, I never take selfies! And I won’t be posting them!

 I tried to do as much of the sheet as I could using reference from the internet and memories of when I have seen people use these expressions. Ultimately I gave up on the sheet and talked to one of my tutors, Sarah, instead, she suggested that I focus on 3 main scenarios that Skaadi would likely face and draw out how she would react to them, this idea seemed a lot more favourable than drawing 25 expressions so this is what I did. I managed to get around taking selfies of myself by getting my girlfriend to model 3 expressions that Skaadi would make during the three main scenarios that I came up with. Once I had the reference imagery, I draw out Skaadi with the expressions, changing the design of her face as I went along.

  • Skaadi;s Demon Face
  • Skaadi Inquisitive Expression
  • Solemn Skaadi
Skaadi Expressions

I found it rather difficult to add light and shadow effectively to show depth in my characters faces so I decided to look at how other comic illustrators use light and shadow in their work. My main inspiration for the redesign of Skaadi’s face came from the comic series Saga; I gave her a much sharper face, more expressive eyes and changed her hair so that it looked a bit more realistic than before. The outcome of this redesign was a much more comic-like character in a style that I was finally happy with, I have been trying to find a comic style for a long time and finally managed to achieve one that I was happy with.

Saga Art by Fiona Staples

I am extremely happy with how I am progressing on this course so far and I hope that I am able to keep this up in the future. I am so pleased with myself for drawing Skaadi in a style that I am happy with and one that I would use in comics any day. There are still some tweaks needed to the style, it’s not exactly refined yet, or coloured, but oh my god I have something that I can work with. From here on I will developing the newfound comic style even further and refining it so that it will eventually be something that I am proud of and could possibly use in other comics in the future.