Decade in Characters Part 1 - Digital Painting

This post marks the beginning of a brand new series of blog posts that I am calling "Decade in Characters!".

I've always been interested in 20th Century zeitgeist and culture, including anything from music and film to fashion and subcultures, and I often find this interest influencing my own creative projects including my character designs, so I've decided to do a series of themed posts of characters based around specific decades. This will give me a chance to look further into a subject that I am already interested in and will also help me to improve my digital painting skills.

I've decided to kick things off with the 1950's! I'm a fan of the style of the era, and many of my favourite works of fiction including games (Fallout series) and films (Back To The Future, Grease) are set in the 50's or influenced by 50's culture, so I've had plenty of things to draw inspiration from.

I've saved my personal favourite for last. This picture was a first for me because I've never been great at drawing female characters, but I worked at it on paper and digitally and finally produced something that I'm very happy with. This is my favourite digital painting that I've produced to date.

Look out for more Decade in Characters posts in the near future. I'm thinking of doing the 70's next.

Digital Painting - Environment Art

Having finished my group project (see previous post) early, I had a free day today in Uni and decided to spend this time developing my skill in an area that I haven't had much experience in: Digital Environment Art.

By the end of the day I've managed to produce a painting using my Wacom tablet and Photoshop. This has been a productive day because environment art (especially digital) is one of my weaker skills. The picture isn't quite finished and I plan to return to it and finish it off next week.

Samurai - Uni Work

I'm now approaching the end of my first year as a Games Design student at UCLan and have been set a final group project for each of the two modules. For one of these projects, my group and I have been designing a game based around Japanese Samurais in the style of the company Team Ico (producers of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus).

This of course means that we've all been drawing a hell of a lot of Samurais over the last couple of weeks. This has given me an opportunity to develop my drawings skills and move out of my comfort zone; I have been drawing full-body characters and movements/action poses.

I have also recently found a half-full sketchbook from last year, before I even started Uni! Looking back over the pictures in this sketchbook has opened my eyes to just how much I have developed in less than a year. I plan on making a more indepth post about this later on.

Meanwhile, here are a few of the pictures that I've produced during the current Samurai project.

 

 

I've still got quite a way to go, but I'm quite happy with how I'm progressing.

Drawing Practice: Faces

I've recently been doing quite a bit of practice drawing faces and character design, trying to develop my skills at getting scales right and use of shading amongst other things. Below are two quick drawings that I've produced recently.