Assignment 4: Shape and Silhouette

Ever noticed how the shape of a character will tell you everything you need to know before you learn anything about them?
Using shape and silhouette can help define a character before it is even designed!
There are 3 main shapes that characters fall under. Circles, squares and triangles. Circles are more friendly, squares are shown to have more authority and protect others while triangles are known to be more aggressive.
Silhouettes are used to design a character without having a definite idea. You just erase parts of the silhouette and add detail.
For my art I drew an ape based on a circle and someone insane based on a square.
I tried to break the mold by having the shapes mean different to as expected as the ape is in a threatening pose, as if chasing the audience. The insane man also is lacks authority but is based a square. Both of these characters could actually have backstories which fits the shape they are.
Is the ape usually calm and friendly and was just pushed over the edge? Was the insane man once a member of the police force? It's good to look into character backstories for this reason, it makes the character itself much more interesting.

Here are the images:

Assignment 3: Colour and Light

The main aim of this assignment was to discover how to accurately colour an object with shading from lighting.
I mentioned earlier that I drew a man with pale hair and what looks like a Sainsburys uniform. I made it look like this as before we drew our own we were recommended to practice colour and shading on a ready drawn image. The bright orange tie contrasted a lot and stood out in that piece and also did in this image where most other colours were washed out.
The shading is a little too sharp. I tried to get a smoother transition by using more shades between light and dark but I notice I'd need even more in future.

Assignment 2: Photoshop

This assignment was used to help the class get used to using Photoshop and a tablet. I don't really like this picture but I'm going to keep it here to document how much I may improve over my time in the creative thinking class. I might just redo this piece, the left arm is out of place and the background isn't needed. I did like the 3/4 view of the character though, really the left arm lets the image down. Really it shouldn't be clearly visible. I might just modify the arm and put stronger lines on the feet to make them morte viisable in photoshop.

Assignment 1: Myself as a character

As mentioned, for this task the class had to produce a drawn image ofourselves as a character from a video game series of our choice.
The game series I chose was Sonic the Hedgehog by Sega. The reason for this is that I'm a big fan of that series.

Before picking Sonic I thought of a few other series. One was Grand Theft Auto by Rockstar games. I soon realised that drawing myself as a character from Grand Theft Auto would not be very different from a normal drawing of me as the series imitates and satires real life.
Another series was Pokemon, made by Game Freak. I didn't choose this series as I felt that to make it look like pokemon, an actual pokemon would have to be drawn. I didn't think I could draw a pokemon that well being so early in the course.

For the image I drew myself as an employee to Dr Eggman, the main villain to the Sonic series. I couldn't draw myself as good as all of the good characters are usually animals. I had a lab coat, a spanner to mend robots and a shirt that says "Eggman Land" on it.
There are two versions of the image, one draen on paper, one drawn in photoshop. The one drawn in photoshop is cleaner but the one on paper has more details linked to the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.

Here Is the new image. The main difference being that the second one iscleaner as it was done on photoshop. I'll upload the older image later when it's available for comparison.

 

Creative thinking overview

It's time to talk about my portfolio. I'm typing this on a phone so I don't have the pictures available at the moment.

I'll go through the assignments in order with a brief description of each. There will be a blog post for each later with the images included.

Assignment 1: Myself as a character - For this assignment it was asked that I drew an image of myself as part of a video game series. It was to test my ability to draw humans in proportion.

Assignment 2: Photoshop Test - As few people in the class had used photoshop or a tablet before, this was used as a practice of proportion (like assignment 1) in photoshop.

Assignment 3: Colour and Light - This was where we learned about colour and shading, depending on the location of the light source. I drew the head and sholders of a man. He had grey hair and a white shirt with an orange tie. I'll go into more detail in that blog post.

Assignment 4: Shape and Silhouette - Here we learned that the overall shape of a character can determine their character. We also added the idea that you could create a character easily from a silhouette by erasing away the detail.

Assignment 5: Working in 3D - Up to this point we had only worked on photoshop so had not really considered different angles and such when designing our work. So, we were tasked with creating a model using fimo clay, wire and tinfoil.

Assignment 6: Heroes and Villains - I've already posted the partially complete villain but part of the assignment was to also create a hero and a backstory for both.

This Cat is Evil

Here is the villainous Cat For the Heroes and Villains assignment, found out that only one of the characters had to be coloured, but here is a concept of the main villain who has yet to receive a name. He also has no legs. I'll post a little more information on him when I post the hero, Mr Nefarious.