ART348-finalized drawring (based off character sketch)

character description:
"I am the perfect personification of Ban's inner desires. I am creative and intelligent and long to be free. However, despite my powerful wings, Ban keeps me in a small, rusty cage in the darkest basement of his deepest subconscious. Self-doubt and a medial existence take the forms of hideous, serpentine beasts that lurk in the corners of this low-lit space. They creep behind the walls and in the closets, ready to pounce whenever I attempt to escape. I can use my cunning wit and shape-shifting abilities to fool them for a time, but in the end I'm always dragged back into this dismal place. Lucky for me, I have astounding patience and all the time in the world. I can sit here and stew as long as I need to before making my big move. It's only a matter of time before I will have my way."

Reflec-chee-own:
The article gave me some great insight for how to approach my project. What I got from it was a concept artist should keep things fast and loose because you never know what will get scrapped in the end result. The refining stages are key, so I feel I shouldn't start dwelling on details until I've streamlined my character. Sure, details will matter in the end result, because maximum clarity is key, but when you have specific deadlines to meet, it's important to spend as little time as possible on any rough drafts. I've found my first 5 or 10 sketches are mostly to grasp the overall design of my character-simple shapes and what not. Usually the end result has morphed far beyond that of the first sketch. In my bird-Ban drawings, for example, my first sketches played with proportions and had no real reference. It wasn't until I started working form pictures of the beautiful Major Mitchell Cockatoo that my character really began to pop.

My overall life goal is to make comic books or graphic novels, but a career as a concept artist would be a blast, too. However, I feel like there are so many people fighting for these demanding positions that I might get skimmed over. If I wanted to actively pursue this goal, I would need to work on machinery and backgrounds because those are my weak points.

main reference:

First side o' page 3 :}

Page 1 & 2!

ART348! (Almost)50 Character Designs!

Ban, our main character:




Ban as a bird...man:

Ban's slimy boss:


Ezmeralda (sort of a love interest):


Homeless man:

Ban's kids:


monster the homeless man becomes in a subway scene:

Ban's wife:


REFLECT!
So this is a bit late, but only because I can't place who my "Mickey Mouse" would be. I had a billion beloved cartoon characters in my wild youth, each a sort of flavor of the month. I'm like a cartoon whore, constantly chasing after different characters and never loyal to any particular "obsession". My first love was Donald Duck-everything in my room adorning his image. It wasn't so much the way he looked, unlike Sendak's Mickey affinity, but more about his personality. I had a soft spot for spicy-yet-downtrodden characters who longed for the spotlight, only to have it constantly snatched away by a more popular (and usually, in my opinion, a more boring) character. This logic was applied to so many 'toons-Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote of Loony Tunes, Plucky of Tiny Toons, (a lot of ducks, for some reason) and so on until my attention turned to The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. As an aesthetic, I liked the color pairing of Donatello-green and purple is my favorite color combination. My favorite turtle, however, was Rafael. His colors were pleasing as well (I later learned red and green are complimentary-go figure), but again, his personality attracted me the most. Like Donald, he was hot-tempered, but in a completely reckeless, ne'r-do-well way. He was the "bad boy", and what little girl isn't a sucker for that? Needless to say, I had EVERY TMNT toy that existed, along with posters, wall stickers, the whole shebang.

Not suprisingly, my 'tween years became a free-for-all with the discovery of 90's Nickelodeon Cartoons, or "Nicktoons". After school became an orgy of great characters with great designs and bright colors-all mine for those few glorious hours. Doug, Rocko's Modern Life, Ah! Real Monsters, Angry Beavers, Catdog, Hey, Arnold!, one right after the other. I had an intelectual opinion about each character on each show, sizing them all up as I saw fit. Looking back it was more sad then quirky because my obsession led me to believe I really "knew" all these fictional characters.

This illusion may have matured, but never subsided-even into teenage years and adulthood. I found a more "sophisticated" lust of fictional characters in comic books. To this day, I'd say the founder of my comic book character love, my adulthood "Mickey Mouse", is Patch from a sickeningly colorful comic book series entitled "Pirates of Coney Island". In a nutshell, Patch (about 16 or 17 years old) and a car-stealing street gang called "The Pirates" reek havoc upon their city and brawl over territory/revenge with their arch enemies-a gang of hardcore grrls called "The Cherries". Patch, a nickname given to him for wearing one over his empty eye socket (this eye was brutally stabbed out by the leader of the Cherries), is a green/black mohawk wearing, pick-pocketing, runaway punk with a fun, exagerrated character design. I still go back and read those "Pirates..." comics to cheer me up on my "pissy" days. It's been years since that series was put out (ironically, the writer and artist abandoned the project 1 issue proir to it's completion), but reading it still puts a smile on my face.

My ART450 project pitch (sah-WIIING battahbattahbattah!)

*AHEM* Dear Prof and fellow Special Projects classmates,

For my final project, I'd like to create a few short comics that will flow together and eventually become a graphic novel. Completing the novel would be grand, but I feel that target is overly ambitious for a 9-week timeline. Sice I'm a visual person (meaning I can't write for beans), for this project I will collaborate with my partner in crime, Jenny Kladzyk. She has a poetic writing style that's just down-to-earth enough to harmonize with my artistic vision. We hope to complete 8 pages every two weeks. This may seem like plenty of time to someone who's never made a comic, but unfortunately, I'm not Jack Kirby, and therefore can't pump out bi-monthly comics. I won't even go into the lengthy editing process...

This will be a "real-space", original work of fiction inspired by monotinous, everyday expierences/annoyances of the comic's creators. The plot, you ask? Simple answer: Combine a mundane life with no creative release and a few pills and you have a recipe for a perfect mental collapse. Synopsis: Ban, an American born man of Korean heratige, feels trapped in his drab existance. Between his nagging wife, annoying children, mysterious pills, minimum wage job and slimey boss, Ban comes to a breaking point. In the beginning, his mental breakdown mostly manisfests in his dreams. Slowly, his dreams become day dreams and his day dreams consume his thoughts, skewing the line between reality and the world that exists inside his mind. Our working title is "Melting Patterns".

I'm fairly certain my project will be the least "digital" in the class. I prefer old-school drawing styles (in method and asthetics), but I am Photoshop savvy and plan to use the program for most of the editing. This will help me resize, clean up and lay out our project panel by panel. Color will be important to the piece, but we're still not sure whether to work that out in PS or do it the ye-olde-fashioned, analog way: markers, colored pencils, etc. As for artistic influences...there are too many to name. I'll go with the top 3 comic book artists that move me (besides Sam Hiti): Nathan Fox, Josh Middleton, and James Stokoe. I'm sure it won't reach this impossible level, but for the final cut, I'm aiming for this: Clean, Middleton-esque reality scenes and crazy, Fox-inspired, acid-trippish scenes with vivid, Stokoe-like colors!

Cat People. Right Meow.

Sooooooo...convoluted explanation: random artist (at http://harveyjames.livejournal.com/164155.html) posted his original drawrings of abstract/cartoon-ish kitties with some fun (and freaky) fashion. OTHER artists were prompted to pick a cat and create a female character based on it's feline design. No one asked me to, but I took a stab at it. See if you can find the kitties hat inspired me on Harvey's site! Or just enjoy this on a visual level and don't ask questions! XD

ForART 348: Silhouettes, Y'all

5 Unoriginal:

30 Original:
Reflectin':
After almost 7 hours in the computer labs (switching over each time one closed), it's safe to say I knew a lot less than I thought about making silhouttes. Having only scanned line drawings into Photoshop before this assignment, it never occured to me how hard it would be to fill them with a solid color. I ended up using the pen tool on each image to make them look clean-a lengthy process. There may be an easy way to scan in a drawing and fill it without the finished product looking like rubbish, but hell if I know. I started by making original drawings in pencil, then inking them. That was the easy part. I had no theme to begin with-I let the drawings come organically. For whatever reason, most likely because I wanted to be ironic and work with transparent surfaces in my silhouettes, I started with an astronaught in a see-through helmet. Each drawing after that was inspired by the drawing before it, and there you have it-30 drawings in about 2 hours total. Too bad the editing process couldn't be as speedy.

As arduous as this process was, I do think making simple outlines of my characters helped me see things about them I didn't realize in the original sketches. Sometimes I get so caught up in details during the creative process, I miss the big picture-the outline-the silhouette! For this reason, I think I would benefit from making silhouettes of my characters more often, although-for my sanity's sake-I probably will leave the computer out of it. Hooray for analog drawings!