// June 20th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Design
I can’t say what these are for, or why, when and how…just yet. But I have really enjoyed working on my first “real” illustrations lately! When I can, I’ll post more details.
For now, let’s just say I was looking to create a sort of cute and cheeky guy with a bit of a super hero feel, especially in the jaw. Having dropped out of college before the life drawing classes, and since I am not much into realism when it comes to the human form anyway, I am lacking in anatomy-for-artists department. I resulted to the look and feel of some graphic novels, as well as drawing techniques featured in cool book that I picked up recently, and this is what I came up with.
I realize this is not the greatest illustration ever – not by far. But it’s more than what I thought I could do, and for that, I am happy.
I use Adobe Illustrator on the job constantly, but I have never really used it for its intended purpose. There is a considerable learning curve in going from Illustrator-for-print-job-mechanical to actually creating a hand-drawn illustration digitally.
I busted out the Wacom tablet, which also presents a learning curve for me, since I bought it not long ago, after years of salivating over one, but have never really used it enough to get the hang of it. I’ll say this – the ability to use something like a writing utensil to get imagery into a computer is fantastic! But the muscles are really quick to let you know just how much the mouse has replaced the pen in my life. I guess I shouldn’t complain too much…it’s not like I don’t have constant shoulder pain from mousing all day long. But after a few hours of Wacom-ing, there were other muscle groups that started to take notice!
I wanted something comic-ish with simple and clean lines. The Google search for “simplified anatomy” returned the book, Simplified Anatomy for the Comic Book Artist, with which I was pleased.
So I did some sketching, following exercises in the book, which I scanned in. I placed my sketches in Illustrator and traced over them, then colored them in, then copied and pasted into Photoshop where I had created backgrounds. These images are a couple of the results of that process.
Am I an illustrator now? Certainly not. I’m just happy to slowly enter the process of learning a new skill. I don’t know if I’m going about it the “right” way, but so far I am content with what I’ve been able to churn out and am greatly looking forward to doing more – and hopefully getting much better at it.
I’ve been wondering what to do with this domain for several years now. Project after project, from personal video game platform gamer tag to business concept, to product brand, “badmoomoo” has had many incarnations. It isn’t until now that I finally decided to bite the bullet and use it as the domain for my personal blog (among other things.)
