Brainfreeze

Closeup

"...so little time."

Part 2!  Last week I shared Heartburn, which was an illustration inspired by my usual reaction to new experiences, ideas, and possibilities. This week, I'm sharing Brainfreeze... the aftermath of that.

Initial Sketch

Brainfreeze is essentially what happens when Heartburn burns out, and it represents my indecision. I'm thankful that I've found so many wonderful things that make me excited, but there is a cost in being passionate and enthusiastic about so many things. It's tough to make decisions. I find it difficult to decide if I want to follow this wonderful rabbit hole of an idea or that one. I stress out a lot; because I know that choosing this means saying no to that. You can do anything, but not everything, and all that jazz. Ultimately, decisiveness is something I'm trying to work on.

I designed these two illustrations together; to show my thought process. I don't know if anyone will see elements of themselves in them, but at the very least I hope you lovely people think they look cool. :)

Heartburn

Closeup

"So many ideas..."

Part 1 of 2! The idea for these illustrations first hit me back in February-ish, but for one reason or another, I haven't had the chance to really bring them to life until recently. They're nearly more relevant now than they were then though, considering the incredible summer I've had, and all the decisions that I've had to make in the past few weeks in particular. I'm incredibly thankful, and overwhelmingly excited about everything that's been happening in my little corner of the world lately; and this little drawing sums up that feeling pretty well.

Initial Sketch

Heartburn - I'm a sucker for a pun, and visual puns are even better! - represents my excitable side. If you know me in person at all, you'll know that I'm essentially a storm in a teacup... If I like something, I tend develop an all-out obsession with it, so I throw myself at projects or ideas or stories with a passion and enthusiasm that sometimes surprises people. It's fun, it's fast, and usually it means I produce work that I'm proud of.

Full Image

That's just one half of the story though. I'll share Part 2 next week! ;)

Ballpoint Pen Illustration | Origami

Remember: These illustrations and more is for sale on Society6. Check it out!

The other night, I took a playlist of delightfully questionable taste, a ballpoint pen, a Moleskine sketchbook, and two hours to illustrate this. It felt like I was coming home, and it felt SO good. Ballpoint pen is still my jam. I've missed it oh so much. I missed drawing just for myself, just to get a tiny snippet of my own thoughts out on paper. Click through to read more, and see the rest of this mini collection!

Don't Starve - Wednesday

Have any of you played the PC game, Don't Starve, by Klei Entertainment? If you haven't, you should! One of my assignments in college this term was to create a new character to be placed within an existing universe, and while some of my friends picked things like Adventure Time and Valiant Hearts, I picked Don't Starve. And I am so glad that I did!

So the first step in the process was research, research, research. I studied the game itself, paying attention to the the line weight, the colours, the shapes, and everything in between. I made some interesting discoveries that I might not otherwise have picked up on; almost every character in the game wears red, for example, and the males only have pupils, while the females only have whites in their eyes. The playable characters, as a set, are incredibly unified, right down to their names: almost all of them start with the letter W.

I also researched different types of characters that I might like to design; and eventually settled on a Horologist, whom I named Wednesday*. Then I was able to sketch out some ideas (throwing away most of them!) and eventually figured out how I wanted my character to look. Below, you can see how I drastically I changed the character from the original sketch into the final lineart.

The next step was colouring, which was a LOT of fun! We were taught a technique of colouring that I had never used before, which allowed for easy changes later on. It worked out quite well, I think! I experimented with different hues and things, but nevertheless I stayed true to the game's styling, and went with a predominantly red colour scheme, with a lot of black scribble detail.

The final part of the assignment was to place the character in different lighting situations, which was my favourite part, by far! We were given five different themes: 01) Mid-day sun 02) Dark rainy day 03) Moonlight 04) Sunrise 05) Haunted House. We weren't asked to design the backgrounds, per se, but I got a little carried away with them... 

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the end results. What do you think? Does my character fit in with Don't Starve? Do you have a favourite lighting condition?

*In honour of Wednesday Addams, whom I love, and think would fit in with the game perfectly! I also watched The Addams Family recently and remembered how much I loved it all over again. 

Mishmash

Here's a whole bunch of doodle-pips and playin' around sketches and animations from August, which was a bit of a rollercoaster for me. There's some fanart (Animaniacs, Skottie Young's Oz characters, Up etc) some warm-up sketches, and a handful of distraction drawings/animations (you know the type - the things you do when you want to just take your mind off things). Hope all of you lovely people had a great August, and are as excited as I am to be saying hello to September. :)

Helios Philip Lament

Here's another character design I've been working on recently for a fun personal project I've had in the pipeline for a long time. He's an intrepid explorer and happy hitchhiker, who's been everywhere and back again. His story is closely associated with Arista Spice.

North American P51 Mustang

Last week, taking a break from character designs, I started working on a new illustration for my S6 shop. It's a P51 Mustang - one of the earliest models - to go with my little collection of WWII aircraft blueprints. It took two long days to get the pencil sketch finished, and then another four or five hours on top of that to flip it digitally and finish it off.

WIPs, the finished project, the rest of the collection, and a little more rambling after the jump. :)