I haven't been very active lately when it comes to doing my
daily sketches. For one thing I haven't had enough time (family, working out, plain working) but the last couple of days it actually depends on the fact that I received an assignment. My first requested job in arts! Wohoo!
A friend of mine saw the "
Jumper" image I did, liked it, and asked me to create a character that could work as a logotype and as a "front" for one of his projects. Since I'm such a rookie and an amateur, I told him "Hell yeah! But I can't guarantee either quality or timespan and I really like to use the work and result for my own portfolio.". Deal!
Anyway, he - kind of randomly - have ended up with the wonderful nick "Wired Koala" so he wanted to incorporate that by letting the character be a koala bear, he also liked it to be sort of a super hero thing. And, hey, honestly, you can't go wrong with a super hero koala. I tried to drag out some more info about mood/color scheme/feeling/style but that was pretty much left for me to decide, but not overly stylized as a lot of logotypes tend to be.
So, added my thoughts, these are the requirements:
- Koala.
- Super hero themed.
- Since he liked the Jumper I will do it in a "cartoony", not too realistic, manner.
- A real character, not just five lines that "gives you the sense of koala".
- The project is about connectivity, that and the "Wired" part of the name could and should be incorporated in the character in some way.
Next step, research. Since my experience with koala bears are fairly limited, to say the very least, I needed to get a hang of how they look. Google image search was my friend here. Needless to say, I felt like a five year old girl going "naaaw", "aaaw" each time I scrolled a bit down the results. Damn, those creatures are cute and cuddly looking! Damn them for breaking my facade of infinite machoness!
So, after gathering a few nice reference images, I believe I got a hang of how the litter critter is built and it's, at last, time to grab the pen and tablet and start sketching ideas in Krita. Pretty much from the start I realized I need to go with a semi human style, that would enable me to use a posture and/or movements that will be easily read by anyone. After some messing around I decided to go with a sort of pear-shaped body with short or no visible legs. More or less feet attached to the body. What else? Yeah, clothing. Following a super hero theme I decided to go with a cape and a tight, sleeveless, shirt. Mainly because of the simple shape of it. Further I didn't want to use a cowl because it would probably give the character a less cute and more of a tough style. I rather have it cute and cool instead of rough and tough. So for anonymity the character was given a type of Robin/Ninja Turtle style mask to depend on. I finally ended up with the sketch below where the character is in a cool pose, one hand in the waist and one hand doing the peace sign. To complement that cool feeling I gave it a sort of a smirky looking smile.
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| The initial sketch I decided to continue working on. |
From the initial sketch it was simply a matter of painting it roughly to give my client an idea and something to discuss around. I gave the koala itself a sort of koalaish gray color, the shirt got to be blue, a color that signals professionalism, and the mask and cape was given a green, calm and non invasive color. I also threw a "super hero logo" in there on the characters chest, in the form of a electric plug. That could illustrate both the "Wired" part of the nick and the connectivity part of my clients project. For a simple backdrop I roughly painted a sort of beige area around the character. This should be enough to give my client an idea of where I'm heading.
Painting the sketch I also realized that the peace/victory sign that I'd drawn in the initial sketch didn't work so well. The koala actually rocks two opposing fingers, instead of just one like we have. The two-thumb-look simply looked strange so I skipped that for now. That'd do for now, so I sent that to the client for feedback, being very clear on the fact that this is very much a FIRST DRAFT.
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| First concept idea sketch. |
I actually received nothing but positive feedback from my client. Apparently he understood the concept of "first draft" and was able to ignore the messy paint and get a feel for the relevant stuff such as the idea, the attitude, the style and such.
Since the idea sketch was a success, there was really no need to change much. One thing he asked me, though, was if it was possible to export drawing into some sort of vector format. This made me think. Since I still haven't really come to a point where I can do super nice lines and clean ink full of life and whatnot I decided to do the lines as vectors in Inkscape first and then, later, colo2r it and add shadows in Krita or Gimp. Or, wait a minute, why not draw it in its full using vectors? That would give me two things: 1) The option to scale the image a lot without loosing quality. 2) The ability to easily modify specific elements in the image. Vectors it is then. All the way. This would be a nice opportunity for me to learn more about drawing vector graphics. Yay! Learning: Good!
So, the evening after the first rough sketch I imported it into Inkscape and started to manually trace the lines and slightly adjusting details. The only thing I actually changed was the feet of the character. I had neglected those in the sketch so they needed a shape-up. I also gave the cape and the mask a lighter color than I had used earlier just to make the character look kinder and more of a "good" super hero. I emphasized the outline with a wider border plus an extra white border to make it pop and also to make the image work without the backdrop on both white, black or colored background.
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| First iteration of the vector image. |
The feedback I received after showing my client this first vector version was somewhat overwhelming. He was super happy about the image and almost had it printed on shirts. I managed to cool him down a bit though. Enough to make him let me finish the work. Thanks mate! ;-)
The next evening I focused on shades. I also eliminated all borders in the drawing, turning them into separate shapes, this allowed me to adjust some lines to make them a bit more alive and "realistic". For example the smirk and the lines that indicates the toes. I finally managed to make the right (from the viewers perspective) arm look good too.
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| Vector image second iteration? |
I gave the image one more evening, tightening up the outlines and making minor adjustments. I also took time to separate some shapes into different layers. That will enable me to hide the shades to just show flat colors or the backdrop or even the body so that my client can use only the head if he'd like to.
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| Final version of the image. |
So, that's it! The images are sent to my client and, now, even the documentation is done. I am very happy with the result and, for the record, so is my client.
+1 and/or comment if you liked it or want to drop some critique.
10-4! //Niklas
