BOOM

My character (as of yet unnamed) now named Jeff (after awesome comic artist Jeffrey Brown), running from an explosion.  Drawn with pencil, inked with India ink and multiliner pens.

 

 A few days after this I drew another picture, continuing a similar theme:

Character Development

As a continuation from my drawings of characters from Robot Jones, I had a play about with making my own characters inspired by the pre-existing ones from the show, with the idea in mind for a nerdy romance comic.

(Unnamed, Not-Very-Original Midget-Glasses-Girl based off of Cubey)

(Unnamed Tall-Fringey-Boy, and an embarrassed older Glasses-Girl and Fringey-Boy having a cuddle)

Then I became distracted with the cartoon show 'Ed Edd n Eddy'.

(Official image from 'Ed Edd n Eddy' of the three main characters)

I forgot all about 'Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?' and started drawing Ed Edd n Eddy characters instead.

(My first drawing of character Edd (also known as Double D), plus with Ed's head poking out from behind him. Drawn with a reference)

(Pen sketch of Double D, drawn without a reference, during my RE lesson when I probably should have been working)

(Pen sketch of Ed, drawn without reference)

 (Pencil sketches of Ed, Edd and Eddy.  Ed and Edd drawn without references, Eddy drawn with a reference)

I also drew myself and some friends in the 'Ed Edd n Eddy' style to practice with the style.

 (It's me!)

 

(My best friend, Ellie)

(My friend Ben, drawn in a free period during college. Also Woody Woodpecker.)

 (More practice of the style in the form of a thank-you-note to my godmother; coloured with Copic Markers)

Then I began more serious character- and style-development as far as my unit 3 course was concerned. I began to consider doing a semi-autobiographical comic in a style inspired by the 'Ed Edd n Eddy' style. First I drew a first simple design of what the main character would look like.

(Nothing special. Just me basically.)

Then I remembered the Cubey-from-'Robot Jones'-inspired glasses-girl and decided I wanted a character who wore glasses. I came up with this guy:

I was pleased with him and so I decided to draw him some more.  Here are some of him pulling different facial expressions and such:

Then I decided to draw him in the poses I drew from this post:

BONUS DRAWING!:

(Poor guy. He fell over!)

Just need to think of a name for him now.

Evaluation

The style in which I drew my final piece, and in particular the character of Jeff, has been developed and refined over a period of time.  I knew from the beginning that I wanted a more cartoony and simplistic style to the one I normally draw in, as evidenced by the doodly ink drawings found in this blog post of mine, as well as studying and emulating artists with a style similar to the one I was looking for.  These included James Kochalka's "American Elf", "Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?" and of course, "Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy" (as shown in this post), the style of which was most influential to my final piece's characters' final design (although I was influenced by all artists studied).  By drawing the characters from these series and making my own characters in an emulation of their style, it significantly helped create a library of aspects I liked about each respective artist's work in my mind and then apply these aspects to the character designs that i used for my final piece.  In retrospect, I feel that because it was a new style for me, the drawings in the style were a little clumsy at times, particularly in the anatomy of the characters as I was unsure of which of their features I should exaggerate for the cartoony look I wanted and so sometimes made mistakes.  However I did learn a lot from developing a drawing style like this, and I feel it has helped improve my current style of drawing to this day.

Exploring Subject Matter - Poses

Exploring Paraphernalia - Drawings

Exploring Subject Matter - Outfits

Exploring Subject Matter - Characters and Expressions

Here are some drawings practicing character, moods and facial expressions.  This is very relevant because in comics and graphic novels, a variety of expressions may need to be used in order to portray what is going on: in the characters minds, during the story, and even to prompt the intonation of something a character is saying.  I have used two of my own, pre-existing characters, Quicksilver and Tisk, to practice this.

Before I show these drawings, I shall give some background information on Quicksilver.

Quicksilver's Background and Character Development

Quicksilver is a character of mine who I created for my own purposes, whom I developed alongside Tisk (the character who I used for the purposes of my Graphics unit 1 final piece (her character development can be seen on my unit 1 blog)).  

Initially, Quicksilver was inspired by Snufkin, a character from Tove Jansson's Moomintroll book series.

 

(Image of Snufkin by the artist and creator Tove Jansson)

In all honesty, Quicksilver was basically a near-carbon copy of Snufkin in his visual design.  Here are some pictures of Quicksilver's 'old' design that were drawn about a year or two ago:

However, after an image overhaul, Quicksilver developed into his own unique design and character.

Quicksilver (in his current design)

 

 

Tisk

 

Proposal

For my unit 3 investigation I will be focusing on comics and graphic novels, due to my research during units 1 and 2 which helped me to become even more interested in those mediums.  


During this unit I will develop my work through investigation and research including sheets of photos, drawings, and other paraphernalia exploring my chosen subject matter.  I will experiment using a variety of materials, processes and techniques, and I will record my ideas and observations relating to my intention.  I will also do a case study on a piece that relates to my subject matter and I must be able to both link it to my own work and analyse it critically. 


For my final piece, I must draft and refine ideas stemming from my ongoing investigation on my subject matter and create an "imaginative and exciting" piece of my own; I must also be able to critically analyse my work. 

Drawing characters from "Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?"

Here is a lot of explanation for a very small group of doodles (drawings of characters whose designs I liked in the hopes that they would help inspire me in character development of my own for my unit 3 final piece).  Apologies for the lengthiness of said explanation. 

I very recently found out about a 2002-2003 short-lived cartoon series called “Whatever Happened to Robot Jones” that apparently appeared on Cartoon Network.  

I only have access to watch the pilot episode and one other random episode of the series, but the two characters I actually took a shine to were ones I found out about after watching these two episodes.  They did not feature in the episodes that I have watched, but after doing some research on “Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?”, I became intrigued after seeing/reading small amounts about the show and these two characters.  Their names are Cubey and Mitch.

Apparently these two characters speak and have larger roles in some other episodes in the series, but because I have no access to these episodes, I cannot truly know what their personalities are supposed to be; however, what little I have seen of them, I really like their designs. 

When I decided that I wanted to draw some of the characters from “Whatever Happened to Robot Jones?”, the best reference I could find of them at the time was a small picture from Wikipedia:

(From left to right: Cubey, Socks, Robot Jones, and Shannon.)

Plus, I only found out about the character from the show called Mitch when I read some online discussion about the TV show, and when I searched for the character on Google images, at the time the only drawing that came up was this:

(Unknown artist)

And this:

(Unknown artist)

So with such little to use as reference, I already knew that my first attempts to draw these characters would probably have a lot of flaws and inaccuracies.  

Here are my first drawings of Socks and Robot Jones based off the picture from Wikipedia, drawn straight to paper with pen (without pencil lines):

 

And here are some pencil sketches of the characters I liked the look of most from the line-up, Cubey:

And Mitch:

When I drew Mitch, I had even less of an idea of what he looked like at the time and a lot of guesswork was used with his design – only until later after I first draw him did I find a better reference, and realise just how inaccurately I had portrayed him:

(An official profile image of the character Mitch, drawn by the character artist for “Whatever Happened to Robot Jones”, respectively.)

Trying Out 'Quick-n-Casual' Style of Drawing

A really, really stupid comic that took me about five minutes, which I drew at the end of the summer holidays.  No pencil-lines; just straight pen-to-paper rubbish, sloppily coloured with Copic Markers.  It is a reflection on how during my summer holiday I neglected both social contact and art-practice.

In the same sort of style, I did another five-minute ink-to-paper doodle of my sister:

American Elf

"American Elf" by James Kochalka are a series of semi-autobiographical comics; they usually contain four panels, and he attempts to create one every day of the year. He takes the persona of an elf, and often represents his friends as animals or mythical creatures also (such as a vampire, a half-fish lady, or a dog).

Here are a selection of his comics from his compilation book, "American Elf: Book Two":

Here is my own doodle of American Elf:

 

This is a drawing of myself in the style of American Elf (as: British Imp):

 

Here is my own comic in the style of "American Elf", drawn by hand with India Ink, then scanned and coloured in Photoshop:

Evaluation

My 4-panel comic strip "Thirsty" was greatly influenced by "American Elf" artist, James Kochalka.  Both the semi-autobiographical nature of his comics and his simplistic, pen-straight-to-paper art style can be recognised in my "American Elf" inspired comic.  I studied a selection of his work before I made "Thirsty" to get an idea of the kinds of topics he chooses for his comics, and doodled the main character to get a feel for his style.  Although already aware of how his style was simple, I was still surprised about how few details he includes in his character designs in order to make them as abstract and quick and easy to redraw as possible, and yet is still able to retain such unique, recognisable characters.  


Although I originally drew an imp-version of myself (as Kochalka draws himself as an elf) in very much the "American Elf" art style, I did draw in a style a little closer to my own for the final comic.  When creating the comic, I tried to choose a silly and relatable subject matter just as Kochalka does, and used an India Ink pen to recreate the same kind of line quality that his comic has.  Then I scanned the comic in, in pure black and white, and coloured it in Photoshop.  After studying Kochalka's comics, I noted that within individual comics the colours he uses tend to keep to a scheme of about two or three colours.  I was not used to keeping to such a small range of colours but found that doing so made the final product look consistant and visually appealing.  I also realised that he colours his lineart in a colour that contrasts with his chosen colour scheme, so I did the same.  


Although I felt I could have arranged the placing of my text better, I feel pleased with the result and feel I learned a lot from studying and emulating Kochalka's work, particularly about using Photoshop, colour schemes, and simplicity effectively.