Planning, Progress
and
Production
10/01/22
This is a series of drawings I did. The first (going left to right) is an experiment of drawing a child turning into a fish like being. This was inspired from the movie "Luca". The middle picture is an experiment with a new style. I wasn't a fan of this and will not be continuing with this style of drawing. Lastly, the end picture is trying to draw someone walking as I want to draw Gain walking with moss appearing below their feet like in the story.
11/01/22
Discussion between me and a classmate abbie:
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Me- So with the character they've got duck legs and badgers feet so imagine duck legs and like a circle for the feet, how would they walk? Would they be stumbling or falling all over the place.
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Abbie- Probably because of the imbalance
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Me- Yeah true so what I'm wondering is so I'm on my heels walking like this, leaning forward and arms in front or would it be more upright like when I'm on my toes and their arms out by their side?
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Abbie- Yeah but do ducks have knees?
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Me- I think so the way I can describe it is so the feathers sit like a pair of shorts and then it has like a circular shape so I assume its the knee then it goes curving inwards and then out for the feet. But obviously rather than it flowing out into the feet and being flat footed like us it would be like a stump.
For this character I've had to think about how they would walk and run with duck legs and badgers feet.
Ducks have knees inside of their feathers so they aren't visible so I think rather than having just the legs visible they will have the bottom half as a duck, this may have some complications as their knees are backwards compared to human legs which mean character will walk awkwardly or uncomfortably. Plus they have badgers feet which, compared to duck feet, are round and small so not only do I have to find a way to blend the two very different animals together I have to imagine how it would walk and run. As difficult this will be I think it will be fun to do.
17/01/22
This is a step by step of how I drew the bottom half of a scene from my friends book.
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Scene: They had badgers feet, ducks legs, mortal body, a cats nose and Bris dreadlocks in the same colour as Ulrics hair. Every step the child took left a small trail of moss peaking through the cobbles
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At first I used a HB pencil to sketch the shape and pose then rubbed it out until it was barely visible on paper. Above is a video of me colouring and blending the colours. It's very zoomed in as i made it for my TikTok and instagram teasing my followers and the showing the drawing at the end. After I posted the video I realised I forgot to draw the moss and added that straight after. This was a lot of fun to create and I love the way it came out. It was a struggle but my friend loved the design.
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I was going do do smaller badgers feet and have Gain walk awkwardly but decided it would be easier to have it all in proportion for simplicity sake.
18/01/22
Today I'm going to focus on experimenting with Procreate and Photoshop to compare the two so I can decide which to use for my final drawings of this project.
Above is the drawing from photoshop. After drawing the outline and doing the block colours I decided to not have the outline on the final drawing so removed it after filling in the block colours. I did screen record me blending the colours however the recording didn't save and I didn't realise until I had finished the drawing. I love the way this looks. I am yet to do the procreate version so I can decide from there which I will use for my final drawings.
This is a drawing completed on Procreate. To better see the difference between the two softwares I drew the same image. I would like to get more practice on Procreate as this was my first time using it. I liked the way to get smoother lines on procreate more than photoshop and how you can get close to the image on the iPad. However where I'm so used to photoshop, it was different brushes than what I'm used too so I couldn't find the brushes I always use which made blending difficult and I couldn't find the colours I needed and sometimes my hand would move the pen line/ eraser line and that made it difficult. So although I prefer the feel and ease of procreate I prefer the tools and blending of photoshop. If possible I would like to merge the two for the time being until I can get better with Procreate. I think if I get my own iPad it would be possible to create my own brushes on procreate to get the effect I like for blending.
25/01/22
This is my initial sketch of Gain, my friend really liked the look of it so i decided to take my design into photoshop. There wasn't much in my friends story about Gains fashion style so to have fun with it and incorporate their mothers different looks. Lynne is a vampire who wears bright clothes and is very tall and their other mum Yaz is a warlock who wears business clothing and is rather short. I thought of many ways to join these two ideas together and whilst listening to 'Karma Chameleon' by Boy George I remembered that his style is very Androgynous and as Gain is Non-Binary I thought his outfits would be very inspiring
Boy George is wearing a baggy button up shirt and a waistcoat in this which I love. I decided rather than making it baggy like with Boy George I will making it fitted with a long shirt. I thought that these two items are professional like Yaz but bright and colourful like Lynne and the colours work well with Gains green skin. I also found out that Gain loves shoes so gave them a pair that bring out their personality as well as their mothers.
31/01/22
I decided this morning that I didn't like the shading done last week so decided to start over with the colouring and shading. I decided to do it a different way which is the clip below.
Above is the video of how I gave the eye its shiny and rainbow look. I love the effect this has and after using colour dodge on the eye wondered what it would look like on the hair and loved the outcome. This is quite possibly on of my favourite pieces so far. I got so much creative freedom with this character and felt a connection to them. I'm super happy with the design of this character and after talking to my friend about this she has made mild alterations to the description given as she didn't give me too many details about their appearance at first to see what I could create.
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I was speaking to Abbie (my classmate who also works on ProCreate) and he mentioned textures and showed many brushes that could be used which inspired the look of the waistcoat.
01/02/22
This is the drawing of Gain when they shift into a different form in front of Ulric and Bris. This was very difficult as it took along time to get the right proportions and I eventually tried to find a reference image (sadly cannot find the link as the image was found on my phone) and then had to imaging what a duck would look like at that angle which was difficult but not impossible. I didn't want to waste too much time on the finer details for the sketch so after the outline was complete I moved straight onto ProCreate for the digital drawing.
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After completing the digital drawing just before end of day I realised I hadn't taken any screen recordings or screen shots but I used the same method for this that I used for the other drawing of Gain.
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I sent an image to my friend for any tips and edits to do next week and she mentioned that the duck half of the body doesn't have as much detail also it looks a unfinished. So next week i will add more detailing to the body.
07/02/22
Today I had to add detailing to the duck body after realising that I had misread the text after removing all the detailing so had to go back and add more detail. I did this by using a hair brush on two different layers to create the different sweeps that add a small bit of detailing and two different feather brushes to emphasise the feathers. I also decided at that point to add a little detail to the left eye as it looked out of proportion to the other so rather than going back I wanted to see if I could make it look like one eye was squinted slightly to show concentration and I decided to keep it as it works with the lip bite.
