Maid Marian and Her Merry Men Portraits project 31/10/14

Ever since I discovered the amazing artist Todd Schorr and his blend of cartoons and pulp art. I have wanted to render characters in to a semi realistic render like he does in his paintings. a lot of well known properties and characters have had this concept executed by a lot of talented artists =). But i felt that lesser known or forgotten shows do not get this treatment. I intend to change this with the new body of work I present to you for this months illustration project.

Maid Marin and her Merry Men

For those of you who do not know Maid Marian was a BBC kids tv series written and staring the great Tony Robinson (from Black Adder). It even got produced in to a colourful comic book with the wonderful cartoon work of Paul Cemmick (He is now an artist for our national SFX magazine). The premise was that Marian was the fearless leader rebelling against an angry King John and Sheriff of Nottingham (who Tony Robinson played). While the (quote) hero Robin Hood and the other merry men were kind of useless and weak yet Marian would tolerate their incompetence. Robin was a coward and cared more about his fashion then fighting.

The aim of these illustrations was to take Cemmicks character designs from the comic and translate them in to a more semi realistic style that represented the characters personality. Due to time constraints this month (mostly to do with Poycon Uk) I was only able to get four of the main cast done but I made sure that each portrait was up to a high standard I also used different light sources to make each individual stand out and look visually more interesting.

Sadly its hard to find the comics nowadays  but the TV show you can find on Youtube. :)

Until next Post Laters ;)

Jowy Shenanigans 18/7/12

All right we are back here again after a couple days away from posting anything I will be brunt with you all I have had a lazy mind in the recent weeks after leaving university. Found it hard to stay away from creative mode on Minecraft, fan art and YouTube channels fall under this category as well. I need to keep my mind and imagination active during this slow period until I find a suitable job linked some how to my practice. This is not rocket science I can do it but I have personally found out that I need to be really invested in my own ideas and characters to truly make them shine and sparkle. That’s why there’s not a lot of JOWY stuff on my DA account at the moment , which is quite sad honestly. But I call this a phase I am going though like in the early days when I started out on online.

 I sent off my CV to a local animation company this week they already responded back. They would keep in touch with me as they like my work, which is showing promise. Soapbox/rant aside lets get to the core of this post.

Another anonymous person (don’t want it mention names) came forward three days ago with a commission for a married couple Tony and Carla who are youth preachers in a church but they are moving on. The client wanted a portrait as token of thanks to them. They wanted it done digitally like I have done with all my recent illustration work and preaching was the most important element that needed be illustrated in it.

1^st day

I had to gather photo references from their facebooks to make it as close to the couple as possible obviously duh no caricatures here.

OH BOYYYYY i could already tell i was going to fun with this commission before i started

2^nd day

I still enjoy doing the value tonal thing its educating me a lot more on how light works in different directions. And how dark shadows can be depending on the light scoure, space and time.

I actually created a light source that would be coming from the back of the figures to give the illusion of a projector

Carla was surprisingly easy to capture tony gave me a few problems mostly because of the angle of his head and his mouth

The picture also had to show some of the youth of the church but as silhouettes.

Carla was surprisingly easy to capture tony gave me a few problems mostly because of the angle of his head and his mouth

Day 3

Showed it to my mom, as she knew these people gave me a citric about his hands and mellow expressionhe did look rather relaxed lol.  

My my we need to make you simile again 

"Will this trim suit you fine sir" 

One last visual was added and that was the name of a youth Christian camp/event called Ignite that the couple went to or promoted (not sure which)

Again with the overlaying of the colour and the brown suit and the blue curtains

The client unfortunately came back sooner then I expected but was very happy with the result as it was so there was no real reason to complain Tony and Carla loved it.

Sweet Another satisfied customer.

FINALE 

I don’t mean to make these blog posts long I just feel like I am leaning a lot more about my digital skills and observation from doing pieces like this hopefully I start doing some paid work very soon because pieces like this give me hope for my future even on the laziest of days

Any how until next Post Laters