The Making of Growlford

I'm kicking off the first post in a while with something I made just for you! Here's a look at my colouring process in

 

Happy New Year! Have some Furniture Sets!

Hello! Happy New Year to you all! Yes, I know - long time no post, but I'm fixing that as of right now! Let's kick off the first LangiSketches post of the New Year with one of last year's major Langi Lala Studio highlights, shall we?

Final Year Project - Poster and Furniture Update.

Heya, people! So, it's now crunch time with barely a few precious weeks left until D-Day/Exam Day. Man, time sure does fly.

In this week's update, I'm going to show you the work-in-progress poster illustrations as well as the progress I've made with working on the furniture.

Final Year Project - Children's Furniture

In previous posts (FYP - Children's Furniture: Chair Designs, and FYP - Furniture Design Sketches, and Final Illustrations) , I've mentioned that I wanted to design a children's furniture set as part of the merchandise tying into my book project. After a search for a skilled joiner to bring it from paper to reality, I have these photos to show you!

These are the raw, just-delivered furniture pieces. Shortly after these were photographed, I bought the necessary supplies to turn them into my character pieces - including wood putty for some imperfections in the wood. Right now, I'm letting the putty cure before I sand, clean, and prime these pieces for painting. Anyway, on to the photos!

FYP - Button Size Poll Part Deux

Hey, again! Since I'm going to be very occupied on Monday, I'll be unable to make the usual Monday work-in-progress update. :(

However, I'm still going to need your feedback on an important merchandise topic: pin-back button sizes! Please look at the options in the image:

Pin-back Button Size Options: 1.25", or 2.25"? (Illustration not official)

All done? Sweet! Now, please vote for your size of choice in the Button Size Poll.

Thank you, and have a great weekend!

FYP - Character Bookmarks (Rough Edition), and the Final Year Quest

Heya! Hope you all had a great and productive/restful weekend! I hope so, because it's time to get down to business - at least for me. =) Over the last week/weekend, I've been tweaking my character buttons (FYP - Buttons Test-Run and Feedback Poll); I'm happy to say that the animal characters at least are ready to be printed, but I've decided to rework Charlene's button illustration. After some time had past, I realized that her expression and overall pose didn't say anything about her personality, nor did it entice the viewer - which is one massive oversight on my part (FYP - Button W.I.Ps!).

Anyway, enough about the buttons! Time to move on to the bookmarks!

FYP - Button W.I.Ps!

Still brainstorming for the furniture, but I've just finished sketches for half a dozen character pin-back buttons.

The Whole Gang!

From left to right, we have Ramesh Goatee (Goat), Pree (Parrot), Countess Whiskeria (Cat), Growlford Barkley (Dog), Lizzy Rexxy (Lizard with the shades), and our main girl Charlene 'GirlChile' Robinson. :) I might tweak Pree some more, but I'm satisfied with the designs overall.

What do you guys think?

Edit: While looking at furniture, I see that many manufacturers are still stuck on the 'pink/pastels and princesses for girls' mantra. The unisex ones (according to my Google-search anyway) tend to look bland, while the boy-specific designs are just full of bright colours, great characters, and just plain fun. :(

FYP - Children's Furniture: Chair Designs

Well, lookee here - an update! In order to show the versatility of illustration in my entire project, one of my ideas is to build children's furniture (yes, I'm ambitious). I spent yesterday sketching and devising possible looks and poses for four of my characters (Countess, Ramesh, Lizzy, and Growlford) as chair-backs. The character designs themselves are not final, but the basic poses will likely remain the same in the final drawings.

The gang as children's furniture designs.

The idea came to me when I was looking on Tumblr, and came across this children's table set:

A friend of mine later told me that those characters were Moomins, trolls (they look like hippos, don't they?) from a Swedish book series that was evidently popular enough to even spawn an amusement pack. You know where I want to go someday. ;)

FYP Character Sketches - Ramesh Goatee & Growlford Barkley.

Hey, peeps!

In between commissions, I've been slowly but surely re-tweaking (sometimes outright redesigning) Charlene's roster of animal friends. Rather than wait until I had more finished pieces to display - whenever that would be -, I decided to break the long drought on LangiSketches and upload this little rough-paper bit:

The little goat is Ramesh 'Ram' Goatee, an enthusiastic little kid and aspiring chef - and with eyes as big as his stomach. The dog in the sketch is Growlford, 'G' for short. That is far from his final design, so I'd expect some minor to major revisions to be in place before the finals are uploaded.

FYP Character Sketches - Lizzy Rexxy

I still have Part III of my poster maquette experiment to post, but I wanted to show this first.

Lizford 'Lizzy Rexxy' Rexxington

The hyper-energetic dancer and party green lizard - Lizzy Rexxy!

What do you guys think? No constructive criticisms will be refused or deleted. :)

FYP - GirlChile's name is...

The polls are now closed! Sorry for those who missed it, but such is life. According to the results, the winner is 'Charlene' with 22.7% of the 44 votes cast. 'Sasha' and 'Kadianne' tied for 2nd place with 20.5% each, followed by 'Janine' (18.2%), 'Christina' (11.4%) and 'Yvonne' (6.8%)

So GirlChile's name is now Charlene Robinson. :D Many thanks to all who voted and helped me out with this task!

FYP - Give 'GirlChile' A Name!

After many, many weeks of brainstorming, I am stumped where giving 'GirlChile' a proper name is concerned. Of course, 'GirlChile' has grown on many of my classmates so I'll keep it as a nickname, but she still needs a proper 'birth certificate' name! ^^; Since I'm useless on that front, I realize that I need your help. A lot. :D

Just to give some background information on the character, here's a brief data sheet:

Age:  7+

Location:  Jamaica


Physical Characteristics: Tall and very skinny for her age.


Personality:  Highly imaginative, observant, jovial, sensitive, a thinker, a little stubborn

Likes:  Reading, drawing, writing, playing games


Dislikes:  Being bored, mean people, being alone, not being able to draw


Family:  Everton (Father), Janet (Mother), Pa Bap (grandpa), Ma Millie (Grandmother)

I've made a shortlist of names and set up a poll on the right side of the blog, so I can get your opinions. If you don't like any of the names listed, or you''d like to make a suggestion, please feel free to do so in the comments. Thanks in advance, guys! I appreciate it!

Polling ends on December 13, 2010 @ 12:15 a.m., so hurry and get those votes in!

FYP Character Sketches - 'GirlChile' and Pauline

Just to set the record straight - my main character will not be called 'GirlChile' forever! Nope. No way. The problem is that I have quite a list of potential names for her and none of them seem...right. I knew I couldn't possibly plot out the story by calling her 'She' throughout the whole thing, so the 'GirlChile' nickname was born.


But fret not. She will have a proper name one way or the other, even if I have to host a poll right here. *hint hint*

In the meantime, I'll show you the initial sketches that I made for 'GirlChile' Robinson and one of her best friends, Pauline Richards done up in Col-Erase Pencils*!:
*Makes me feel all...animatorish and shiggity. :D

'GirlChile' Robinson

These aren't the very first sketches I've done of 'GC', but these are the ones I'll show because the initial sketches were some crappy stuff. I consider those my detox excretions, and who in their right minds want to see those? In the book, she's a very tall and skinny little country girl who's bright, highly imaginative and loves life. I did a full body sketch and several facial ones to try and get her character to match the way I've envisioned her. The one with the darker outlines closely represents 'GC' the most, but the design process is far from over. It's getting there, but she's not quite 'GC' yet.

Pauline Richards

Next is the smart Pauline Richards. This is the very first sketch I've done for her...isn't it odd how some supporting characters are just easier to put on paper? Weird. In any case, this isn't her final design either and I realized in retrospect that she looked similar to 'GC' in the face. I'm still trying to balance my characters being distinct yet being cohesive in overall style and design. I've made some notes on Pauline as to how I could distinguish her features more the next time I attempt to sketch her.


So, what do you guys think?

A Guy and a Girl

One of my first sketches since getting the 'break' from school. I sketched these images of a random girl and guy while waiting around for an exam to finish, and realised how great it was to finally work on non-school related things after a nasty first year. I'm not sure what or if I have anything planned for these two in the future. We'll see, right?