Random Sketches - Some People

Did some warm-up sketches over the past week and a half, and this is what I have to show for it. Not much, but I'm pretty busy with client projects AND I start a new Day Job next week. Wish me luck, please!

Fan Art Friday - My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

A lightening storm killed my modem last week, so I wasn't able to post anything at all for Friday. I'm still busy with a client's project, so here's a hodgepodge of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic character sketches (Pinkie Pie, Twilight Sparkle, and Rainbow Dash) for this week! These were done at various points over the past seven months as warm-up or procrastination sketches. Yes, procrastination sketches - they do exist.

Hope you'll enjoy, and see you again next week (unless another lightening storm decides to visit O_O)!

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 - '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?

Ward Theatre Poster Project

Wow, I haven't been here for a while! Anyway, let's move on.

For one of my illustration assignments, we were asked to design a poster for a Ward Theatre production. Ward Theatre is, or WAS, Jamaica's version of Broadway. The annual pantomimes were normally held there but, unfortunately, the grand old theatre has fallen into disrepair. The pantomimes are currently held at another theatre that's closer to the theatre-going public, but I decided to use the current pantomime production for the year and redesign its poster for this project. The pantomime is called "Runner Boy".

My first attempt at the project was rushed, safe and bland. I won't even show it here. I was lucky enough to get a chance to redo it and I did a series of sketches for that purpose.



I call this my 'brain fart' sketch. It's the first sketch in the process and it was basically done to get the main ideas down - 'Runner Boy' in his country clothes and bare feet among more traditional track and field atheletes. Long before I finished, I considered this sketch to be rather uninteresting but I continued nonetheless. It's all a part of the process after all.



This second sketch was an attempt at more dynamism. I tried some foreshortening, although it's quite unsucessful here, and I maintained the idea of concealing his face as I had with the prior sketch and with the prior attempt at the project. The hills in the background reference his origins (i.e. a country boy from the town of Yam Hill). Liked it better than the first, but it still felt a little weak - as if he was out for his morning run and not a country boy called to participate in a city sporting event as the play's summary indicated.



A little better with the foreshortening, but not anything to write home about. I included two traditional runners in the background, with the barefoot Runner Boy beating them by a mile. The placement of the figures cost me the hills in the background, and also left me with an empty space to the lower left. Another trip to the sketch paper was in order.




I finally have a sketch that I'm almost satisfied with! I say 'almost satisfied' because I'd like the opinions from the viewing public before I start on the final. I changed the placement of the figures, which allowed me to reintroduce the hills (which will be faint in the background so as not to subtract from the other two runners), and gave Runner Boy himself a more dynamic angle and a more pronounced position in the foreground. I'm considering moving the title a bit lower and more to the left so as to give more balance, and the play information will occupy the space below that.

Any suggestions before I start the main piece?

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?