I've been doodling over the weekend and wanted to get back to my roots of designing, which is weird, silly and goofy looking characters. I've been playing with an idea I had of small critters having a war in a typical suburban backyard. The character below is Fwog, he is the trusty mount for one of the heroes in the story.
There's something lost whenever I go from pencil to pen. With pencil, my control seems looser and more detailed. Once the image goes to ink, much of those details are lost or simplified. Ink makes an image cleaner and better defined for print . . . but there's something about the original sketch line that has more detail and character.
If you want to see another example of how I use this technique, with a little more detail on the process, go to the link here.
There's something lost whenever I go from pencil to pen. With pencil, my control seems looser and more detailed. Once the image goes to ink, much of those details are lost or simplified. Ink makes an image cleaner and better defined for print . . . but there's something about the original sketch line that has more detail and character.
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| • The Original Pencil sketch of FWOG. Again, like all of my sketching, I want to create something new and different from what I've done before. Here, I wanted a warped looking frog, giving him odd and humorous features. The pose was actually forced due to the limited space on the sheet of paper - but in this case, I think it worked out very well. The pose has a graceful-clumsiness to it. |
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| • The inked version of FWOG using a Faber-Castell black brush pen (B). Knowing this was to be combined with a color comp, I tried to keep the image clean and less busy. |
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| • Combining both the pencil sketch image on top of the color comp image. I believe this gives the best results with a nice balance of outline and color. |
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| • Color comp image using Spectrum Noir markers and a white Gellyroll Pen (8) for highlighting. The original drawing looks good on paper, but much is lost when scanning to the computer. Without a solid holding line, this image appears to be sun bleached and faded. |
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| • Combining the inked image over the color comp image - creates a nice bold image. I feel this is too much black line. Note the slight error near the tip of Fwog's snout that was altered during inking; the line work does not properly sync together with the color comp below. It's important to stay consistent on both images when using this technique -- or errors (as seen here) will occur and ruin the complete effect. |
If you want to see another example of how I use this technique, with a little more detail on the process, go to the link here.
