So school has officially started again, and it's quickly becoming clear that this will be a pretty intense year! I have fallen back to part-time Illustrator status at Woozworld, working about 15hrs/week, and am slowly getting back into the full-time student life. I'll do my best to keep updating this blog with new school work as well as Woozworld material whenever I can.
To kickoff the semester, I'd like to share my first assignment for my new Character Design class. As a quick way of evaluating the general drawing skills of the class, our teacher asked us to reproduce an image (illustration, painting, silkscreen, etc.) in the medium of our choice. And as a second part to our homework, we had to offer our personal interpretation of the piece, with no limitation of technique or style.
I chose an image from Shaun Tan's wonderful and inspiring book The Arrival. I really love how he merges detailed realistic settings and characters with the most unusual creatures. He has a great way of mixing the natural with the fantastical, and reminds me a little bit of Hayao Myazaki in that respect. Their styles are very different from each other of course, but they both seem to nail that delicate mix in a way that resonates with me.
Any way, so I chose the very last image from his book, which you can see below. I have included both parts of my assignment, which was done entirely on Photoshop using a stylus. My first impulse was to use pencil on paper, which I'm more comfortable with when it comes to something this realistic. Though I use a stylus on a daily basis, I'd never "painted" in such a style on Photoshop, and I felt a bit threatened by the idea. But since I'm all about learning new techniques and working in different styles, I gave myself a little challenge and kept my use of pencil and paper to a rough sketch. I'm pretty happy with the results, and proud of myself for stepping outside of my comfort zone here! Turns out painting on Photoshop is super fun too!
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