More Bollywood badge graphics! I went a little overboard with this — no pun intended — and so it’s actually twenty-days late (eep!), but luckily @kaymatthews’s Kapoor family celebration goes on for the whole month of June!
Not executed at the level I was hoping for, but about half the figures look like the people they’re supposed to be, and the boat doesn’t look too bad, I guess. Need to work on better line quality & composition in future.
This is a ‘badge graphic’ for @AlenkaofBohemia’s Madhuri Dixit appreciation week (it’s the actress’ birthday today, May 15th, so Happy Birthday!), which she’s curating on her ‘Bollywood-ish blog’.
To be honest, I’m not super-happy with this. The anatomy is fine, but the face is far from it, and I can certainly tell that it was either put together in a hurry, or that my mind and heart were elsewhere while doing it — both of which are partially true, at least.
On the one hand, being able to bang one of these out on something close to autopilot, after months of not illustrating, is a good sign for my skills — practice makes perfect. On the other, isn’t half the point of these fun side-projects that you learn something new, try something different?
I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts. Most of these are radio programs from the BBC that are handily delivered through RSS, but over the years I’ve found that while cooking, drawing or sitting at the computer plugging away at a design, nothing works quite as well to pass the time and alleviate work tedium than a bunch of people talking.
My go-to Bunch of People Talking podcast for years used to be Around Comics — sadly they’re semi-officially ended (though they do bring out a show every month or two), but for the past year or so I’ve been listening to the Sarcastic Voyage, a fun hour-or-so of general geeky banter. Run by two very funny hosts, SV is the kind of show that doesn’t need to be about anything to be entertaining, and before long you will be sucked into it, and will pick up its lexicon of in-jokes. That the hosts and many fellow fans are on twitter also helps, like some kind of perpetual fan convention.
I’m also a huge fan of Futurama, so when I heard that Sarcastic Voyage was doing an episode about it, I basically talked them into letting me do an illustration for the cover. That image is what you see above, but overachiever that I am, I was thinking a little bigger. How big? This big:
(Click here for a Wallpaper version at 1920×1080 resolution*),
This handy wallpaper-sized illustration isn’t quite as grand as I intended — the monster isn’t as elegantly bloodcurdling as I would have liked — but I did manage to successfully:
1) Make Futurama robot versions of the hosts (even though they’re just Bender & Hedonism Bot with wigs — er, metal hair… um…)
2) Make a bad pun on the guest’s name
3) Include one SV-specific in-joke (a very large, cupcake breathing-one, in fact)
4) Insert myself as a giant statue head. I have always wanted to do this in an illustration.
Here’s a couple of WIP shots:
Above are the pencils for the main figure set. I drew the image in stages on four separate A4 sheets — it was a relief when they all sort-of fit together in perspective (the cartoony quality of the image helped). You can also see corner right the smudgy bit where an other discarded version of the Chris Pager-bot was drawn, then hastily rubbed out to make room for this one. Also, the shape and course of the rope kept changing as figures moved around and were drawn in.
Here’s a little shot showing the pencils in-progress, as well as my initial rough sketch. A lot changed in-between; many poses were tightened up, character designs too, and the overall ambition of the piece was brought down to fit the deadline. Ideally I could have worked on the piece for days and days (this took me about 8 hours over two sessions).
Coloured in inkscape, of course, since I’m not very confident in colour theory and like mucking about with things until the very last minute.
V
*(I would be arsed to provide further resolutions for other aspect ratios and iPads and whatnot, but I am lazy — gimme a shout out on twitter.)
One last twitter originated sketch for now. This was also drawn weeks ago, and in less than half an hour (which pleased me no end) for fellow Futurama & Star Trek fan @aalgar, who co-hosts the excellent Sarcastic Voyage and Post Atomic Horror podcasts (more on both in a future post).
See the full post for a couple of details, and click here for a large version of the image
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Another twitter sketch request! This is something I did a few weeks ago, for @ashwinpande (who always requests “BOOBS!” so…). Coloured it up in the Gimp. Since it does feature naughty naughty breasts, am keeping the full image behind a more link, so as not to, um, corrupt people? Hell, I don’t know — if you’re here you’re probably corrupt anyway.
When in doubt, draw Star Trek. Truth be told I’m not very happy with this one. The linework is noodly (fineliner, not brush pen), the BG is horrid, and the characters aren’t very well thought out beyond the big blue guy (who actually evolved between pencil and ink stages).
Mostly, however, I’m miffed that it took me nearly four hours to churn this out.
I have no idea why I’ve never put this up here before. Did it last year when fellow Bollywood bloggers were doing a Sridevi-themed week. The hands are hideous (and they’re actually improved from a previous version — I love you vector) but I’m quite happy with it.
Last night on my twitter I sent out a tweet asking people to suggest things for me to sketch. I’ve been thinking of doing this for a while, so with the New Year as an excuse and no motivation to do, um, real work, I thought I might as well get my rusty drawings hands a bit of a work out. I got six suggestions, and though it took me until 2 am I got them all done. Here they are, in the order I was asked, and the order I drew them.
@cynduja asked for “a ghost doll” — I suppose I could have cheated and presented a blank page, then said the ghost was invisible, but this came out instead. I’m generally happy with the face and the somewhat awkward pose, but since drapery is my achilles heel I drew none on this doll when I would have quite liked to.
@jun6lee requested “Amitabh from his Mohabbatein avtaar getting his head chipped at by a woodpecker” — um, okay. My unfortunate skew while drawing is most apparent here (look at this beard) which I really need to work on, and the bird is rushed, rushed rushed, but overall I’m happy with it. Celebrity caricatures were never something I was interested in, but this at least looks vaguely like the celebrity in question.
@SudhishKamath wanted “DPs for @Doodherman and @Udderrwoman” — I did not, as initial impulses will dictate, want to make the woman with Attack boobs (or is that Attack udders). I suppose the milk-can on the guy’s head is an homage to every kid who’s repurposed household vessels as helmets.
Drawing wise this too has the dreaded skew, and I really need to learn some anatomy instead of this cut-and-paste pieces of shorthand approach that I currently have. It works, but in very, very limited ways.
@thedilettante wanted “Stylised owls!” Well, here’s One. Of all six sketches this is the one I like the most, even though I went a bit overboard and unthinking with the grey brush pen on the background. It does’t look half as bad the morning after, which is some consolation, but for a moment there I thought I’d ruined the whole damn thing. The owl itself has some personality — albeit generic — which is good.
@electrocowbellrequested “a DJ badger.” Of all of these this was the quickest sketch, and it shows. Not exactly happy with it, but it gets the job done, I guess.
@Kazarelth‘s request was the most complex: “Five polar bears playing a card game underwater wearing frilly panties and enjoying a nice glass full of oxygen.”
So I did that. I think the composition could be much tighter, and the drawing too, but I’m happy with the stylisation on the bears, and may re-do this as a proper illustration one day.
Well, that’s it. I would like to do this again, and maybe even make it a regular thing. It certainly helps to get those illustration brain cells and muscles working.
That title just sounds wrong. Using a very loose pen sketch technique which basically involves keeping a fineliner pinned to the paper and not picking it up until the sketch is more or less done, then doing similarly rough blacks with a big marker.
Purpose? To loosen up the hand, actually (and much needed with how little drawing I’ve been doing).
This one actually not the second sketch I did on the page, but the third. For some reason the second sketch is always crap. 😐
V
That title just sounds wrong. Using a very loose pen sketch technique which basically involves keeping a fineliner pinned to the paper and not picking it up until the sketch is more or less done, then doing similarly rough blacks with a big marker.
Purpose? To loosen up the hand, actually (and much needed with how little drawing I’ve been doing).
V
More catching up! I drew this on paper last September, on an A4 sheet using a light blue marker for the sketch, and then various black pens to lay down inks. The good thing about this method is that you can then scan the piece in grayscale mode and any amount of rough sketch lines magically disappear! (You can see this in the sketch version below)
Colored in the Gimp, of course, using a woefully-neglected graphics tablet. Actually there was a fourth figure in this, but it was so horribly drawn (a last minute add to fill up the page) that I decided to erase her from the colored version. This is what the original page looked like:
Another image I’d done early in the year also features our lovable interdimensional tourist, and involved food, of a sort. I just realised I hadn’t posted it here on the site:
I should really be drawing a whole lot more.
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