Friend Caricatures

Sorry I did not upload in over a week, here are some caricatures...

They are all my friends, good ones I may add, and I will continue to make more so if you are a friend of mine and want a caricature email me, facebook me or make a note in the blog!  I am trying to understand facial features to a finer degree and also caricature.  I am having lots of fun drawing friends and perhaps soon I will caricature celebrities that I enjoy.

Take care! Oh and I will upload the figure drawings this Friday! Promise!!!

Character Design Part Two

Hello Everyone.  So here is my character design assignment from Stephen Silver's class for this week.

The first one was to make a realistic portrait of a man with a bola hat and then to draw three caricatures of the same man, but from memory.  I enjoyed doing from memory because it alleviates the stress of making it look exactly like the subject and you focus more on the variety of head shapes and the exaggeration of facial features.  I also did a variety of caricatures of my friends so I will post that shortly, but this exercise allowed me to experiment with the art of caricature.

After that assignment and drawing caricatures of friends, I did several versions of the character I created last week of Abelina Baxter and her alter ego Wren Blackburn.  I colored them to give me a future idea of how I will color the final product of the character in the end.

Then finally, I chose 3 heads that I liked from each row and made a body for them.  They show the front and profile of the figure and I did this for both Wren and Abelina.

So there you have it.  I will post some pictures soon of caricatures of my friends. Also I did not forget about the figure drawings, I apologize for not having those up last week, but they will be up sometime this week.

Stephen Silver's Character Design Class

Currently, I am enrolled in two online courses. One is Maya Basics offered by Animation Mentor and the other is Character Design taught by Stephen Silver, the class is on a site called schoolism, thank you Jose Antonio Prats for the website!  

Silver's website...

SilverToons

Silver is a fantastic cartoonist/illustrator who has designed characters for Kim Possible, Danny Phantom and other cartoons that you may have seen on Nickelodeon or Disney.  He is a great instructor and I am learning quite a bit from his class.

This first assignment was to design an eccentric fat British entrepreneur named Walter Chipwitther. Before starting the assignment, I viewed several influences of Silver's such as Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Paul Coker, Don Flowers and most importantly Ronald Searle.  Ronald Searle is a hilarious cartoonist and I was very inspired after viewing his work.

After looking at numerous artists I began drawing several fat guy faces that had a monocle and a bow tie, because Walter Chipwitther had both of these accessories.  Here are a couple of fat faces...

This one was actually a caricature I did before the group of fat faces, could you guess who it is?  I would be impressed if you got it right

This one was a really fun doodle

Eventually, I made the face of the man in the top left corner in the final below and thought it was a good fit.  I drew a body of his with pants and no pants. Oh yeah and another description was that he had to be wearing a smoking jacket.

Silver gave me a critique and drew on a layer on top of my drawing showing the construction that was missing in the body and arms/hands.  

His corrections make my drawing more alive and have more personality, it was really impressive watching him draw my character in a matter of minutes.

After that week, Silver assigned us to do silhouettes of a character that is based on the story Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  (Walter White is a good example)

Anyways, I wanted to draw a female character for this project because I do not draw enough characters that are women.  I decided to create a nerdy scientists that transforms into a barbaric woman.  Here is the description....

After writing the examples I got lots of references for the character.  I did this for Walter Chipwitther as well.  This trick is great to get a idea of the outfit and personality for the character.

After I got references, I went outside and drew silhouettes of people in the park and the train.  I also went to Dare 2 Draw located at the Society of Illustrators and drew the silhouette of a woman warrior, which was perfect for my character Wren Blackburn.

Silver also commented on the faces that the noses and lips could be brought out more to exaggerate the person's unique appearance.

Finally, I did the silhouettes of my character here they are!!!

Silver then looked at them and liked 2 of the skinny girls he circled them in one of the examples below...

Silver suggested 3 of the Wren Blackburns. His advice of the characters was to simplify the shapes and to make sure the gesture matches the personality of the character.

At the end of this week, my new assignment is to draw one final of Baxter and another final of Blackburn.  These drawings are not silhouettes and are going to be like the 1st assignment.  Silhouettes were tricky for me, but they do help in creating a character that is simplified and lively.  I will experiment with silhouettes more this week in creating my finals.  

We were also assigned a caricature assignment for this week so I will post this project by the end of this week.  In the meantime, any feedback on any of my work especially assignment two would be greatly appreciated.  I am always interested in what people have to say about my work because it helps me grow as an artist.

Thanks for stopping by and check back Thursday for some new figure drawings!