Simplified

Tried out a different style and I ended up enjoying it so much I made two pieces in one day. 

I took some inspiration from My Life as a Teenage Robot, Olly Moss' recent poster designs, and Mary Blair's work. Only after creating my first one did I notice a similarity in style to Samurai Jack...maybe it's because I watched an episode last week. So I also looked at some Samurai Jack backgrounds.

I wanted to play around with very basic shapes, line, and colour and create a setting with a fitting atmosphere.

What started out as a landscape study of mountains quickly evolved into a sci-fi setting with futuristic pyramid structures. I couldn't contain my imagination, it went wild creating these. I even concocted stories behind them as I worked on it.

After finishing the first one I wanted to create another and work in a vertical format and take a more colourful route. This is when I looked at some scenes in Samurai Jack and I noticed several backgrounds had patterns of basic shapes in them (arcs, circles, semi-circles, rounded rectangles, etc.) that either served as texture, something for the viewer's imagination to make sense of, or sometimes for the sake of creating an interesting design and composition. I wanted to incorporate those techniques in creating this piece.

I was thinking of a miniature society with organic-like buildings on the very edge of a pillar. I moved away from a pillar and decided on a cliff instead, it also made much more sense.

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I am really enjoying this style since it's so heavily design focused. It's also just so much fun to do!

I am itching to create more! I'll definitely expand to slightly more complex shapes as I go along.

Doodle

Playing around with profile silhouettes. Just a little appetizer for a bigger post this week on something a little different than usual...

Hear Me Roar

So I jumped onto the Game of Thrones bandwagon and liked every minute of it. I really love the characters, character development, the awesome acting (especially from the younger actors! Carl from The Walking Dead please take notes), the costume design, and especially the story lines and the risks it takes. 

There are still stuff I don't like, mostly not knowing what the limits to the magical elements are in the fiction since it is very minimal. So GRRM could at any time pull off a deus ex machina and the audience is just supposed to accept it. There's a certain shadow-y thing at one part that does this and I disliked that. 

Anyway, I drew Tywin Lannister a few days ago and decided to scan and colour him as well. I was sad that I drew it on a separate piece of paper instead of in my sketchbook. Here is the final:

That lion in the background was difficult to place causing too many tangents but I finally found a sweet spot after moving it around for more than 5 minutes.

Here's the drawing I did, there were also a bunch of other doodles on the page. I drew him because I found the facial features of the actor, Charles Dance, rather interesting and I wanted to try to create a caricature. Also, Tywin is one of my favourite characters since he treats Joffrey with some disdain. I will be sad if he happens to die later on.

I want to read the books now...