Practicing Caricatures and Misc Char Designs 3

          So I was looking at a caricatures board on Pinterest (I'm using that now), and decided I wanted to try my hand at more the extreme style of caricaturing like what is seen in political cartoons typically. The first person I decided to caricature was Josh Hutcherson.

          Also here is a 3rd sheet of miscellaneous character designs which are colored pics from my sketch.

Junkyard Crew and September Sketchbook Pages

          Some designs I did last year, I based off of this picture of shattered windows. The negative space in each window frame looked like a silhouette for a character. So I traced those silhouettes on to moleskin notebook paper and created a design next to them that fit the silhouette. The first one I could see a character in was the 2nd panel on the right window. 

          Using abstract shapes to come up with character, creature or machinery designs is a technique that I commonly use to  avoid "artist block," to warm up, and just as another avenue to gather inspiration. I've heard of one artist (totally blanking on his name) that will throw or slap down a wet sponge or paintbrush on a tan canvas, then use whatever random shape the splat is as a silhouette for his creature and mechanical designs. Another artist I like, Monty Oum from Rooster Teeth, did something similar to create the map for the world that his show RWBY takes place in. He went to a diner, grabbed a napkin, squirted ketchup and mustard in it, crumpled it up, and then unfolded the whole napkin. The stains on the napkin represented the continents and of course the negative space was the water surrounding them.

          Below are the results of my shattered window silhouette designs and below those are my sketchbook pages for September.

Finished

Update on Digipaintings

Update on where I am with a couple paintings I posted much earlier.

Starting to turnaround Charlie.

Choco Factory Characters

          In my Sophomore year at CCA, I was in character design class taught by my now mentor, Ed Bell. The final project for that class was to take characters from a classic book, revamp them, but stay true to the essential story and personalities of the characters. I chose to design Willy Wonka, Charlie, Grandpa Joe and Mike TV. Now, 3 years later, I have redesigned  two of those characters: Charlie and Mike TV.

     The first two pics are the original, first attempts and the bottom one has the remodeled versions:

          I am really proud of how these two turned out. I would say that the Preston Blair book and my Drawing for Animators professor, Ed Gutierrez were the ones that helped me most in reaching this new level of draftsmanship.

Charlie and Rough sketches

          Nearly done with the Charlie painting below. It didn't turn out the way I originally imagined, but I actually like this one better. However, I would like to spend some more time drawing him before I paint him again. I may even redo this piece from scratch when I feel more confident in drawing him and keeping him on model.

Here are some renders(partially) of some rough sketches I did.

Aug & Sept Sketchbook pages and Progress Pics

Below are some mouth studies for my design of Michael Jones from Achievement Hunter. I am using this model to replace the stand-in model for the dialogue animation I did in Toon Boom. You can find that dialogue piece here: Michael Dialogue Piece

And here are a couple of progress shots.