Summer's here for most of the college going population and that means caricature artists are in demand! Summer doesn't really mean that, but it's relevant to my post. Anyway, craigslist frequently throws up special events that are in need of an artist for one day to do caricatures. Up until now I've only done a handful of distorted celebrities and I would like to have a wealth of them under my belt to get some work.

I'm doing 2-3 of these a day and trying to keep in mind the circumstances that a normal caricature artist would have. Fast and loose is the name of the game, with each of these taking 20-25 minutes. For now I'm using Prismacolor markers in 30% grey for blocking and black for a final pass. I'm leaving the names out so you can guess who they are, or you can be a filthy cheat and read the comments section ;).

LOST Caricature

This is a caricature of Daniel Faraday from LOST (who I sincerely hope the writers didn't kill off last week). Faraday is a physicist who comes to Magic Island to study its unique properties and, thanks to some time-traveling, tries to alter the course of history to prevent the crash of Oceanic 815. Yes, now I'll stop talking about the show because I sense the non-fans are annoyed.

The actor Jeremy Davies has a very unique face and definitely contorts it in amusing ways when he's thinking or perplexed. This face in particular is my favorite, the "oh crap this island is going to kill us all" look. Check out the images below to get an idea of what his character looks like and compare to the drawing. That's what I've been doing for most of yesterday, haha.

Haha!

http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/52741?page=1



Hey there, sports fans! I have admired the t-shirt site Design By Humans for some time and I finally got around to a design that I thought would fit in with their current line. The shirts are chosen daily so it would please me and be a big help if you could vote on it.

Also, my fellow illustrator Andrea knocked it out of the park with her latest shirt design for Threadless. Good karma abounds for those who go to that site and vote right now!

The Real Catwoman

Special post today! Today (actually, April 8th) is my girlfriend Jen's b-day. She's a real trooper in that she's working hard on her animation projects on her birthday. I'm getting into caricatures so I thought I would start with my favorite person....Jen! The whole process is really fun for me; I start with reference sketches of the subject until I can draw the person easily without resorting to copying a photograph. Then I start to notice parts of the person I like and that have great design potential. Finally I choose a pose and push those features to make it a solid design. This isn't nearly finished yet, but I like the drawing and hope to polish it soon. Jen, I hope you like this! <3.

Robo-Scare-Crow

A robot scarecrow! In my mind he would probably run on corn ethanol because it's right there on the farm. Ideally, he should run on electric because most farmers are already hurting the environment with pesticides such as DDT. And I've been thinking about this too much, haha.

I've had this guy in mind for a while, I just had to get off my duff and flesh him out (notice the irony?). This is the first sketch, which I will then blow up about 150% to get a nicer, more detailed final drawing. Then I'll color it and submit it to either Threadless or Design By Humans. I'm leaning towards Design by Humans because they favor illustrations that take up the entire canvas that is the shirt. As always, input is desired! Ciao.

Heeeeere we go, the final drawings for a proposed children's book. The characters I did a couple weeks back are the cast. So, this is a game I played back in the day in P.E. Centipede was a game that improved on the premise of "Tag" by making the "it" person couple with another person when he tagged them. Then a chain would begin that wouldn't end until time was called.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with these five. I think the contrast will be more apparent when I add color, as the texture of the graphite became distracting (especially on the darker pieces). Body language and characters were the two most important things to me, so I really spent my time doing rough sketches and taking photographs. I didn't want the background kids to be no-faces, so I spent a little time developing each of them. Which is good in my case since a couple panels have the background guys taking the spotlight. I'm really happy with the depth and variety of images. You'll be seeing color soon!

I haven't done a character sheet in a while. I don't have an animation background, but I am interested in continuity and fluidity of design. That's why I devour animation model sheets (not literally, most of them are circa 1940s and are probably worth a mint) ,for their display of characters from all angles and expressions. These are the featured characters in my submission for Teatrio this year. I'm a little behind, but not doomed yet!

I sketched these guys one time and got too uptight about it, resulting in stiff drawings. So I went back, looked through animation books, observed my girlfriend Jen kicking ass at drawing characters at lightspeed for her animation class, and did some life drawing. Once I was relaxed and nailed how the characters were constructed, I gave the finals a shot again and they flowed. Nice how prep work accomplishes that.

P.S.- to my followers, I can not name these people if my life depended on it. Save me. Some people have the gift, but I've been procrastinating in that one area. So far they are Coach, Sporty Girl, and Larvae Boy. XD