Steampunk Frog as a Puppet??? A Big Maybe!!! Can't Wait!!

                 A brand new character I'm fiddling around with. I was looking at frogs and also thinking of the stop motion film "Wind in the Willows" for inspiration. The species of frog I got interested in was the amazon horned frog. Below are examples of what I was looking at:


 

           I also looked at this blog with interested designs that inspired me to exaggerate the features of my frog. http://melissavart.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012-02-07T20:04:00-08:00&max-results=7&start=7&by-date=false

          So I looked at the frog and liked how he had these crazy "brows" and enlarged them. I loved his knobby hands and feet as well! So I made them small instead. Right away I knew I wanted him to wear a steam punk outfit. There was something about his figure that told me that he should be this "pompous" guy who is very stylish. I enjoy details so I decided to experiment with textures and paint over them to get a sense of how the cloth was laying over the form of the character. There's more work to be done for folds of the cloth and more information in various other parts of the outfit like the boots, leather straps around his wrists, and his white collar. So far this has been great practice and a lot of fun to work on!

         I like this character design enough that I want to make a puppet out of him. That would make a fun trip to the fabric store! Just thinking about it makes me excited!

A Fun Kid's Toothpaste!

            A quick update on my T-Rex toothpaste character! So below is what I have so far. I've decided that I will go into Lightwave and model a bottle. I will then throw the design over top of it and position my light and camera. I think this route will be better so that I have an even lighting source instead of trying to individually add a gradient mesh to each and every letter. I didn't complete the effect because of this new idea. As you can see, the mesh isn't looking that successful. However, I was pleased with how the mesh on the bottle (minus the letters) turned out. Anywho, I feel confident that this new solution will turn out much better!

A Cute T-Rex Brushing his Teeth!

        Hey artist, animators, bloggers, and everyone! So I've been digitally painting more and even came up with two new characters! I had a colleague/friend comment on how much better I've been improving with painting. So, that made me feel really good and more inspired to keep at it! I had tons of fun playing around with different colors to paint the silky terrier's hair with! His back is just a bunch of different assorted blues and a tad of gray.

       Steampunk is one of my favorite genres! With the heron character below, I got an interesting idea to make the heron mechanical and mix some of the natural elements (feathers) to contrast against the hard, smooth metal. I was inspired off of a book of sculpture artists using the steampunk, old, grungy, industrial, worn theme. It was an awesome book to flip through! So I picked elements I liked and put my own spin on them while I was looking at herons.

 

           I've been fiddling around for the past few days with a cute little T-Rex dinosaur character. As you can see he is brushing his fangs. This is because I'm testing out my illustrating abilities on branding products. This one in particular will obviously be for toothpaste, but aimed at children. However, this isn't for a client, but just for fun. I wanted to try something new and see where it goes. I'm still looking at my brushes and seeing what else I can do to add just a little bit of texture to his skin since I already have texture going on with his nails as well with his mouth area.

Marionette Making the New year!!

Hey artists!! Hello everyone!! It's been a long time since my last post in December 2011!! Wow!! Well I suppose I should update you on past drawings. I think I'll keep that turkey as is since I've began new work on a marionette to start off the New Year :)! I started it last week. Anywho, I have been drawing through January. So I'll post something more substantial soon of what I've been up to. I think I'll revist the Lulu Marie Antionette and repost that when I'm done with it. I hope everyone has had a great new year to begin with and had a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Anyway, for today's new post I'd like to share a couple of in progress photos of my dog marionette puppet. It's a puppet of one of my chihuahua's, Glory. So far I'm killing two birds with one stone by working on both the head and body of the puppet(not at the same time though)

 

How the body started out.

The body getting more shape.

The head after sanding. Then I added quick marks of where the eyes, nose, and mouth will go.