For starters, this was my first venture into doing anything in the actual 3 dimensional realm. Even though the website (cubeecraft.com) provided quite a few excellent examples, the way I ended up getting my bearing for this was by looking at character skins for the game “The Sims.” Looking at how some of the characters were constructed, I was able to use that as a reference on how all the detail I was going to add to the template would work.
When it came to ideas for the toy, I was so excited that I started jotting them down during the lecture in which we were given the assignment. Of course, a lot of the standard pop culture references came to mind such as Darth Vader or even Takamura from the anime Hajime No Ippo. But, I wanted to do something that nobody would ever think of. So, I decided to go the Sylvester route and do an actual person. That person was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, more commonly known as Lenin. I know questions would arise as to why I would choose Lenin of all people, and the answer to that is simple. Put bluntly, I’ve read a lot of work and became a fan of his writings on revolutionary theory, anti-racism, anti-sexism and his statements on equality for all people. Especially when I learned that during his era, the USSR had the greatest record for women’s and workers’ rights in the entire world. Of course I could have done a realistic interpretation, but due to my somewhat disturbing love of anime, I decided to design his paper avatar chibi style.
The work with the colors came from a painting of Lenin by Alexej Konstantinovich Nesterenko. What attracted me to this painting in particular was the subtle contrast between the tones. Although the color palette was warm, it allowed me to get a start on what colors to use. Of course, with the colors being so warm, I had to turn up the saturation levels and use the brightest colors in Nesterenko’s palette in order to make the toy more cartoonish. I did this for every part of the piece, from his tie to his eyes. Now, in order to do such deep effects, I had to change the value on certain details. Those details were his eyes and his hair mostly. This allowed for the illusion of depth to be more apparent, and to allow for the toy’s details to not be too flat.
With the colors armed and ready, I was set to begin the drawing. After I filled in the color for his head, I began drawing Lenin’s eyes. To give them life, I utilized a lot of airbrushing and blur effects to eliminate the sharpness of the lines from the shape fills I had to do. From there, I drew his mouth. Not too difficult, considering a simple triangle was all that was necessary. Going back onto depth, you will notice that on the top of his head that there are airbrushed glare marks. Considering he was bald on the top, I figure that the extra detail there would keep it from being too bland. After drawing the hair with a mixture of fills, blurs, airbrushing, burning and line value changing and warping, I drew his ears. In order to do this, I created an oval selection. I then traced the oval selection with the paint brush tool, moved the selection over and deleted the fine lines. The crescent shaping allowed to show some depth, which ended up being a total surprise to me. In further ventures in which I have to do cartooning, I will definitely make use of this “accident.” For his suit, I used similar techniques as previously listed.
Coming up with a three dimensional piece was definitely a challenge, but it allowed me to experiment with a form of depth and color work that will prove beneficial to me in my future works. The handling of perspective and detail, in color and in drawing, showed me a lot of new ways to use the techniques I have picked up over the years. By far, I’d have to say this was one of the most fun projects I’ve done on Photoshop to date, despite its simplicity.
No comments:
Post a Comment