Lappish Witch

Some weeks ago I decided to take part in the Character Design Challenge on facebook. It's just a game: an excuse to draw something not related to my job and it works this way: they give a theme and you have to draw a character according to that theme and post it on their page. It's so incredibly nice to look at how many different ways a theme can be interpreted.

This month theme is Wizards and Witches and this is my entry:

If you want to take part  in the Character Design Challenge you are welcome: this is the official page this one.

Lemurs

I know, I know... I've been not posting for a long while, but lately I'm having a very very busy time. I hope I'll update you soon with some news, in the meanwhile here there is a sketch made in bic pen, brush-tip pen and automatic-pencil.

Greyscale VS Full Colour

Some days ago I was practicing with digital colour, so I tryed some new tecnics: I worked on this portrait in greyscale and then added the colours. I'm not still completely satisfied with the final results but it's a first attempt, so I supposte it's ok.
By the way, which one do you prefer? The Grayscale or the Full Colour version?

Gun WIP

And there we are with the step by step process for the Girl with a Gun I posted some days ago.
 

1) as usual the start point is the pencil drawing on common print paper.

2) Cleaning up the illustration: after I scanned it and opened the file with adobe photoshop I start ereasing all the pencil line in excess and all the grey shadows. I'm afraid I forgot to take a screenshot of the final result after the clean up, but you should easily imagine it, it's like the image above but more tidy ;)

3) The flat colour part. It's when I choose what palette I'll use to create the atmosphere I had in my mind while I was designing. I simply fill up the different areas with a colour shade that will be a sort of halfway between the darkest colour I'll use for the shades and the lighter colour I'll use for the birght points.

4) Colouring the lineart. I simply change the colour of the whole lineart making it more similar to the base colour of the area. It's a little detail but the image looks quite different.

5) Volumes time: with a soft brush I try to armonize the lineart with the base flat colour and, while doing it, I try to make the image a bit more tridimensional casting shadows according to the volumes as the figure was under a neutral light source.

6) Shadows. I simply paint the shadows according to the lightsource I chose. I usually paint the shadow with a colour (dark green-brown in this case) to suggest the idea of the kind of light is shining in the picture. After I painted the shadows I set the layer on 'multiply' and low the opacity.

7) Light. Now it's time to add some light spots, I go on using the soft brush and paint with a bright colour the spots where the light goes, I try to be consistent with the different materials (i.e. the light has a different effect on humas skin than on the fabric) but I don't always suceed.

8) Final atmosphere. That's the final part of my work: I simply add some detalis like the wallpaper and give a stronger light.

I hope you enjoyed the work in progess process :)

Disclaimer: I summarised a lot, but I usually work the steps 5, 6 and 7 on an area at time, starting a new area once the previous one is complete but it was simpler to explain this way.

Gun colour

This is the final result, in the next days I'll post the wip :)

Gun

Working on a new illustration which I will share the work in progress of.
This is the first step: pencil on common paper.

Two external inspirations this time: I took the ideas of hat and hairdressing here : https://it.pinterest.com/pin/505880970619728007/ while the gun looks a bit like the wonderful steampunk gun Luca made for me some yeras ago.

Some sketches again

And here there are some sketches again. Characters will come soon, very soon, and pieces of information will come with them, but now it's still time for some background preparatory work.

Hut -sketch

Hi there!
It's a very hard working time here at Fedzeppelin's place, I and Sara are working on a new steampunk project. You'll have some detalils and some new characters soon but in the meanwhile here there is a sketch for one of the backgrounds.
I hope you enjoy.

Page 27 WIP 2: pencil

Very busy period at Fedzeppelin's place. I've just the time to drop here the second part of the WIP.
As you can see, something has changed from the layout page and I can assure you: it always happens.
Hope you enjoy.

Page 27 WIP: layout

Here I go again, after a very long time.
I'm sorry but it took a while to recover and I've got a bit of flu still. Anyway here I am back to work and to this blog. I'll update you all about what happened in France, as soon as I have some proper news to share, in the meanwhile I'm back to the steampunk project. I've to draw a couple of pages, so I thought it would be nice to show the whole creative process.
Are you ready?
Very well: here there is Page 27 Layout.

The layout is the first step a drawer makes when he (or she) have to project a page.

Of course, before there is a script: a page where the author writes what will happen in every panel of the page. Sara wrote the script for me with all the datas and reccommendations and dialogues, but I'll not share it because it's in Italian (and somehow in a sort of 'code language') and it would take a long time to translate it.

Anyway here there is the layout. You can see that at this point the draw is not so accurate, somewhere not even proper, that's because it's a sort of quick sketch of the page, it's useful to see how the page will look like at the end of the work, and to decide how the areas will be filled.