Character Central

Na-Na-na-na-na...batman.

2010-11-22T21:21:00.000+13:00

Been loooooooooooong time since posted. Hope everyone all goody.
JC

Work doodles

2010-09-27T20:18:00.000+13:00

These are some doodles that I have been doing during my breaks at work. Tools used are red and blue biro and a strong cup of coffee.

7.1 earth shaker

2010-09-06T20:18:00.000+12:00

At around 4:35am early saturday morning a 7.1 magnitude earth-quake hit Christchurch. It was by far the worst earth quake I've been in. The amazing thing is that no one was killed.
Poor mum and dad had come up to stay with us for dad's birthday.
At the moment we're still in civil defense mode, with many many aftershocks. There's a real issue of more damage to buildings, people's homes. Also with water contamination. It's gonna be a huge clean up.
It's times like these that your so thank-ful for loved ones, friends and the blessing of everyone been safe.

Peter Jackson caricatures

2010-08-28T12:10:00.000+12:00

This is a pen sketch I did quite some years ago. Found it the other day and thought I'd post it online. I cringe when I look at his feet but oh well.... always a WIP, always learning.

I'm still happy with the shading and hatching.

This one I did up last year. I know at the time I was aiming for a clean feel to it. Which I did find challenging because whatever lines you choose to leave out you hope you can still capture the look of the person.

Done in P/shop

Favourite books

2010-08-16T21:17:00.000+12:00

I've had these books for years... like when I was 5. I use them quite often as they are a great source of inspiration and the actual artwork is amazing. It still amazes me the simplicity of the images but yet what seasoned artist's they were (are) with the technicality and finish.

Fav disney character is Goofy and I love the jungle book characters too.

JC...:)

Mr Leafy Final

2010-08-15T18:24:00.000+12:00

Here's final image done up in p/shop. Next step will be to put it on a canvas. Verse from the Good Book (Bible).

JC

Mr Leafy concept idea

2010-07-19T20:56:00.000+12:00

This is an idea for a canvas digital print that I'm working towards. I've already done monkey-man as a digital print which is cool. It's nice to have something that is tangible to see and touch.
I'm also gonna add a little message with Mr Leafy.
Will post up when he's ready to go digital canvas.

whole lotta monkey business

2010-07-11T21:29:00.000+12:00

These are some images that I've been noodling away at over the last month. The coloured versions are images I did last year and came across them only recently and thought I'd post them as well.
I've felt a bit guilty about not posting more images so I'll post a few more soon.
Peace

JC..:)

Bear deck: Skateboard design

2010-06-14T22:39:00.000+12:00

Started off by doing the little bear character. Inked up in illustrator. Tried to focus on giving the line some variation.

Felt like I needed to put the character into some type of context so hence the skateboard design.

Really enjoyed doing this.

Fonts used - biliz blur & Detective Inc

Used illustrator for inking bear, font placement and skateboard design; P/shop for colouring

Thank you card for some friends

2010-05-20T20:24:00.000+12:00

Just a fun little project lately for some friends at church. Both my wife and myself created a card each.

Fun thing I learn't was creating the shooting stars, thanks to a cool tutorial online. Check out here Shooting Star.

Have a good one

Background and colour up

2010-04-27T22:28:00.000+12:00

Used illustrator to do the background and get perspective. Also blocked in colours and hoping to create a bit more atmosphere with some more depth especially in the background.

I've so enjoyed trying to incorporate more texture through patterns into this piece.

Total time taken....on going in between life and work.

Hope to finish this soon.

Bless...JC:)

Concept ink drawing

2010-04-19T22:22:00.000+12:00

Just had to get something up on me blog. Will develop the background next...any ideas?? Finding backgrounds a challenge.
Used micron-pens .5 and 1.0 for outside.
Bless...JC :)

Going banana's

2010-03-28T17:05:00.000+13:00

I have a thing for monkey's.... I know, kinda weird aye. So I've been kinda going a little banana's lately and started to draw around this concept - one thing lead to another and voila' you have the above image.
Everyone is going banana's and yes I've been watching a little too much tv lately, especially the news which makes you go banana's.
I do like banana's though, especially on toast with butter....yum.

JC...:)

comic with friend

2010-03-14T19:15:00.000+13:00

A good friend of mine has giving me a comic draft. So I'm slowly putting together concepts for it.
It's aimed at a young audience...with the characters been somewhat a group of misfits that fit together to make up super hero's.
Going to be a great challenge. It'll be a 12 pg mini comic at this stage. Would love to get it in print too.

Sorry for the late blogging as of late - Time....arrgghhhh!!!!!

Hope all is well to everyone out in cyberspace...:) Bless JC

Wedding Caricature

2010-02-22T20:06:00.000+13:00

A wedding caricature I did just recently. Did to A4 size printed out on nice paper and framed up.

This is the first drawing I've done in the last few weeks....hard making the time. I swore to myself that I wouldn't mentioned how starved I'd be for time on a blog but it's challenging balancing life/work.

Take care and as alway's thanks for visiting.

...JC :)

BJ Builder logo

2010-02-02T18:05:00.000+13:00

A logo design I did last year for my father in law who is a builder. I initially did the blue-line sketch to try and capture the essentials of his character. I felt that it was still a little busy so I re-did the image completely. I went with this one as I felt it more bought out his happy persona' in a exaggerated way.
Did colouring and inking up in Photoshop.

Flying machina

2010-01-20T22:27:00.000+13:00

Slowly getting into creating vehicles. This is my first attempt. I roughly sketched out idea bottom right hand corner and then used illustrator to create Flying Machina. I feel Illustrator gives that crisp and precise line that I couldn't readily achieve freehand.
Overall I'm trying to get a steam punk feel to the piece.
I will be eventually adding this to the Character concepts (posted Nov 25th/2009).

Hope to colour up this soon.

:)

2010 1st doodles

2010-01-13T12:53:00.000+13:00

Did this sketch whilst on holiday. It wasn't planned in anyway...just started initially drawing the central character and everything kinda flowed from that. It's nice to have moments when you just draw unplanned.

Some more random sketches.
One on left was the result of flicking through a National geographic magazine and reading about this tribe in Africa. Kinda got the imagination running wild.
The guy on right which I've called Rabbit man is just a weird moment of drawing a pose and then putting ears and a tail on him. Kinda looks funny as a contradiction of muscle bound and cute and fluffy all in one.
Happy New year to all....thanks for visiting...JC

Merry festive season!!!

2009-12-21T19:22:00.000+13:00

Hello to everyone. Hope you's all have a awesome christmas and new year. Enjoy your holidays, time with friends and family. God bless and see ya's into the new year of 2010!!!

As always thanks for popping in and also sharing your awesome creative talents.

:) JC

Lucha rough colours

2009-12-09T18:12:00.000+13:00

Just a basic colour up at this stage. Have been meaning to post something up for ages. I've also fixed Lucha's leg as I felt it was a little to exaggerated.

Frankenstein & Mad scientists

2009-11-29T11:31:00.000+13:00

I'd love to colour this up one day. Frankey is yet to be refined and inked.

I'd imagined this mad scientist with a small army of crazy bots at his service.

I inked up scientist using micro - thicker pen for outside and smaller for interior's. Quite happy with the result.

Happy thanks-giving :) and how many weeks to go till chrissy!!!! Yay for holidays.

Character concepts

2009-11-25T21:22:00.000+13:00

I just had to get myself to draw this last week and I'm kickin' around a comic idea. Nuttin' out idea's and trying to tie myself down to just one particular idea has been challenging.

For the above I just started drawing the octopus and the deep sea diver came next.

These two guy's are going to fit in somewhere with the above characters....?? I'm kinda envisioning a steam punk feel. I love steam punk. Mike Mignola has some lovely references in his hellboy series which are visually lovely.

I'm roughly working on a back-ground element for these two guy's and hope to post it up in next few days.

Bye for now and thanks for visiting.

Chris Martin caricature

2009-11-18T20:20:00.001+13:00

Taken from inspirational song "lovers in Japan", Coldplay. Went to concert earlier this year, awesome.

Tools used...inked and coloured in illustrator CS4 - gradient done in P/shop.

Facebook Avatar

2009-11-04T16:03:00.000+13:00

Just a fun image I did for my facebook pic. I was inspired by illustrator Chipwass, especially his colour schemes. Slapped in a little texture and hey presto'.
Inked up in Illustrator and coloured in Photoshop.

Batman background

2009-11-02T14:33:00.000+13:00

Here's background image - done in illustrator.

Now to think up some colours for it.

It's based on 1 pt perspective...which I did firstly on tracing paper. Then scanned up and went over in illustrator.

Colour version coming sooney!!!

Thanks for visiting and as always....any thoughts, dreams, comments most welcome.

Batman vs Luchadore

2009-10-29T11:35:00.000+13:00

Loving those luchadore's.... I'm a fan of Nacho Libre so it felt fitting to slip him in here.

I'll need to fix up that leg coming forward on Lucha (knee a little flat).

I'm going to colour up Lucha and then start work on the background... I'll try this in Illustrator.

Any thoughts, tips are most welcome!!!

Bye for now :)

Batman fanart

2009-10-28T13:12:00.000+13:00

One of my favourite classic super-hero's. I'm going to have him fighting someone..will post that in day or two.
Hope to also have a background environment!!!

Cartoon Animation stills

2009-10-21T15:39:00.001+13:00

As promised in an earlier post here are some image stills from a recent job I had.
The hero dog above was a lot of fun and the challenge was to create a dynamic look within the constraints of the brief.

One of those constraints was that the animation was to be in 2-D (either front or side-on). So I had to make sure that the pose's were readable and easy for the animator to articulate.

Here's the rest of the animals for which was the interior shot. It was challenging also to find a way to create a visual interest between all the characters so that they could be read easily as the camera moved past them. In the final animation the mouse was moved from the trap as it wasn't seen as appropriate.

Exterior shot of clinic. Also side profile of characters.

I really enjoyed doing the exterior as it's something I haven't done alot of within illustrator.

Major reason for using illustrator was that once images were complete I could hand over the files and not have to worry about resolution...so yay for illustrator.

Lobster Johnson fanart: Feathering technique

2009-10-14T11:23:00.000+13:00

Just started to colour-up this image. I've tried another technique which I like the look of. It's selecting the area's to shade and then feathering. This gives the image a much softer look. I initially had the outlines all in black (to harsh), so I coloured them respectively to the subject.

Definitely stoked with outlook so far.

I learn't this technique from Shane Lewis. Check out his tutorial. His blog is definitely worth a visit - he's got some funny-as pics!!!

Will post finished image later.

Bye for now and any thoughts on your colouring process would be very welcome.

Happy 70th Super Ma!!!

2009-10-10T12:54:00.001+13:00

Caricature of my wife's mum.
Big 70th birthday coming up so it seemed doing the super hero costume was called for.
I've been studying a digital artist called Jackademus. What I like about his style that I tried to incorporate here was the shading. He's an awesome artist, go check him out here.

Jack and the Beanstalk character concept

2009-10-06T14:27:00.001+13:00

Here's my interpretation of Jack. Thinking that I might rip up the trousers a little to give him that much needed destitute look. Go destitute!!!

I'm working towards submitting 5-6 full colour pages to some publishers. So I thought I'd try Jack and the Beanstalk as a story - I mean how cool would it be to climb up into the clouds on a beanstalk.

Just some doodles at this stage, trying to get a feel of how he would move, some expressions, etc. I really love this stage of the concept as you start to see the character emerge.

Rat me out poser

2009-10-02T14:19:00.002+13:00

Some Random remy-esque sketches after watching Ratatouille, one of my favourite Pixar films. Great thing with DVD is been able to slow down and track the movements of the characters for posing. You really get to see how characters move effectively.
Go on - be a poser!!!
One great resource I've found for posing characters has been Preston Blair. Just type in the name on google and you'll find heaps of great tips and techniques. He also bought out a book called Cartoon Animation which might be at your local library or alternatively there's lots of pages floating out there in web-land. One such place is here (ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive). It's a great resource for all sorts of stuff.

This was the result of me playing around with Remy cooking. The shirt kinda came out of watching spiderman 3 the other night...very random but there you go.
Tools used were 3b, hb pencils...little touch-up in photoshop.

Children's book illustration

2009-09-30T14:02:00.002+13:00

This is from a submission I did awhile back for a publishing company here in New Zealand.

I've since been developing more concepts aimed at the children's market.

I enjoyed doing the model sheet (far right image) as it helps keep a consistency with the character.

Tools used were Photoshop CS3.

Any thoughts or comments are most welcome!!

Vector cartoon: Inking Control

2009-09-25T13:19:00.001+12:00

Love using illustrator CS for the inking stage. Illustrator gives you greater control for adjusting thickness of line and also maintaining the stroke weight through out the image.

For the little alien dude I mostly used 1 pt stroke and to give the image a bit of punch I used a thick 8 pt stroke for the exterior outline.

I have often used Illustrator to do up the inking stage and then export or save out to Photoshop where I can then colour up to my little heart's content. It can be labour intensive using illustrator but the pay-off is having the yummy crisp even stroke.

For a further look into vector inking check out this tutorial From Sketch to Vector Illustration.

Cartoon Animation

2009-09-21T14:46:00.000+12:00

A fun recent collaboration with Raymond at Red 5. Raymond did all the animated effects (Please check out his site) he has some awesome stuff.

I supplied all the digital artwork (Illustrator files).

For me it was a great learning curve coming up with storyboards and the refining process to get the characters looking just right.

There will be a future post in which I'll show images used for the animation and some things I learned along the way.

Photoshop Caricature

2009-09-17T15:59:00.000+12:00

This is my brother-Law Mark.

Always the challenge to try and capture the spirit of your subject and not just rely on drawing a big head little body.

Tools used were my brain (ouch), a few A4 sheets and Photoshop CS3.

I'm currently using a technique that works well with a optical mouse....yes I'm one of those people. I lay down flats (a comic technique) then shade in again over that base flat colour.

In the Forest: exercise of Composition

2009-09-10T11:09:00.000+12:00

This is a image I did awhile ago for my lovely wife.

It was a great exercise to learn how to best use the background & foreground elements to produce a pleasing composition.

I used the left top tree and bottom right area to frame the characters.

Also using the path from the castle to flow downwards helps to draw attention to the main characters.

First Post: Welcome!!

2009-09-04T14:59:00.000+12:00

Hello and welcome to my first post.

Who am I about and what do I want? Well -

I'm a freelance illustrator hoping to better myself everyday in my craft.

My hope is that this blog will become a place to grow and connect with others whom are passionate for character illustrations.

The above image is a submission I did for a t/shirt competition recently.

Though I wasn't successful, I really loved coming up with the idea.