sketchbookfactory

I have been teaching myself to use Illustrator, Painter, and have been brushing up my Photoshop skillz. Here are some characters I’ve made recently.

“Rapacious” the evil bunny. This was one of the first things I made in illustrator. I found a tutorial on how to make a cute pink bunny, and changed it up a bit. Unlike most of my work (which I usually draw by hand, then scan and manipulate digitally) I made this completely in Illustrator by drawing shapes and connecting them. I have since discovered that this is a very slow way to work.

Here is another Illustrator exercise. I found tutorial online for how to make a cartoony pirate guy, and basically followed those instructions to make “Ambrosia” a frankenstein-like character from one of my plays. Then I made the background in Photoshop. Ambrosia is crazy for sausages and diet Coke, and has a leg made of a vacuum.

This is Katrina, a character from some plays I wrote called The Phoenix 3.0 Trilogy. She’s a bad-ass chick that lives in a post-Apocalyptic world with her boyfriend ZJ. Her outfit is pretty steampunk inspired because I’m kind of into that these days. I drew this original sketch on paper, scanned, traced, and colored in Illustrator. 

Here is a zombie that eventually became the central figure of the Monsters, Mutants, and Other Tales of Love poster. I drew this on paper, then scanned and traced in Illustrator using a wacom tablet, and then colored in Illustrator. This took FOREVER because I didn’t know what I was doing and just sort of fumbled through it. I am still not exactly sure how I did it.

This is ZJ and Katrina, star-crossed lovers from the post-apocalypse. For this one I did the original sketch by hand, then scanned into Illustrator and colored using the Live Trace and Live Paint tools. These a great tools for doing a quick and dirty color illustration.

Here is ZJ, our favorite post-apocalyptic doofus. I drew this on paper, then scanned into Illustrator where I used the live trace and live paint tools for the base colors. Then I took it into Corel Painter and added some more shadows and highlights.