My Digital Media Project - What I've Been Up To

Well, first of all, I've been doing sketches of the Paladin character. I decided to use a heavier, rounder basis for the character, reminiscent of Amethyst from Steven Universe. As she is based around the Paladin archetype, her signature weapon could, logically, only be a sword or a shield. I decided on the latter, to make it more distinct.

[Amethyst, from Steven Universe, for reference]

After marathoning Sailor Moon a little more than might be recommended, I thought of possibly having the paladin character being a transforming hero, in the same vein. I sketched this costume idea before I came to the conclusion that the Sailor Moon inspired might be a little too much. However, I do like some of the armour pieces, inspired by a piece of art from the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena. I also decided that I liked the idea of having a ludicrously large shield, with handles on the back so that the character can grab one handle and swing the shield as a weapon.

This led to me doing several designs of the shield. I briefly tried a few designs for a smaller shield design, but I found them less satisfying, and less striking, than the idea of the character swinging a shield around that was as large as her. However, the original design for the large shield, as you can probably tell, would be hellish to draw consistently, hence the simplified version beside it.

I also began to sketch the turnarounds I would use on Donkeyskin's character sheet, but I quickly remembered why I do not usually use my higher quality pens. My preferred drawing pads have very absorbant paper, and, when using a higher quality pen, it soaks up the ink in the line and makes the drawing blurry. This annoys me to no end. I also realised when I was inking that I found the drawing generally unsatisfying, it didn't have any energy, and Donkeyskin was starting to look an odd shape.

While watching some students from another course (Theatre, I presume, due to the fact that they were all doing speeches from plays (and one made a terrifying Hamlet)), I sketched and inked most of Donkeyskin's final illustration. It is of the climactic reveal, when Donkeyskin removes her fur coat to reveal the gown made of moonbeams, hidden underneath.

I based the frame around the drawing, and Donkeyskin's pose, on the art nouveau style, though simplified, in the case of the frame. I feel as though the prince and his servant look slightly out of place, timeline-wise, but I don't doubt that this is something that shouldn't be terribly hard to fix, should it bother me enough to do so. I've still not decided on what is going to fill the top right corner, probably more astonished courtiers or something similar. I outlined a box at the bottom of the linework, in which I intend to briefly describe what is drawn in the picture, a practice which I have observed to be common in Fairytale illustrations.

Lastly, I "attended" a livestream by a pair of fandom artists I admire. It was greatly informative, and I asked a great deal of questions about their workflows, which taught me some interesting tricks for digital colouring in Photoshop.