My Digital Media Project - Brief 2 Prototype

Brief 2 was the illustration for Donkeyskin, which I posted briefly about before.

Firstly, starting with the scanned image, I did the obvious first step. Flat colours. After that, I added textures to the walls and pillars, to make them look more like stone or marble.

With those parts done, I considered what I wanted to do for the shading. I decided to shade all in shades of brown, to help keep the colours warm, which I hoped would make the dress stand out more, as it's a cooler colour than the rest of the room. To shade I created a layer on top of the colours, but below the lineart, and used the shades of brown to create shadows and highlights where I wanted the light to be shining.

After that, I decreased the opacity...

Which made it look like this:

Then I added the words, a small section of the story of Donkeyskin, that describes what is going on in the illustration.

And finally, I layered two old paper textures on top of the whole piece. However, in doing this, I was bothered by how much the dress didn't pop, underneath all the layers of brown I'd put. I wanted the dress to have the appearance that I was almost glowing. So, I went onto one of the paper texture layers, and erased the texture that covered the gown. I felt that that made the dress pop in a more pleasing way. You can see where I erased if you look closely at the layers.

My Digital Media Project - Brief 1 Prototype

The prototype for the first brief was a banner for a website, in this case, I looked up the dimensions for a Twitter banner (So that I can use it for my Twitter, because I'm a filthy cheater).

I had a very particular idea of what I wanted this image to look. Joyfully, I soon discovered...

This would be the easiest thing in the world to do. Seriously, it took me all of a half hour. Granted, I already had the character (Robo) drawn in Illustrator, and that definitely took longer, but it was also long done, before even the development deadline.

I just selected a square, and used the gradient tool to create the fade effect I wanted. Then it was only a matter of adding the desired words on top. I'm fairly sure I spent more time picking a font than putting in the lines.

Seriously, less than half an hour.

My Digital Media Project - Game Plan

Okay, so I've finished all of the prototypes for my briefs.

I have to post about how I did them.

I'm gonna do that in order of brief number.

Okay? Okay.

My Digital Media Project - Page of Paladins

So, first of all, I finished off the illustration of Donkeyskin, and I will make a post about those finishing touches later, but right now, I have a tone of screenshots from making the test page for the Paladin brief. (Small warning for language in the sketching stage)

First, I used the sketch tool in Manga Studio to roughly plan out each of the panels. I also, on the fly, changed the design of the shield, to make it a little easier to draw consistently.

Next, I used the pen tool to draw the final lineart.

I experimented some with the screentone tool, the feature which drew me to Mangastudio when I first purchased it. It was during my weeaboo phase, okay. I used two layers of the same tone on the jewel, to see if I could use that to shade the jewel. The experiment worked, but it might look a little weird, combined with the big shine I put on it in the lineart.

I've added all the dialogue using the character tools in Mangastudio. I find it really handy that they have hundreds of different speech bubbles to choose from, including ones that would be supremely difficult to just draw straight.

My Digital Media Project - Colours and Textures for Donkeyskin

Finally! With the dissertation out of the way, I can get back in the saddle on the practical work for my project.

This week, I dedicated to working on the Donkeyskin illustration, as that has a chance of taking the longest. I've got it mostly done, just shading to do. The original plan was to mimic watercolouring in Photoshop, however, I couldn't find a tutorial for it that I found satisfying for filling my vision. So, instead, I chose a flatter, brighter colouring style, mimicing a book of fairytales I once had in my own youth.

My Digital Media Project - A Minor Snag

My Laptop's had to be wiped. Pretty much all of my college work's safe, but...

Reinstalling all the software's going to be fun.

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.