Space Fairies

I had Ok Go's latest song/video stuck in my head and I doodled my way to the concept of Space Fairies. I dunno, I'm a little odd sometimes. Anyway, I wasn't sure how I felt about the final result at first, but now I think it's ok. Maybe if I feel inspired to draw more Space Fairies sometime, I'll develop the idea a bit more. 

onward and upward,

Bethany

February '16 Sketchbook

I know I'm a week early for my monthly sketchbook post, but frankly, I didn't really have anything else suitably blog-worth for this week. It's always frustrating to be up to your ears in projects that just aren't ready to share yet, but this does seem to be part of the process. Hopefully by next week, I'll have something interesting to talk about. Till then, thanks for bearing with me. :-)

onward and upward,

Bethany

Yeti color studies

While exploring more of Yeti's life and personality, I started to wonder about what color he was. Even though I've been mostly drawing him black and white, color is important to me and will be important in Yeti's world. Since getting a character's color right is one of those tough but critical aspects of character design, I decided to start working toward a final color scheme now.

This is my first attempt. I went pretty bold with the contrasting colors and design. I think some of these are pretty fun, but they seem too different from the original black and white character. I want both b&w Yeti and color Yeti to feel like the same person. Also, I realized I wanted Yeti's color pallet to be simpler, because I envision his environment being very vibrant and colorful. Placing a super colorful character in a super colorful environment can overload the image and your character can get lost in the shuffle.

Here's attempt number 2. I wanted to try something more subdued and more neutral, but I went too far in that direction this time. These pallets are a little too boring, in my opinion and the cool color scheme was not as inviting or appealing. 

Attempt number 3. I went back to warmer colors and tried to keep Yeti's over all color on the lighter side. These versions are getting close, but they still seem too boring. I wanted to add a bit more pop in the design, even if it was just a little pop.

And here's attempt number 4. These are the closest yet, (although they still need some tweaking). The darker color "pops" seem to liven up the character and the over all lighter value makes Yeti feel consistent with his b&w version.

I'm still playing around with this design a bit, but I would love to hear your thoughts on what I have so far. Feel free to let me know which versions you like best in the comments section. (And thanks for letting me share my process! ^_^)

onward and upward,

Bethany

Yeti Concept sketches

In an effort to get to know Yeti better, I've started doing a some exploratory sketches of him doing various things. There aren't as many sketches to share as I would like, but at least it's a start. I've also been experimenting with the comics format, because that's something I really want to get better at doing.

onward and upward,

Bethany

January '16 sketchbook

Looots of sketches today, partly because I ended up having a lot more stuff from December that I didn't get to share before. Guess that's not a bad problem to have. Also, the badly drawn 4 panel comic is an extremely obvious pun that I somehow still find amusing. Don't judge me. >.<

onward and upward,

Bethany

Environment studies

I decided to take a break from the picture book project today, so I'm posting these environment studies instead. I've been doing environments off and on in my sketchbook for about a year now. With these particular ones, I sketched and inked them first, then added color later to create more depth. Drawing them as thumbnails keeps me from getting overwhelmed.

onward and upward,

Bethany

Yeti's character design

Originally, I planned to blog about something else this week because I wasn't sure if I'd be ready to do another Pixie and Yeti post, but then the project I was going to blog about didn't come together in time. So I'm going to talk a little about the process of designing Yeti.

The first yeti I ever drew was in October '15 during my first Inktober. I drew this guy and called him a Dog-earred yeti.

After that, the idea of re-imagined and unique yetis interested me, so I played around with adding different feature to see how that would change the character. I drew this one, who I think of as an Owl faced yeti, a sort of mysterious, forest guardian, perhaps.

Around the same time, back in Spring of '15 I believe, Lauren and I were discussing the idea of changing the collaborative project we'd been working on to a picture book. As we thought about possible characters, I suggested yetis, because I had some past experience with them. I started playing around with making a warm, friendly yeti character for our story.

After a few attempts, I arrived on this design.

Time passed, life got crazy, and Lauren and I put our picture book project on hold. Then, a few months ago, once we'd decide to start working on it again, I start really refining Yeti's design.

Drawing him in profile is a challenge. I still haven't got that totally figure out yet. :-/

His face shape change a little to give it more dimension (and cuteness!). I also realized that adding fur was very important to making the character feel like Yeti.

Which brings us to where we are now.

I still don't have everything about Yeti figured out yet. I'm still not sure how he looks from the profile or behind. I need to make sure I can draw him in any pose our story calls for. I'm also not sure if he has any name beyond Yeti. But the basic elements of his character are there; large, egg-shaped body, deer antlers, droopy goat ears, furry. I picture his personality as being quiet, contemplative, and a bit wary of things that seem new or scary. He also loves cheese. :-)

Thanks for letting me share Yeti's design journey with you! Unless anything unexpected happens, I plan on talking about Pixie next week.

onward and upward,

Bethany