Bens task - artist research and sketches

Ben's 3rd task from the guess who workshop left us picking a piece of paper out at random from my hat, each bit of paper had 3 words, 1 noun and 2 adjectives. we then had to create a character using those three words, the characters would eventually be used for a giant and weird game of guess who so we had to make sure that we conveyed the words properly through our images.
My three words were melancholy, alien, warrior and i am very happy with my choice. This part of my blog will contain scans from my sketch book, it will show my path of thought and how i came around to making some of my characters. The page above just shows my first initial thoughts when i got my words, it is sort of a mind map but with images, i tried to illustrate aliens and warriors on different pages so that i could define the key elements of each word. For warriors i focused more on what weapons they would be using because i will be using an alien body shape so warrior characters didn't seem to matter too much. For aliens i just drew up some ideas of what the word means to me, some are floating, some have big heads
and some have robotic features.

Here is one of the first pages of my sketch book, i shows some simple ideas for the concept of a melancholy alien warrior. The one on the left hand side is a weak, amphibian like alien with only one eye, the way i made him hold his weapon at a lowered angle makes him look unprepared for battle. Making his eye red was a bad choice in my opinion because it makes him look angry, the harsh angle of his eye lid is also makes him look mean and or annoyed. If it were to neaten the curve in his eye more it would look more sad. The image on the right shows a stout, muscular, heavily Armored alien. Whilst drawing both of these images i was messing around with the eyes and was seeing if i could convey the mood without the use of any other facial features. The helmet on this one makes it impossible to see most of his facial features, again i have made his eyes slightly at the wrong angle so he looks more annoyed than anything, i also drew him with his hands in his pockets which would have worked well if his eyes were angled correctly but in this case it just looks like he isn't bothered. I did some research and i found out the importance of facial features and how the eyes can actually make up most of the expression. Manny the mammoth from Ice Age for example has his face completely covered by hair and his trunk yet he is still able to show anger, sadness, excitement and many other emotions. For my final image, should i chose to focus on eyes to convey sadness i will have to work on drawing them correctly and take influence from characters such as Manny. 

       Angry manny

Ready for adventure Manny 

This was just another idea that i had, i made him small and weak, his simple face actually conveys the sadness quite well, though i think the angle of his lip could have been lower, he looks a little more irritated then anything. I think the use of greens in my past images definitely helped to convey that my characters were aliens. I want to experiment with different colour's now just because not all aliens are these classic green colour's.

E.T the extraterrestrial  

Zoidberg the Decapodian 

Crypto the Furon 

For my character research i though i would check out some of the more famous aliens and take them apart to find out what it is that makes them recognisable as an alien. E.T is a character from the Spielberg's  E.T. the extraterrestrial. He is small in size and brown in color, he has an extended neck and only has 4 fingers on each hand. His finger glows which seems to allow him to use telekinetic powers to move objects his wrinkled face has an amazing texture and i would like to try and use wrinkles on some of my aliens. Wrinkles exaggerate emotions and could therefore help to make my aliens look sad.

 Zoidberg has features of a squid on his face but he also has claws like a crab. he is able to use his claws to cut open flesh and or sever limbs, he is supposed to be a doctor but usually causes his patients more pain than relief. 

Years ago i played a game on the play station called "Destroy All Humans" i got to play as an alien called Crypto and he is this little grey martian with a large cranium, he also has the ability to move objects with his mind like E.T. Crypto has the classic alien look, small, grey in colour and incredibly smart, Zoidberg on the other hand is silly, unprofessional and clumsy, whilst E.T. appears to be weak, fragile yet very intelligent. Each one of these aliens have their own personality and back story, maybe giving my character these features will help me convey his message.

This is another extract from my book and it just shows some ideas of alien influence. The page on the left shows my interpretation of Crypto and E.T. the colour on the pages was my own fault, the other aliens were coloured  with pro markers and it bled through the pages so i tried to touch it up with photo shop, it was worse. The page on the right shows my interpretation of Paul the alien who for me highlights what a classic alien looks like. Paul is skinny, grey and very smart!
one of my images was also inspired by the Pale man from Pans Labyrinth. the pale man has eyes on his hands and i thought it would be fun to see what i could do with this. the image below shows a pregnant alien who has a facial expression on his belly.    

This is the Pale Man! 

Chris Riddell is one of my favourite illustrators and i thought i would let his work inspire me to create some aliens in his style. I found out that Riddell had released two books, both of which contained a load of images of aliens which he had drawn. I'm currently waiting for the first book to arrive so i thought i would upload some pictures of his other projects. The image above is one of riddles aliens, i love how feeble and creepy they look. 

Riddell uses a lot of neat ink lines and then colours using some amazing vibrant colours. his accurate line work mixed with the insane colouring leaves him a cartoon image that has realistic qualities.  

This isn't necessarily a alien but it is a character from his book series The Edge Chronicles and i thought it appropriate to add in. The pages below will reflect my interpretation of his style and i will begin to home in on a final idea for my alien.   

Just an ideas page for some aliens, the one in the top right hand corner on the left page is a copy from Chris Riddell's Alienography book.  Three of the characters on the right hand page were eventually used for some of my outcomes.

Here are some more of my character ideas, They are coloured using Pro Markers and my line work was done using a fine liner. The added weapons and Armour tick off the warrior description. The odd body shapes and colours definitely cover the alien qualities and the facial expressions definitely make them look sad. The one on the left is weak because of his small limbs, his gear is too big for him and his sword is broken, and if that isn't reason enough to be sad, he is also pink. The one on the right is overweight, ugly and lacks protection which are all good reasons for him to be sad.
For my final image i would like to do one like this on A4, i will then scale him down to A6 so i can keep all of the detail.

I managed to get hold of Chris Riddell's Alienography book and it was literally jam packed with alien ideas. his use of colour is incredible and i can see how much effort he has put into these images. 

Each of his aliens are incredibly detailed and they all seem to reference real life animals.  

I know that Riddell uses a dip pen and ink to colour his work and he generates some pretty awesome textures and i would like to try and mimic this style. Colouring inks and dip pens are quite expensive so i setled for a fine liner to lay down my outlines. I have recently discovered using pro markers to colour my work, they dry with an amazing matt finish and they also layer up well. For my visual mapping module i tried my hand at colouring my images using photoshop, i would now like to take my skills further and try to colour some of my aliens this way. Photoshop allows me to neatly colour images efficiently and professionally, i can also generate the highlights and shadow quite easily using this program. I have noticed that Riddle never really uses white, he adds subtle colours from the pictures palette to make the white pop off of the page.  

This is my final design for the words; melancholy, alien warrior. i am yet to add a background and some of the shading needs to be improved but this is the colour and structure that i will be using. Throughout this project i have researched what are the main features which can be used to describe and alien, and i have come to the conclusion that there are many features which are used to define an alien. The colour green, amphibian like appendages and monocular vision are some of the features that i have used to get the description right. I have drawn this alien out using a fineliner and then coloured him with pro markers, i then touched im up in photoshop and blended the colours, I love the matt finish which is created when i color this way.   

This is just a grey variant of my final alien design, i have changed the design of the eye in this one and i have also gave him a different armour colour. The grey skin tone was inspired by the alien Paul! which is noted further up in the blog, in this picture i have also made his pupil a lot bigger making him look even more upset. 

Here i was just experimenting with the words alien and warrior, he was a bit rushed and i messed up his eye, though the concept behind him works well and it was quite easy to convey the words that describe him. 

By far my neatest image yet, this was just experimenting with the word 'alien'. i think the line work from this character best mimics that of Riddell's aliens, i think when i finish my final image i will add some more detail using this image as a guide. the colour palette used for this alien works well and i am really happy with the way that it turned out.
This alien is supposed to be a worm like creature, he was originally supposed to be an aquatic alien so that is why his lower belly sorta looks like gills and his moustache also looks like seaweed. 

This is one of my early ideas, the warrior description was met by using armour and a sword, the way that his face melts combined with the way i have angled his eyes helped me accomplish the sad emotion and the green skin would makes it alien like, though giving him horns made him look more like a monster and could therefore confuse the viewer of it's description.

Here i have been Experimenting with black and white images, i used a fine liner to create these Riddle inspired aliens, this one is based on a bull frog, i like the loose lines that i can create with a fine liner, my line work has definitely gotten better since the first project.

This is Marvin the alien worm,  he was actually one of my first ideas that i had when i first got this project. i have just revisited this image because it was a good practise to draw as many aliens as i could to generate a good body of ideas for this module. I love the wispy lines that i can generate with a fine liner and the textures that i can create are endless. In this image i have used thin lines to accentuate his wrinkled face, it works well and looks like a cross between E.T and Medusa, E.T was also mentioned further up in my blog and was used for eye reference.





This is Skottie Young. My friend introduced me to him a while ago and i think his work is pretty impressive. He uses brush pens to create these awesome little doodles, i love the looseness of the lines and the thick block colour. I found out that he  also illustrates for Marvel comics which i thought was pretty cool, he creates his professional images using a graphics tablet.




I love the thick lines created with the ink as it really brings out the detail in the face and hair.

How Skottie would communicate a warrior.

This is one of the prints for the Marvelous land of Oz, i like the way that he colours his images. thick black lines are used for stress marks on the clothes and are also used for accents on the limbs.

Here is an image of the different stages my alien went through, the middle one even features a helmet which matches his armour. For my final piece i thought that i would add a background as well as a platform for him to stand on, i tried to create the platform using the same technique as the alien so they would match.

This is another image from Skottie Young, i used this moon as a reference when drawing the planet for my final piece.

I chose to come back to my final alien piece after i had finished my stage 2. My article for stage two was about robbers stealing 1200 eggs on Ham drive green, which i thought was an accidental reference to green eggs and ham by Dr Seuss. Books from Dr Seuss are normally coloured in a really simple way and it turns out that the front cover for green eggs and ham featured a green background. Getting back to the point, i thought i would try to colour my alien's background like this and this is how it turned out!

There are a load of different versions of this book but the one that i know always had a green background. 

This is my final piece for Bens guess who task. Chris Riddell influenced my line work and colouring technique, i really like how this turned out. If i were to do this project again i would like to try my hand at using a dip pen and colouring inks to get a  more natural feel. If i were to do this again using digital media i would probably trace the image in photoshop so that my lines were nice and consistent, some of my lines here are a little grainy because i just worked straight on top of my origional pen drawing.