Syfy - A new idea

After finishing my scientist themed poster there were a few more characters that I wanted to expand on to make a set of three, one of which included an astronaut shooting guns off like a mad man and floating around in space (See sketch folder for image). But those ideas went on the back burner as I went back to working on my menu design. Whilst doodling I realized how much I really enjoyed the brain characters and it got me thinking about using them as the main content for another poster. I wanted to think on a simpler level as something that is more effective so I came up with this.

This really popped as an image for me and the colours looked great, I used my previous scientist Syfy poster as a reference and just drew this guy out digitally. I was super keen on the idea and decided that if I wanted to get a set of three posters finished for the deadline then this style would be the most effective and efficient. 

To keep things loose as I did before with the brain design above I did some basic sketches for the next two ideas, I found it more comfortable to work straight on a digital canvas for this one as I felt that the inks would flow more naturally. This seemed a little unorthodox but in this case it worked best for me. Below are my results, the left drawing showing some basic ideas and the other two were my digital inks which were done free hand.

As I said the inks seemed to flow more naturally when I worked straight on my digital canvas, it is as if my computer acts as a secondary sketchbook. A skill I have only recently developed, I will take it as a good sign as it means that I am becoming more confident with my computer inking and composition skills. After seeing how the brain turned out I couldn't wait to ink these guys in. Below are some of the problems I encountered along the way.

The hairy guy did not come together as smoothly as the brain character, he started off purple and I felt like that was the wrong choice in colour as it was too similar to the pink. I then turned him brown and Liked it some more, the multiple eyes were throwing me off as the other two designs only had two eyes so I tried a version where he only had one eye and I was not a fan of that either. After playing around with it I eventually made the monster blue and that was when the multiple eyes looked right, from then I kept it blue and moved on to the slime monster, he did not have any problems at all.

I love how these guys turned out, the lines and shading are consistent throughout and the eye colours were kept the same to make them feel like they are all part of the same set. Something my lecturer did mention to me when I first showed him the brain poster was that these guys have the potential to out stage my previous Syfy poster. Seeing them all finished I can see what he meant but I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing. The brain character is pretty much the same as the one in the scientist poster and the line quality is also very similar so they could tie in some how. Maybe these three could act as flyers and the scientist poster could be the main piece, it's a hard decision to make as I feel like these images are almost stronger because they work as a set. Either way I will be submitting all of these images as finals for the college deadline and when it comes to the actual brief deadline I may submit them all as different ranges of poster designs as to give them a choice.

If I was to critique myself on these images I would say that although the flow of the images work well when they are improvised some things could have been thought out more. The logo at the top for example is a different size for each poster, aesthetically there is nothing wrong with that but if I had used the same size logo from the beginning for each they would have looked more uniform,

If I do have time I'd like to see these guys on badges, tee shirt templates or even stickers, stuff that you could hand out on the streets to help promote the channel.