Syfy design campaign - A new inspiration

After completing my menu I was feeling super inspired and wanted to create more art in that style, I enjoyed working with shapes and I liked keeping things busy.

I have been a big fan of Andrew Kolb for ages and I love how neat and precise he can be with his illustrations. The Dexter's Laboratory image in particular was screaming at me, it was telling me that I could do something like this, I felt like I was on a roll and the workload kept flowing at this point. Although I loved my scientist Syfy poster design I felt like I could make something a little more busy, maybe think a little more geometric this time as well.

I had an idea to create a Syfy themed weapon wall. (See sketch folder for sketches)

I wanted to keep it well regimented and fairly geometric to see how much I could push my style.

The main idea that I wanted to capture was the idea of the Syfy channel being very at home, the low budget films give off a home made kind of vibe so I wanted a few of the "weapons" to look like every day items that you could find in your house. Some weapons would maybe have a retro science fiction theme to them so that they all tie in together.
Below is a screen shot of the colour mock process which is similar to the way that I mocked up colours for my menu. Just the original inks with some digital colour loosely thrown over the top to give me an idea of where the colours would sit against each other.

Due to the time scale I didn't really have time to alter this image or take any screen shots, I just wanted to commit to something and make it good, I planned this image out fairly well before I started it, I just wanted to let my digital skills do the talking. I am really pleased with these outcomes and it was great to work almost purely using shapes. The blue background was my original palette but I mixed it up with the brown and purple for some variations. The bright background was what kept me focused on the grey weapons, the contrast was needed. These however are not the final images as I felt that the background colour almost took something away from some of the more colourful elements like the hair dryer and the Super Soaker. Below is my finished image,

The black makes everything pop off of the background and it all looks a little more uniform this way. My lecturer mentioned that the Syfy logo maybe shouldn't have the white underline as it doesn't look deliberate but instead looks like a printing mistake. That is something that can easily be changed but for the college deadline I will keep it this way as I think it adds a little depth to the title and makes it look engraved within the metal.  I would definitely like to do more work like this in the future!

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.

Syfy channel campaign - Character finalization

The image on the left shows a developed version of a drawing showed on the last post, I was super keen on the idea and wanted to start rendering it. After having a conversation with my lecturers I reminded myself that I shouldn't rush into things and should instead explore the character. The sketching folder shows the different facial structures and designs I had tried out until I finally reached the image on the right. Much more refined, a better use of the space and a set of characters that are full of emotion. The nose was at a bit of an odd angle before and I had changed that so it would now curve upwards as if it was pressed against the glass. I also took some time to draw some fish characters which again are shown in the sketch folder, although they did stay practically the same it was nice to try out other types of fish to see what would have worked.

I have recently looked at artist Dave DeGrand and he has become one of my favourites, we both seem to share a mutual love for illustrating gaping mouths and green goo oozing from all directions. both of which features have made an appearance in my final linework scientist.

From left to right you can see the evolution of my final image, the first image to the left shows a point where I had thought it was done, after talking with my piers and my lecturers I had decided that the green background was too overpowering and it wasn't really functioning as a background, the top left hand side was also missing something.
The middle image shows a darker background and some slime dotted around, this fitted more into the underground lab scene and was starting to make more sense. I also experimented with the colour of the fluid inside the jar, I wanted to make the character look more immersed.

 Finally the one on the right is the finished image, I added cracks to the walls to make it more apparent that is is a background, the test tubes got some smoke and I added a dark blue fading gradient to give the effect that it is underground. Pretty happy with how it ended up, I also reverted back to the purple gradient effect on the fluid instead of the blue as the background merged too much into the foreground. In the future I need to focus on the background, I need to draw more elements and get used to drawing a scene so that my characters will better interact with their surroundings. In this case the character is not interacting with the background but it is a skill worth investing in as an illustrator/character designer.

Syfy channel campaign - thought process

Out of all of the projects we had a choice from this one seemed the most suitable for me. The Syfy channel wanted a new campaign to encourage people to watch their channel more, we were given a lot of freedom in terms of what the actual outcome could be, may it be a short animation for adverts or posters that would go on large billboards and so on. We were given one strict rule and that was that we couldn't use any content from existing shows that are aired on this channel which made sense seeing as they wanted something new and fresh. Also perhaps it may have something to do with licencing and copyright claims etc.

Either way this project was calling my name as it would give me a chance to better my character design skills and work within a genre that I am comfortable in. There are so many sub genres within Science fiction so I would also have a wide field to play on. To kick things off I just flicked through some of the programs that have aired on the Syfy channel, I did this to gauge the genre range and diversity. Below are some of the more popular shows that I came across.

There is a lot going on here, the overall diversity of the Syfy channel is very impressive, they have programs about vampires, angels, starship captains, space cowboys and even live action cartoon remakes. Now obviously the programs above are the high end shows, the Syfy channel also shows a lot of low budget films and programs and they are proud of that, they wanted us to share that passion and consider this passion within our designs.


Along with this general research I also gathered together some classic science fiction posters as a reference. I also really love retro science fiction posters so I was sure to get some inspiration from them in one way or another.

I love the way the text just pops off of each one, also a big fan of the Mars Attacks poster as it seems to have a modern twist to the style and their expressions are perfect. The older ones have a cloudy pastel look to them and it really enforces their age and authenticity, it is a style that is often emulated, a timeless classic.


Within the sketchbook folder there are some sketch pages that show my idea pathway, it starts with loose generic sceince fiction sketches featuring robots, aliens and ray guns. this was to warm myself up and get the feel for science fiction.

For research I looked at Futurama which is one of my favourite science fiction cartoons, I felt like this was not only appropriate because of the content but I felt like the target audience was also similar to that of the Syfy brief (18-25 year old's).

I also chose Futurama as my main reference because I feel like it comically mocks our expectations as to what the future will look like. 1000 years down the line and robots are still clunky and crude, some are even made of wood!
The program also features cowboys that live on the moon and a planet of giant Amazon like women who despise men. A lot of playful concepts have came out of this show and I love the way that Matt Groening has stylized his characters and i'd like to take inspiration from this.

Whilst I was drawing and playing around with ideas I remembered that in the previous module I allowed my favourite childhood cartoons to inspire my work, it was like there was always one cartoon that I could relate to within my research. That theory proved relevant for me during this brief also, above are some cartoons that helped me along my way.

After sketching out some characters for a while I noticed a theme, scientists and brains seemed to be where my head was leading me so I extended on the idea. The image above and to the left was the first rough for my scientist character, I wanted him to have a brain in his head and I wanted to give the brain some life too so that they would act as two separate characters. He was going to be a full scale person but instead I liked the idea of having a head in a jar and within the jar the head has another jar on his head for his brain (quite the mouthful). I started to draw other interactive characters to the left, there are some loose fish drawings, they would have mixed emotions about sharing their jar with a human head and his brain.

The sketch folder shows my pathway through this scientists design, above however are some characters that I had considered whilst mapping out my ideas. I drew brains with eyes from the beginning and it was a week or so into the project before I remembered that there was yet another cartoon that I could use to link in. The purple bear on the far right was from a show called Evil Con Carne and he was controlled by a talking brain in a jar upon his head. My brains varied from this design but it was again worth considering as I did not want to rip this cartoon off.