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This was my final outcome. I am extremely pleased with how this turned out. I enjoyed trying the painterly style as I think it makes it look a lot more refined and less cartoony. I think I successfully added depth into the background without it getting too lost.

The title was difficult, I tried making it look carved but it just wasn't working, so i decided to make it look like a cave painting which I think works well.

The eyes help add tension to the scenario and I'm extremely happy with how the lighting turned out.

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After the feedback I made some adjustments to the design. I added a title, added more eyes, and put my finished Yapp into it to help flesh it out further. I like this composition a lot, I hope to be able to add a good bit of depth into the background and to make the title look carved into the rock.

Toby suggested to add a secondary light source to help define the darker aspects of my character such as the clothing on his shoulder, so I want to add some kind of purple moon-lighting to do that.

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This was the feedback I got in class today.

Lots of people liked the use of the red eyes in the bottom composition, I definitely agree that I should add more of them in it. Also people wanted more detail in the background which I definitely agree with, I'll make the background more dense. I forgot to add a title so thats something I will add to the final draft.

People were saying that his design matches the 100 word description which I'm really happy about.

overall i'm happy with the feedback I got and I know what to work on moving forward.

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I spent today working on the refined look of my character. Focusing on getting his clothing to look like fur, and trying to get the lighting from the torch look correct. This took a while but I am very pleased with how it turned out. I think his expression fits the situation he will be in very nicely, and I think I was successful with the texture in his clothing.

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Following the value and colour studies I did, I chose a pose for my character and decided on some accessories such as;

Dome, the baby Pachy, an improvised torch and a pouch which is made of a pitcher plant.

I wanted him to be walking in the jungle at night with his torch lighting the immediate area.

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This was my attempt at value studies and colour studies with my chosen silhouette . These were very useful and really helped me visualise my character and his clothing much easier.

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These were the silhouettes I created for my character, I decided squares would be best as the base shapes for him. I played around with using circles, but I preferred the look of the squares. I remembered in the video they said to have your character have something distinct on their head so they would stand out in a crowd so I tried having his hair tied up in a bun, but didn't like that, then I gave him a leaf on his head acting as a hat which I really liked.

I liked the look of the far left one the most so I played around with that and got these three bottom silhouettes.

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Creating the 100 word character description was quite difficult for me, I struggled edit it down while keeping all the important information in. This was what I ended up with after a while of trying;

Yapp, a caveman gifted with a much larger brain than normal, is overly empathetic and can’t bring himself to kill anything. This leads to him being outcast from his tribe for he is annoyingly talkative, weak and useless. Being alone in prehistoric Earth is not ideal, this environment is harsh and unforgiving and any mistake can lead to death. Dome, a baby pachycephalosaur who was an egg that hatched before Yapp could eat it, has imprinted on Yapp and is now reliant on him to survive. Yapp must look after himself, protect Dome and ultimately prove to his tribe that he would be an asset not an annoyance.

The image above is the mood-board I created for Yapp and Dome. I used AdobeColour to pull the colours from some of the images to create swatches.

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20 Questions Howl Pendragon

Interrogate your Character and their World

1 How old is your character?

27

2 What's their relationship with their parents? (if their parents are dead then detail the story and their past relationship if you can find it) (if they have a different back story again, then enter that here)

Parents aren’t mentioned (but was born into a normal family) doesn’t have a relationship with them since he ran away

3 Who raised them (ignore if listed in 2)

Mrs. Pentstemmon was his tutor after he ran away

4 Do they have any siblings? - If so, describe them and their relationship(s)

NA

5 What is the main thing, or some things that challenge them?

Howl loves the power that comes with growing up, but not the responsibilities that come with being an adult.

6 Describe two or more relationships with other characters – what characterizes those relationships?

Calcifer- Howl caught a falling star (Calcifer) Howl gave Calcifer his heart, binding them together, this allowed Calcifer to live and boosted Howls magical power. Calcifer fuels Howls moving castle and protects it.

Markel Fisher- Howl found Markel (a fifteen-year-old boy) asleep on his doorstep and invited him in, he now lives with Howl and is his apprentice mainly looking after the shops while Howl is out.

Sophie Hatter- The films protagonist who gets cursed by the Witch of the waste and she goes out in search of a cure.

7 Does your character have children – if so, how does your character relate to them?

NA

8 Does your character have a mentor?

Mrs. Pentstemmon was his mentor but doesn’t appear in the movie.

9 How has your character’s upbringing shaped their view of the world?

Having entered a portal that took him away from his parents, Howl never grew up, he is permanently stuck in adolescence.

10 Does your character have chosen accessories / clothing / tools / weapons

His distinct pink and blue checkered jacket.

11 Does your character have any notable enemies?

The Witch of the Waste, an equally powerful witch who cursed him and is after his heart.

12 Describe your character’s world

Ingary is the land that Howl lives in, it’s a temperate land with many neighboring places Such as;

The Folding valley, a large fertile valley covered in farms and has one small town called Market Chipping.

The Coast, a poorer area of Ingary with its main town being Porthaven.

Kingsbury; This is the rich capital of Ingary, it has a King and is the most advanced city/town in Ingary. They live in an industrial society, with steam powered vehicles and flying machines.

The Waste; A large desert wasteland beyond the Folding Valley. The Witch of the Waste was banished here decades before when the movie was set. Howl and Suliman (another wizard) created a flower garden along the wastes border with their magic.

13 What are your character’s goals in life?

Howl tries to be everything for everyone, but is afraid of losing control and not being loved. Howl wants to be loved.

14 What stops your character getting towards their goals?

His heart being consumed by Calcifer. The Witch of the Waste hunting him, and the war that he is dragged into by the palace.

15 What personality flaws does your character have and how do they manage them?

His obsession with his appearance and his childish behavior, one day he uses the wrong spell which turns his hair orange, and he has a meltdown, turning into slime and saying “What’s the point of living, if you aren’t beautiful.”

16 What special talents does your character have – were they innate or did they develop them, or discover them – if the latter, then how did this happen over time?

Howl was born with a natural talent for magic which he began studying and practicing.

17 Is your character a loner or gregarious – or something more complicated (if so, describe)

Hard to determine this one, he lives is his moving castle away from people, yet is happy to let people in such as Sophie and Markel. He is also known for going out with girls, then suddenly abandoning them.

18 Why did your character become a bird?

Through giving Calcifer his heart, Howl gained the ability to take animal from. Through this however Howl slowly loses his humanity and almost succumbs to the dangers of staying in animal from.

19 Why was your character such a womanizer?

Through magic, Sophie shows up in the past and say to howl, “I know how to break the curse, find me in the future,” This leads to Howl spending years looking for this girl he saw in the past (Sophie) who can break his spell, so Howl would abandon them once he knew they weren’t who he was looking for.

20 Did your character know Sophie was cursed?

It is revealed that Howl could see through Sophies curse and knew she wasn’t an old lady all along.

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This was the feedback we got from the other group. I think them saying to bulk out the character doesn't make sense, he is a post apocalyptic, insectoid scrapper, he should be fairly scraggly. They also said to pump up the colours even though the colours they said to use were orange and brown, which are tones of the same colour. The style reference they gave was a big help and I think I managed to make a much more successful design in round two.

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This was my first design for the character brief group task. I personally really didn't like the brief we got, I felt that it was very complex, and it didn't leave much room for us to be creative, since they gave us a lot of physical aspects of the character which made designing it a lot harder in my opinion. The tail was a very annoying aspect as it had to be a scorpion tail, and had to have stuff tied to it.

I struggled simplifying the design to that of a game character, especially since it was a bipedal insectoid that had mandibles, wings, a tail, worn exoskeleton etc....

I am not super happy with how this design turned out.

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Today for my character design practice I wanted to focus on;

Varying line weight Thinking about the characters silhouette And playing around with values

I designed this "BugBoy" and was trying to vary the line weight when doing the line art on this piece. I tried to have the top of the shapes be lighter than the bottom, such as on the characters shorts and legs especially. I also made the eyes much heavier to make them feel bulgy.

When designing this character I wanted him to have a strong silhouette and also be asymmetrical so I gave him antennae and made one be bent. I knew that adding wings would help his silhouette feel more bug like and the spiky legs and feet help too. I also wanted to see how it looked flipped too.

I gave values a try today since I didn't use them on the previous character. I like the look of the right hand side one more since the wings and eyes are bright and stand out better which I think are the aspects I would want to stand out most.

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This was my attempt at the value study we did in class today.

I think it turned out pretty well, it is definitely an exercise where you have to trust the process and map out the topography first without thinking about detail, which I found difficult initially. The tip of zooming out and also squinting when looking at it helped with determining the values to use, or spots where I used the wrong values. I could always spend more time on it and improve it, but i think I got the majority of it mapped out correctly, anything else would be adding small changes and details.

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James Raiz (TheBoxOfficeArtist) is an illustrator whose videos I used to watch several years ago. He specialises in highly detailed comic style illustrations. He mainly works traditionally but it looks as though he adds glowing/lighting effects digitally.

I absolutely love this style, comic book illustrations are always impressive, dynamic and interesting. The amount of detail he puts in is crazy, I love the angles and poses he uses. The bright colours and the inking and highlights make the images really pop.

I don't think this is something I will be able to achieve in the 4 weeks for this elective, so I don't think I will do a comic style character.

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The shaded duck, I changed some of the colours around and think it turned out pretty nice.

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My attempt at inking and colouring the provided sketch. It went far better than i expected and i'm really happy with the outcome. I might play around with shading to finish the piece off.

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Started off playing with brush settings, colour, layers and smoothing. I already have experience with all of this so it was just a refresher.

I did however learn that you can create brush strokes with the pen tool and that you can rotate the art-board in photoshop using R. I can see these tools being very useful in creating a digital illustration.