See how Pernille Ørum takes the idea for a character and brings it to life using simple techniques and vibrant colours
As a visual developer in the animation industry it’s your job to realise yours and other people’s ideas, and to tell a story using your creative skills. This means that you need to convey your objective to your audience and understand the effect different elements in a composition have on the viewer. This being art, nothing’s written in stone, but learning the rules and then deciding how you want to use them is a great start.
I begin a painting by identifying the story. Who is the character or what’s the mood I’m after? Here, I’ll be painting a lady from the Wild West with an attitude and so I think about the colour palettes in the American West and how the warm tones of the prairie could carry this illustration.
In my workshop I’ll be focusing mostly on colouring an image. So to get the most out of this article it’ll be helpful to have a strong understanding of how to construct an image using form, negative space, how to paint light and how colours relate to each other.
I’ll take you through my ideas process and how I decide on the colours early on. Then I’ll show you how I build up an image using flat local colours, before bringing it all together at the end.
1 Thumbnailing my ideas
When starting your drawing it’s important to have a clear vision of what you want to show, and here thumbnailing is a great tool. It’s a chance to quickly sketch out and test various idea without spending too much time on them. It also enables you to run your ideas past other people while it’s still possible to make changes easily. Here I want to draw a Wild West-themed woman with attitude, and try out a range of poses.
2 Cleaning up and simplifying
Denne historien er fra July 2019-utgaven av ImagineFX.
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Denne historien er fra July 2019-utgaven av ImagineFX.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Jan Wessbecher
Dominic Carter talks to the visual artist about creating his own comic and why sketchbooks are great for creative experiments
Kyounghwan Kim
The Korean character concept artist speaks to Dominic Carter about staying open to ideas and the value of drawing regularly
Slawek Fedorczuk
Dominic Carter talks to the concept artist about what keeps him motivated and the advantages of using physical sketchbooks.
Raquel M. Varela
Raquel is inspired by magic, fantasy and fairy tales. She loves designing female characters from distant worlds. \"My greatest reference is Loish's art, thanks to her I learned to draw the movement and fluidity I like to convey.\"
Estrela Lourenço
Estrela is a children's book author and illustrator. Her work is influenced by her background in character animation and storyboards for clients such as Cartoon Network, and she channels comic strips like Calvin and Hobbes.
Daria Widermanska
Daria, also known as Anako, has been drawing for as long as she can remember. Inspired by Disney and classic anime, she loves creating new characters and often finds that a single sketch can spark a unique story.
Allen Douglas
Allen has been painting professionally since 1994 for the publishing and gaming industries. Inspired by folklore, he distorts the size, relationships and environments of animals, and calls his paintings 'unusual wildlife'.
Thaddeus Robeck
Thaddeus has been drawing from the moment he could hold a pencil, but it was the 2020 lockdowns that gave him the time to focus on honing his skills.
DRAW FASCINATING SYMBOLIC ARTWORK
Learn how JULIÁN DE LA MOTA creates a composition from his imagination with a focus on crafting figures, volumetric modelling, and light and shadow
First Impressions
The artist talks about his journey into the mythological world