The Brute

I was really stuck on what to write about this week, so I launched a Twitter poll to ask my followers on there what they would like to see from me. It tied between showing a new personal character and what my future goals are. Both of which I am working on right now, so I thought it would be a good idea to choose the options that I did as it would push me to get on with them! I've been working through my goals a lot recently, as there is something that will be happening in my life pretty soon which requires me to really have some direction in my life, but I'm not quite there with them yet, however, I did start a new character a few weeks ago and really wanted to get him finished, so I decided to go with that this week and use the blog post as motivation to get it done, I'll be posting my future goals next week!

As I mentioned, I started this guy a few weeks ago, it was right around the time I got my iPad Pro and I wanted to see what sort of a final piece I could achieve with it, and if I could pretty much achieve my normal work flow and end outcome without using Photoshop and my Wacom. I will admit I did end up using Photoshop and my Cintiq in the end, mainly for speed purposes, but also because Procreate is lacking one thing I use in every piece; clipping masks! The character I'll be sharing with you I created for the little personal world I've been developing which I wrote about in a previous post.

I'm not fully set on exactly what type of humans will inhabit this world, but I like the idea of having some sort of modern day scavenger/pirate type gang, so this is what I was going for when designing this character. I knew that I wanted him to be big an bulky, and I wanted to give the impression that he just went into everything full charge and he's basically a bit crazy, and people have good reason to be scared of him!

I already knew in my head what I wanted him to look like in the face, but I knew I needed to find a pose that would fit his personality. I have been trying to push my poses a lot, I used to just draw every character front on, but I can't tell you how much fun it's been challenging myself to create a pose that's more exciting and tells more of a story! So above is the initial sketch and a couple of expressions.

I've also attached a video below which Procreate recorded while I was working on this character (absolutely amazing feature!) so you can see what I did manage to do on the iPad itself. As I mentioned I did switch back into Photoshop and my Cintiq purely for speed purposes, but I do reckon I could easily have done this all on the iPad, it would have just took a little longer without being able to use clipping masks. 

( I had to piece a couple of clips together so somehow the coloured version glitches in once or twice, apologies for that!)

I constantly tried to push myself technique wise too throughout this, it does take me a long time to finish a piece, I should probably time it for future reference but I'd say this piece was around 10-12 hours all in all, I'm sure I'll get faster in time, but because it takes so long, it's easy to start getting bored and wanting to give up. But I really went all in on this and used techniques and ideas I really wanted to try, regardless of how long it took.

I wanted to try and be a bit more creative with the whole piece and not just the character, making sure it would be a stand alone illustration and look pretty cool on my website. So I taught myself some new tricks to turn his expressions into little stickers! I also learnt a while back how to make masking tape in Photoshop and I want to use it on everything!

Hope you guys liked this one, I'll be sharing my goals for the future next week!