Custom Character Sheet & Process Video

I'm fortunate that I get to work with a lot of Twitch streamers and Youtubers on art for their channels, I've always really enjoyed being part of that because I feel like I can really make a difference to what they're trying to achieve, so when I was contacted by LEIGHonPC with a fairly big overhaul for his Twitch channel I couldn't say no.

There's more to come for this project which I will share over the next few weeks but firstly we had to create a character for all of Leigh's Twitch art, so that's what I'm going to share on here today! Leigh wanted to create a character that represented him, the games he plays and his personality. I wanted to create an illustration which got that across, but which anyone could also use as future reference for art or merch he creates in the future. So I decided to go with a custom character sheet which showed a detailed illustration of the character, with a couple of different views, some facial expressions and a variety of weapons.

The character was obviously the main focus of the sheet, so I started out by drawing that up first.

When I asked Leigh about some of the things he liked which I might then be able to use to influence some of the design, he mentioned coffee, fitness and pizza. So I made sure to include these three elements somewhere, so he's got a flask of coffee, a dumbbell nunchuck, and last but not least a hand made pizza box shield.

One thing I have always really struggled with (but have been improving a lot with lately) is capturing the likeness of someone when I draw a face. I can draw random faces without any reference what so ever and be really happy with how they turn out, but when it comes to drawing a face that looks like a specific person, I've always found it really difficult. So with projects like this, I usually draw out the body etc. first whilst I'm practising sketching up the face and achieving the likeness that I'm aiming for. 

So next up was the expressions, once I figured out how to draw the face and make it look like Leigh it definitely makes it easier to draw up different expressions for the same face.

Once all of the elements were complete, I added them all onto one sheet and finished it up! I've included a video of the first half of the process below, along with the final illustration at the end of this blog post!

There will be more from this project soon, thanks for reading!