It was 4 a.m. and I could hear rhythmically thumping 4/4 bass from the nightclub downstairs. At the time, I lived right in the CBD (for you North Americans, that means City Business District) next to Cuba street, in the middle of everything. Could it have been the club music keeping me up? Perhaps. It was more likely that coffee I had at 3:30 that afternoon that was just kicking in. I got up, grabbed my sketchbook, and put pencil on paper. Just a middle of the night doodle. After a couple pages of grotesque nonsensical middle-of-the-night depictions, I wanted to push out more ideas for the dog character in my story. I poorly attempted some perspective type industrial design drawings of a dog and failed. It’s 5am and my hands are doing that caffeine trembling thing, whaddya want? These certainly did help me zero in on some shapes for the canine, and I providentially developed an idea I fancied for the boy. Getting there I wasn’t sure if this were the direction I wanted to go, but at the end of the day I wanted my character to look like my old dog Droopy (named after ). He was a […]
When I initially started milling out ideas for my characters last year, I started with some thumbnails in my sketchbook. Very loose, rough and ugly, but I began to find the shapes I wanted my characters to consist of. I tried out different poses I thought I may find them in and mainly focused on silhouettes. This was basically stream of consciousness sketching after those late nights working on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and The Hobbit. I used a PITT artist pen from Faber-Castell. These pens have a brush-like action to them, but are still felt tipped. Really great for thumb nailing or outlining.