Something A Little Different

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Before I get started, I promised last week that I would put a link up to the review of the various places we visited while in Birmingham for the Comic Con there, which we posted on the TanraStudios blog. If you're interested to see what we thought, then click here and enjoy! :)

That done, on to todays post!

So, this week I started looking at the horror genre again to see if I could get a bit more inspiration for any of the nightmares, be it for atmosphere or just for the interesting horrific things that might turn up in nightmares. I mean, really, some nightmares can be pretty messed up after all. And so, in doing so, I tried looking at drawings and games and clips from films (because I admit if I watched the films too long themselves then I wouldn't be able to sleep for over a week). In my research I came across a relatively new, episodic game called 'Bendy and the Ink Machine' - thank Nadia for this since it was through her pointing out a fanart that I first heard about this. For those of you who might not have heard about it, BatIM is based in an old cartoon studio, which was obviously inspired by the old black and white Disney cartoons, such as Steamboat Willy, With one of the artists invited back to 'see something', leading to what appears to be the awakening, or creating of a real life version of the star character, Bendy. There's only two chapters out at the time of this blog, but I'll admit, it did interest me.

I had been thinking in the past that, in Dreamwalkers, the art style of the dreams should also differ, depending on who's dream they enter, be it due to colour (or lack thereof), or more realistic, or maybe even more cartoony etc. It would differentiate the waking world from the dreamscape, while allowing me to explore different ways to portray the dreamer's personality, or even allow me to have more flexibility in what the SOS crew can pull off within the dreams, as I imagine that each dream would have its own 'rules' to follow.

This lead me to doodling a little. Which lead me to doing fanart.

Yes, I have once again started doing some fanart. Still, it has let me explore 'horror' yet in a different kind of art style, so if nothing else, it let me have some practice! The drawings I did were avatar/icon style images that could be used online, so I only had a certain amount of space to work with. If nothing else they could be edited to make badges, perhaps! Let me know what you guys think?

Either way, first was the image I doodled which evolved into a colour piece.

Admittedly, its probably more cartoon that horror here, but it was a first attempt. I think the thing I enjoyed the most was doing the glowing eye here. Still, I wanted to try to get used working with only a few colours and get used to a slightly different art style as well. I think the ink itself could be improved, as I didn't really get around to the lighting on the ink properly, so it's come across a little on the flat side. But it was interesting to get used to drawing Bendy himself. Hopefully I'll do a few improvements on him to make the ink pop a little better.

Still, I'll admit I enjoyed working in almost sepia tone, which was similar to the art style from the game, and so I tried something slightly different in terms of both the shading and texturing in the next part.

Please note this one definitely isn't finished yet, but the majority is, so I thought you guys might be interested in seeing it :) Once again, please excuse my horribly photography skills

This one, I feel, is coming out closer to what I originally imagined. It still looks cartoony, but with hints of more....not exactly realism, but grittiness, I guess? The drips of the ink look a bit less cartoony - sorry, I haven't looked at highlights yet on this one - (it reminded me a bit of when I did the front cover image for Dreamwalkers, honestly!) and you can see the grooves in the wood. I definitely think if I drew a kids nightmare with a cartoony like figure looking similar to something like this, it would certainly be scary to that child. Not to say there isn't more to do here, but it seemed to be a good basis.

Its been nice experimenting, and also allowing myself to get some of my interest in other things on paper.

Characters aside, atmospherically, the game does pretty well, using the cartoony/comic like art style and making it pretty damned creepy, too. Its worth a look at for that, if nothing else, but the gameplay as well in pretty interesting and the unfolding story looks pretty promising, so I'll probably keep looking into it as more episodes of the game come out....and hope I don't end up scared of shadows for months after.

Yes, I am indeed a big wimp. Ah well

Anyway, hoped you enjoyed my doodle detour. Its great to post up some stuff for you all :)

Until next time!

Tara