Door (Sign) To Childhood!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

So as a little bit of a break from drawing characters, I was coming up with an idea for a design for a child's bedroom door. You know, signs that say who's room the tag belongs to. I guess I was somewhat inspired, since I have been doing various designs for images that would go in a child's room.

While I had previously been focusing on Alice in Wonderland, I had been shown alternate ideas for the room images and thought I might give those a try as well. The one I favoured the most in my sketches ended up being a room tag, with the child's name on it in a nature theme, while involved branches, leaves and animals. While only really a first sketch and something that could be worked on into more depth, what I ended up with was this:

Apologies for the quality of the image - as usual, my photography skills leave much to be desired. Still! The idea was for a young child, using cute but simplistic designs for the animals - which, if I wanted to, could easilly be replaced by different ones like bunnies, mice, other birds, dogs, cats etc, depending on the preference. The surrounding area, which is admittedly rough at the moment, and the name would be like wood or vine-like plants. True, this one has the name Tabitha on it for now, but it does show that longer names can fit in it without a problem - if I'd used a short one like my own name for it, then it would be awkward to adjust if a longer name was required

So, when I'm not experimenting with my art style, I was considering making a full colour version of something like this and see what people think. Would anyone be interested in seeing a full version of this or even a range of kids door nameplates? I am interested in what you all think.

Until next time!

Tara

Sketchy Raccoons!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Sorry for the delay on this post. I  have mentioned in the past that I occasionally have difficulties with my wrists - mainly reoccurring tendonitis - so I didn't particually have anything to really show off just yet. Well, other than my finished commission, but as I'm waiting on payment for that it doesn't feel right to show it off before the client can have it, you know?

While they're still a tad achy, I at least dont need them strapped up, so I did some sketches, mostly just to get my hand back in and give my wrists a bit of gentle exercise. Since I had been drawing Milo recently, I thought I'd stay on a similar vein and draw some more Milo things.

Milo was created mainly as a Zootopia/Zootropolis based Kingdom Hearts character, so I decided to have a go at drawing him with a keyblade. Note that the keyblade in the current sketches is only one idea for what it actually could be, since I'm still a little unsure as to the design of the blade itself. I'll likely be doing some pure keyblade ideas at some point and figure out what fits best on blade design alone, but for now, these were just sketches of Milo as a keyblade wielder.

So the first sketch was just an idea of him in his normal outfit with (a version of) his keyblade:

As you can tell, the keyblade itself is exceptionally sketchy. The basics of it is that it is a night stick with a stylised paw print as the key's teeth and the guard is horns arching downward. Between the blade and hilt is a ZPD badge. As Milo is a detective, it seemed fitting to mix animalistic features into police-type ones. 

With Milo being so small - Zootopia sizes of the characters match their real animal counterparts if they stood on hind legs) - the keyblade itself is able to shoot energy bullets, but my friends and I have jokingly considered his fighting style with it might resemble the kind you expect from Star Wars' Yoda, allowing the small character to fight much larger opponents.

The second sketch of him I decided to do, not in his casual clothing, but the suit he, as a private investigator, would likely wear on the job.

Bit unsure if in a final image he would have the shirt tucked in like this or loose as his casual shirt tends to be. However, this is the first time I've actually drawn him in his work's clothing, so this might end up changing later down the road. 

Oh, my sketches aside, I'm considering trying to do the Milo drawing I did last time into an image using that experimental art style I sometimes try which is different from my usual art style. Since all I've done to it so far is a base sketch and a colour test on it, its the perfect base for me to give it a try. Plus, since Zootopia itself is a 3D animation, rather than a 2D, it seemed a fitting image to attempt. 

So, the plan going forward is to show various ideas for the keyblade that Milo could end up with going forward, and the image of Milo using my experimental style to see if this would made for an interesting image of Milo, maybe even closer to the canon style than 2D. So expect the beginnings of one or the other, or maybe both coming up!

Once again, sorry for the delay on this, but thanks for sticking with me, everyone! You're all awesome! :)

Until Next Time!

Tara

Cartoon Raccoon!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Some of you may remember that late last year I drew an image of a character that was an anthropomorphic raccoon that would have fit into Disney's Zootopia world for a Kingdom Hearts RP. That image was just a pen sketch and one during a time when I hadn't really drawn many animal characters.

For reference as to the image I'm talking about, I covered it here

Well, I've been having another go at it and I've sketched Milo Forager the Raccoon once again, this time having a bit more of an idea of how to draw it, with some studying of actual raccoons to help me get a better idea for its features.

So, I began with a sketch, which ended up coming out like this:

I feel like the proportions on this version fit the character much better than that initial sketch, such as in his body shape. The characters in Zootopia did tend to still have the proportions of their real counterparts. This includes the slim paws that, ironically, look somewhat like hands anyway, a wide body, especially near the back end and the head shape is closer to a racoon than the original version, though its a little difficult to show the exact shape of the muzzle from that angle.

Admittedly, I was initially a little unsure about this version purely on the sketch, as it doesn't show a lot of details where colours and shading is concerned.  A lot of the colour would bring out details in the character, which looks a little awkward without it. As such, I decided to do a test run with colour rather than going straight for a neat line art. Now, this isn't meant to be detailed or even neat, but rather I wanted to be certain that it wasn't the fact it lacked colour that made it a tad awkward.

So, this in mind, I tested colour on the sketch:

As you can see, veeeeeeerry rough colouring, since it was litterally just selecting areas and filling them. This would be far neater once the line art is clean and I get to the actual colour stage. But even with that in mind, just adding the colour to it does actually seem to make him stand out far more, and the slight awkwardness that bothered me isn't there any longer, especially around the face where the different fur shades stand out rather than looking a little out of place.

Still, I am much happier with this version of Milo than the original sketch I made all that time ago, so I may draw more of him in the future, once I've got a fully designed Keyblade for him to be able to show him as he is in the Kingdom Hearts Roleplay.

Plus it is pretty interesting designing keyblades, especially after having drawn Chidori for the commission (which I'll be covering next week after it's been handed over).

Still, as usual, happy to hear what anyone thinks :)

Until next time!

Tara