This little fella surfaced as a doodle in my sketchbook last year, and I decided to take him to my desk where I HAND INKED him, then colored him in Photoshop. He just seemed like the kind of little guy that needed to be let out of those pages to breathe. Just don’t let him breathe on you, of course. No telling what kind of cooties he has.
By the way, I only stress the “hand inked” part above because of something that happened to me not too long ago. I was visiting a friend at Dreamworks Animation one day, and had my portfolio with me. A couple of college-aged art school interns working with him were also there, and they asked to look at my art while I continued conversing with my friend. When they finished looking at the goods, they asked something that really startled me – “What program did you use?”
“Program?” I asked, “Well, I colored a few of those things in Photoshop, but everything was drawn by hand on paper or painted with real paint.” The look of astonishment on their faces was priceless, although, I probably was equally astonished that they weren’t being taught the fundamentals of art at their school. All they knew was the computer.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love working on the computer, too. I am often called on to do so for work in the animation industry, having even recently done some storyboarding on a Cintiq tablet monitor (for those of you not familiar, it’s a computer screen you can draw on with an electronic pen). It’s just that I LOVE to draw and paint on paper. Both have their own looks, but when I work traditionally, at the end of the day I have a genuine real piece of art in my hands. That is infinitely more satisfying than just saving a file that disappears from view when you shut off the computer.
Hope you enjoy this little traditional/Photoshopped hybrid. At least part of it can be found on some nice Bristol board in my studio. The colored version disappears for me just as quickly as you clicking on the next web page.