Monster Illustration for Mobile Game in Vector

This illustration was created completely in Adobe Illustrator using all vector shapes and layer effects.  I had been asked to create a monster illustration for a children's mobile game project providing all assets in Illustrator.  I was given several reference images for a variety of monster styles.  Since one of my own monster characters fit the bill, I decided to waste no time designing a new one and just get down to the nitty-gritty Bezier curve handle-ing.

But, before I opened Illustrator to lay down points, I pulled out my Fujitsu Lifebook with penabled screen and made a concept sketch on Autodesk Sketchbook Pro to keep me on track during the production phase of the Illustrator project.  The sketch was done is a 20 minute sitting and the Illustrator project took a Sunday evening to complete.

A little about how this character was created in the first place.  He, or it, started out as a sketch done while living in South Korea using a mechanical drafting pencils primarily .05 for base and .03 for sharp details.  I was just going with the flow on this one and could see his image on the paper (if you can understand what I mean).  I call it the Monoptic Finger Alien because his legs are flexibly jointed fingers with distinct finger characteristics of knuckle lines, finger nails and rounded ends like finger tips - as to distinguish them from the typical non-jointed, point-tipped structure of tentacles.  The sketch below is lightened to clean up the background of the sketchbook page, but the original drawing lines are darker as I don't care for light handed sketches.

Concept Illustration

An accomplished author contacted me a short while ago seeking to enhance the visual aspect of his stories. This is a concept piece for a book cover illustration of a protagonist in one of the author's many writings. Without disclosing the story or other sensitive information I wanted to display the progress of the painting.

In this work, I had the opportunity to experiment more with pre-customized brushes and created some custom brushes for myself.  I needed a special brush to simulate the African hair, and even though it has not gone through the final pass, I am very pleased with the result.  There is yet much to do but this was completed in a couple sittings as sample work and I am enjoying the progress thus far.

 

Disclaimer: Background image is credited to Toni Bratincevic.

Colors! Majin's Character Sketch

Character concept painting sketch for Majin and her friends (chingu dul). Majin's character is fleshing out more and more with every painting, but this is one of the early concepts of the other characters in Majin's adventurer crew:  female and male friend and schoolmates, and younger sister.

Painting created in Colors painter program on the touch screen of a Nintendo DSiXL screen - my poor man's digital touch screen pad.

To see it stroke by stroke:

http://colorslive.com/details/695927

A caricature of Ninja Turtle, Donatello, in black and white as he sits on his swivel chair at his desktop work station in the underground NYC sewer home.  He turns and leans back as Master Splinter approaches the doorway behind.  The desktop framed photo denotes the father son relationship I wanted to express in this illustration.

In this piece, I wanted the freedom to explore cartoony contours that would somewhat liberate me from concerns with proportion and perspective accuracies because in a cartoon world, these are not necessary boundaries.

I wanted to see the soft, rounded Ninja Turtle in B&W.  Removing the element of color that is often associated with the cartoony incarnation of TMNT, I wanted to see a deeper and perhaps somber aspect as a contrast to other portrayals of this series.

This illustration was created entirely in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.  It was a test project for the software to get a glimpse at some of the capabilities of this software.  I really enjoyed Sketchbook Pro and have added it into my repertoire of visual graphic tools.

Please enjoy this alternative depiction of the ninja turtle world. ~Dan

Majin Lee

Character concept portrait painting for original story I created and developed while living abroad in South Korea and other Asian countries for several years.  Picture drawn by hand on paper, painted with Pixarra TwistedBrush with post work done in Adobe Photoshop.