My own work

I've not really gone through my own working process much, so I wanted to show some of the pieces I've been working on lately.

My current self generated project is centred around a group of anthropomorphic animals, a theme, I'll admit I enjoy drawing quite a lot. The premise is based around a lizard, a rat and a tasmanian wolf (thylacene) working together in a garage. A rival garage opens up next door, run by a weasel with a not too bright rhino and a less intelligent porcupine. The main focus is the interplay between the three main characters and the events in their life along with the rivalry with the garage next door. I've always enjoyed mixing up mundane elements with the extraordinary and this will feature heavily in the stories with outlandish cartoonish violence mixed with social observation.

The first stage has been to develop the character designs. The three principal characters have been knocking around for some time now, but I never felt that the character designs were particularly accomplished, being designed when I had less experience. Thus, in order to understand what makes a good character design, I've been looking at a number of books and websites - most notably gleaning advice from John Kricfalusi (the creator of Ren and Stimpy) who is something of an expert in this field as well as  looking at design work from such folks as Joe Murray (Rocko's Modern Life) and Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter's Laboratory) as well as from earlier artists, notably Walt Kelly (Pogo) and Carl Barks (Uncle Scrooge/Donald Duck).

I'm preparing the seventh member of this ensemble - a secondary character: a somewhat nervous Armadillo accountant who will work alongside the rat, lizard and wolf. After looking at a lot of good anthropomorphic animal designs, I started to play around with shapes.

Then some sketches of armadillos just to get the feel of what these guys look like.

For me, I felt this character works best if he's small and insignificant. He needs to look like an accountant, and most of all we need to see his personality from first sight.

Combining props - the glasses, the tie and the safety helmet - and his pose - in this case, he seems to have picked up a minor injury - should tell us a lot about this guy.

Next I do some poses and head shots just to break in the character. I want to find the best and easiest way to draw him. This is particularly important if he's to be animated in the future. All the best pieces are pasted into a model sheet.

Then there's colour - not always easy. I experimented with more earthy colours, before deciding to go bold and making him blue. Hopefully, the form and the addition of armour plates on the snout should indicate that he is an armadillio.

A coloured Dillon

And that's about it for now. I'll put this guy away for a couple of weeks and come back to him with a fresh eye to see if anything needs tweaking.

Good night.