New job alert

Hello everyone!

Long time no post! If I’m honest it’s the combination of extreme busyness and low mood/ energy. However, I started a new job last week which I hope will go a long way to addressing both of the above.

I’m now working as a Character Designer on a TV show at Blink Industries! I had a lovely warm welcome from the Producer, Lead Character Designer, Showrunner and the rest of the team. It was also lovely to know that a classmate of mine is storyboarding on the same show.

This is exactly the type of work I’ve spent so much energy trying to get over the last few years so I’m very happy! The timing is perfect (turbulent year, art-wise and upcoming circumstance changes), the studio is in London (I don’t have to work from home everyday) and I’m on the Production side of things (optimum learning environment). All I can say is ‘Thank you God!’

I can’t say much about the show itself but I love the style and I look forward to getting to know the characters over the next year or so.

Thanks for reading. Until next time!

God bless,
Selom

Character Redesign

I recently started redesigning an original character called Adrian. He’s the head of a group of teachers called the EAGLE Squad. I haven’t got round to the other teachers properly yet, but this is the second time I’m redesigning him and this time I’m going in a completely different direction. One of the reasons I never got round to the other teachers is that I wasn’t that excited about the story or design - it needed reworking. I really felt like I should redesign him, but even when I went to start it I had no motivation at all. It wasn’t until I thought of him as a character in the 70s that I found new inspiration and started looking for reference to fuel my mind. Below you will see just how different version 3 is from versions 1 and 2.

Adrian version 1, 2 and 3 (rough version)

With version 2 I kept the same clothing but just wanted to push the shapes a bit more, but version 3 is a completely different version of Adrian - cooler, more in control. One of the main redesigns I wanted to redesign in the first place is that I want my portfolio to reflect where I’m at right now, all the things I’ve learnt since through studying and from my mentor. I wanted to start with some kids, but God wanted me to start with Adrian - God wins again!

I cleaned him up and experimented with different cool colours to bring out the personality I’m going for. I decided the purple was my favourite.

Colour exploration

I then added some rough expressions and showed it to my mentor who kindly did a drawover for me which I then finalised and added a couple more expressions to as seen below:

rough expressions

drawover from mentor

final

I’ve really enjoyed this process so far and I’m looking forward to getting round to designing the other teachers this time.

That’s it for now. Until next time.

God bless,
Selom

Hand Studies

I intend to post studies on this blog sometimes… this is one of those times.

Hands are definitely an area I need to practice more. These were 3-5 minute studies on Line of Action (https://line-of-action.com/). It definitely felt a lot easier than it has done previously. We keep going!

That’s it for now. I’ll be back with another post next week!

God bless,
Selom

This month's updates (May 2023)

General updates

Things are beginning to pick up again art-wise - that student from my lecture last month was right - the new financial year really turned the tap back on because January to April, things were very dry! I don’t mind telling you that I had to seek employment outside of drawing. I was actually working in a school as a Teaching Assistant and I actually hope to go back to that at some point, even if it’s just once in a while. There are young boys in schools who really need male role models and I felt like I was beginning to make some sort of difference. To be continued…

What I’ve been working on

Illustrations for an English Chamber Orchesta performance
I started these illustrations in March but finished them this month. I was commissioned by an organisation called ‘Little People Big Noise’ to draw a poster and some illustrations to accompany a musical piece by the English Chamber Orchestra with a poem by acclaimed writer Sophia Thakur. I attended the initial performance of it with my friend and mentee and it was great to see how the illustrations were used - the music and poem were fantastic! It was a new avenue for my work for sure. Below is a comparison between my initial sketch for the poster and my final drawing. One of the more subtle changes is that the girl in the final drawing is based on Sophia Thakur whereas the first one wasn’t.

Final illustrations for The Christmas Carrolls Book 3 (The Christmas Club)
The Christmas Carrolls is a book series about a family that celebrate Christmas all year round and are generally over the top with it and don’t get why everyone else isn’t. The series was my first book deal with interior illustrations and it forced me to draw several things I’d avoided drawing for ages so I’ll always be grateful for that. However, I’ve improved quite a bit since I drew those initial characters in 2021 so trying to stick to the original style required immense discipline which took a lot out of me. Here is the final cover and selected rough interior illustration.

Character Designs for secretthingymabob
Yeah, that’s probably as much as I can say. It’s just a few days of work and I’m not quite finished yet, but it’s been really fun. Character Design is my favourite type of work (in case I haven’t said this enough).

Illustrations for a book about a Welsh sporting hero
Having said many times that I was running away from books, they seem to keep chasing me so I even considered getting another agent this month, but after some frank conversations with a couple agents I was made to realise a few things (basically I had unrealistic expectations) so it didn’t work out. However, I was approached directly about a Children’s Picture Book and I haven’t done one on my own before so based on my new realistic expectations I decided to take it on. My main issue with books so far has been the payment terms and this time and this publisher was able to assure me in that area (I don’t mind being honest about this stuff).

Takeaways from my mentor

Volume is king!
I’m being mentored by the amazing David Perez (cra0la on Instagram) who from what I can tell has worked with virtually every big Animation studio including the one he knows I want to work for wink wink*.. There are reasons he’s worked with all those studios and the reasons are that his work is amazing, he really knows his stuff and he’s a really nice guy with excellent communication skills, so when he says something I’m gonna listen! I asked him to mentor me in February this year and thankfully he agreed. He has been putting me through my paces in an assignment he set me to design a cast of four retail colleagues. His main aim at the moment is for me to push myself and get out of my comfort zone. I’ve definitely been scared to push proportions for some reason. I also have a tendency to flatten my drawings even when I don’t intend to and think that habit has come from the styles I chose for my book illustration work. David picked up on this and he’s been helping me realise that even when a style is graphic, there is still volume underpinning it. I’ll soon share a comparison of my first take on the assignment and the latest iteration and the multiple versions in between, but it needs its own post. Going forward I just need to remember volume, volume, volume!

That’s all for this week.

God bless,
Selom

Artist Spotlight - Carter Goodrich

One of my favourite things to do is look at the work of more experienced artists - of course you have to be careful when and how to do this as if you don’t feel good about your own art it can do more harm than good. Generally, it tends to inspire me or help me realise the gaps in my knowledge that I need to work on. There are so many artists I have been inspired by on this journey so I’ll be spotlighting them once a month, starting with Carter Goodrich.

Carter, Carter, Carter can’t you see sometimes your works just hypnotise me?

Carter Goodrich - man I love his work. I’m starting with him as he was one of my first big inspirations when I found out what Character Design was. I remember being interviewed to get onto an Animation course in 2013 and they asked me about my influences and the first name was Carter Goodrich. The teacher hadn’t heard of him (to my disbelief, though I’d probably only heard of him weeks before) so I was only too happy to educate him right there and then and I’m sure my passion came across. These are the images I would have been showing him - development work for Brave, Despicable Me, Hotel Transylvania and Ratatouile:

I loved everything about Carter’s work - the shapes, the proportions, the character, the humour, THE TEXTURE, THE TEXTURE, THE TEXTURE! I didn’t understand how someone could use a pencil to such good effect and imbue the characters with such life. At the time I was a Photoshop novice and also clueless about colour so he was one of the people who gave me hope that it’s possible to be a Character Designer without using Photoshop (PLEASE LEARN PHOTOSHOP IF YOU WANT TO BE A CHARACTER DESIGNER - it’s on every job description haha). Anyway, I’m sure I definitely went through a phase of trying to wield my pencil like him and I’m sure the results were embarrassing!

I was also aware of Carter’s work for The New Yorker magazine and his friendship with Pete de Seve who’d had a similar art journey (in one interview I watched of them they were joking about who copied who). I feel like it’s rude to mention Carter without at least mentioning Pete de Seve so I will talk a bit about him. Pete, of course is amazing in his own right and around 2013/ 2014 when Carter was my world I called Peter ‘Mr Ice Age’ as the main thing I knew him for was his work on the Ice Age movies - I later found out that he’d worked on a host of other things which I didn’t expect like The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

I love the storytelling and personality he puts into his drawings, especially the one of Scrat from Ice Age (one of the most unfortunate characters on screen, ever). The guy is a master no doubt, though I do resonate more with Carter’s work for some reason - maybe it’s because I feel it’s easier to break down or try and replicate? I’m not sure.

If you don’t know Carter’s work or Pete’s. look them up! Hope you enjoyed this as there’ll be another artist spotlight next month, possibly with some annotations over one of my favourite current designers’ work.

God bless,
Selom