My Art Journey 2023

Welcome to my Nostalgia Project.

The point of this project was to take a favorite childhood series or movie and redesign the characters in a new and visually interesting way.

Here we can see the redesigned lineup for some of my favorite characters from the Astro series. I wanted to create a design that was easy to read and a color scheme that was different from the original but kept the iconic red boots for Astro. As you use the neat little slider below you will see the alternate casual design I made for the characters with base colors.

These are a few of the many sketches I created to find the design and style I wanted for this project. I really enjoyed this part of the process.

After making so many sketches I decided on a set of designs and sketched them in a matching style. Then I made color iterations to help me decide on the color set I wanted for Astro and friends.

Expression sheets for a few of the characters.

This is the turnaround for Astro and gestures of the characters.

Astro Boy's home!

For the environment design, I started with some thumbnails of Astro's bedroom and started sketching the design I liked best. I didn't feel like the room fit Astro, so I redesigned the room to be a house with an iconic Astro theme. Astro is curious and loves to learn so I definitely wanted him to have a library, I also felt like he would be really into space exploration, so I wanted the house to feel like an observatory. Once I had a rough sketch of the new design, I used blender to create a rough 3D model and sketched over the model to get my final line art. Then I just added color and the fun part, light!

The color iterations for the exterior of Astro's house.

These are the props for Astro's house. I created a bunch of science themed toys that I thought Astro would like to play with.

Here's a nice story moment with Astro and his sister.

The Hermit Project!

For this project I was exploring the hermit archetype. After doing some research, I decided on the lone hermit archetype for my character design.

I started with a lot of sketches for this character. I knew that he needed to have a walking staff and a bag to carry things in, so I played around with the idea of him using a large shell as a backpack. In the end I changed my idea of how he would carry things and focused on the characters design and silhouette. After the final sketch was done, I created some color iterations and mixed a few of my favorites to create the final design.

                                                                       Marlin's turnaround.

                                                    Character gestures and expressions.

Story thumbnails showing a young Marlin playing at the beach and looking for the perfect shell to make his home.

Marlin's house is made from a giant sea shell and is tied down to a large raft so he can travel around. Here is the process for his home, I started with a bunch of thumbs and picked my favorite design. Then I sketched a turnaround and some props for the environment.

These are the props for Marlin and for the environment.

Key Art thumbnails, I wanted to explore the large world that the hermit lived in. In some of these thumbnails I tried exploring larger than life objects and creatures.

                                                 Thanks for looking at my Hermit Project!

This next project is based on Luke Howard who named the clouds in the 1800's. My goal for this project was to try a more graphic style and do lot's of cloud studies.

                                                                    Luke's character design!

Environment study. I wanted to experiment with different times of day on one scene.

Here are some more cloud and environment studies I did for the project.

At the start of the project I worked on some cloud studies to better understand the flow and shape of the different cloud types.

                                                           Props and environment design.

                                                    Other studies I've worked on this year.

                                                                   Ikea magazine study

                                                                       Vehicle shader packet

                                                                             Prop Practice.

                                                            Translucent materials study

                                       In this project I was studying Itten's 7 color contrasts.