Robot characters for kids' event

I recently had an extremely fun and inspirational project. I designed 4 robot illustrations for an event in which kids and their teachers exchanged their experiences they had achieved by using Lego-robots in their schools.

I first had a workshop with children to get ideas for robots. Kids designed and drew their own robot characters and based on those drawings I came up with concepts for the robots. Who would have expected an ice cream robot being one of them? The other 3 concepts were actually pretty practical... wait, did I just sort of claimed that ice cream robot wouldn't be practical..? Ask kids, they know better. I also could utilize some juicy details from kids' drawings.

So here are images in which I have combined either a sketch or a vector path image with the finished one.

The window cleaning robot.

The hedge cutter robot.

The dog walker robot.

The ice cream robot.

Illustration Friday - Animal

After a very long while, a doodle for Illustration Friday. Playing around with Procreate app is so much fun.

Inktober 2015

Last year I noticed that folks were spending the gloomy and rainy October by drawing impressive set of inked pieces in the name of "Inktober", one every day of the month. This year I wanted to join the fun also myself and I did the first piece without even dreaming to do the full set of 31 days. Little by little... I found time to do more and more.

Here's some picks from the beginning of my set.

Being sometimes very badly behind THE so called schedule made me desperately draw faster than I would have otherwise done, and that, I found out, is something that I should do even more often. So far the Inktober has been a great training camp that has taught me some subtle nuances of expressive line work. Zappy line, I think, is not just a result of skill but also courage.

Making weird combinations of animal faces and fashion kind of poses has also been a great deal of fun.

It's probably against the rules of Inktober, but I couldn't help myself finishing pieces with a touch of coloured pencil.

Peace!

Clayface & Batman

Another character for Sketch Dailies.

Creepy Ronald McDonald

After a while I did a daily challenge, this time for Daily Doodle. Here's a character that must be one of the most iconic characters in the universe. Maybe it's just me, but I find Ronald McDonald nothing but creepy, and yet it's used to allure kids. I think Ronald would easily do a main role in just about any horror movie.

Pan - the god of the wild

As playing pipes all day long every day must be a tough job even for a god of the wild, it should be okey to have a smoke every now and then.

Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road

I haven't seen the Mad Max: Fury Road yet, but the Furiosa character would be a nice reason to watch the movie.

Zorro suffering from dyslexia

Spelling isn't always that easy. A vector piece for Daily Doodle.

Jenny Sparks

Just another superhero that I haven't heard of until it was in Sketch Dailies. I would guess that she's british.

Werewolf - Happy Halloween

Here's some bestial terror and horror for Halloween, a werewolf I did for Sketch Dailies some days ago.

Ahti - the god of water in Finnish mythology

I tried out an exercise that I gave to my students... and I believe I learned a great deal. I hope the exercise was also useful for my students.

Venom - Supervillain

Here's yet another character I made for Sketch Dailies. Doing these daily challenges is not only fun, but it's also a pleasant excuse to keep drawing more than I would otherwise do.

Also I frequently run into characters that I haven't heard of before, like this one - Venom. As far as I got it right, it's somehow related to the Spiderman. I may have seen it before, but I had no idea of its' name. Anyway, now I'm one superhero wiser... only, it's not a good guy, but it's actually mentioned to be a supervillain... So now I also know that there's such a category as "super" for villains also.

I drew this with my favourite combination - iPad Air + Wacom Intuos Stylus + Procreate app. Here's a couple of wip screen shots.

Sketching space gladiators in a battle

Couple of days ago I gave my students a task to design two characters - enemies with each other. At the moment my schedule seems to allow me to make that task with them. So I started to sketch an idea of two space gladiators.

As I didn't have a very clear vision what the characters should look like and not having done this kind of creatures that much before, I found it very hard to come up with anything nice.

When I couldn't come up with a decent composition easily, I used Illustrator to build it with simple shapes. My idea is that the other one is having a scifi-kind-of-blast-cannon to stun it's enemy and the other one is using the same tactic as a viviparous lizard - dropping its tail to bluff the enemy. And that tail being very showy, kind of like the peacock has.

After I found a decent composition I started to build up the characters and their details in Photoshop.

Only at this phase I started to fit in more gladiator props.

Looking forward to finish this... if my other projects just allow me to do it.

Superman - tricot covered flying object

Usually when I feel an urge to draw just something without having any specific topic I end up drawing something that I've seen others drawing a lot, like superheroes, viking warriors, robots, monsters... the list is endless. Well at least I draw something instead of using 2 years trying to come up with extremely original...

Anyway, here's the Superman. In the end I think I had more dynamic postures in the sketches than in the final piece.

In the coloured version I tried to find a colouring method that would fit with a soft and greasy line work. I guess I failed to do that, because the outline sort of lost the vivid feeling it had before colouring. I believe it needs more subtle colours. That kind of line work needs air to breath. So I still need to work on that. Otherwise I'm quite happy. I believe I found some things that can be useful in future.

Princess Leia

Another semi-experimental piece I did for Sketch Dailies.

Nike - goddess of victory in Greek mythology

Trying some new thing with a late Sketch Dailies piece.

Batman playing rock-paper-scissors with Flash

Sketch dailies had a Batman-day.

Luis Suarez - from Transylvania (?)

How about some garlic Mr Suarez?

Wayne Rooney finally scored in World Cup 2014

Some soccer again... Being - without a doubt - a great player, it has been almost like a bad luck spell that Wayne Rooney hasn't scored a single goal in World Cup Finals... until a couple of days ago against Uruguay. Unfortunately there's not going to be a lot of chances for more in this WC as England didn't make it to the second round.

Rooney's robust character is very tasty for a player portrait.

... and some close ups.

Viking and a raven

During the previous months I've been so fascinated drawing with iPad/ProCreate app that I have done only very little with Mac/Photoshop... until my previous post. Now I continued experimenting things on Photoshop. I guess I was after some sort of a painterly kind of collage technique. Anyway, I ended up combining both drawn elements with details from photos. Here's a viking for Sketch Dailies.