Samantha Landells

 In preparation for my academic tutorial I was asked to complete these questions:  1) What is going well? I am really pleased I have been able to focus on not only my traditional skills during this project, but designs which encompass a more realistic human anatomy as this is an area I am trying hard to improve on. I really like the final character designs I have managed to come up with and feel I have been thorough in my concept ideas and development.  2) What has been problematic with your projects? I feel I have been attempting to be too detailed in certain areas which have led me to having much less time to complete the final illustration but I feel I will still manage to complete this as I have been able to catch up. I just need to make sure in future that I do not become too fixated on certain areas for instance I was struggling with my initial character silhouettes as I didn't have access to feedback as it was half term, however I was able to resolve this by gather...

Displayed within this post are the two completed outlines for my characters within my ‘Character Design’ module. I felt it would be more effective once I was happy with my sketches to create digital versions of my designs so I could alter them more effectively if needed. I also felt by having my characters digital it would also provide me with the opportunity to import them into my composition sketches so I could work out where and how I wanted them placed. I just find by having a refined version of my sketches I feel a lot more confident working out their poses whilst maintaining their shape and form. I’m really happy with how these two characters have turned out and feel they will work really well together in my illustration. I love the interesting features I incorporated within my Nisse character in comparison to the use of hairstyling to create interest within my human character. I enjoyed this process as it enabled me to focus on the human anatomy which was a target I am aimin...

Following my explorations into both textured brushes and children’s illustrations I commonly found this style of illustration being used where there were bold outlines which were made less intrusive through the use of a textured brush and wanted to explore its efficiency within the creation of one of my own characters. I chose to use my young girl for this considering I have not yet explored any digital methods of colouring or creation for them unlike my Nisse character. I like the way my character turned out considering this felt like the first time I had used these methods to create a completely unique full frontal character design, based on human anatomy. I chose to simplify certain areas to ensure it remained suitable for my chosen target audience, for instance by simplifying the shape of the hands and feet. I really like the textures used on the actual block areas of colour as I feel this works really well to create the perception of texture, however I am not so sure on the ...

Starting the process of designing and colouring my Nisse character for this module I was having a lot of trouble with how  I wanted my visuals to appear and the style and form of my character. I have previously created an overly-exaggerated full illustration of a gnome which I have discussed in a different post, however I wanted to explore something more ‘human’ and relatable to the design I was hoping to achieve. Due to this I decided to create a small illustration to explore this which I found really helped me move forward in my development. Although I took a more realistic direction with the texturing on the hair I really like how I have chosen to colour my illustration, incorporating shadows underneath elements of the beard in order to create more depth within my work. I’m not sure I like the fit of the hat I designed on this character as it seems unrealistic the way it is standing tall despite having the appearance of a fabric material. Due to this I will make sure to foll...

I attended the AOI meeting for my course requirements and completed these notes during the call as I was unable to write due to my fractured hand. I took screenshots during the powerpoint to support the notes I was making to help minimise the writing load. I made these notes to ensure I fully understood the points being discussed and how this could help me in the future as an aspiring illustrator. I also found it really helpful as it helps me digest the information better being able to return to it in the future, writing notes I find helps me more easily return to subjects as I can comprehend the topics quickly using my I found this talk extremely interesting and really enjoyed the experience overall. I have now applied for the AOI membership which will provide me access to a braod range of resources which will help me currently and in future when developing multiple areas of my career, which I feel is a smart investment to make. 

During the creation of my Character Design module I decided to create a personal development illustration based around this character, in order to help me visualise the different ways I could represent this character within my final design. I liked how I still maintained the use of human form within this design as it was an important technique I was hoping to develop during this project. I like the way I chose to create a more unusual pose for my character as it creates a clearer narrative that the character has been discovered somewhere within a hidden cave. I wanted to base my illustration around the theme of a traveller who had stumbled across the creature and had managed to snap an old image which had been previously lost in time before discovery. I tried to enhance this by handwriting the title of the illustration as if it were a handwritten note of what the picture captured, which was a common practice in days past with old style cameras such as polaroid’s. I felt this helped...

In my previous illustration I set two targets once again they were 1. To explore the recreation of the design using a different expression to see how this impacted the design and 2. Explore the development of a magic mushroom based character. I chose to go with the colouring of my original colour scheme which is based around the concept of magic mushrooms with their purplish caps so I felt this would work perfectly. I reused the pose from my previous experiment as previously discussed and began investigating the use of different expressions. I ended up creating completely unique eyes for this character made from loose spirals as if to insinuate they are under the influence. I also chose to leave the brow line marks as I felt this once more boosted this perception and felt they worked well together. I decided to create a new mouth entirely, one that would fit with the rest of the aesthetics of the design. For this I chose to create a form which portrayed the character as being in a se...

I was asked to create a graphic illustrative response to the below image of a dog named Winston, my client has requested commissions based on their dog before and I was excited to see what I could come up with for them now. This was more of a personal purchase rather than branding so I wanted to take a much more colourful and fun approach. I decided to take what I had learnt from my previous Editorial project Tetsuo: Iron Man where I created illustrations of ‘The Birds’ using blocks of colour with no detail as I felt this style would be highly appropriate for the job. Initially I had created the design using more saturated colours but the client expressed they would prefer something that matched his fur colour so they remained fully recognisable despite their unique facial markings. Due to this I returned to the design and chose to directly eye drop from sections of the image for the basis of my colour palette. This worked much better and the client was a lot happier with this slight...

For the development of this characters pose I wanted them to be positioned in some form of power position, which is why I chose the have them holding their arms up in victory as if trying to intimidate those around them. As before I decided to create this character initially using the same purple colour scheme as I was some reason finding this a lot easier to work with, not only this but I like how it allowed me to compare the completion of each character to how it would look using the original colour palette so I could measure its success. I wanted to highlight the character and personality of this character even further hence I decided to incorporate maggots within the design to portray that the character is literally rotten. I found this addition rather successful as I managed to maintain a viewer friendly character whilst creating a sense of villainy which is what I was hoping to achieve.   For this character I decided to go with a completely contrasting colour scheme of red an...

Continuing on with the development of my mushroom character I decided to investigate two of my targets which I’d previously set which were to 1. Explore the use of colour and 2.Invetigate the use of a more dynamic pose. In order to create the pose initially I decided to use the same colours as I had utilised within the previous design, I felt this would help me practice the placement of my shadows with a design I had already created to help me improve this element. I also felt by completing this design using the same colours initially it would allow me to reuse them as positions for the original character as well if I chose to use them in future. Seeing as my initial design was a standing pose I chose to explore having the character sitting down as though listening intently to a conversation. I felt this worked really well and my choice of placement for elements such as the arms really helped boost the cuteness of my character which I liked. While exploring different colour optio...

This was a really fun personal project for me and I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process. The aim of this project was not to work on a completely new character design, but to rework a well-known Nintendo character which had become a key component of humour throughout lockdown for me and my partner. I wanted to do this as I was feeling inspired by a YouTube animated video about Super Smash Bro’s which resulted in the infamous Waluigi becoming part of our daily comedy. Due to this I wanted to capture the memory and felt there was no better way than to create my own design and have it printed on matching hoodies for me and my partner. I recreated the iconic red mushroom to  be printed on the front of the chest and began designing the main illustration to be used on the back of the hoodie. I used Procreate to create this design following references for the placement of the characters. I also redrew the Nintendo typography for the character using individual letters so I could place it ...

I thought initially this task would have taken me longer to complete whilst juggling my other projects but I managed to fit it in almost straight away which I was impressed by. I absolutely love the style of this new design, I chose to take inspiration from my research into ‘Eat Chicken’ or ‘ 吃貨雞仔 ’ and use this to execute my SMART Targets of exploring the use of a more muted colour palette. I feel this worked especially well and I’m really happy with the final results of this design. I decided to incorporate an outline on this design but used a more natural colour to the character and I really like how this allowed me to refine areas without being too contrasting against the whole design like it would have if it were black. I enjoyed my exploration into the use of coloured line strokes and I feel it will definitely be something I experiment with further, as I feel it works really well for the concept of children’s illustrations. Overall I’m really happy with how my illustration ...

Considering my chosen mythological character during my Character Design of a Nisse, I was heavily inspired due to my research into this character persona to develop my own illustration of a garden gnome. It shares the typical character features and style of the Nisse character I am trying to develop hence I feel this will be useful to my projects development as it will help me visualise this style of character better. I was inspired by my 30 Day Challenge designs and my Textured Brush Experiments for the style of this design. I wanted to explore the style of something heavily textures considering the audience I was working towards for my project was a young audience, I felt this would be the perfect opportunity to jump into this further and start exploring some of those digital techniques myself. I really like the outcome of the overall illustration and the way the character interacts with the environment. If I were to redraw this in the future I would work on making the beard have...

Following on from my previous explorations into this character I decided to address the colour values of my character in order to see whether a bolder palette would work better for their design. I chose to reuse the villain pose and facial expression as I felt this could work well with the darker colour palette, not only this but I felt it could be an interesting way to explore the villain character concept further. I used my references from the Blackreach mushrooms from Skyrim as inspiration for my new colour palette, combining the use of light blue and purple within this new experiment. I really like the impact this had on the overall aesthetics of my character, it made them feel much more mystical using a blue light rather than pure white. I was inspired by the completion of this design using my villain pose to create a secondary character which would be their supporter. I wanted the aesthetics of this character to contrast heavily against the design of the other character thoug...

I was inspired by the characters created by the artist Jen or ‘Fair Drop Art’ for the development of this character as I wanted to explore the creation of my own anatomical mushroom creature. I wanted to base the colours of my mushroom around the species Cortinarius Iodes as I wanted to work with a more magical feeling colour palette than the usual standard browns of fungi. The type of fungus I chose to base my character on has a purple slimy cap with yellowish spots which develop through maturity. Due to this I wanted to create an expression which appeared more aged due to my choice to incorporate the yellowing spots. I achieved this using various strokes to accentuate facial features of my character such as lines under the eyes for tiredness, and layers to form a hanging chin. During this experiment I was attempting to further develop my skills and understanding of using textured brushes within my illustration. I chose to combine the use of heavy textures to add detailing but s...

I am growing increasingly fond of the chick characters I keep working with during my personal development. I find them fun to create whilst resulting in playful illustrations overall. For this design I decided to try something completely new for the body form of my chick, using inspiration from the artist ‘Eat Chicken’ or ‘ 吃貨雞仔 ’ illustrations. I really liked the use of overly exaggerated features to add further levels of innocence to my design, I decided to create the chick as though they were a ‘giant’ with a tiny head as I felt this would be quite interesting to explore. I love the addition of a cherry on the top of their head as it helps provide this scale reference to both younger and older audiences. I decided to use cell shading for the completion of this experiment rather than the soft texturing I had been using in my previous explorations as I wanted to investigate how this would affect the overall aesthetics of the design. I prefer the use of solid lines and cell shading ...