10/19/15 - Halloween Post 5 - Haunted House Silhouettes (Part 2)

Continuing from yesterday's post, here's three different tests I did for conveying inner details in a silhouette.

For the first one, I chose to completely cut out all windows to 0% opacity (full brightness):

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For the second one, I dimmed some of the window details to more accurately reflect whether light was shining through or not:

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For the third one, I added extra details (non-transparent items) into the mix, but kept them as the darkest details:

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Out of the three designs, my favorite is probably #2 or #3.

10/18/15 - Halloween Post 4 - Haunted House Silhouette (Part 1)

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Okay, so today's goal was to create a more realistic scene, and play around with how silhouettes convey the details.  Here's the base image I came up with: a Volkswagen Beetle in front of a haunted house.  This is a silhouette at its purest: no inner details at all, only absolute edges.  Tomorrow I'll play around with additional options for showing the inner details.

*Note: Just like last time, my sole method for creating objects was the polygonal lasso tool.  My reason was two-fold: 1. for ease of creation, and 2. the distinctive look (which I think works well for these silhouette images).

10/17/15 - Halloween Post 3 - Silhouettes and Colors

I wanted to stay focused on just the silhouettes this time, so I made the scene very simple: just a few gnarly branches overlaying each other.  I also solely used the polygonal lasso tool for all the details, which I think is a cool effect in its own right.  I'm starting out simple with these silhouettes (just branches and trees).  As I progress I'll try much more complex designs, to see how well they translate into this simpler form.

I then tested with colors to see the different moods they created.  I went as simple as possible and just created a solid color in the background that I continually changed.  Interesting enough, the different colors actually made me start to imagine different details outside the frame.  Some felt swampy to me, some felt like a forest of dead trees, some felt like toxic waste was lurking down below.  It was actually a really fun test to play around with.

Otherwise, this was an incredibly simple design to achieve and I'm really happy with how it turned out.  As always, click each image for higher resolution:

10/16/15 - Halloween Post 2 - Tower in the Woods (Color)

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Well I spent way longer on this than I should have, haha.  My limit for these posts is supposed to be 15 min. max, but I ended up using about 30 min.  But I definitely enjoyed creating it.  It was really fun to just mess around with color and extra details to try to emphasize the original sketch's mood even further.  I'd love to continue it even beyond this, but for now I'll leave it as is to make room for more simpler Halloween creations throughout the rest of the month.  Anyway, enjoy!

10/15/15 - Halloween Post 1 - Tower in the Woods

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Gonna take a break from sketching cartoon hands for a while.  It's almost halfway through October and I wanted to get into the Halloween spirit with some random spooky creations.  Up first is a sketch all about mood and layers.  An ancient tower sits toppled in the middle of the woods.  Mostly I just wanted to sketch the tower itself, but I also wanted to play around with silhouettes, layers, and composition.  Approx. 25 min.

10/13/15 - Sketching Cartoon Hands (Chernabog)

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Now THIS guy has some seriously cool poses!  And what better subject for a post on Oct. 13 than Chernabog from Disney's "Fantasia"!  I had to do a bit of guesswork with these since his look is mostly based on lighting a silhouetted figure (which makes for a VERY cool look by the way), but I think they turned out really nice.  And I just HAD to color it in this time.  :)

As always, here's the raw sketch as well:

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