The Evolution of a comic strip and its characters – Part 3
| In part two of this series I talked about why it is I draw little aliens and just where they came from (besides Mars of course). With the inclusion of the article I mentioned we’d take a little trip down memory lane and see the evolution of Gummy over the course of about one year.In the beginning the Gummy drawings consisted of one frame illustrations attempting to capture a single moment in the little green guy’s life. At that time I was using Photoshop to create the illustrations and as you can see below they were a bit rough. The images were drawn quickly with very thick lines and somewhat blotchy coloring. |
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| It was during this time that we learned a little about Gummy. We found out he’s a little shy, quite lonely and eager to fall in love. His first love was a street lamp, as you can see. She didn’t pay much attention to him which eventually led Gummy to once again feel alone. |
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| It was at this point with the illustrations that I began to feel there needed to be another character. One which Gummy would fall head over heels for. Enter Bella, the little pink alien. As you can see while the line thickness and coloring technique are much the same, Gummy’s proportions and shapes began to change a little. |
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| Eventually I moved on from Photoshop to Illustrator. The middle image above is the very first I did using Illustrator. Now we see cleaner looking lines, coloring that’s less blotchy and a slightly more polished appearance. You might also notice the odd shaped heads. Looking back at them now, I wonder just what I was thinking. |
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| The middle image above represents the point at which I decided my aliens would never again have funky heads. I hope most would agree that they look better. Overall I was definitely shooting for a cleaner look. No more thick lines and lousy coloring. There were still a couple things that would eventually be tweaked, which I’ll talk about in the next segment of this series. I’ll also talk about how the comic strip came to be and why a certain bratty blue alien was introduced :) |
I definitely like the way your series has evolved. Much cleaner lines and brighter colors. Btw, did you mean to say, “Eventually I moved on from Illustrator to Photoshop”? I thought it was in reverse.
LOL…most likely. I wrote this while dealing with a huge headache. I’ll have to fix that..hehe.
Great post, Mike! :)
I’m going to say it once again, even though you already know…I’m a huge fan of the single frame illustrations! They are so adorable.
Thank you, Tishy :) I’ll make some more just for you..hehe.
This is really cool stuff, there is something really fascinating about seeing how things evolve over time. Your end result is extremely professional, it looks just like a comic strip you’d see in the paper. Very lovable characters! :)
Great Post Mike. I love when artist shows their drawing evolution. I like the new style, very clean, looks pretty :)
@Christy: Thank you! That’s what I was hoping to accomplish :)
@Hernan: Thanks, buddy! I love to see how an artist’s work evolves as well :)