Family Vacation

So this week's topic was "Time Machine". As soon as I read the topic, the first thing that popped into my head was this incredible scene from Samurai Jack.

My first idea was to create a similar scene and make a time traveling scientist warrior character. Here's what I came up with after playing with Illustrator for a while.

It just looks like a cheap rip off! So I ditched it, and started fresh on paper. I did a bunch of sketches.

I liked this, and decided to simplify it further. I wanted to make it look very 60s style cartoon, so I drew a hat on him :D I wanted to make it flatter without perspectives like that Samurai Jack shot. After sketching for a while, I finally drew this.

I was happy with this, and I realized how much I love the process of simplifying something!

Then, I got it into Illustrator and traced it. Here's the first draft of it.

I guess I got the forms right on this one, but the colors were just awful. It still looked too busy, and there were too many things in it fighting for attention. So I let it sit there for a night. Next morning, I looked at it, and the color scheme just came to me. I went in and swapped the color swatches. And I think it worked. I also added a couple of other characters to make it look like a family. Finally, I used the ever-so-beautifully-retro-futuristic font "Neutra" for the sign board. Here's the final image again.

Let me know what you think!

Viking Mariachi

This week's topic was "Viking Mariachi." I wanted to do something that had a balanced composition with a lot of elements, yet staying clean and uncluttered. Here' my first attempt.

I think this one looks okay when they are separated, but when all of them were put together in a single frame it looked too chaotic. So I started over. Here's the second version. This time I carefully drew the characters so that there would be no intersecting forms. I think the characters sit well together here, and each one is very different from the other.

And here's the finished piece again. I think I'll get back to this one sometime to do some shading.

You should check out the Facebook group here.

Suave Monkey

So, a few people from my department have started a new Facebook page, which is somewhat like Illustration Friday. And this week's topic is "Hats & Monkeys". Perfect excuse for me to spend a couple of hours playing with Illustrator every week! Yay. So here's what I came up with for this one.