Jason McLellan Character Design How-To Part 3

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Welcome welcome to part 3 of a I don’t know how many parts tutorial! I’m taking you through my creative process with a real world example. And by creative process, I mean awesome, and by awesome I mean I don’t know what the hell I’m doing but people keep paying me to do it so go figure.

Anyway in Part 2 I had sent the client four new character designs for a hot chick in a cybernetic suit with a Japanese flair. One of four designs was approved (far right in shown here) so now it’s time to move onto the robot design.

The client wants a large bulky rounded robot that stands 7 to 8 feet tall with a star imprint for the face. Sounds like a wrestler from the early 80’s to me but hey what do I know.

Normally I hate drawing robots but this time I decided to take a different approach and as a result I found the process to be more to my liking, I hope the client feels the same way. I decided to approach this design and drawing with more of an organic vibe. What the hell am I talking about you ask? Well normally I try and draw out all the details, and concern myself with each part of the robot mirroring the other side in a futile attempt to create a symmetrical piece. As a result I would always end up with an awkward, stiff and uncomfortable looking piece. Translation: a shitty robot.

But this time I took an organic approach by using a big brush in Photoshop to create basically an inkblot. I simply tried to draw each piece of the robot, legs, arms, and torso in just a few seconds with a brush that was entirely too large for any sort of detail whatsoever. I know it may sound trite (old news genius) but taking an approach like this does free up your mind and allows more room for the creative process to take over. Any artist knows there is a point when you are working where every stroke, every action is totally innate and impulsive. To me this is when I am having the most fun and doing my best work.

As you can tell by the result above I was nowhere close to obtaining this level of artistic nirvana but hey my robot doesn’t look that stiff. Does it? Wait. Don’t answer that.

But either way I am sending this rough off to the client tonight and I will let you know how it goes tomorrow. If it’s approved then part four will be about taking a rough to a finished piece. However if it’s rejected we will explore how to use Google to hunt down and kill your clients.

See you on the other side. Whatever that means.