Stuff From the Online

I have plenty of stuff to upload, so here's sort of a big post.  These are all online course works.  For the first week we were asked to a design of an old wealthy entrepreneur whose name currently escapes me.  Anyway, here's the finished guy.

And here's some process work:

The main assignment has us design two characters based on the characters of Jekyll and Hyde in our own interpretation.  I was thinking of basing my characters in Alaska, but ended up doing some research on Finnish folklore, resulting in the characters set in 1880 Finland.  Jekyll is an eager cartographer, trekking through the forests to explore and draw his maps.  Hyde is a leprechaun-like gnome.  It looks innocent, but it is rather mischievous.  It strives to get people lost by luring them deeper and deeper into the forest while playing riddle games with them.  I did some research on Finnish names and came up with a Finnish name for Jekyll (Jyri Laaksonen), while the Hyde character already had a title from the folklore that I read (the Menninkäinen).  I don't know how to pronounce any of that!

For Jyri, I looked a lot at Lapland clothing and some other things he'd be wearing on his treks through the forest, such as snowshoes.  Anyway, I worked on doing different thumbnails first, while more refined sketches were due the next week.

There wasn't a lot of info on the Menninkäinen character, so I did lots of research on wildlife in Northern Finland.  They have a lot gray owls there, it seems, so that's what I ended up basing the Menninkäinen's facial design on.  I also wanted it covered with a snowy blanket with some natural materials on it.

Here are exercises of facial features and hands.  Most of these were drawn from photographs, whereas some I copied from some of my favourite artists.

That's all for now.  I'll see if I can scan in some sketchbook stuff soon.