This assignment was to design a series of crazy athlete characters that could be used on a collection of cards and funny enough to make middle-grade kids laugh. At first I sort of misunderstood the assignment so I didn't make them really funny. As soon as I realized the actual topic, I started to exaggerate more.
It became more fun to draw and I was happy about many of them. I tried a bunch of sports and researched about them. I think the one I had most fun is the lucha libre characters. When I researched about the sports, there were so many interesting actual pictures that were even funnIer than my drawings!
So I chose two of my lucha libre characters and made a composition. I used a pen I bought in Japan that was really easy to ink and have line variations. I wished I had bought more of that pen because I cannot find it anywhere!
The next assignment is to design KAIJU, the Japanese monster. I have to say that I was VERY excited for this project because I really like Japanese Tokusatsu shows with superheroes and monsters. Although I didn't watch much of Gozilla or Gamera or other monster movies, I love Ultraman series, which has so many memorable kaiju.
So, I started again with copying some famous kaiju from Tokusatsu shows. I did much more this time because I had so much fun drawing them! I also researched about their background stories, design concepts, personalities, and other information that only made me love them more. There are so many nicely designed kaiju and their stories make them even more successful characters. I also had learned a lot from researching the great designer Narita Toru. His concepts for designing kaiju are really interesting.
So, I started my own kaiju designing, and it was much difficult than I thought. It is not easy to make a good kaiju character and there are so many different approaches. I just keep come up more ideas. It seems to be easier to have a motif in mind than random sketches.
Finally I made a fight scene of two of my original kaiju. I really had fun drawing them. I am actually trying to color them now. But I think my favorite design is the series of Volcano kaiju. I used them in my final piece.
What is interesting about this assignment is that everyone design kaiju quite differently. When I saw the works from other classmates, I realized maybe I limited myself too much from trying to make my designs really similar to those in Japanese shows. And I actually considered about that there are people inside the suits. But actually there are no limit on designing kaiju. It was really nice to see everyone has his own thought about kaiju.
The next assignment is to draw many face expressions. This one was really fun, too. But I think I should have exaggerated the expressions even more. And I found out that it wasn't easy to keep the character look like the same character when repeating him so many times.
Last but not least, our final project was to create a composition by using characters we previously designed. I chose the ones I had most fun, the lucha libre wrestlers and the volcano kaiju brothers. I actually did two pieces and I might ink the first one some other time.
Last assignment is an in-class assignment we did in the final week. We had to design an urban legend character that looked really cute. I researched about cute animals and I chose a sea otter as my final design, combining with turtle!
I really enjoyed doing all the drawings for this class. But I can't believe I am going to graduate the next term! Hope everything will be alright...
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