To start with, we were set the challenge of designing three robots to test our skills with traditional media, and to depict one of these as a full colour image. I’ve drawn a lot of stuff like this in the past, so it wasn’t too harsh an introduction to the course.
I drew out my three designs in pencil and pen, drawing inspiration from robots and mechs in videogames, such as claptrap from boarderlands and Dog from Half-Life. Finally I chose one, a mech-style robot with legs and no arms, to draw out in colour. This was a bit of a challenge as I wanted to create the image in my sketchbook, but needed to create a full-clour image in traditional media. I wanted to avoid paint, but I didn’t have much in the way of other traditional colouring tools. In the end I decided to use pro-markers, which meant I had to buy more of certain colours in order to have enough of a range to make the image; I chose a range of orange to yellow with a brown and a red to add some stronger contrast in places, which actually worked a lot better than I thought it might.
I was pretty happy with how it came out, although I think the illustration could have benefited from some pen line to sharpen the edges, as markers tend to run slightly and lose the form of the image. I may actually scan the image in and work into it more in Photoshop at a later date, as I think it has a little potential for development. I’ve attached some images of the work.
Matt Glen 