For this “Igor” type character (the trusty Mad Scientist lab assistant guy), I started out with a sketch from an evil clown character I created a few years ago. I wanted to work with some new painting styles in Adobe Photoshop, specifically staying away from the Dodge/Burn tools as they seemed to render colors with too much saturation, and in general are a poor excuse for building color, shading and highlights on your own.
I started out with the head from an existing sketch so I didn’t have to bog myself down in creating something from scratch when really I wanted to experiment with coloring and painting in Photoshop. The evil clown sketch had a nice creepy character head/face, so I thought it was a good launching point.
The base colors were laid down on a separate layer, as were the shading and highlight layers. Hair and background also on separate layers. The body was just roughly worked up to keep the head from being a floating object.
Looking at him now, I am thinking he might have been better as a graveyard keeper, with an appropriately spooky latern instead of the test tube he’s holding.
I went for high-contrast dramatic lighting, and reworked the shading and highlights many times as I was experimenting. Brush was nothing fancy, just the standard Photoshop painting brush at very low opacity and set to use the pressure sensitivity of the Wacom Intuos3 tablet.
I think I could have gone into more detail, especially on the lips and the body, but I didn’t want to overwork the sketch while I was experiementing. I think I hit a nice stopping point and decided to share as-is. Perhaps I will revisit Igor sometime in the future.
Visit George Coghill’s cartooning & humorous illustration portfolio.
Last 5 posts by George Coghill
- Oblong Ogre - January 5th, 2009
- Green Grimace - December 15th, 2008
- Cap'n Clobber - December 1st, 2008
- Orange Crush - November 24th, 2008
- Yellow Bellow - November 10th, 2008
