Pandalf

[pandalfus01]

Here’s a spooky still for an animation loop I wanted to work on. I thought it would be nice to practice animating some silly characters running down a street; however I realised it was a little too ambitious for me and I unfortunately ran out of time to practice getting the characters and the background to move.

Also sorry for the lack of posts/interaction, work has been hell lately and I’m once again trying to get back into my creative groove. I’ve got a new pattern design coming up which I am looking forward to working on; hopefully that will be out soon... 👀

Happy Halloween! 👻🎃

[pandalfus01]

When it comes to making designs for this page, I like to create a sketch on paper first and then go over the drawing again in Illustrator. But with this piece I wanted to get better at drawing freehand graphics on my laptop. 

The hand creature itself had originally started off as a random blob that I filled with different colours. This was to help me get used to how the graphics pen feels on the surface of the laptop. Looking again at the shape of the blob, it made me think of a hand stretching out so I decided to build on that. 

Separating the layers, I created a rough sketch of the hand and the accompanying background. I thought it would look cool if the hand represented a boss from a video game or a greedy entity. With this idea in mind, I could start adding the rings and jewels to give it more detail and personality. 

After that it was on to the background; I thought it would be interesting to have the hand look like it was flying towards something so I drew a spiral pattern, coming from beneath the collar, and built a cloud around it. I then started drawing some more clouds and added tall buildings to break up the background and add some depth.  

Looking at it now, I am pretty happy with how the colours turned out. I would like to improve on implementing more freehand painting techniques, especially to the background elements of my work. If you like this or have any thoughts about hands, let me know what you think and have a great day.  😊✋👁

[pandalfus01]

Back at you again with some rootin’ tootin’ doodlin’. Cowboy Shiftyjeans wishes you a happy Wednesday 🤠

[pandalfus01]

Lemon Plant Dance 🍋🌱

I made this design a while ago; the idea of drawing a lemon plant with a face seemed funny to me so I sketched one up and finalised the design in Illustrator. I originally drew the plant on a random desk but I wasn’t satisfied with the composition. Instead I thought it might be more fun to make a little animation loop focusing on getting the plant to do a little dance 💃

With the animation itself I converted the main body of the plant into a shape layer in After Effects. This would allow me to manipulate the anchor points along the path of the body to move in different directions. That took a bit of adjusting since I didn’t have full control over how the anchor points moved; sometimes I would have to add in an extra keyframe or two. The leaves and head were pretty simple to animate as their own shapes. For the final touches I added a wave warp effect with some random light flickers to give it a glitchy, retro screen aesthetic 📺

Song - Resonance by HOME

[pandalfus01]

Happy Monday, here is my latest drawing; in this one I spent some time experimenting with different brush strokes as a way of getting a feel for which ones would work best.  🖌

I kept it pretty simple with the overall design, only adding a few extra shapes here and there so that I could play around with the colours a bit more. The biggest difference from my original sketch would be the liquid melting along the bottom of the head. I think the roundness of the panda face reminded me of an ice cream scoop which influenced the melting goop. I am glad I added that as I feel like it gives a little more character to the overall design. 

For the colours, I wanted to keep it a little restrictive to match the minimalist design. I also added various shades of blue and orange to give the head and the pearl some depth. Finishing it off with a bold outline to make it stand out from the light geometric background. 🐼🟠

[pandalfus01]

Here’s a little skull drawing I made recently. With this one I focused on altering the weight and stroke type of each line to give it a little more depth and style.

I definitely want to explore doing more short and stylised drawings like this one as I feel like it helps me practice my art while I’m trying to come up with other projects. Let me know what you think.  💀🔥

[pandalfus01]

Gooey eyes

A little drawing I made this week, based of one of my quick sketches. I had some fun playing around with the colours and shading. Let me know your favourite 🙌

[pandalfus01]

Scrambled Motion.

Wanted to have a go at animating a drawing I made a while back. Looking back at it, I’ve always appreciated how you could take a bunch of shapes and use it to make something freaky and abstract. 

Using this composition also made for a good experiment in terms of getting a whole load of shapes to move in different ways. Splitting all the shapes for After Effects was a little tedious but it gave me a lot of freedom to experiment with how I could get each piece to move and take form. 

I like how it turned out but I keep getting that feeling of wanting to add more. I might try and do something like this on a larger scale for the future. Hope you like it. 💙💜💛🧡

[pandalfus01]

Strange plant 🌱

[pandalfus01]

Hey, its been a while! Here’s a pattern I have been working on. With this design I wanted to explore machinery, nature and perspective and I used that to imagine a pattern that combines these elements. 

With most of the patterns I draw, I usually like to start from the centre and build my way around it from there. It was more or less the same deal with this one, I started with a circle while picturing different moving parts that would revolve around this central shape. The space between these parts allowed me to play around with the perspective of the background, making the plants and bamboo smaller as it got towards the centre.  

Adding the colours was fun but it also took some time as I tend to overthink and experiment with the colour combinations that I’m using. 

Overall I’m fairly happy with how this one turned out. I might try animating it in the future since I spent time thinking about how different sections of the pattern would move around. Let me know what you think. 😃🐼

[pandalfus01]

Here is a little Stag design I have been working on. In the original sketch I was quite happy with how the antlers looked and I tend to like drawing long, branching patterns so I wanted to see what I could do with it in Illustrator.

It took me a while to digitally redesign the antlers; I wanted to keep the outlines of the branching shapes but I felt like it didn’t match the rest of the design. I kept the original outline so you could see them in a little more detail.     

I kept it pretty basic with the colours, focusing instead on making it look intense and surreal through the pattern and shapes. Part of me wanted to go all out with the colours but I didn’t want to distract away from the overall look. 

Hope you guys like it anyway and hope you all have a happy new year! 🎉

[pandalfus01]

Take a Look Inside 

[pandalfus01]

Here’s a simple drawing from a sketch I made earlier this year. Wanted to focus on something easy and fun to draw until I can figure out my next project.  

For this one I struggled more with the body and the colours more than anything else. I wanted the body to look smooth and that took some tweaking with the anchor points. I also experimented with the colours a lot more; drifting away from the usual purple and blue colour scheme I like doing. Let me know what you think! 😀🐉

[pandalfus01]

Happy Halloweeen! Hope you enjoy this fun, somewhat disturbing little animation loop I've been working on. 

I always enjoy this time of year and wanted to make something to celebrate the spooky season whilst working on my animation skills in After Effects. Took me a while to figure out how to rotate the skull around. Once I learned how to move the position of a shape's anchor points between keyframes, that helped me out a lot. 

Felt like this one could have done with some more colour but I didn’t want the background to be too distracting. I should have also had a go at adding more detailed movements to the skeleton’s head to make them more life-like. But overall I'm happy with how this one turned out. Might try and go back to doing more detailed illustrations for the time being. 

Hope you all have a great week! 💀🎃

[pandalfus01]

A potion by the ocean 🐚

[pandalfus01]

Moon Tree 

This one took me a while to work on; originally it started out as a sketch where I wanted to combine nature and space to create a surreal, fantasy image. I spent a lot of time finding the right colours as I wanted to keep it minimal and focus on the shapes of the rocks and branches. 

Might return to this image one day as I still feel like something’s missing. Let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks! 

[pandalfus01]

I drew these characters a couple of months ago based off of a tabletop RPG game called Troika.

Had a lot of fun playing this game and I thought the characters were very unique and inspiring so I wanted to sketch some cartoon versions of them. I personally played as Freddie the Gremlin Catcher (on the right). 

Designing the characters was fun but also challenging. A lot of the patterns and features on their costumes were inspired from the original character illustrations. 

If you’re into tabletop RPG’s you should definitely check this game out. I found the characters and scenarios to be very creative and unique!