The merc with a mouth WIP

Aerodyll

New Member
Hi guys.,
New member here, I introduced myself after a fashion in another thread but I wanted to upload what I am working on currently. It will take a long time to finish and I can't wait that long before I at least post something on here. So here is my current WIP. It is copying the style of an artist I admire called Abraham Garcia. I am using this to give me something interesting to work on to get me back into the habit of working on my own stuff when I get home from work.

It is going to end up as a deadpool poster, I haven't decided on colour scheme yet but I have made it with set swatches so it should be easy to change when I have more of it finished. I am not sure what to call this style but it is fun but is actually a lot harder to work with once you start introducing new shades of line into the mix, it is so much easier to create shading when you are working with line thickness alone. This mix of cell shading / line thickness / cross hatching is quite tricky for me.

Anyway I hope you like what I have for what little there is.

The file is too large for me to attach so here is a link to it online. Apologies if this isn't the way you do things around here.

Thanks,
Ben
 
It's looking ok, but I'm going to state the obvious - don't copy other people's style. Not just from an ethical point of view, but specially
with something so highly detailed, to me it would be a waste of time. You need to develop your own style and techniques. Go back to basics
and pick up a pen and paper. You will learn more that way and develop better as an artist and/or illustrator. And if you want to make money from
doing it, forget about comic books and look to do something more commercial. Start with simple logo designs for instance.
 
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Welcome the forums.
 
I'm going to agree and disagree with Wardy on this.

When setting out to learn, I don't think there is anything wrong with copying and learning from someone else's work that you admire.
I'd be telling fibs if I said I'd not started the same way.

You can learn a whole lot by studying someone else techniques and to be honest, Garcia's hatching emulates Victorian engravings and bank notes so it's not what I would call his invention and I've seen it elsewhere and even done it myself.
In effect, he's heavily inspired himself in his execution.

There is a school of thought which is not to try to focus on getting your own style as this will develop by itself as you gain your skills.
You could try forever to be completely original and reinvent the wheel but not many people manage to do this.
Even people who have strong signature styles are heavily influenced and have just put their own spin on it.

I remember seeing Banksy and Jon Burgeman's stuff back in the day and they'd done this.
Look at them now.
Neither was new but many now copy them now and people will say "that's like Banksy", "it's his style".

Looking at what you've done I'd say your rendering skills are off the scale so huge respect there.
If hatching is your thing then stick with it as you've got it nailed.

One thing I would suggest is to do what Wardy says and just start drawing your own stuff even if it's just doodling in a sketchbook as this is where your own style is going to develop.

In short. I'd keep doing what you're doing and do the stuff you enjoy and then make it your own.

Keep posting as I can't wait to see where you go with it and also looking forward to seeing Deadpool finished.

(He's one of my fave anti-heroes) :D
 
Hi guys, thanks for your comments.

This is my first 'creative' piece I have done in a while and was done to get me back into the habit of working on my own stuff in the evenings. I appreciate that the image is not my own and the style is heavily inspired by someone else. I am somewhat new to this kind of stuff and had procrastinated for a long time on what I should actually make. I had absolutely no idea what I should do but knew I needed to do something and I figured if you can't decide then pick the first thing that comes to mind and course correct on the way. The important thing for me was to just get started.

I came to this project because I had been out of the creative world for so long I had no idea about styles or subject matter. Design is so big I find it intimidating to jump in so this project was intended to get my feet wet, not really design I guess but still it is a start.

@Wardy: This is not to dismiss your comments, your work is beautiful and I respect your talent. You took time out of your day to comment which is compliment enough and I will bear your words in mind. I disagree on some of your points and believe true originality is an ideal to aim for however I also believe that at this point is most likely beyond my abilities. I will of course strive to improve in the future. Though I do agree that had I known how labour intensive this would be at the start I may not have started it as in truth at the end I will have fan art which is not going to be very useful for me in the long run. But it is fun at least and better than video games which I have sort of fallen into wasting my evenings on.

@scotty: Thanks for your kind words. For a long time I was struck with performance paralysis and really struggled to make any moves towards a creative piece of work. I got a client through a stroke of luck and actually found working to a brief and to someone else's feedback much easier than trying to fill a blank canvas by myself. The idea of defining my own style and it being something I needed before beginning was petrifying. However once I just started and decided to course correct en-route it got much easier. I guess I will figure out what work I want to do and how I want to do it as I go. I will keep this updated with my progress though.

@hankscorpio: Thanks for that. It is useful. I will use pixel images in future. Thanks.

Cheers for your help guys,
Ben
 
Hi guys, so I gave up on this for a long time while I did some other things. I always had the thought that I never had a big enough block of time to make a dent in it. One day it hit me though that if I had just spent 15 minutes a night working on this even it would have been finished a long time ago, in fact while I was waiting for the right time to pick it back up I wasted more time than I ever spent working on it to begin with. Ridiculous. So in the interest of finality I have finished it, or at least gotten to a place I feel comfortable shelving it.

Though a lot of the comments on here made more and more sense to me as I was working on it I am still proud of it, especially as I was convinced half way through that it was gonna look like total garbage. Though not exactly on par with the Mona Lisa I am still pretty chuffed with it, and as for an experiment in managing my own emotional state while being productive it has been a success.

So in the interest of closure mainly for myself here is the 'finished piece' on to the next project!.

Cheers,
Ben

 
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