As stated in an earlier blog, the genesis for this project came from an conversation I had with a friend and illustrator/animator; Darren Tate. Darren has been commissions by a local skate store to reimagine their existing branding into something that would be screened onto a hoody, the result of which I posted in my original blog.
My initial response to this work was, ‘that isn’t something I could do’ without a large amount of reference images to adapt, and so I wanted to change that, learn what I can, and start to create my own style of mascot logo making.
As Darren was the genesis of this project, it made sense to sit down and go through his methodology in creating this work. Here is a video and transcript of that conversation:
He essentially asked for, he wanted to make some hoodies for the shop, but they've already done just like ‘logo’, like the shop logo on hoodies, they wanted, like, a different graphic. So he just said he knew my style already. He's like, cartoony. So he essentially said “a cartoon character would be great. And something in keeping with the theme of the shop, which like their logo is a little bee and its a pretty basic bee, like got no face or detail. It's it's like clip art, basically. It's basically an oval with stripes on and wings.
So you wanted something a bit more detail that you can blow up on onto a hoodie. So I basically just took it upon myself to draw something in the style of stuff I like drawing. I didn't want to just meet a brief. I just wanted to have fun with that. So I tried to draw in the style of, like 1920s, like rubber hose animation.
So I looked at. Basically my my workflow is I've got a draw, this type of character. Let's look at other people's drawings on Pinterest. So I search on Pinterest of, like, bee illustration and then just take a few screenshots of ones I like make a real quick, like mood boards.So yeah, save that. But then also on the mood board, save like images of just this is the kind of style I want to draw. So a lot of the pictures I got were from the Cuphead show. So if you look at his head, his head is basically the nose, eyes and shape heads of the devil.
But I also wanted to kind of make of it like, you know, the obviously I think the hell fish from Simpsons. I kind of wanted that vibe like the kind of thing you'd see painted on the side of like, a spitfire. So I wanted to do that in rubber hose style of a bee.
So just try to combine them on that mood board and then essentially just start drawing it. If that makes any kind of like, I mean, I basically stole his face.
Yeah. So…I basically draw as if I am animating them…I go through to the main thing I do when I start drawing a character is, which is what I learn on my animation course, is what's called a line of action. And I knew what I wanted the be to essentially be like pointing a stinger at something. So I wanted him like taking that kind of line like that. But then I thought, no, having him just straight would be boring. So I tried to curve the line of action a little bit just to give it, make it a bit more dynamic.
So I started off with his big butt because I knew that that's the line that the stinger needs to go. So in a sense you build up a shape so that this thing is essentially a cone that's his in the bottom of his torso. So this would be the top joining that up and just filling out his body mass.
And then I wanted that line of action to be a bit more curved at the top. So instead of being his head here, I put his head essentially leaning over his chest a bit, so just so he could see with his line of sight exactly where he's going to be stinging.
So that is his heads. He's going to be facing down. And then one of his arms to be kind of pushed up like that. So just circle real basic shapes for the head. And it's just a line for the arms and then same kind of arches for the legs and feet
So rubber hose when like when it was like the, the birth of animation, everything was very loose and fluid. So yeah, all their limbs were essentially just hose shapes. So then yeah, once you draw the lines, flesh them out a bit and just for the arms and legs.
And then I believe the only thing on that I haven't done apart from facial features, is like stripes and then his wings. So the wings would kind of be following the line of action because him essentially diving down to setting something, the wings will be blown back and then it's just very basic shapes for facial features, little antenna, and then what I would do once I've done that, lower the opacity of that layer down to half just to get a rough guide and then just start on a layer above, just to build in the details. So that's when we can start building in the actual shapes that are a little less sketched.
I used to only do two layers when I was drawing a character. I'll do a sketch and then I'll do the final drawing. But I've in the last couple of years, I've done an in-between of that, which is still a little bit loose, but keeps the keeps the detail a bit more. And then after this I'd do the same like lower the opacity and then do the, the finish line up.
So you want the eyes looking, looking down at where he’s stinging. Big magical grin. And once I kind of had this finalized and then did some text around it, it was pretty basic. And essentially a circle around him and we've just the shops name but I didn't really have to think that much because this kind of style I like drawing anyway.
And like I basically been drawing as very similar face since I was like 8. Like his face is very, very similar to Sonic the Hedgehog and Mickey Mouse, which is characters I always drew as a kid.
Like basic makeup and build as Mickey Mouse, Sonic the Hedgehog, Like, nose on the edge, Big eyes, mouth on the side. And which is characters I have been drawn since I was a kid, so it's pretty self-explanatory. And yeah, that is essentially it.
The main take aways I have from this interview are his influences and how he uses them, and the idea of the ‘line of Actions’ that was “what I learn on my animation course” (Tate, 2023).
The idea of a ‘Line of Action’ is a new concept to me and something I’m going to look into in more detail. It makes a lot of sense to start as basic as possible with a line, be it straight of curved or even angled, and then build the shapes on top of that.
The list of influences are: 1920’s Rubber Hose Animation, The Cuphead Show, The Simpsons, Sonic The Hedgehog and Micky Mouse, which all makes sense as Darren’s background is in animation.
“A lot of the pictures I got were from the Cuphead show. So if you look at his head, his head is basically the nose, eyes and shape heads of the devil.” (Tate, 2023) This shows that Darren’s methodology isn’t that far away from my own, but it’s just more refined and he is using references for specific parts of the design, “Like his face is very, very similar to Sonic the Hedgehog and Mickey Mouse” (Tate, 2023).
In his book ‘Steal Like An Artist’ Austin Kleon states that “”Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas” (Kleon 2012) proving that this is not only an accepted way of working, but it’s a necessary one. There aren’t many ideas that have been worked through before and therefore you don’t need to reinvent the wheel with every new brief or project. It seems that the difference between my work and that of someone who has been doing this for years, is the levels of influence and how many pieces go into their ‘Frankenstein’s monster’ for each design. Darren isn’t actively looking up images of Sonic the Hedgehog every time he draws, but he’s done that so many times he knows intrinsically knows the make up of them and how they would work inside the design he is working on. It becomes muscle memory over time.