Digital Cartoon Robot

I’m working on a new project creating robot spot illustrations for a series of computer programming books for kids and teenagers. This is my first paid client job that I am creating entirely digitally. Pencils and inking brush are from the Frenden Photoshop tool set.

 

This is one of the initial robot designs. I began by sketching about 50 ideas very roughly in blue pencil – the image on the left is from that initial set. I find this process very relaxing and fun, just letting my mind go crazy coming up with silly ideas. Most are pretty awful but you get a few good ones. Working on the tablet is actually very fluid. I liked the shape of the body and head but decided to get rid of the cranial peripherals in the tight pencil sketch on the right.

Working on a final piece starts with a rough blue line sketch.

Tight pencil sketch for client approval.

Final inks. This is the hardest part of the process as I am rather picky about the quality of the line. I do most of the inking with a digital brush because I like the thick and thin qualities and I don’t want the image to look like it was created on a computer. I want a tight, clean image, but I also want a hand-drawn feel. Unlike working on paper, on the computer I can zoom in on detail sections which can make me a little nuts when I see all the little imperfections. I got frustrated on my first robot drawing and decided to try it on paper with brush and ink. I scanned it and compared it to the digital version and realized the one done on paper was actually rougher than the digital version.

Final colored image. At first I tried coloring the original digital file but found that dropping colors in with the bucket left an anti-aliased halo. Coloring on a layer beneath was overly time-consuming. I decided to convert the ink layer to a 600 dpi bitmap, then reconvert to RGB. This leaves a sharp, pixelled edge around everything which allows for dropping in color with no halo. Once the image is shrunk down for print the pixel edge all but disappears.