This great class gave me the inspiration to dive into illustration again. So, thank you very much! I've been using MidJourney for a while now for other things, but this was the perfect way to get inspired to try a new style and visualise a simple yet complex topic :D

 

##My Prompts##

I used MidJourney v. 6 with the following prompts to get some inspiration:

1) art, an anthropomorphic character, fantastic, scenery, cartoon, fantasy, flat style illustration

2) art, an anthropomorphic character, fantastic, scenery, cartoon, fantasy, flat style illustration

3) creativity, art, an anthropomorphic character, fantastic, scenery, cartoon, fantasy, flat style illustration

And a couple of the previews inspired me to dive into the composition of a fantastic world and one out-of-place character like Smitesh did. 

 

I just love the green rock head with the pink background! But that would have been too complex to start with. So, I decided to draw from some of the simpler previews, experimented with their colour schemes and started with a sketch.

 

##The Idea##

 

I'll admit, there was no terribly clever idea behind my concept. I wanted to draw a kind of allegorical figure, but I wasn't in the mood for research or deep thoughts, so I simply drew a guy. Not very special. And I like scarves.

I recently saw a nice anime intro (Netflix, something about dungeons and food), where the characters were in a still in huge dimensions to some kind of scenery. I wanted to pick that up, and I'll still work on it cause the original has these fantastic ankles that I didn't bother to add to this project. 

So, that's basically it: I threw a couple of mundane items together that I wanted to check out lately but didn't have the proper idea to do then. Creators block 0:1 Me!

 

##The Drawing Process##

 

I used Photoshop for everything. I want to get back to Fresco, but using Photoshop for other things a lot, it is so much easier to use that right now. Maybe I should take a Fresco course next X)

To make it easy on myself, I wanted to have a simple background - midground - foreground thing going on, where the character is in the midground to emphasise his surreal size. And the rest is basically texture simple forms working part-time as trees and non-descript animals.

 

I decided to go with a yellow and turquoise alien colour palette. First, I thought the character would also stand out against the yellow background by being green. But that would have blended him with the foreground, so I decided to mix his colours.

I simplified the foreground more and decided to cut the leaves in the front to spare time and not overcrowd the picture. Then, I added some details which I use a lot. I contemplated animating or adding the grain effect, but I don't like the grain effect that much, and I'll save the animation for another class :D

This was a very inspiring class, thanks a lot!