As stated in the proposal for this project, I decided to create a piece of artwork over a character from a video game. In particular, I chose to do a character from the game Undertale. The reason I chose this game is because I feel like it had a lot of influence on me, and overall had an admirable amount of work put into its engine, story, and especially music. I did a lot of research regarding how to use Adobe Illustrator and how to properly apply techniques such as perspective, layering, and shading. I had a lot of trouble with perspective, so I looked up a few guides and did some life drawings as practice before I drew the basic frame of Papyrus. This ended up helping significantly, as I was able to create the desired perspective of a worms-eye like angle. The general process that I created it was making an initial form sketch, outlining the anatomy of the character, then drawing over it. After that I created all of the splices in order to properly convey where the light source will come from, and then I filled in the splices with the proper color to create the illusion of a shadow. After that, I placed some bones in the layer behind Papyrus, and then a more general background behind that in order to convey where Papyrus is.
Prior to creating this piece, I did a lot of research on how perspective and shading work, as well as some general skeletal anatomy. Of course, since this is a cartoon character, I didn't have to illustrate all 206 bones accurately. Over time I decided to switch from gradient shading to a more direct splice-shading technique to add to the cartoon-y effect of the drawing. In addition, I worked on drawing poses and practicing one-point perspective and researching how to properly draw a subject with proper perspective. I looked at some other drawings of Papyrus to get a good look at his expressions and demeanor, and eventually decided that a more heroic pose would help convey how he feels about himself.
In terms of both the project learning targets and my own goals, I feel like I did a good job hitting them both. I applied all of the techniques that I wanted to express in the drawing sufficiently (line, shading, perspective, proper color, expression, body position), and broke down these techniques into separate sections for myself to complete in order to add a level of organization to the project. My connection to popular culture is directly seen, as my subject is a character from a recently released video game. My personal goal of creating a good perspective and expressionate Papyrus were both met; I'm very proud of how I was able to draw his body and facial expressions in a way that properly represents him.
I personally felt like this is the one project where I have improved the most in sketching and drawing. It had been quite literally a few years since I had tried to draw anything seriously, and I am very happy with how nicely it ended up turning out (especially the lines and use of color). My ability to properly convey a light source through shading is better than it ever was, and after working on this project for so long and watching videos over art theory, I find it much easier to visualize objects in my head. Though I did improve significantly, I would still say that my weaknesses would definitely have to be shading and my ability to create an immersive background, as well as being able to illustrate a specularity/shininess to objects that are being directly hit by sunlight. I can't quite wrap my head around gradient shading, especially on a subject where I have no experience with seeing as a 3D subject.
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