Create portfolio art

Visual development artist Mitch leeuwe reveals how he starts a character line-up to help secure work in the animation industry

If you’re keen to secure work in the animation industry then creating personal projects are the way to go. I was advised to start developing my own characters and environments, just as if I were working for a studio. Industry figures want to browse your portfolio and check that your work matches their style, to ensure that you’d be a good fit with their teams. It’s certainly worth taking the time and effort to generate your own intellectual property and imagining that it’s for film or TV audiences.

In this workshop I’ll be creating a character line-up that could be used for an animation project. I want to develop a hero, some sidekicks, comic relief, enemies and the main antagonist. And once I’ve created this cast of characters, I can use them to design comic covers, film posters or original environments showing the characters in action.

Next year, when I’m showing my portfolio to potential employers, I want to be able to demonstrate two different personal projects, featuring pages of original characters, props and environments. This means I won’t be short of material to talk about in any interview situation. I want to show any studio that I’m a good match for its vis-dev team.

1 Get the creative juices flowing

When I work on a personal project I often start by drawing some random ideas in my sketchbook. In this case, I want to do something on a sci-fi theme – it’s a topic that I’ve always loved. So I start drawing in my sketchbook and just have some fun with a pencil for a few minutes. After doodling some random robots and aliens, some workable ideas and themes start to form.

2 Choose a direction for your characters

Looking over the random sci-fi doodles that I’ve drawn in my sketchbook, I start to narrow down some of my ideas and think about how they’ll look when combined in a group. I decide to make a character line-up of some of the characters. I’m looking for contrast and so the idea of a hero, a friendly robot, some evil aliens and two vehicles seems to be a good balance to me.

3 Keep working on your ideas

Sometimes I’m really busy and it’s tricky finding some spare time to work up any ideas for personal projects. A sketchbook is great because you can take it with you pretty much anywhere. I draw these sketches on the train while travelling to see a client, generating some new characters to create the contrast I’m looking for.

4 Designing a rough layout of the figures

I take all my rough character ideas and turn them into a line-up. During this stage I’ve got a lot of ideas buzzing around – almost too many – and it’s hard to make a decision and go in one direction. Take your time at this stage and make sure you’re happy with your choices. It’ll be harder to make changes later in the process.

5 Trying out different line-up layouts

Because this workshop will be published in a magazine I consider setting the line-up in a portrait format. Indeed, I explore different layouts while working on the design of individual characters. I like both vertical and horizontal formats, and choose to keep my options open.

6 Exploring a vertical composition

I look at a previous issue of Imaginefx and consider how my workshop and artwork might appear in print, and make a rough version of a possible layout. I decide that a vertical drawing would work, but only with fewer characters – or else the line-up would become confusing.

7 Horizontal composition

I always intended to draw a group of different characters, because I had this line-up in mind for a possible cartoon series. That’s why I decide on a horizontal line-up, because it’s easier to read all the different characters. I still want to illustrate a vertical line-up, but I’ll do that after I’ve finished this one.

8 Developing the line of action

When I’ve finalised the composition sketch I start working on individual characters. I always start with a line of action, and ask myself what story do I want to tell with this character and how can I best tell that story in one line. Using these action lines also helps to keep everything readable and dynamic.

9 Construction with shapes

After the line of action I think of the construction. I use three different shapes: a sphere, a cylinder and a cube. With these basic shapes you can build every character you want. The advantage of using those shapes is that they’re easy to understand and give any character a strong sense of three-dimensionality.

10 Refining the line-work of each character

I start with a loose sketch and work up my final design on top of it. I try to keep it sketchy, but also make decisions on the angle of the lines. Once I have the final sketch I start drawing on top of that with a Hard brush. I add a bit of Smoothing in Brush Settings to generate clean lines.

11 Colouring the characters

I place a folder beneath the line-work, and start picking different colours and creating the shapes with the Lasso tool. I start with the big shapes and move on to the smaller ones. I work with common colour schemes such as complementary or triadic. For this character I’ve used a triadic colour scheme, which means using three colours that are opposite each other on the colour wheel.

12 Shading the colours

After I’ve put down my colours it’s time for shading. I begin by determining where the light is coming from. If the lighting is complex I start by drawing and shading a ball. Studying this ball should help you work out how the light should affect your characters. I then add highlights and bounce light where necessary.

13 Using 3D tools to build objects in the line-up

When I’m creating vehicles such as the buggy and spaceship I’ll use 3D to get the perspective right. The model can be pretty basic, so you don’t need to be an expert in 3D to use it for your drawing. I use Blender because it’s free and has a lot of great settings. You can also use it to see how the lighting works on your objects.

14 Checking over the final artwork

I look at the values in the image to check if everything’s readable, and notice that in some places there isn’t enough contrast. I spend time painting in some highlights to add more contrast and flip the image to gain a fresh take at it. And now my character line-up is complete!