Project 1: Coleman Criss

For this project, the moment we were required to use an appliance, my mind went instantly to power tools. Growing up around, and working on construction sites, it just felt natural.

 

Here are a few of my preliminary sketches. I tried a few different ideas like a weed-eater as a helicopter, a hedge trimmer as a sawfish, but eventually settled on a leaf blower as a jetpack for a comic inspired hero. 

                        

I started by finding these reference photos of my appliance and figure and then combining them into one image using Photoshop to get the scale and angles right. I saved the combined image as a .jpg and then imported it into Illustrator.




                                                          



My next step was laying on my structure of the figure and then designing a suit of armor or character  that would be believable wearing a jetpack. My love of comics heavily influenced this style.

My next step was coloring in my figure and adjusting the greyscale to achieve a more dimension and breathe more life into my character.

After I toned the figure and the "jetpack", I wanted to give him a space for him to exist. I looked for a series of images of buildings and this one fit the angle without being too busy.

I went in and built my shapes over the buildings while working around the figure. I toned the sky and added a sun to bring more life into the composition. I left the background less detailed as to not take away from the main subject visually.

After "building" my buildings (horrible joke intended), I set the figure into the space and ran over the entire piece, fine tuning the tones for the greyscale and shaping up my lines further.

My last touch on this piece was adding the smoke coming out of the exhaust of the jetpack to simulate the movement and flight downwards from the top of the buildings. I made this image larger for easier viewing.  My point of view for this piece wasn't necessarily dealing with a social issue, but I did approach the work by tapping back into my childhood and tried to capture the excitement and imagination that I felt when reading my comic books. I wanted those feelings to translate through this piece to the viewer.