The third of the aforementioned haunted house posters I’ve been working on for my dorm.  I’m not sure if I’ll be going with this color scheme, but I just wanted to get some colors down to have a basic idea of what I’d be working with.

This weekend, I’ve been working on a couple of different illustrations for some posters promoting my dorm’s haunted house.  A few days ago, I ended posting the rough colors for the head of a zombie I was working on… now I’ve got the finished image to show off.

Hit the jump to see how the illustration progressed, from start to finish.

I’ve never actually drawn a zombie before, so I decided to not go too nuts with it, even though there was a lot of temptation to really make the visible decay extreme and have the creature look like it had been gone through  a vat of acid.  Instead, I chose to make it look just familiar enough to be unnerving and then incorporate some things like broken bones, shredded clothing, and a little gore.  I came up with the above sketch, though I couldn’t figure out how to make his right foot look, so I left that part unfinished and worked on it once I had the sketch in Photoshop.

Next, I outlined and shaded our undead friend in with some basic colors (as well as drawing in his right foot).  I’ve realized that I don’t like using black outlines because they make things look a little boring (in my mind) and the colored borders I’ve been playing around with lately give everything a cartoon-like appearance without coming off as too kiddy.  I still didn’t have some of the details like toenails and the broken bone in the left leg done, but this at least gave me an idea of what I was working with.

After this, I went about finishing up the details and then I started working on the shading. As you can see, the shading gives him a really nice three-dimensional appearance and adds a bit of eeriness to the character.  Finally, I did a little bit of cleanup work and quickly drew in a tombstone with a daisy… partially to add a little perspective and partially because I thought it made the image feel appropriately goofy.  The below picture is the final version.

Zombie, final colors

Nothing says "Halloween" like a disembodied zombie head!

My dorm’s got a haunted house event that I’m doing poster designs for… here’s the head of the zombie.  Eventually there’ll be a full body, but I won’t be able to *really* work on this until after my midterm on Thursday.

This is just the basic color scheme.  I’ll post a full breakdown with the final draft after I finish it this weekend.

Since the idea for my website started when I got the idea for the Grimm Corps into my head, I figured it would only be appropriate to show how my first entry in the series progressed from concept to the final version.

My concept for Red began with the idea of taking the fairy tale and essentially spinning it on its head.  I wanted her to look like a fighter, someone who was deadly even though they weren’t bristling with weaponry or armor.  After a little noodling around, I came up with the above sketch.

Next, I scanned the sketch into Photoshop, whereupon I started to trace over the outlines.  My goal for the look of the Grimm Corps was to make the characters look simultaneously cartoony and original… on a whim, I decided to not use black on any of the outlines… instead, I wanted to use variations of the colors I envisioned in each field.

After this, I filled in the colors.  This sounds pretty basic, but it took a while because I just wasn’t sure exactly what shades I wanted to use on her skin and pants, at first. I actually really disliked how this outlook appeared, mainly because it felt incredibly flat. I then decided to work on shading, using both highlights and shadows. In total, there are four layers for each color type: an outline, a filler, a highlight, and a shadow.  I really liked the outcome, and then decided to start working on more fairy tale characters as my free time permitted.

Red Riding Hood, final colors