“Alix.” Character Concept. (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes.
I had some spare time on my hands the past couple of days, so I started doodling with an idea and finally came up with this. I named this character “Alix.” This new concept piece is of an alien character. I will probably use him in a future illustration, but I don’t know how to employ him just yet.
During the process of building up this character concept, I decided I wanted to make him into a “tough guy,” but I didn’t want to put him in armor. I finally decided that I was going to create a “crime boss” character. Someone like Jabba the Hutt. With that in mind, I decided to add piercings, then a scar through the eye that rendered this character’s eye damaged. I actually thought about adding a tattoo to the face but scrapped that idea because I decided that would be too much. Finally, I decided to put him in “casual” wear, which would be more “boss” like.
This character concept was sculpted in Zbrush with the final image produced in Photoshop.
“Soar.” Digital Illustration. (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes.
I present to you my latest piece that I have named Soar. This fantasy illustration depicts the successful flight of a man soaring through the sky in a wooden DaVinci-esque flying machine. A bit of a departure from my previous creatures and aliens. After my last work, I decided to scour through webpages, books and other publications to inspire me for my next illustration when I came upon DaVinci’s flying machine blueprint.
My intent here was to depict the flying machine, somewhat modernized for the Victoria Era, hence the clothing I drew onto the pilot. I know this is not an original idea, but this is my take on the whole “early” flight idea.
This flying machine and character in this illustration was sculpted in ZBrush and final production was completed in Photoshop.
This illustration, a well as my other illustrations, can be viewed in my Illustration Portfolio.
“Aviator.” Character Bust. (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes.
I decided to taking a break from creating aliens, and monsters, and sci-fi characters and draw up something new. I am in the process of a new illustration for my portfolio, and decided to produce a new character for its. This new characters is called “Aviator.”
With this character, I learned a few new techniques. These techniques mostly involved the leather helmet and goggles, and I am really pleased with the results. I ran a search for “leather healmets” and found images online, and based the sculpting of the helmet and goggles on the images I found. I wanted to create an old-tymie looking pilot for this illustration.
This character bust was created in ZBrush, and composite produced in Photoshop. This 3D Model has been added to my 3D Modelling gallery. You can also view my other works in my Illustration Portfolio.
I would like to know your thoughts. Please leave a comment.
— Mike Barnes is a professional graphic designer and illustrator with over 15 years of experience. His online portfolio can be viewed at www.lookingtodraw.com.
While almost everyone has access to some sort of graphic design software — largely due to the Internet, and with that kind of access there appears to be a wide range of folks who now claim to be graphic designers. While many of them are professional designers, many more are just “Photoshop-pers.” Putting it another way, almost everyone owns a wrench. I don’t know about you, but when my car breaks down, I always take it to a professional mechanic. I always seem to get better results.
So why should you as a business professional use a professional designer rather than just go to your nephew who owns a copy of Illustrator? Well, here are just a few good reasons:
As a professional designer, s/he knows that it takes more than just drawing a “pretty picture”, or just throwing some pictures and text onto a blank page with the hope that the final result is “good.” The professional designer also acts as a consultant. As a consultant, s/he will ask questions, learn more about the client, the client’s company and customers, and learns what goals the client wants to reach. With all the answers in place, the professional designer takes that information and guides the project to the place that best achieves the client’s goals.
A professional designer keeps up-to-date with the current design trends. And while s/he knows what is trendy today… trendy may not be the answer to achieve the client’s goals. Trendy may just stunt the client’s needs as the final project may just reach a small portion of the market. If that’s the goal, that’s GREAT. However, if the client’s goal is to reach a wide market… you get the point. The professional designer does his/her research. That research often involves reviewing the client’s previous projects, and viewing the client’s competition. The professional designer learns all that s/he can about the goal then takes that information to produce the goal-reaching result.
The professional designer builds a relationship with the client. Although the client’s nephew already has a built-in relationship with his uncle, it doesn’t mean that he will know much about the his uncle’s business. The professional designer will keep in contact with the client as often as possible. S/he will ask the right questions to learn more about the client’s company, the product or service offered, and about the customers. The professional designer cultivates the relationship to the point that s/he will not only produce the project, but will become a “partner” to produce a final project that will exceed the client’s goals.
There are many other aspects to the differences between the professional designer versus the “Photoshop-per”: Creativity, technical skills, knowledge of color, experience, outside-the-box thinking, etc. All great qualities of the professional designer.
As a young designer, I worked for a great art director. One day I presented, I thought, a final version of a project to him. He looked it over, slowly turned his head, looked me in the eye, pointed to an image on the design and asked me, “Why did you put this image here?” My rookie response was: “I think it looks good.” That turned out to be the wrong answer. I was taught a painful lesson that day: A professional designer knows that just because something might look good, it may not be the right look to achieve the goal.
So ask yourself, when you are ready to begin your next project: “Who will be of the most help to me? My nephew, or a professional designer?”
I’d like to know what you think. Leave a comment and share why you think a professional designer is the right choice.
— Mike Barnes is a professional graphic designer and illustrator with over 15 years of experience. His online portfolio can be viewed at www.lookingtodraw.com.
“Evening Stroll.” Digital Illustration. (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes.
This is the second illustration for my series of “Candid Shots from around the Galaxy” (still just a working title). Here we see Eleanor and Edgar taking a casual stroll through the streets of their home town.
Both of the characters and their clothing were sculpted in ZBrush. The background image was created in SketchUp, then imported into Bryce for rendering. The final composite was produced in Photoshop.
his image Evening Stroll is the second illustration of the series and was inspired from a photo by photographer Daniel Arnold.
“Edgar.” (c) 2014 Michael J. Barnes.
“Edgar” here is my latest character sculpt. He’s another alien set to appear in an upcoming illustration. Created in ZBrush and composite produced in Photoshop.