Welcome to week six of THE DIGITAL DREAM. After last weeks realisation that I needed to refocus, this week was one of the most fun yet.

A week focused on sketching my chibi character, lilSOPHiE :)

DAYS 31 TO 36

STUDY EXERCISES

DAY 31 • lilSOPHiE CHIBI CHARACTER SKETCHES
I’m having so much fun creating these chibi characters, and I believe I’ve settled on a size; I made their legs a teeny bit longer, and rounded out the chin.

I got thinking today … what if I render lilSOPHiE’s hair super realistically? Normally chibi characters have basic flat hair, but I might try and merge my realistic drawing with these Chibi’s.

DAY 32 • lilSOPHiE CHIBI CHARACTER DIGITAL SKETCHES
lilSOPHIE’s still finding herself :) Turned one of her pencil sketches from today into a digital sketch.

She’s wearing one of my dresses, my brown bag, and … just like me … trying out the wigless look :)

DAY 33 • lilSOPHiE CHIBI CHARACTER SKETCHES
Here’ some sketches from today, before pop off to Life Drawing Class, but I’ve come up with an idea … I’m going to quick sketch tonight’s life model, as a chibi character lol

DAY 34 • lilSOPHiE CHIBI CHARACTER SKETCHES
Spent two hours on the train sketching lilSOPHiE.

Was so much fun, she’s even wearing an identical outfit to what I was wearing today; totally wigless too :)

DAY 35 • lilSOPHiE CHIBI CHARACTER SKETCHES
More lilSOPHIE sketches for today :)

Love how happy she looks on the right … Think she’d call that her *Giddy Face*

?

Going to try some digital sketches soon.

DAY 36 • CHIBI CHARACTER SKETCHES
Started turning photos from google into chibi characters today.

Capturing the pose is really fun, But it’s hard to keep track of the proportions, and I really struggle to consistently draw the head the same shape.

The one on the left gives me a vibe of a really cool anime I watched years ago, called Panty & Stocking :)

FUN, FUN, FUN

The truth is, last week, I was in a such a confused place, dealing with the conflicting goal of learning digital painting and learning how to draw chibi characters, that I almost quit the challenge.

The digital dream is a 75 day challenge, taking me till the 29th December 2017, with ONE MAIN GOAL – bring lilSOPHiE to life, and a SUB GOAL – finding out if I enjoy the process of working digitally.

Last week I realised I had lost sight of the main goal and was too focused on learning digital painting. Instead of quitting, I turned it around and allowed myself to put the computer to one side for a while, focusing instead on finding out how to draw chibi characters, and what lilSOPHiE looks like; I feel I made a lot of progress in both areas this week.

A WEEK OF SKETCHING

• sketching her while on the ferry to work
• sketching her first thing in the morning in bed
• sketching her before bed at night
• sketching her on the train
• sketching her wherever and whenever I could :)

I enjoy finding poses online and trying to turn them into chibi character poses; I’ve even found myself acting out some of the poses to get a real feel for them.

I also enjoy imagining outfits and dressing her up; I’ve been basing a lot of her clothes on outfits I own :)

It’s just been a lot of fun.

Are these technically impressive? Probably not.

But Does it really matter if you’re enjoying yourself?  Definitely not :)

BASIC SHAPES

My feeling is, she’ll get better the more I draw her, so I focused on finding out what the basic shapes were of a chibi character, I came up with:

1. HEAD : elongated CIRCLE
2. NECK : tiny GAB below her chin
3. BODY : BEAN shape
4. ARMS : SAUSAGE shape
5. HANDS : STUMPS lol
6. LEGS : SAUSAGES
7. FEET : STUMPS :)

The video above, CHIBI TUTORIAL! by Yamuo, really helped give me a good starting point for the shapes.

It’s funny, because she mentioned the bean shape of the torso, which triggered a realisation; I already knew about this shape from the Proko Figure Drawing class I purchased ages ago.

I just assumed that was only for realistic drawing; I never realised the same shape could be applied to a manga style chibi character.

DOH!

I haven’t really focused on lilSOPHiE’s face yet, like the eyes or mouth, as I didn’t want to try and learn too much at once; so in a way her eyes are only place holder at the moment, but I imagine they’ll be similar to her final eyes, just refined a bit.

DIGITAL DREAM?

I did dabble a lil bit on the computer, turning one of the sketches into a digital sketch … but this was much harder than I expected.

While it didn’t have the same nice feeling as pencil sketching, it did highlight how cool it is to work digitally … like being able to change the colour of her hair instantly; digital really allows you to play around and experiment with things.

I imagine in the future I’ll do the sketch with pencils, than scan her into the computer to do the final colour and stuff :)

WEEK SEVEN

Week Seven was another fun one – lots of sketching – but it also came with a big question mark … Does lilSOPHIE have a face? Does she need a face? Why do characters need faces? To find out what the devil is going on here, check out the WEEK SEVEN POST :)