Pikachu - Basic Shapes

 

For the Basic Shapes assignment, I had to pick a character from the lineup of the original Nintendo Smash Brothers game. Perhaps my choice of Pokémon seems obvious from my previous blog post, where I created Charizard using Block Sprites, but I had another reason that is not so apparent. I already had a physical reference to work with - a Pikachu wireless charging port that I own. 

Technically, I was supposed to break down the character to primary shapes - spheres, cubes, cones etc. But I think this turned into secondary shapes instead, with far too much detail than what the assignment originally called for.

I was provided a Huion drawing tablet and accompanying stylus, and almost immediately, I fell in love with them. They're incredibly smooth and user-friendly.

The tools I used the most were the Pencil BigStrokes and the Airbrush Soft Round 50% Flow from Nick Zuccarello's Photoshop Brush Tool Presets. BigStrokes were used for a quick and easy outline/tracing of the reference images. The Airbrush was what I used to shade. Smudge tool was used to create a nice, seamless transition between the different color shades. I think I was still getting the hang of the tools in the first sketch, but had boiled it down in the second and the third, which is why you can see higher levels of contrast which bring out the nuances of lighting.

I inadvertently relied on the reference for my lighting a little too much, because, as you can see, the specularity is rather high in the sketches, almost making them look a little plastic, much like the charging port itself. 

In hindsight, the lighting could've been a lot better, and I could've actually chosen a better background than a messy desk. Otherwise, I'm rather proud of this one. 2D Art is not my forte, so I challenged myself to achieve this without using 3D models. I suppose I did cheat with the reference. But nevertheless, this is a decent start.