This was the first design/character I was commissioned to do for KickIt Longboards. For those of you who don't live in Saskatchewan, or have few memories of your experience here, we get some intimidating looking clouds that slowly advance, and makes you wait for the destruction it wants to unleash. So it didn't take me too long to find a storm cloud I could reference for this design. I don't like storms, they keep me awake with a terrified dog for most of the evening and the really bad ones threaten to tear the roof off, or knock over the trees around you.But I do know quite a few people who love storms, quite like this little dude.
I didn't even notice until my brother pointed it out, but there is a face in the storm cloud. See if you notice it.
When I make these designs, I usually draw them on paper first and go over the drawing with an India ink pen, then I colour them in photoshop. I have an old tablet, so I find I have more control drawing with the paper and the pen then I do with the stylus. But it tends to get a bit tricky trying to draw a background on paper that will fit a whole board. Luckily, I can rely on the Layout Design classes I took in college, that taught me how to draw backgrounds for camera pans, to create things like this:
And of course Character Design helps with things like this:
