This is Ada, pronounced 'Add-ah'.
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| Personal Piece - Ada - Character Concept Art |
So here I go with my portfolio segment! To start this off is the drawing above! It's a digital hand drawn piece I did using Adobe Photoshop, a small Wacom drawing tablet and a few hours of my time.
It is one of the most recent drawings I did and it's one of the first drawing ever I attempted to do using a digital drawing tablet! The first being this Death Claw inspired creature...
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| Personal Piece - Death Claw (Fallout Game Franchise) |
Using a drawing tablet is really ...weird. It's very fun to mess around with and when you go back to traditional drawing you miss pressing Ctrl+Z to undo a mistake. Drawing on the flat surface of the tablet while looking at a vertical monitor (I don't have one of them fancy tablets) was a strange sensation but I quickly got used to it! I really need to make more time for drawing though... anyway!...
About The Piece...
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| Progression Cycle |
I did this piece more as an exercise to get used to using a drawing tablet. I already had the design for this character going in, although I did make some alterations.
Standing at nearly 8ft tall, the character of Ada is a mountain of a man. Due to circumstance he has to constantly wear a specialised mouth piece fashioned from a gas mask. Obviously it is difficult to speak through the layers of rubber and is often too much trouble for him to bother. Ada leaned to live his life without the need to speak to others. Despite his size, he often blends into the background of peoples awareness. Silent, still, but listening, watching.
I wanted a World War 1/World War 2 vibe form his design and indeed the world he is from.
The character is from a fictional universe that I have been expanding for several years now. More specifically he is tied to a project that myself and my good friend Jack Deane have been working on lately. It is a long term project but it is going strong!
The design comes from the costume I put together and made for a short film project (more below).
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| Ryan Foristal (Left) & Danny McCarthy (Right) In costume during the filming of G.A.S.S : Integrity |
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| Danny McCarthy in costume as Ada. G.A.S.S : Integrity - Behind The Scenes |
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| Danny McCarthy (Left) & Drew Hickey (Right) G.A.S.S : Integrity - Behind The Scenes |
The Project's Public Beginnings...
Part of the aforementioned project took the form of a short film, which I tried to do with a bunch of my friends but unfortunately that didn't work out. It was a massive learning experience and it was a pretty fun time on set but only a quarter of one scene was film plus a few miscellaneous shots. It was the trickiest part and if we got that out of the way then the rest would have been a cake walk!
Alas it wasn't meant to be. However since then the project has and is going through a process of expansion and refinement. So hopefully one day you, dear reader, will hear much more about this project in the years to come and will remember this simple blog post with it's vague hints about the project's promise.
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| Progression Line Up |
We shall 'shlaters',
Richard.