I started this image knowing I wanted to do a Philbert piece. I wanted it to have the classical oblivious Philbert ignoring the immense danger he might be in. I started off sketching the tree, and wanted it to have lots of sharp branches coming off it. I put this tree above the waterfall, which I obviously drew in the cutesy way. When you look at the overall image, it doesn't look too dangerous, but if you imagined this to be a real scenario, you'd probably find a different path to cross the waters.
I wanted to incorporate a nonsensical perspective in this drawing, which is why the image feels like it keeps changing the horizon line. If you focus only on Philbert, the disruption isnt as strong, but when you start to look at the surrounding environment, you can definitely feel that something is wrong. I wanted the whole image to have a feeling of danger, like Philbert was just stepping into a bossfight.
I am still trying out the boxy lighting, and still like it ! It fits the style and gives a new element to the drawings. I also tested around with the background a bit, to see what would work and what didnt. I tried using mostly rocks and grass to fill the ground, and have the spiky trees as the contrast.
I also fell in love with the rocks on the bottom left. It reminds me of that "don't talk to me or my son ever again"-meme. Welp. Let's look at the progress.
You can see I started with the characters, and then the foreground. I either do it this way, or the background first. It just depends on what I feel like starting with. You might also notice I did all the shadows mainly instantly, and knew what direction I wanted the light to come in from. I was considering adding other characters in this piece, but then I would have to make the whole piece bigger, and I really liked the main focus on the image, so I chose not to. I also wanna highlight Philbert and Fox as the main duo!
Lets talk about inspiration !
1.Yog Joshi
Yog Joshi is an illustrator and animator who does a lot of tutorials and environment illustration. As usual I discovered him through Pinterest, and as I knew I wanted to do an waterfall illustration, I looked him up for references and inspiration !
2.Eny Simonyi
Eni Simonyi is an illustrator who works very graphically. She also does a lot of landscape, but in a totally different way than Yog Joshi. It is incomparable, but they both inspire me and my artwork.
Overall, I had previously mentioned I wanted to do a waterfall, and this is where I could comfortably do so. I do enjoy this piece, perhaps because it is a great sum of who Philbert is.
On to personal stuff,
I have actually started streaming on twitch. I want to do both art and video games there, and having an community online is all internet is about ! I think especially doing livestreaming is the essense of digital living. You cast what you are doing, while talking to people from all over the world ! So far I love doing it, and I hope to do it as much as possible. My twitch is ofcourse twitch.tv/swilmann