Once again, I go over the progress of a design. This time, we’re looking at the Mountain Climber.
Started out with an idea of a character climbing some tall object with the help of a rope.
Worked in a background, shifted from a forest to the mountains, tried to keep the clothing as basic as possible to avoid headaches if I had to change the pose or something. Color-coded everything so that I can see which items are part of which larger piece.
Came to the conclusion that the rope didn’t look quite right, it needed to be more taut.
Decided to change from the old rope-around-the-waist to a more modern climbing harness. Took a look at some online references and made a simple approximation of a climbing harness. Added fingerless gloves and a stubble, because this guy is just fundamentally obnoxious. Started assigning the base colors.
Added all kinds of minor details: the clouds, birds, houses, sweater logo, hammer, drinking bottle, shoe spikes, glasses…
Changed the line colors of each item from black to some lighter color to give the whole image a brighter look like it was being blasted with mountain sunshine. Started with the shading process from the background.
Once the background was shaded, moved onto the sweater, since it’s the next-largest item in the image. Continued like that with the rest of the pieces.
Finalized the image by shading the face. Made some minor tweaks and additions throughout the process.
There you go! I hope this was either useful or entertaining to you.
