Erin Gebbia Art Archive: 2011

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Bird Bling

A penguin with swag for my brother's 12th birthday today.

At 8am he had already managed to get at one of his presents and start playing a new Wii game.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Civil War Concentration - Loyalties


Starting the 2nd out of 3 stories for my AP Art Concentration. Border-state upper class blue tick coon hounds deal with family loyalties and moral issues... previous story: pg1; pg2; pg3; pg4 continue: pg1; pg2; pg3; pg4 next: pg 1; pg 2; pg 3; pg 4

Friday, December 2, 2011

Hoot hoot Hello


birthday present for my mother 'hoot hoot' means 'hello' in owl

Available as shirts, hoodies, stickers, and iPhone cases! Click here!

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Texas Tigress


Birthday gift for a friend who likes to square dance. Fun fact: Her outfit (pictured here) won her the 'Best Dressed' Award. (golden tabby / "strawberry" tiger)

Monday, November 21, 2011

Shapes and Shadows

AP Art Class Assignment - Black and White Shape Still-Life

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Civil War Concentration - Battle


deer family story arc pg 3 of 4 continue: pg1; pg2; pg3; pg4 next story: pg1; pg2; pg3; pg4 final: pg 1; pg 2; pg 3; pg 4

Friday, November 4, 2011

Civil War Concentration - Loss

deer family story arc
pg 4 of 4
continue: pg1; pg2; pg3; pg4
next story: pg1; pg2; pg3; pg4
final: pg 1; pg 2; pg 3; pg 4

Monday, October 31, 2011

For Samyena's Halloween Art Exchange
My partner was theroguez and their coydog, RayJ. One of the theme choices was the game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which I don't know much about, except that you have a lantern and have to avoid monsters and the dark (both of which make you go insane).

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Civil War Concentration - Letters

deer family story arc
pg 2 of 4
continue: pg1; pg2; pg3; pg4
next story: pg1; pg2; pg3; pg4
final: pg 1; pg 2; pg 3; pg 4

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Civil War Concentration - Goodbye

deer family story arc
pg 1 of 4
continue: pg1; pg2; pg3; pg4
next story: pg1; pg2; pg3; pg4
final: pg 1; pg 2; pg 3; pg 4

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Return to the Past

possible logo for school auction

Friday, September 23, 2011

AP Art Concentration Statement

Concentration Statement:

—My concentration illustrates the stories of three different families who were divided and destroyed by the Civil War. Although the Civil War started as a war to unify the states, it ultimately caused great division and destruction between families across America.

—In the first story (images 1-4), a hard-working father fulfills his patriotic duty, but loses his life in the process, leaving his wife and children to continue on without him. The second story (images 5-8) follows the conflict between a father and son who become divided in a battle of morals versus family tradition. The final story (images 9-12) pits geographic residence over dedication to family, as two brothers find themselves dedicated to opposing factions, bound to face each other on the battle field. Unfortunately, none of these stories finds a happy ending. Only destruction and loss result from war.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Starry Songdog

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Spirit Week Stallion


design for the spirit week shirts: the Cave-Fury

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Movie Maniac

bust badge commission for a dragon who writes movie reviews

Monday, August 22, 2011

Kangaroo Kicker


birthday present for my amiga I put 16 on her jersey because that's how old she turned today, but it turns out that 16 is her actual jersey number. HOPPY BIRTHDAY

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Sprouts Logo

possible logo for Forsyth Country Day School's new 'Sprouts' mommy & me classes

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Illustration Friday - Perennial


perennial- adj. lasting for an indefinitely long time; enduring (Cassie Coyote and Jason the grey wolf / golden eagle hybrid (c) Me)

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Drummer Dog


Drummer Dog Because he rocks /rimshot Jason the grey wolf / golden eagle hybrid (c) Me

also, unfinished art:


accidentally merged all the layers and saved it that way soo it's not entirely finished but...oh well Greg Otter (c) Me

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Creating Characters

A 'Behind the Scenes' Look at How I Create and Develop Characters

('My Obsession with my Characters')

The Initial Idea
I can't really say where my ideas come from. I'm usually either bored sitting in class or doodling new animals. Often, I get attached to them, and on drawing them more and more, I decide that they need to stick around. The first process I go through is designing the character.


Far left: the first ever drawing of Lukas, who started out as a thug and remained that way for only two drawings Mid left: the first ever drawing of Greg, a generic party-otter, and a cheetah character who didn't last Mid right: the first drawing of non-thug Lukas Far right: rough character concepts for 'Otto' and 'Paul' before they were known as Greg and Lukas

Design Development
Greg and Lukas have gone through the biggest design changes, both in markings and shape.


Top row: early drawings of Greg Middle row, left: Greg's early design Middle row, right: trying out new design ideas for Greg Bottom row: finalizing Greg's new design, and other characters


Top row: early drawings of Lukas Bottom row: later drawings of Lukas, with new more anatomically correct (read: harder to draw) platypus bill

First drawing of Greg and Lukas together, with Greg's old design and Lukas's new design (with updated platy-bill)

Most recent Greg and Lukas drawing, showcasing their current designs and personalities at play.

Names
During the process of designing a character, I give my characters a name. I like when names match the character's physical appearance or have a certain ring to it that people will easily associate with the personality I want my character to have.
Deciding on names is tricky. There are either of two ways you could go: meaningful or memorable. I usually go with memorable because I'm a sucker for the things that actually make names memorable, like alliteration and putting the stress on the first syllable (CASSie, LUkas, APril, JAson). Short names also seem to be more memorable, too (Greg).

Personality
In my opinion, a cool looking character is wasted if it's not given an equally interesting personality. Without a solid personality, you'll have nothing to draw but boring head-shots. Wouldn't you rather be drawing your character expressing its personality in more interesting ways by acting and reacting to your other characters? I would.
The sad part is that it's sometimes way easier to design a pretty character than give it a personality. When I first start developing my character's personality, I think about what purpose the character will serve. Do I want them to be funny, mean, snobbish? Making a list of traits helps me decide which characteristics I want to emphasize or completely discard in the initial phase of personality-planning.
I also try to make my character's appearances match their personality. This step kind of happens during my 'design development' process. Consequently, Lukas is usually drawn grumpy, because, well, that's part of his personality. Speech patterns go hand in hand with personality. The speech of a grumpy character, for example, can either be short and clipped in agitation, or long and ranting. You could even through in a passive-aggressive flavor.

sketches of Norton, the passive-aggressive owl

Most importantly, I research the animal I've drawn. Finding out interesting things about the animal helps me give interesting personality quirks to my characters.
For example, consider April Opossum.

Honestly, the picture above is the first time I ever drew her. Her only traits were that she was a little silly and easily confused. I really wanted to develop her personality more, however, so I looked up some info on her species.
In addition to that, I took some common stereotypes of opossums and gave her a similar yet twisted version of those traits: Because opossums are usually seen as 'southern trailer-trash vermin', April is instead from a wealthy southern family who owns a plantation; Because opossums are known for 'playing dead', I decided she would be both a theater enthusiast and aspiring (yet unknowingly bad) actress.

notes on April's personality

Or, you could give your character the complete opposite traits of it's stereotype, like a cowardly lion or killer rabbit. That would give you double irony points.

Interactions
A character's personality dictates the interactions it will have with other characters. I've drawn Greg and Lukas interacting the most; their love-hate relationship amuses me so. Determining these reactions takes some planning of your character's behaviors. Even little things like nervous ticks, habits, and the amount of change the character keeps in their pockets can help display and strengthen character traits. I tend to let my characters run wild in my head, so I find out these little things about them, and at the same time, come up with little stories and tidbits of interactions that I could illustrate.

In Closing - Upcoming New Characters

Here's a sneak peak at some new characters I was working on, plus notes on their possible personality traits.

I'm creating all the time, and sometimes possible characters get pushed to the back burner because I can't decide on a suitable personality to fit the design. You may or may not see these guys again, but I really love bison and Malaysian sun bears...