Frog Creature in Photoshop

In the lesson with Steve we were looking at a unique way of drawing characters. In the images that we viewed, we saw animals with the body type of humans, but still keeping key features of the body, such as the hands and face. A great example of this is the graphic novel "Maus". In this book, it tells the story of the writers  farther, who was a Jewish man in Germany during World War 2. In the novel, the Jewish  people are depicted as Mice, care free and easily in danger, where as the Germans are shown as cats, things that hunt down and kill Mice. A spot on representation of real life.

Depiction of animals with human characteristics.

Looking at these creatures, we were told that we were going to use this method to create a creature that had to be a representation of a frog. The first thing that I did was gain research and a reference. This is so that I can get the features of the creature right.I went straight onto the internet and looked up exotic frogs. These frogs were very colorful coming from such a tropical place, I needed to make sure that these colors were incorporated in my game.

Finding an image to get reference.

After I had found the picture that I wanted, I bought it into Photoshop and was ready to paint a representation of it. We were told that we could do a 3D model of the creature and then paint over the top. Now normally I would jump at this opportunity, but this time, I felt that I needed to improve my painting skills. I would use a skill that a close friend had showed me. Its when you get the picture, create a new layer and paint over the top, almost like a form of tracing.

The first thing that I wanted to do was put the outline of the creature on. By selecting the paint tool, I went around the outline so I could create myself a box to paint in. I also put my own twist on the character as I didn't want to directly copy it.

Painting over the image with an outline.

Below is an image of what the final outline looks like without any paint added to it. The reason I went with this direction is that I wanted to create a realistic interpretation with paint, something that I had never done before. Now that the outline was done, I had the chance to move on and add in the paint to the image.

The outline so far.

Moving on from the outline, I started to paint the inside of the creature. With the frog under as a template, I created a new layer and used colors from the picture to paint over the top. I first started with the eye, using the eye dropper on the template, I managed to get the color perfect, though it still didn't match up nearly as well as I thought it would. To make up for this I used the blur tool at set the strength fairly low and merged the colors. This was much better and made the creature look quite realistic.

Once I had got the eyes right, I proceeded to continue with the rest of the body, which mainly consisted of greens, except for the legs, they were mostly blue.

Adding paint into the piece.

After all the colors had been merged on the body, the next stage was to continue with the arm that I had just drawn free hand and make that look as good as the body. To be honest it mostly consisted of me doing guess work of where the color would change on the arm, similar to that of the other side. When I was finished with it, I was pleased, the result matched the other hand.

The next thing was to give this character a gun. Again, by grabbing reference off of the internet and placing it in a view where I could see it, I managed to draw a decent replica and will it with a good tone to suit the piece.

The last thing was to reduce the size of the outline to make the piece look much more realistic. As I already had it on a separate layer, all I had to do was use the lasso tool and just cut the pieces that I didn't want and I was done.

Painting the gun and stalk.

Below is what my character looked like without a background and the reference removed. So far I am extremely happy with the way that the frog has turned out so far. The next thing I wanted to do was grab a background and stick it onto the image to finish it.

The finished painting.

Going on the internet to find a decent background, I managed to come across a rain forest. This would look perfect with my piece, so I managed to slot it straight into the image and see what it looked like. Although I was happy, I still thought that it needed a bit of tweaking, so I applied several filters to it and blurred the background until I was happy with what I had.

Final design 1.

Final design 2.

Final design 3.

I managed to get 3 different results, just by changing the hue and saturation. I feel that my favorite one is number two, it just suits its environment a lot more than the others plus the color with the gun, makes it look like hes up to something, being mischievous.

If I could do it again, I would probably copy the template a lot less and add more aspects that I designed myself. Overall though, I am really happy with the results that I got and I am glad that this time, I got to practice my 3D drawing skills, rather than modelling skills.