Scooby Doo and Shaggy

Final Artwork

Initially I was going to post these within the text of my story but I didn't want to break up the paragraphs with these pictures and accompanying commentary.


I think the final piece turned out pretty well.  I was never a big Scooby Doo fan myself but I enjoyed making this for Andrew.  Read on to see how I made this!

Inspiration

Ok, so I basically drew this picture but I changed Scooby's arms and legs and Shaggy's face.

Initial sketch...yes I realize I forgot one arm of Scooby

Here is the final pencil drawing.  I made the lines darker and cleaned it up so I could see the drawing easily on my computer.

What are those sticky notes doing on the side of the page?  Well, I did not leave enough room for Scooby's back left paw so I had to use the next page in my sketch book.  Oops!

Scooby outlined with vectors

I used a tapered stroke and changed the thickness, degree of tapering, and sometimes removed the taper from one or both ends of certain strokes.  I would zoom in and do a stroke freehand.  Then I'd zoom in even more and make sure the stroke lined up with the pencil drawing.

It doesn't matter that Scooby's leg outlines overlap, adding the color will take care of that!

Vector Outlines

Here is the final set of vector outlines.  There are places the outlines overlap but I did that so the lines (Scooby's back as an example) look continuous and there aren't unnecessary tapering lines.  As I mentioned earlier, this will all be fixed when the color is added.

The Colors I Used

Here is my color palette.  You can see the bottom has a bunch of different colors from different projects.  To make things a little simpler and to avoid losing a color, I like to create these color palettes for each project.  In this case I was even able to label the colors!  I use Artboard, an app for my Mac, so that is where this screen shot is from.

Close Up of Shaggy's Face with Color

So yes, that looks weird.  This picture is just to illustrate how I add in the color.  I work all on one layer; I think this comes from being trained in traditional art where you don't get convenient layers to play with.  I freehand the colors in (like a coloring book) and then go in and make sure I didn't "color outside the lines".

Color Behind the Outlines

That looks better!  Here I simply moved the color shapes to the back so they are under the outlines.  (Scooby's arm will be fixed when the color is added to his arm.)

Final Product

Here is the final product.  I hope this has been an interesting and informative read!