Vector Shenanigan Guy

N

NintenDan

Well-Known Member
Full GL Member
Credits
521
Hey look, another Shenanigan Guy revival! Sorta.

What I'll be doing here is putting up little random updates on me trying to draw my five favourite Shenanigan Guy characters in a vectorised form. Hopefully at the end I'll have five poseable character templates that I could possibly animate in After Effects. That's the goal anyway but I ain't promising squat because you know how I am with delivering promises! *shifty eyes*

Anyways, here's Shy Guy 1.0:

gallery_19_35_7560.png

NintenDan said:
A step-by-step picture record of my attempt to create a vectorised Shy Guy. I started completely from scratch, using nothing but primitive shapes and free-hand paths. This is what I got after about one hour of messing about. I've tried to implement "native, vector shading" (using gradients and not jumping into raster editing, i.e. Photoshop, to enhance the image and create depth), and will more than likely clean this up.

The arms are in a "placeholder" position, as is the mask and the head. I need to add shading to the brown areas (mask and belt), as well as the arms, mask, and mask eyes.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just with shapes huh? I'd like to see your process
 
re11ding said:
Just with shapes huh? I'd like to see your process
Click to expand...

For the body I started off with a rectangle (well, three; the torso, belt, and then the "pants") and just added points and spread it out.

For the head, I used a large a oval and then for the dangly end of the robe I used an ellipse and positioned it to make it look seamless. The arms were drawn freehand with the mouse and pencil tool so they were more natural shapes rather than primitive. But yeah, no tracing done here kids! Which is generally what you should be avoiding when doing this, but meh. I just pop up a drawing of Shy Guy I did a while back in one window and use that as a reference point for what parts I need to include.

The aim is to split his body up into as many pieces as possible to allow for easy animation. I'll try capture how that turns out later on as well. The shadows currently won't allow me to do that (because the shadow is going over all three elements of the body - I'll need three separate shadows on all three elements otherwise I can't animate them).
 
Daww....It's so cute and tiny.X3 Makes me want a little shy guy plushie...... <-Don't judge me guys, I'm a girl, it's adorable to me.

*ahem* Anyways, you mentioned having all the separate parts for easy animation, so are you planning on doing an animation Dan?
 
ebstiv23 said:
Dan, that's awesome! I would love to see a new Shenanigan Guy comic...
smile.gif
Click to expand...

Well, the plan is to hopefully get somewhere with these, heh.

Luma said:
Daww....It's so cute and tiny.X3 Makes me want a little shy guy plushie...... <-Don't judge me guys, I'm a girl, it's adorable to me.

*ahem* Anyways, you mentioned having all the separate parts for easy animation, so are you planning on doing an animation Dan?
Click to expand...

Did someone say Shy Guy plushie?

gallery_19_35_9004.jpg

But anyhoos, yes! I would like to muck about and see if I could do an animation. At the moment, compositing the characters so that their made of individual pieces is the first place to start.

Also, note the absence of a black outline. I'm planning on excluding it just to see how it looks.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Luma said:
Daww....It's so cute and tiny.X3 Makes me want a little shy guy plushie...... <-Don't judge me guys, I'm a girl, it's adorable to me.

*ahem* Anyways, you mentioned having all the separate parts for easy animation, so are you planning on doing an animation Dan?
Click to expand...
I am a guy (a man at that...) and I have Bowser plushies from Nintendo world, and Mario too. I spent over $100 altogether on those bad boys.
 
Shy Guy 2.0 on the right (or bottom), Shy Guy 1.0 on the left (or top) for comparison purposes:

gallery_19_35_7560.png
gallery_19_35_8825.png

Not sure about the shading I did with this. I kept it very subtle and simplistic, compared to the gradient stuff I had started in 1.0.

I like how the mask depth worked with the holes though and will keep that.

I'm not entirely certain on what style I want. Simplistic and blocky, bright colours might suit the cartoon more, but I don't want to make it too much of an eye sore. At the moment though, this is the best Shy Guy I've drawn in Illustrator by far, so that's a plus.

Feedback or suggestion on what shading to try is appreciated! Image examples are great too!

EDIT: After a quick look and self-feedback session, I'm going to combine the shading from 1.0 with the model of 2.0.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm definitely starting to get a good vibe from this latest one (version 03)

gallery_19_35_5061.png

I also asked myself the question of if shading in Illustrator will affect how my lighting works in After Effects. I will try it out and see how it goes, as well as just importing a basic shape outline and then using After Effects to handle the actual lighting.

EDIT: And I've gotten version 04 done too.

gallery_19_35_7658.png

I'm going to import this and see what can be done, and then import a no-shading version and see if it's plausible to just do the lighting in After Effects (though it could mean more processing for After Effects, so doing it in Illustrator will save up some processing that's required).

EDIT EDIT: And what was INTENDED to be a straight forward task isn't working for me. When I go from Illustrator > After Effects, some of my gradients and paths aren't imported and I have no idea why. More investigationing is required.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Figured out what was messing up, had nothing to do with me, hah. Problem solved!

EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT: I think the shading looks nice in After Effects. Also, got it so that I can scale it as big or as small as I want and it all looks nice. And as promised, here's an example of what happens I take Shy Guy apart. It looks pretty messed up, I might need to work on that.

But here, for your basic talking, walking and more, I can probably animate and morph the shapes to suit. For specialised poses, one might need to draw a different arm or whatnot based on perspective. But hey, that's what you have to do sometimes, even if takes a long time. Though you would think with a basic structure such as this set up, you wouldn't have to re-invent the wheel and could just make tiny edits and reshapes of the body to suit the desired pose (unless if it was something crazy like breakdancing). I'm pretty sure at the end of the day, any complex animation is going to take a bit of time if it is going to look any good.

gallery_19_35_20955.png

EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT: Things have been going well and I've gotten concepts for two more characters! Shading will come next but I think I will work on the outlines for the next two characters before moving on. Both were relatively easy, as they were composed of a circle for the main body (not that I'm complaining).

Enjoy them anyway, and thanks for reading!

gallery_19_35_1957.png


gallery_19_35_2605.png

I am really enjoying the cartoon, clean-cut styles I am producing and am glad I started this little experiment!

EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT: Got bored. See if you can guess who else I drew. He probably needs a bit more work however in the shape department, especially with the mouth (which was quickly added anyway so no big dramas).

gallery_19_35_4741.png
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I LOVE it! I might even print and cut the parts and put them back together, because I'm THAT borded
tongue.gif
 
Pretty cool.

Vectors make me cringe a little, though.
 
Poor disassembled shy-guy!
Shocked.png


Also, I am shocked to see the amount of progress you've made, Dan. This plan may actually come to fruition.
 
PantelonesNovemberHandle said:
I LOVE it! I might even print and cut the parts and put them back together, because I'm THAT borded
tongue.gif
Click to expand...

POST RESULTZ!

Zexis said:
Pretty cool.

Vectors make me cringe a little, though.
Click to expand...

Yeah, some can turn out really good and then others can look really dodgy. I'm not artist but hopefully I can avoid them looking really dodgy. That Goomba needs serious work.

ebstiv23 said:
Poor disassembled shy-guy!
Shocked.png


Also, I am shocked to see the amount of progress you've made, Dan. This plan may actually come to fruition.
Click to expand...

I'm shocked too, haha. I have no idea what happened, I just got bored.
 
Challe-

I'll just put this here.
knapp01.png


I'm kinda busy at the moment tho, but I'll print/cut them by the end of the month.
 
I got some more time to work on Goomba and finish off the fifth and final character! Check out the improvements on Goomba! The new one is on the right/top! (still gotta touch up the mouth and add shading but meh)

gallery_19_35_5080.png
gallery_19_35_4741.png

And here's our fifth Shenanigan Guy crew member, Chom- uh, wait? Blooper?!

Chomp has moved on. He had a great ride with the gang, but the shenanigans were just too much. In his place, we have Blooper. The most significant change I made with Blooper was his eyes. Refer back to past comics to see how his eyes were previously just two lines. Anyways...

gallery_19_35_4876.png

He pretty much looks like the real deal! Amazing! (not up myself at all, yeaaah...)

Now to shade them all!
 
I might try drawing a Chain Chomp and Lakitu. I have a feeling I'd be better at the Lakitu moreso than the Chomp (even though Chomp's just a big ball), but who knows. I'll focus on shading these suckers first.

EDIT: Heck, why don't I just vectorise a whole bunch of Nintendo characters? lol.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Some of the vectors, I would like to see you make them. Some are simple shapes while others seem to be combined shapes. Do you happen to remember how you made the more complex shapes?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top