Creat Multimedia

Designing Aiko 2: 2012 Edition

Friday January 20, 2012 | (no comments)

(Read about my 2011 version of Aiko and how I designed her to get a better idea of why I participate, how I approached developing the illustration, and what Ai-kon is.)

After a long period in which I couldn't really work on anything new and creative due to holiday traveling and a bout with an illness, I was beginning to feel creatively antsy. Then, my friend David happened to mention the Ai-Kon mascot contest - I had completely forgotten about it, and there was only a week and a half left before the deadline!

I wanted to try participating in it again while taking a less analytical approach, and so I set out to make what I felt like making and have a little more fun with it. This year's theme was sci-fi, so I picked some influences: retro-futurism, Ulala from Space Channel 5, Evangelion suits, Catherine, Chrono Trigger's Lucca, and Interplanet Janet. I also wanted to do something more cute and childish than last year.

I started off with making a simple body and face sketch in Photoshop, and then drawing some costume ideas on top of it.

I decided to go with the first one, and pulled the scribbles over to Illustrator for inks, picking out the colour palette on a few sections when I was bored with working with the pen tool. I also reposed the legs overtop of the old ones, since I didn't like the position as much. 

Finishing the lines took a long time. I did the jetpack separately, after I knew how much detail I wanted to go into it to properly contrast with the character.

I finished flat colouring, and changed the colour of the linework to a nice fuschia to add some pop. I also did all the jetpack work. I had been posting it on a forum I go to, and they gave me a number of suggestions: resize the legs, change the hand position, and so on, so I listened (she also had a peace hand sign in one version that was dropped since it was too busy). I liked the cheeky "11" that kept appearing, since this is the 11th year of the event.

Next up: pull the illustration back into Photoshop (split in layers, of course) and start painting in basic shadows and highlights.

Next, more shadows and highlights painted in.

The last stage involved the liquify tool in Photoshop, since I didn't want to have to go back and rework all of my elements. A forum member suggested I add more curvature to the spine, and I wanted to push around some other elements. I also fixed some highlights and shadows, and upped the saturation on some of the shadows to make the overall illustration much brighter.

After a lot of mushing and tweaking small elements, I came out with the final product.

I've already seen some of the other entries for this year's contest on DeviantArt, and they're all very varied. I'm really curious to see how the judges lean this year, given the open nature of the theme.

I did have fun, but posting it on my forum while building it resulted in some really strong criticism. I really need to work on accepting harsh criticism more reasonably, and I need to produce a lot more work if I ever want to start taking on bigger projects.