After receiving a serious amount of creative work from Heather B that would make an elderly artist proud, I had to make an entire new category to draw people’s attention to pupils like herself. ‘Pupil Spotlight’ will be an irregular feature that will highlight certain pupils that are extremely productive and talented.
Heather B, although being a young S1 pupil, has produced triple figures worth of images and animations, expanding her skills and experimenting within the medium of manga and anime. She sent me a link to a folder with nearly eighty images and shorts, all of which were absolutely incredible. It has taken me a few weeks to finally get around to publishing some of my favourites, but I’m sure you’ll agree that it was worth the wait.
Using a mixture of sketches and computer colouring, using a tablet and drawing with a mouse, Heather mixes her traditional drawing skills with her computer knowledge to her advantage. The above image has been drawn by mouse, which I’m sure, some of you will know how tough it is to get anything worthwhile out of that tool.
The video below is a little 2 second sample of Heather getting to grips with animating a little creature’s face. Notice how the blinking eye and fluid motion of the chatting mouth make the little guy look and behave realistically.
Below, another eye study. By getting the eyes right on a character you can bring them to life. As human beings, we are prone to looking towards the eyes upon first contact. Therefore, for any character to make a impact, the eyes must be believable.
Heather does not only push her skills in drawing linear and simple line characters, she also spends a lot of time working on giving the impression of style and subtlety as evident in the orange and tree studies below.
I’m sure you will agree that there is a lot of talent exposed in these images. I know as a fine artist and designer that using tools such as stalling software and crashing movie editors, uncontrollable computer mice and frustrating pen tablets, that sometimes it is a good thing to achieve any kind of output, but to actually achieve the output Heather is producing now… is staggering. Below you will find a few images of how one of Heather’s images comes together using a variety of sketching and layout, designing and impressionistic computer painting, then composition and combining.
The Art Classroom 