Sasha4Arts Blog

I went to visit my sons who live in Bristol while the youngest is in Uni. I took Sasha with me, we had ourselves a decadent barbecue (with a whole lot of drama finding charcoal but that is a story for another post) and Sasha got to gnaw on some bones. And there was much rejoicing.

Next day I went to see where Sasha had “buried” her treasure. Being a silly, city dog, not used to having a garden, she had simply dug the earth up a bit and plopped the bones not inside the very shallow grave but sort of next to it and called it a job well done. Naturally this attracted lots of flies. These were really colourful blue-green flys, not the boring, uninspired, colourless black and white versions we get in the city, these were some good-looking flies!

Staring at those sexy flies I got the idea of creating a posh fly character, I told my youngest son this and he suggested some accoutrements for said posh lady. So I set to work. First order of business I sat in the garden on the steps you see there, in the Bristol summer sun, 16 degrees and howling wind with pen and paper sketchbook, the old-fashioned way, like a hippie. And came up with this:

Sure, my sketches won’t win any prizes but it’s all about getting an idea and then iterating it, usually in digital form where it’s easier for me to change things.

Then a quick sketch in Procreate to get the general shape I wanted.

Next greyscale levels to determine values and differentiate shapes, a trick I learned from Creature Art Teacher: https://creatureartteacher.com. Highly recommend this site if you want to learn about character design and especially animation.

Oh and of course I added a hat and scarf, cause you can’t be a proper posh lady without a hat and scarf. Damn, she’s lookin’ fine!

Now the real hard work begun. I took my greyscale masterpiece into Affinity Designer 2 and started drawing the bits and pieces. This took hours to get right. By the way, if you’re unfamiliar with this tool, go check it out now! It’s amazing and they’ve got a 6 month trial period! Enough time to ditch overpriced, bloated Adobe rubbish and get something better, cheaper and from a company that actually cares about its customers. It’s available for iPad, Mac and Windows, you simply can’t go wrong with it.

I got the shape done and then it was on to the textures. This was the part that took me the longest as I experimented with all sorts of styles and blend modes. Finally at the end of that first day I had something I liked:

It was still missing something but I felt it was a good place to leave it at and rest a bit. You need to take breaks from your drawings to get some perspective, after looking at something for too long, you start to lose objectivity and your critical eye gets overwhelmed and overly familiar so you’re not really progressing, just getting frustrated. It’s something I really struggle with because I don’t like to quit so I usually go for longer than is healthy. Cautionary tale! Don’t be like me, take breaks.

That night, I couldn’t sleep, I kept thinking about Her Poshness and what she was missing. I also didn’t like the stocking legs too much, it made her look more pimpy or prostitute-like than posh. So I made lots of mental notes while trying to fall asleep. The next day, armed with inspiration and excited about all those genius mental notes I’d made I sat in front of the iPad ready to realise this masterpiece! Of course, I’d forgotten all those genius notes from the night before. No matter, I set to work on adding meaningful details to my lady.

I created a nice background, some text and set off on making variants of her. First the Posh one which was the original idea. I got rid of the scarf as it was messing with the overall shape of the character.

Yes! I loved it! The cigarette holder was a stroke of genius in my opinion. But still, there was something that didn’t resonate with me.

I messed around some more and got this variant:

A bit lady-of-the-night to be sure, hence the title.

I went back to it, couldn’t leave it alone. After hours of not sleeping and messing with it I came up with what I think is the winner, my all-time favourite:

The Noir Fly, Femme Fatale! I left it here, otherwise I would have kept going for days. It’s also hard to know when to quit so after three days I decided that was enough. Rule of thumb: three days is more than enough for a character design. Leave it, move on and come back to it later if needed. Remember “Perfectionism is the enemy of productivity.”

Next up, I need to find her story so I can make a quick animation in Moho and bring her to life.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Happy creating 🙂