Okay, so today I wanted to make a “fighting illini cartoon”. I’ve been seeing these cool cartoon designs around, and I figured, why not try making one for my favorite team?
First, I doodled some rough sketches. Nothing fancy, just trying to get a feel for the pose and the overall look. I wanted something dynamic, like the Illini guy was ready to jump into action. I messed around with a few different ideas, some standing poses, maybe one where he’s running… you know, brainstorming.
After I had a sketch I kinda liked, I grabbed my tablet. I usually use this drawing app, it’s pretty simple but gets the job done. I imported my sketch into the app as a base layer.
Next, I started outlining. This is always the tedious part, but it’s gotta be done. I went over my rough sketch with a cleaner line, trying to make it all smooth and stuff. This took a while, gotta be patient with those lines!
- Outlining:Took about an hour, my hand was cramping, so I had some coffee.
Once the outlining was done, I moved onto the coloring. I picked the classic Illini orange and blue, obviously. I filled in the big areas first, then went back and added some shading to give it some depth. I’m no pro artist, so I just kept it pretty basic, but it looked okay.
Color and Shading
This part was actually kinda fun. Playing around with the colors and seeing it all come together is pretty rewarding. I spent a good amount of time just tweaking the shades, trying to make it look somewhat decent.
Finally, I added a simple background – just a plain color, nothing too distracting. And… that’s it! My “fighting illini cartoon” was done. It’s not perfect, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Maybe I’ll try another one soon, with a different pose or something. It was a fun little project for the day!
