Friday, September 12, 2014

"Secret Identity" character designs



Character designs for Donovan and Royce, from Secret Identity. For these, the author gave me actors to reference for them, Steve McQueen and James Dean, respectively. I went with pretty basic "thug" outfits for their regular attire, but of course, then we have their "superhero" personas.

Designing Batman and Robin based outfits was fun and it was a challenge incorporating their birds (a raven and a blackbird) into their outfit while still keeping them colorful. At one point, the script mentions the outfits don't necessary fit Donovan and Royce, hence Donovan's slight belly there.

Designs by Fil Romero
Concept/Creation by Bobby Mort

"Super Complicated" character designs





I forgot to post this after I posted the comic back in April (?), so here they are, however long after the fact they may be. For Super Complicated, I only did very quick concepts for the four characters that appear and speak. The top image is just quick brainstorming, which got refined in the full body sketches below. The third image of course, are just some color keys I did up for all four of them.

Designs are by Fil Romero (me)
Concept/Creation by Bobby Mort


"Secret Identity" comic






"Secret Identity"
Concept/Story by Bobby Mort
Art by Fil Romero

Another comic commission by Bobby Mort. I really enjoy these short comic commissions. They really challenge me and this much more so, as he wanted a style that was more like western comics. It was hard for me to make a full on jump though, so my usual style's still there. I'll be posting the main character designs for this up soon, as well for the last comic, as I realized I forgot to post them back when I said I would, haha.


Thursday, July 24, 2014

Lemon Turnaround Video


Finished up work on Lemon today and decided to pose her. Here's the resulting turnaround.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Lemon Sculpt WIP 2


Some more WIP shots of Lemon.

Lemon Sculpt WIP


Today in class, I decided to start on a full body sculpt. The kids are actually moving quite fast in the program - which is very nice to see. I gave them the option that later they might get a chance to work with modeling a body if they wanted, so was showing them the run down of that this morning.

Anyway, decided to model Lemon, my chubby, little fairy character. I think she's coming along rather nicely.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Gardener Color Schemes


Decided to play with random colors schemes for that gardener girl doodle. Not really sure what I want and some of these are just all over the place (ie. the first one of the bottom row, haha), but I think I likethe first and third one of the top row.

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Gardening



Some sketches I did while waiting for my flight a few months ago. I think I had seen a friend's designs for a gardening girl on FB and I guess had gardening in my head, so I guess I did something similar. The little design on the dog is supposed to be a leaf, cause why not, haha.

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Star Breakers



Another commission from the same guy who commissioned the "Super Complicated" comic. He wanted me to cartoonify a photo of a group for a Star Trek-based parody. The top image is the final product, edited to look like an old VHS video feed. I used a very nice tutorial for it that you can see here: http://mikeyjam.buzznet.com/user/journal/12237761/tutorial-getting-vhs-tv-effect/

The bottom image is the clean version and my inspiration was around the pop art styles of Roy Lichtenstien's comic panel paintings. They wanted the image done in my style though, so I had to mainly play with the image's line weight, especially with the hair.

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Little Miss Conquest


Character designs I did up for the recent Nickelodeon Animated Short Pitch Submission. I actually only JUST found the response email and unfortunately I didn't get picked, buuuut whatever, I did try, hahah.

But yes, character designs. The first three were featured in the pitch, though I included the fourth design, because I really did like how it turned out. From top to bottom, we have:

Nina – A rambunctious, imaginative 9-year-old, Nina spends most of her time daydreaming about taking over the world. She actively tries to accomplish this, but finds her exploits constantly thwarted by her nemesis and babysitter, Ellen. Nina is a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl, usually dressed in a red sweater and a black shirt. She also normally wears a rather puffy, green raincoat and bright red rain boots. She frequently tries to be intimidating, but due to her short stature, finds her efforts wasted.

Archibald Aardvark – Nina's plush aardvark. In Nina's mind, he is her ever-loyal sidekick and butler, who's always willing to lend a claw in her quest for world domination. Archibald is a large, plush aardvark, dressed in a collar and bow tie and wears a monocle. He rarely leaves Nina's side and speaks in an elegant British accent (at least in Nina's mind).

Ellen – Nina's babysitter. Even though Nina's antics are generally small-scale, this full-time college student has to deal with them constantly and finds them quite tiring after a while. Ellen is a dark-skinned young woman with dark brown hair, usually worn up in a pony tail. She dresses in a white, button-up shirt, purple sweater vest, and blue jeans. Despite her calm, academic appearance, she is quite athletic, which is helpful in keeping up with Nina and her various schemes.

The young boy included at the bottom is Simon, who was either going to be Nina's friend or cousin, who would visit regularly and assist her in her schemes. He would create random little gadgets and devices for her to use.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Texture Exercises


I was going through some old folders the other day and found a worksheet I had been given to me by one of the storyboard teachers from college. I had gone in before I had graduated high school to sit in on a class and they were doing an exercises where you had to draw a common object, but render it to resemble different textures. I've been meaning to do it for a while now and finding the page inspired me to actually sit down and do it. So here's a few fun wrenches for you all.

Top row: Transparent glass, oak/wood, black lacquer, melted wax
Middle row: Balloon, cloud, jello, poured concrete
Bottom row: Dirt, on fire, frozen, sponge

Thursday, April 24, 2014

"Super Complicated" Comic





"Super Complicated"
Concept/Story by Bobby Mort
Art by Fil Romero

A comic commission I just finished up recently. The story, as noted above, is all done by the person who commissioned it, Bobby Mort, and I of course, did all the art for it. I'm rather proud of it, as this was my first time working based off another person's script for a comic that was longer than a page. It turned our rather nice, if I do say so myself, and I really enjoy the character designs I came up with for this project. I'll be posting the sketches and color scripts for those later.


Saturday, March 15, 2014

Scavenger Doodles




Some more doodles of the character I came up with when I did my random costume exercise. I decided the character is a scavenger of sorts, and traveled around like what I imagine is the like...a  European countryside or American forest area and picks through abandoned items for random stuff.

I did these up last week during the comic class I was teaching, sort of examples for the kids, and I even ended up starting a comic. I didn't even finish the first page, but still, it was fun. Also, it was neat to work in pen, which all of this is done in black and orange pen.

Misery Sketches






Some sketches for Misery. I most of these back in November I think, when my sister and I had gone down to Disney World.

For some reason, I gave her a black sclera on her right eye, but I'm not sure why - I think I was kinda going for a zombie-ish look with her, but I'm still not sure yet which way I'm going with her. The more cartoonish version at the top is more or less the design I settled on, as I felt the more normal proportion ones at the bottom were too close to my usual-ish style. 

But Misery's story more or less, follows her interaction with this boy she meets named Collin. He looks more like the doodle in the second image, with curlier hair, and not like the one with the pointed up-do.

Misery was basically an unplanned baby - her mother was not ready for her and named the girl Misery due to the nature of her conception. She would eventually give Misery up for adoption, but despite all the negativity surrounding her, Misery was constantly cheery. She would later be adopted by a loving couple and move to a happier town where she met Collin. 

Collin himself was a rather depressed boy (for reasons I haven't figured out yet) and found Misery to confusing, yet interesting. I think I was going to write a story with a similar character to Misery, where Collin commented something like

"She danced through life, either unaware or uncaring of the misery and suffering around her"

The story itself isn't totally fleshed out obviously; it was merely an idea that I just kinda build on over time. If I ever do anything with these two, I'll never know, hahah.





Friday, March 14, 2014

Playing in the Puddles

"To the people who like to rain on my parades, sorry - I rather like playing in the puddles!"

Quick color experiment with a character I sketched up a while ago. Her name is Misery, for reasons I'll explain later. Despite her name though, she is a rather cheery girl.


Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Portfolio Site

To keep things somewhat tidy, I made up a separate site for just my portfolio. I just got things all updated and such, so feel free to check it out! Portfolio can be found here: http://filromeroportfolio.blogspot.com (or you can just click the image below : ) )


Monday, February 24, 2014

Costume/Character Design Exercise


A small costume/character design exercise.

I was straightening up my room earlier and found a pair of my goggles and my white wig. Decided to play around a little and liked the result, so felt it was good enough for a photo reference, so I could draw the design up later : ) And here it is

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Albert and Fritz



Hey ho, new character time!

Well, maybe not new-new, as I've had sketches for these two for a while.

Anywho, meet Albert the Alligator and Fritzy the Frilled Neck Lizard, two Disney-esque/inspired characters I actually came up with when visiting Disney World down in Florida.

Albert was originally conceived a few years ago, when my mother and I went down to Disney World to visit my sister. She was working down there through the Disney College Intern Program and we had gone down to visit during my Spring Break. While riding one of the Disney buses to our restort, I decided to doodle, and because it was Florida, I was thinking alligators and because it was Disney, I was thinking Disney characters, so I drew my first version of Albert.

 


I ended up giving to the bus driver as a thank you, cause I wanted to make his day a little : P

Fast forward to a more recent visit and I decided to draw Albert again, and once again, that sketch was given to the bus driver of one of the buses. It was also this trip I came up with Fritz, as I felt Albert needed a friend.



I don't remember my reasonings for making him a frilled neck lizard - I think it was maybe because I thought it fit. Albert made me also think of Australia and that made me think of frilled neck lizards... Maybe it's a reference to the one frilled neck lizard character from The Rescuers Down Under.

But anyway, yeah! So, that's how they came to be and I just recently got around to sitting down and finalizing them up some.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

TF2Newbs.com Intros

Here are some intros I did up for TF2Newbs.com, an online community for the multiplayer FPS, Team Fortress 2. These intros are for their event videos that they post from time to time and for fun, I did up two versions.

Regular Version:


Pyrovision Version (this version mimics a texture style found in the game when using certain items):