Roger Ramjet

John K posted some great screencaps from Roger Ramjet with the advice to copy and analyze them in order to improve on construction. I found this guy to be the most interesting of the bunch, so I sketched him starting by blocking in the major forms and fine-tuning from there. Until drawing him, I didn't notice just how many directional lines there are in his face and body. It's so well put together, but you only really notice it when seeing it in the still. When finished with the sketch I felt like inking him and did so with a different brush pen than usual... a nice little Japanese Pilot brush pen on 11 x 14 textured drawing paper.

Here's the example.

Here's mine. AAAAH! My proportions are way off! He's too tall and skinny, his head is too small for his body and his arms are too big/too far from his body. I need to work more on construction!

It needed a little digital cleanup in Photoshop, due to a little sloppy inking (I smudged my hand through a wet line or two, and had a few lines that needed fixing). I tried to follow the principles of good inking as outlined in Katie Rice's great post on the subject, and it definitely taught me something... that I need to keep practicing! This has also taught me another thing, it's tough to draw from the computer screen.

Bonus! Here's my first try, with no cleanup. His nose is a bit wrong in this one, but the proportions are a little better... some of the same problems though. Plus, I got too heavy with the hat outlines.

Back to the drawing board!