Behind The Scenes: Mandalorian Illustration (Patreon)

 I've realized, that it was some time since I did a pop culture reference illustration. I enjoy making these very much, because I always was a huge movies and books fan and it's amazing feeling to recreate some of your favorite scenes or characters from popular universes. 

It has another upside, that when you make something many people love, it's more likely it will explode on social media. But I treat this more as a nice-to-have attribute, rather than focusing on always finding the next big thing. I've been doing several weekly illustrations consistently for almost a three years and I plan to continue for many more, so the hunt for likes wouldn't work as a long term motivation. I simply have to enjoy, what I create next.

This week, a lot of things collided into a single idea. I was planning on making a character design, there was a longer delay since I last made a pop reference and new Mandalorian trailer was out since last week. Didn't need more :)

First step - looking up some actual Mandalorian references - was the easy part. You just need to have a good view of the armor, close up on the helmet and some mood image for the lighting reference. The "baby yoda" was easy too, though I had to search a bit until I found a good view on the cradle from more angles.

When it comes to actual look of the character, I always admired artists, that can take a know popular character and remake it into their own style. Recently I have started a character series, that begun with a tiki shaman character and I carried the chubby look to more of my characters since. I really wanted to see, if I can make Mandalorian follow this pattern :) So I gathered some of the popular characters made into a more bulky cartoon for the reference.

I'm always a bit nervous when sketching the characters. I just never know, what comes out of it :D There were several things I need to figure out. First, how would the shaman proportions translate to Mando? After looking at the reference of Batman and Link and some other cartoons, I figured I would need smaller skinny legs to emphasize torso, so it's clear that this is a strong character. Even though he might skipped a gym few times, it still should be visible that shoulders and hands are way wider than legs.

I like to have a story present, when making a character and "baby yoda" offered me one right out the bat. It's really hard to stay on top of things and stick to a regular exercise schedule after having a baby, so why would this be any different for Mandalorian? Gone are the days of Blurrg riding, when you need to read a story about fall of the Empire to little green dude.

The modeling was pretty similar to the shaman character with some small adjustments to the legs. Let's have a look ;)

So that was the Mandalorian scene for this week. Thanks for reading and I hope it will help you with your next work.