Behind The Scenes: Hackerman (Patreon)

I really wanted to come up with new cool character this week and challenge myself a bit, so I don't reuse any body topology I've already created. Some of my characters are based on pop culture, some are archetypes, like scientist or explorer.

I've looked into my notes and came across one of my favorite indie short movies of all times - Kung Fury. By the way, if you haven't seen it yet, stop what you're doing and go see it right now. Best spent 30 minutes guaranteed.

My favorite character by far is the Hackerman, so it was time to frame the challenge and set up some reference.

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As always, I turned to Pinterest as my search engine of choice and gathered some movie reference. Few images were enough and there weren't that many anyway. Nice touch was a costume breakdown.

But I didn't want to just replicate the character, I wanted to give him a bit more of that synthwave 80's touch and a bit of cyberpunk feeling. That's why I collected all kinds of cyberpunk references. In the end, I didn't use most of them, but there were some little details that made it through and I had a lot of important color and lighting reference.

I'm really starting to enjoy the sketching process, though it can be still painful at times :) Luckily enough, cartoon sketches can be a bit forgiving.

I went for a chilled out and confident pose with badass expression. Glasses, low mustache and raised eyebrow did the trick. There was this awesome old school VR glove that I wanted to keep and console on shoulder as well. I added a little touch to it by leaving the severed cable hanging out.

I replaced the boots with sneakers and added a floppy disk in the pocket to emphasize the lo-fi technology. I really like how these sketches help me to define the work before going into modeling.

If you'd like to get more into drawings like this, I strongly recommend cartooning books by Christopher Hart. 

So that's it for the latest character illustration and I hope it will help you in your own work.

See you in the next one! :)