I tend to never post much (or anything) that I work on at the studio, mainly because everything I work on, I have to wait for the episode to air first, and by the time that happens, I’ve already forgotten about it.

I was the character designer for the show in Seasons 3 and 4, which was basically when we started the character design department. As the scripts and episodes were getting bigger and more detailed, we realized that we needed to make this department to really start designing our characters thoughtfully. After season 4, I jumped on to lead the character designs for our other show, Chozen, and since then, I’ve jumped around a lot of design projects at the studio. But now, let’s get to the stuff you really want to see.

The Sports Illustrated drawings we did were a little different this time because it was meant for web, which was posted not long after we finished the drawings! So here is a detailed post to delight your eyes, my approach to this project:

I started out with four basic sketches, mainly because we knew that we wanted Lana in this “standard” bikini beach pose. So really, it was nailing down the pose, what she will be doing with her hands, and what kind of bikini we want her in.

Next is cleaning up her outlines. I tend to draw past arms or anything that would overlap because if I need to change her pose later, it makes it easier to work from, and it also helps me draw her body correctly first, before overlapping.

As you can see the following steps, I colored in her base color, and then added in the shadow colors. This is usually the step we stop at for the show. However, being this was a special project, we decided to up the detailing and give it a little extra boost.

I added in some highlights on her skin to give her that little something extra, to really highlight her form, and to give her darker bikini color some roundness, to help it not appear flat compared to everything else.

And to kind of bring everything together, an extra highlight all over her body. At this point, I am done with the drawing, and it gets passed on to a background artist.

Kim Feigenbaum painted in the background, following my super loose sketch. As you can tell, she’s a beast, and nails it every time. She was also the background artist for Pam’s and Cheryl’s images as well. After she is done with the backgrounds, it gets passed on to a compositor.

Mark Paterson was the compositor for this project, and while he normally works on the animation side, they wanted a compositor to nail the lighting and give the drawings that soft light and glow that would fit right into the style of a photo shoot.

I was also tasked with drawing the lettering for the names, to match with how Sports Illustrated has the model’s name and info on the side of their magazines.

And finally, we have our finished project! With many steps, this drawing took about roughly four days to complete, with many people helping out and having a hand in completing it.

I hope you guys have enjoyed this post and a look at a brief breakdown of one of the many projects we do here at Floyd County Productions, other than making cartoons!