Starbright Illustrations (blog)

By The Illustrator 　http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/2009/12/03/monster-sketch-done-in-gimp-with-a-wacom-graphics-tablet/

I’m still considering about which direction to go in with the inhabitants of the spaceship bar I designed in Blender.

Right now the inhabitants of the spaceship bar are all pretty much humanoid, and that’s all well and good, but then I suddenly thought about making them more alien and monstrous. I grabbed my Bamboo graphics tablet, jammed it in the USB port – I had to install the drivers all over again, which was odd – and then opened GIMP.

I’m trying to use the GIMP illustration software instead of Photoshop as much as possible now, I’m totally into the open source, free software thing. For my present needs GIMP is doing everything that I used to need Photoshop for and it doesn’t cost a penny. It makes the constant upgrading and cash investment of the Adobe world look a little ridiculous to be honest.

I’m really enjoying being able to jot down my ideas and try out designs directly in GIMP without having to pause and scan them in.

It’s great to see these quick designs instantly on the computer screen. After having a look at this one for instance it doesn’t strike me as the sort of alien that would be hanging around in a spaceship bar. I think it’s more the sort of wild little alien that might be encountered planet side in a strange jungle or alien forest.

It might even be a candidate for some kind of comic strip about alien high jinks, or some other more light-hearted kind of illustration. It reminds me of the Moonbugs online comic strips I was doing a little while ago. I might just have to start doing something like that again…