Anyway, the show was great and I left feeling quite inspired, though I wasn’t sure what I wanted to draw yet. Sketch_Dailies did a Furiosa feature leading up to the movie release on Twitter and all of the entries were amazing! I highly recommend checking it out. I have found so many incredible artists through there, and I’ve only been participating for a few weeks! It wasn’t until after I had finished the most recent webcomic that the idea struck me and I started sketching and researching.

About Research

When I research a character to make a cosplay parody of, often times the outfits are chocked full of detail. I can’t draw it all, so I need to pick and choose what to keep and what to ‘simplify’. I asked myself, “what details are the first you see?” in each character. For Furiosa, it is definitely the arm, the belts, and her battle grease face make up. For Mad Max, it was the jacket and the details therein, from the missing left sleeve to the pocket with clips, and the blood bag line tied neatly up over his shoulder.

To the Drawing Board!

Typically when I start an illustration, I’ve got a rough sketch going on somewhere. It will either be in my notebook, sketchbook, or on the Illustrator canvas itself. This helps both keep me on track and remember the initial inspiration and idea.

First I get my lineart down.

Basic colors are added:

Then highlights and shading:

The Final Touches

After I’m happy with the colors, I do some tweaking and final touches. Sometimes it’s adding texture, and other times I completely redo the color balance of certain objects. In this case I used a stippling brush to add some texture to the sand and environment. I experimented with a color overlay too, but in the end really liked the palette I had come up with originally.

And that’s it! :)