As promised, the mini-tutorial / reference about how my blog’s mascot, the cute robot I-404 a.k.a. “Eye” was born. If you’re looking for detailed tutorial about how to do digital painting of a robot like I-404, you might not find everything you would like to see here, because I won’t cover the whole process in details, but I’ll show you my workflow and how everything was put together.
Small disclaimer, before we start — I’m also a beginning illustrator, I mean, I always drawn something on paper, but just recently I started to digitalize my works, so if you’re a illustrator with experience and want to give me some tips on how to improve my workflow or the tools I use, feel free to drop me a line in the comments. Thanks in advance!
Grasp the idea
The idea behind I-404 was simply getting a mascot for the site, just to put some more life than just plain text in it. The I-404 is the robot which tells you when you gone wrong way on my blog and allows you to go back where you were before or suggests you the different exit. I-404 is currently visible only on the ‘File not found’ page, but I hope to incorporate him here and there in my blog’s layout so you can get familiar with him.
I wanted it to be a robot, because I simply love robots. I love the whole idea of anthropomorphic androids that will be dedicated to help people where they can’t help themselves. As a kid I watched Star Wars and Stargate with my father, who’s a science-fiction geek since when I remember. As a teenager I read enough S-F novels by P. K. Dick, S. Lem etc. not to b influenced by futuristic visions of androids. Also, robots have become a big part of popculture around us and we can’t help it. That’s why I decided a robot will be an icon of my site.
