Gubbles Longjump
Who is Gubbles Longjump?
Gubbles Longjump is my D&D character! He loves camping, the outdoors, and playing with his bird friend, Koko.
Completed on March 15th, 2023. Drawing took me roughly 16 hours over the course of about a week. I started with a Heroforge model of my character, and the background is basically a copy of a stock background I'd been using, but with less detail and weirder looking trees.
Gubbles Longjump and his best friend, Koko
The Process
Gubbles
I started with a model from Heroforge. This took me about an hour to make.
After that, it was pretty simple. All I did was trace the outline of Gubbles and each object, then I sampled colors from the model to color it in.
Having the model as a reference was essential to this process. There is no way I could've made this without having that. It even made the lighting much easier for me to handle.
The biggest challenges I face while making this drawing were the torch's fire and Gubbles' left foot (the one he's standing on).
The fire was difficult because I have no idea how to draw and color fire, and the Heroforge model's fire, while good for a D&D miniature, doesn't translate well to 2D the way I attempted. Maybe I'll go back and completely redo the fire one day, but... meh.
The left foot was difficult because the turtle blocked it and I had to rely on my own vision of what a Grong's foot looks like in that position. All in all, I'm okay with it, but hopefully I'd do a better job if I reattempted this one.
The original Heroforge model
Background
The Placeholder
Pretty early in the process, I decided that I wanted the portrait to take place in a swampy area at night, and that Gubbles would be standing on a boulder, pointing his wienie at an unseen target. I searched online for a background image as a placeholder, and found this one.
I chose it because I liked its mystical vibe, and the blueish color scheme was very pleasing, and fit in with the colors I had chosen for the original model.
The original background image I had while I outlined and colored Gubbles and Kiki
Final background
I chose to draw the trees in kind of a pseudo-Dr. Seuss style because drawing real trees is hard. I used a gradient effect on the background to create a fog effect.
Similarly to how I used the colors from the Heroforge model to fill in Gubbles' outlines, I used the mixture of dark greens and dark/light blues from the placeholder image. I hope this doesn't count as plagiarism.
Speaking of plagiarism, the rock in the background and the tree from the foreground are pretty much carbon copies of the original placeholder. I'm pretty sure the rock that Gubbles stands on is also a carbon copy from the internet. In fairness, I created this solely for my D&D group, and I'm not making a profit off this, so I'm not losing any sleep over it.
My final background. Some areas are not filled in, because Gubbles covers them. Neat!