Story by Seth Bogardus
Photo by Ryan Low
Matthew Lin has been drawing since he was six. It has been a large tradition in his family. Most of his family has had something to do with art in their lives but his largest inspiration was his aunt. She had a similar job to illustration and it showed Lin that he could make it as an illustrator if he really wanted it.
And that’s exactly what he did. He worked a second job at Scholastic for a while doing comics and that soon branched into his independent, commissioned work that he still does – from high-profile clients to the Campbelltown library.
In the session, Lin created a unique character with the class while teaching them different elements of character design. This began with a simple choice: human or creature and quickly evolved to class debates about the way he should hold a tree trunk.
Some more serious notes about character design included the importance of environment, colour and shape defining a character. He talked about how colour frequently ties into environment – something green will be pictured from a forest or a swamp while something blue is pictured from water.
The environment a character is from can also define its personality further than just the drawing. He also talked about shapes and body positions: like rigid lines defining a more aggressive character and drawing some lines on an angle to give depth and direction to a 2D figure, as well as bending a body to create movement in a stationary pose.
As Lin worked on the sketch, the class followed along with each person giving their own creative variation into their piece.
If there is anything to learn from Lin, it is that you can always achieve your dreams if you put the work in.