Saskia de Klerk

Project Type: Personal Work

Self-initiated work.

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  • Christmas Critters

    Christmas Critters

    Since I started freelancing, it has become a yearly tradition to design my own Christmas cards each year. I got the idea of designing a Christmas-related creature in 2020 and now I’m trying to come up with creatures for the most wonderful time of the year every time!

    Christmas Card 2021

    christmas candle crab
    2021’s card featured a candle-bearing crab creature.

    Christmas Card 2020

    christmas ball creature
    2020 featured a Christmas Ball mimic.

    For 2020, I put in extra effort figuring out how this creature would roll up as a ball, so I understood its shape as well as possible before starting on the final illustration.

    christmas creature design
    composition mockup

    Apart from the sketches above I also made a proxy model in blender to make sure I got the perspective correct, as well as enabling me to play around with the lighting.

    blender proxy model
  • Ramsey Landrace

    Ramsey Landrace

    This character was designed for a collaborative publication called Character Design Zine 2020, featuring all kinds of characters designed by artists all over the world. I decided to design an anthropomorphic goat to stand out from the rest, hopefully!

    ramsey back and front
    ramsey expressions

    At first sight, Ramsey seems a senile old man, complaining about back aches and today’s youth. Under the well-worn cloak hides a sly smuggler with every forbidden good of the galaxy in his ship’s cargo.

    During the Battle of Veluw, his home planet, an unfortunate hit on his head costed him one of his beloved horns and gave him almost permanent headache in return. Ramsey then used his whole stolen fortune to have the ancient artisans of Hircus make him a custom lightsword to fit on his broken horn.

    electric scimitar
    use of lightsword
    The lightsword, known as the Electric Scimitar, channels headache into electric discharges.
    moodboard
    Moodboard for Ramsey’s looks and personality
    • personality sketches
    • full body sketch
    • exploration sketches
    colour tests
    Colour tests for Ramsey
    zine spread
    Finished spread as published in the zine
  • Character Design Challenge: Cormorant Fisher

    Character Design Challenge: Cormorant Fisher

    cormorant fisher illustration

    My submission for January’s Character Design Challenge on Facebook. The theme was cormorant fishing, a traditional fishing method in China and Japan using trained cormorants. A snare around their neck prevents them from swallowing too large fish, enabling the fisher to snatch them from the bird.

    For this challenge I imagined a cormorant shaman, going out on the river to thank the river spirits for today’s good catch.

    • fisher sketches
    • cormorant sketches
    • illustrations

  • HARPYA Graduation Project

    HARPYA Graduation Project

    The Harpy, a monstrous woman-bird hybrid hailing from Greek mythology, was a symbol of death and pollution. Like many other female monsters, she represented a fear of anything unknown and dangerous in nature where Man had no control of.

    She used to be something different, though. In ancient times, different peoples worshipped bird-goddesses that represented birth and life as well as death and rebirth. It is thought that with the arrival of large-scale agriculture, society became more patriarchal and the bird-woman was banished to the Underworld.

    But not only the bird-goddesses changed, humankind changed too: we psychologically distanced ourselves from the natural world. Instead of living in collaboration with nature, we took the reins ourselves and sought control over our food production and living space.

    In HARPYA, I strived to bring back the life-giving aspects of the harpy through character design for video games. Using Jung’s female psychological archetypes as a guide, I created seven new harpies being protectors of nature, each embodying a different aspect of our relationship with nature.

    Aellodite
    Aestia
    Progress of designing the character lineup.
    Story concept illustrations.
  • MetalSeaDramon V.S. Wargreymon & MetalGarurumon

    MetalSeaDramon V.S. Wargreymon & MetalGarurumon

    I made this illustration for a fanzine focusing on childhood interests and obsessions. When I was young I was a fan of the Digimon anime and the episode wherein MetalSeaDramon, WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon fight is one I remember most vividly.

    • Flat colours
    • In progress of painting the details
  • Wonder Woman

    Wonder Woman

    An illustration I made of Wonder Woman after seeing the film on a plane flight.

  • Miss Lemon Maid

    Miss Lemon Maid

    Made for CG Cookie’s Lemon Maid contest. The assignment was to create a maid character with lemon theming.

  • 2019’s Christmas Card

    2019’s Christmas Card

    Christmas-themed illustration I made to send to friends and family.

  • Harpies (Inktober 2017)

    Harpies (Inktober 2017)

    A selection of drawings I made for the Inktober Challenge in 2017.

    This was the first year I followed the official prompt list, and on top of that I set myself the restrictions that all drawings needed to feature harpy characters and all drawings needed to be made on brown paper.

    In the end it was a bit too much of a challenge and I didn’t manage to finish all 31 drawings, missing just four.