After looking through numerous fitness books that were filled with exercises to help people get into shape, I had the idea to create my own. What inspired this idea? It was mainly because all the illustrations or photos in these books are quite boring. They are somewhat good at demonstrating the exercises, but they lack fun.

Here are a few pages I did for my exercise book featuring my character Dimitri, the Strongest Man in the World, demonstrating some exercises with free weights.

With Dimitri, I decided to go with the classic Circus Strongman look rather than a modern Gym Meathead look. Just because it’s a timeless and fun look. Also that moustache is very fun to draw.

“I don’t attitude problem, I simply have a personality that you can’t handle.”

This illustration is a prime example of me reworking an image over and over again in Photoshop. As you can see here how the starting inked drawing is pretty different from the final image. As I was adding to colour in the illustration, I was just not happy how her face looked. No matter how many times I reworked the eyes, I felt that the eyes and the smile didn’t work.

So I decided to completely redraw her face through Photoshop. Instead having a big grinning Joker like face, I reworked her to having a rather unamused expression. I think the unimpressed expression works quite well.

My illustrations of the Star Wars’ character, Darth Maul!

For those of you who don’t know who this is, Darth Maul made his first appearance in the movie ‘Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace’ and was the apprentice of the main villain of the movie, Darth Sidious. Like the illustration I did of Darth Vader, I decided to make Darth Maul an absolute unit, so that’s why he looks cartoony buff.

While adding colour to the illustration, I wasn’t happy how Darth Maul’s original costume looked. Since his outfit was just black, I thought it looked rather… well, boring. So I decided to remove his black under layer and allow Maul to show off his massive arms and chest.

In the Star Wars universe, Darth Maul has back tattoos all over this chest and arms, not just his face and neck, but when I added the tattoos it made the illustration far too busy.

I will do another illustration of Darth Maul in the future, because I really want to do him in a costume that I think will suit him better.

A doodle of the Marvel Comics’ most popular character, Iron Man! I decided to draw Tony Stark in an oversized armour. I had the idea of having a little electromagnetic fire in front of the arc reactor, just to show how healthy the energy levels are. The bigger and brighter the flame, the better the energy levels. I also like having the armour shake, gives the ultra high armour a bit of a low tech feel to it.

Here’s an illustration of girl dressed up of her World of Warcraft character, Nesty. Since this is a drawing of someone playing Cosplay, I like the idea of trying to make costume as low budget as possible. This is why there are patches on the skin, to show where the skin make up has rubbed off, a zip on the top and why our young lady is wearing trainers.

A doodle of the mighty little hero of the DragonBall series, Goku! This is a drawing of him back when he was a wee lad.

Marvel Comics’ Venom is always drawn so serious and menacing, so I decided to have bit of fun with him and do a Goofy Venom.

A doodle of the Green Ranger from Saban’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers! For this illustration, I decided to put the Mighty into Mighty Morphin’ and make the Green Ranger an absolute unit! Since he has a more cartoony form, I make his helmet a bit more fun too.

A Character Concept Sheet of my ickle frog character, Sir Ribbet the Brave Frog Knight! I feel I haven’t perfected his design yet, but I am getting a little bit closer.

The Master of the Dark Side himself, Darth Vader! This illustration of Darth Vader I decided to have a bit of fun with. I made a couple of changes to his costume and made Vader hit the Gym as well. He’s now an absolute unit of the Dark Side of the Force.

Smiling Horror! A bunch of sketches of famous Horror Film characters, Pinhead, Jason and Alien, but drawn in a rather goofy way. I like the idea of making these scary and horrific characters funny and approachable.

Here is the Test Page for my character Dimitri, the Strongest Man in the World, demonstrating how to perform a correct Lateral Raise Exercise. As you can probably guess, the arrows, speech bubbles and text are merely placeholders.

This is the design for my character, Dimitri, the Strongest Man in the World! I created Dimitri when I was asked to diagram some exercises for a chap, so he wouldn’t forget how to perform them when following his workout programme. After sketching up some basic exercise diagrams, I decided to create something a bit more fun, thus Dimitri was born. I thought having a traditional Circus Strongman demonstrate basic dumbbell exercises would be a lot of fun. I’ll also have Dimitri take to the reader while he is demonstrating the exercises too.