Iterative (Character) Design

I downloaded some software for my scanner, so it's doing a bit better now. Here's the few drawings I've done recently. Oh! I found someone with Strings of Fate archived, so you can definitely see that working its way into the Mao design.

This is before I found the archive, so you can see I'm still struggling quite abit with getting the exact facial definition I want. Otherwise this character sheet does what I aimed for, lining up proportion across the different viewpoints. I still have a problem doing the front facing drawing.

Then I put random clothes on them. I don't suspect she'll be running around in the second outfit too often. Or with the back arched so crazy far back. I was inspired by the warcraft night elves. The kimono is cute, though.

Anyways, on to progress!






If you read Strings of Fate, you can see definitely how much more it reflects those facial features. The heads in the middle and right drawing are pretty much me looking at the comic and copying it over... but I do feel much better about drawing her without a guide now.

The bottom left picture is a redrawing of the "Draw your character getting soaked in ice cold water" assignment. Fun!




Here's the corresponding update to Tiamat. I ported over the style from the Mao drawings above, and I think they mesh okay now. I would like to do it all in the first aesthetic I used, but this one is usable and already doable. I can't consistently draw the other style, nor do I have any idea about how to do females at all.

His hair is pretty crazy. I might try to cut my hair like that.

So this is how my style for this project (code-named Journey for now) is progressing. It'll be interesting to come back in a couple months and see how it has changed.

Look how much more sure the lines look already...

Dabbling in color

I hooked up the printer I have at home, however it seems to be pretty low quality. I'll download some drivers and see if that helps. Anyways, here's another piece of work I did recently.

For class, another assignment was to color some of the drawings we did for the character designs we had been working on. I missed the class, so I pretty much just dove in and went nuts without any kind of real guidance, unless you count looking at an online color wheel. That's why his pants are green.

This is my first stab at coloring using a physical medium since... hmm... maybe 7th or 8th grade. It was a lot of fun despite not knowing at all what I was doing. I cheated a bit; when I scanned it in, I took out some of this block of dark color under the chin that I accidently made.

Anyways it wasn't half as bad as I thought it would be. I learned abit about mixing colors and how to work with mistakes. You can tell by the texture that I did the shirt first, which has a very rough surface from just applying the gouache and then moving on to the next area. Later I realized they smooth out a lot if you sort of come back over it with a damp brush, which is necessary for fading colors together.

Also the color choice is very saturated because I forgot to buy a white. I don't think it took away from the painting, but I don't know if I would have picked some of those tones if I wasn't bottled into those choices. When I go back to school, I'll be meeting with my professor to go over that color exercise I missed, so hopefully that will help a lot.

Some character designs from class

My class on Introduction to Character Design and World Making is incredible. The teacher is one Professor Francisco Espinosa, who is an ex-Disney art director among other things. You can google him, he's got a lot of cool stuff going on (his current project is a well-received graphic novel named Rocketo). He's a really animated teacher (punny!), and his class is one of the few classes that I've ever actively woken up in the morning excited to attend. Other classes have exciting topics or useful topics, but having to wake up in the morning usually clouds my opinion to the other end. Anyways, here's a look at two of the pieces I worked on recently for class (I have no scanner, so the others might not come until I go back to school next week).

Here's a study of the lead male character in the world I've been considering. The assignment was to depict the character from birth until death, in a way that you can tell that it is the same person through different stages in life. Tentatively I've been labeling him as Tiamat, but it doesn't really go well as a name in my head. Maybe a nickname?

I started with the 20-30 rendition, since that was the primary state in which the story takes place. It was a bit odd doing the baby version... I ended up taking his sort of line-y eyes to be the visual constant. The head shape-ish I think carries some consistency as well. It was really fun doing the middle school / teenager version. I just thought of myself in middle school / high school and then exagerrated all the awkward parts. The older version I cut back on his wild hair a bit and gave him a little more chin, and then the old version I just imagined the old chinese grandpa with shower slippers and a wifebeater.


This is the corresponding study of the lead female character. The inspiration for the design is Mao from Strings of Fate (I miss that comic, does anyone have the chapters saved?). I'm not able to nail the expressions down yet, but I won't get there by not drawing. I believe she's a little tall in this rendition, she should be about 7 heads I think. The male lead is 8 1/2 heads. Her head is a little big compared to the style above...in terms of consistency in style, I have to figure out how females work.

I have some more work on her that has a little more progress, but I won't have access to a scanner till I go back to school next week.

This one started as three heads showing different expressions, and then I decided to expand it out to show the actions. The one on the left needs some more facial tuning, but the middle one has elements that I think work, and I really like expressionon the far right one, as well as the pose. The clothes were stuck on as an afterthought (you can tell) on the first two. Her design will probably change a lot. Let's just call her Mao for now as a little homage. I have a thing for cats, if you haven't noticed yet.

Beginnings

I'm going to try something new here and devote this blog to production. I'll be posting the various things I create (and related information), be it my drawings, pictures of foods and desserts that I make, and web-compatible programs like java code or flash apps. Should be a fun ride, and at the very least it will be entertaining to look back upon.

As for the title, Footprints in the Snow was a drawing/poem I did that was my first step into a decent quality work that I was proud to have completed. It fits in the sense that this blog will be like footprints, the visible trail of my creative journey.