Portfolio Class- Character Development!

[Dan Warren]

Hello, all! This will be the thread for my first mentoring class- focusing on character development for a portfolio. we will be doing 4 characters in total over the course of the next 2 months, each taken from the arthurian archetypes and basic heroes journey format, but they will include a major twist so as to keep them interesting. these will include-

The hero- the arthur archetype. A noble warrior with connections to the otherworld.
The magical advisor- the Merlin archetype- an otherworldly aid to the hero.
The temptress- the Morgane archetype. also magical, but an antagonist to the hero.
The villain- The Mordred archetype. an evil flip of the hero.

We will discuss these character types as we move forward, and in the order presented above. the twist here to keep things interesting is that while we will be working off the basic Myth of Arthur, we will not be doing anything related to medieval europe. for anyone following along with this class, i encourage you not to use europe either. challenge yourself to translate this well established story into another culture.

I am assigning the following!

Thomas- you will be doing the arthur cycle in feudal Japan. I want emphasis on their mythology via the magical characters and a lot of research on their culture and costume to be reflected in the designs! how would a man becoming a king look at that time? what gods or deities can influence your design on merlin? how would excalibur look in this setting, and why? push this as far as you can!

Malan- In your entry post i saw some really awesome pen designs of faces. these had a lot of originality and character. I want you to use this approach for this class! these are a strongpoint for you, and will make your folio much more interesting if you expand on them. with that in mind im placing your characters in ancient Arabia. try to imagine Arthur as the adventurer who would become a king, Merlin as the archetype of the genie, and all the possibilities the middle east has for a sorceress like morgane. have fun with this and use that awesome style i saw!

Tadas- you get a tough one, but one i think you can do really great things with. your setting is Ancient Egypt. big emphasis on research here to look at the wildly different kinds of armor and style the ancient egyptians had from the medieval europeans. it is up to you how you interpret their really rich mythology and artistic sensibilities into this, so have fun, and do a lot of research!

some final notes!

NO FINISHED CHARACTERS ON WHITE. either Vignette and background in or set them on a dark or toned background. add cast shadows below them to ground them in tandem with your lightsource.

you have 2 weeks per character! the first week i expect to see sketches, research, and some work on a final design. after a long crit and some suggestions, you will have a second week to finish. when it is done, there will be a second crit, some paintover, and review before the next assignment is handed out. post your progress in this thread as you do it. keep this natural, progressive, and fun.

ANYONE FOLLOWING THE CLASS, FEEL FREE TO POST YOUR WORK HERE. if i see anything that really strikes the mark, i will present it on the stream and offer feedback.

Thanks all! have fun and ill see you in a week!

[Thomas Mahon]

My tablet got broken yesterday, so I ordered a new one today, should be arriving wednesday. Until then, back to the pencil! I'm not as comfortable with traditional mediums as digital, but It's something I need to work on anyway, so what better time.

Here are some studies of screenshots and pictures, planning on doing tons of these the first day or two just to get a feel of samurai and the costumes, aswell as doing research into how to tackle the King Arthur character specifically. I know this isn't much, just had to do these before bed time.



p.s sorry for low quality scans :(

I'm just going to collect any useful Japanese related links I find in this post (these are for the whole course, not just the arthur character, collecting them here so I don't forget)
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamabushi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shisa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chokuto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhanmadao
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urashima_Tar%C5%8D

[ImSkeptical]

Here are some studies of screenshots and pictures, planning on doing tons of these the first day or two just to get a feel of samurai and the costumes, aswell as doing research into how to tackle the King Arthur character specifically. I know this isn't much, just had to do these before bed time.

I don't know if this is the place for this, but this might be helpful for you. I would strongly recommend in your research looking into an anime called 'Mononoke' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mononoke_%28TV_series%29 ). Not only does it having a striking visual style, but it delves heavily into the myth and supernatural elements of Japanese culture. Furthermore, the fansub

http://www.nyaa.eu/?page=torrentinfo&tid=141764

contains notes on all these things, like what some of the symbolism that appears refers to, and the background of the supernatural creatures that appear for each episode, so is probably worth it for that alone even if you don't watch the whole thing. It's 12 episodes long so it is a bit of a time investment.

Hope someone gets something from this :D.

[BenFlores]

hey everyone. although i am not in this class, ive always been interested in history and culture so i thought choosing to learn about the ancient egyptians would be a good oppurtunity to explore and apply some of the stuff ive been working on already.
had alot of fun with this first draft of the charcter, and the armor is influenced by the god amun-ra ( hawk head and ram horns)

[Thomas Mahon]

Thanks ImSkeptical! I'll try and check it out, I'm looking at more live-action films and stuff at the moment though.

So I started thinking about the character King Arthur a little more, and I found that these helmets, 'Kabuto', often have big ornaments on them, to show a Samurai's heritage, I figure giving King Arthur (Shogun Asa) one of these would be a good idea, in replace of his crown, going to explore that further. I decided against giving him a mask, because they seem quite demonic and uncharacteristic of him, maybe I'll give one to Mordred, we'll see. anyway, some studies:

[JakeB]

Think I wanna give this a whirl. So may as well post my stuff in here. I was gonna go for a Mongol Culture. Been listening to a load of podcasts about Genghis Khan, and it's super interesting.

So yeah, not a lot yet, but I'll post what I've got. Thanks for doing this btw Dan :)

[malan]

Someone knows about any good reference films, books, sites or anything that could help for the ancient Arabia theme? :P Im having a bit of problems finding something useful haha

[Melanie]

Movies: Alexander, 300, Prince of Persia

But first I would look for documentaries about ancient arabian cultures. At least that's my approach for the mayans. If there is a library (with real books on real paper :D) in your town: go there and search books about ancient arabic cultures and copy everything you find in your sketchbook. Finding the names of those ancient cultures might be an important key to find usefull information. Checking some wikipedia entries about the cultures, their weapons, materials etc. could also help.

Google also some Angus McBride illustrations - always helpfull. They are based on real archeological discoveries.

[xaero84]

Hello i´m trying to put my sketches and ideas and I can´t, I select the files and add them and it
doesn´t appear!
Someone knows how to insert the images and when is the livestreams for sketches review?

[Thomas Mahon]

Hello i´m trying to put my sketches and ideas and I can´t, I select the files and add them and it
doesn´t appear!
Someone knows how to insert the images and when is the livestreams for sketches review?

Step 1: Go to an image uploader site, like photobucket
Step 2: Right click the image once it's uploaded and select Copy image URL
Step 3: In your post, type [ img ] ENTER URL HERE [ / img ] without the spaces, done!

And the livestream for sketch reviews is on sunday.

[xaero84]

Hi everyone! this are my sketches and ideas for the african king arthur!!

---

[Thomas Mahon]

So my new tablet arrived, here are some warm up / design explorations for Arthur. I'm leaning towards putting him in a full body suit of armour. I also discovered a Japanese lion/cat symbol called Shisa, they're guardians of the spirit world, so I think incorporating that into his design could be a cool idea.

Sketches from imagination, no ref this time!


(gonna slip this one in here too)

[Tadas]

Hi!

I've been reading a lot about Egypt. also watched a couple documentaries. took some notes, and scribbled some things. I don't usually show stuff like that, but I'll post it just so it wouldn't look like I'm not doing anything :)

I also started designing a bit. For the Arthur, I'll probably use a lot of design elements that resemble Horus

[xaero84]

thomasmahon the one of the middle is really cool man, it looks like the samurai king arthur! =)

[Dan Warren]

guys, all this work is looking really good so far. I dont want to insert my opinions too soon (or else these will become my micromanaged characters and not your own), but you all have some things going in interesting directions. keep workin it and ill offer some feedback in the next couple days. really good starts. <3

[DavidFisher]

lot of good stuff guys looking forward to learning a ton in this class. This is def a weak point for me so i want to participate in this class as much as possible. i dont even know if its a valid culture to use for the challenge but I decided to go with the inuit culture to push myself and study character design in a culture im not familiar with at all dont know if im going about this the right way but heres what i have for a start

[BenFlores]

after doing more research about the egyptian gods and how i can relate them to the archetypes, i decided to make king arthur related to horus(the god of the sky). horus avenges his father osiris ( the god of the dead) by killing seth (the god of chaos).i have three choices of gods to use as influence for excalibur. amun-ra (the most powerful god),thoth (the god of knowledge),ptah (the god of craftsmen)

heres my second draft and notes/references

[Tadas]

a couple more sketches

[malan]

Still doing a lot of research! I didn't have a lot of knowledge on Arabic themes, so I still have a lot to rearch, but it has been really interesting :) To have an update, I post this little thing, trying to understand the arabic patterns and designs. I will need to use this type of stuff a lot, so here goes.

And thanks a lot Melanie for the tips and ideas! :D I will go to the library on these days and watch some of those movies :)

[malan]

Hey people, a friend of mine told me about this movie "Mists of Avalon", it's about Arthur, and she says it should be of help to understand his history, so I'm about to watch it. Hope it helps!
Cheers! :)