Portfolio Class- Character Development!

[JakeB]

Shit, Malan, that's coming along great. Really like what you're doing with it. His face is awesome.

Kytran, like the witch doctor type Merlin. Think you might be having the same sorta issue that the rest of us are having though. Atm, you have a pretty cool looking witch doctor. But you kinda need to push it to make it "Merlin" I guess. I'll be honest, I'm not all that sure how you'd do that, but maybe something to think about to make your character stand out. I just remember Dan mentioning it in the crits, and it's right at the forefront in my mind when I'm designing now. Keep it up though :)

So, a few people mentioned the pose, and I personally kinda liked the dragon idea. So been trying to rework it.
Gestures


Pushed 4


Then cleaned 2 up a bit. I have no excuse for the face in the first one. Eurgh. Think I'm going to push ahead with the second one though. Hope it's not toooooo over the top for a character design. But hey, this is all a learning thing I guess. Gonna be fun trying to make the dragon look sandy.




(ps, shot a ref for this pose afterwards, so should be able to tighten up the anatomy a bit, think that'll help)

Keep it coming everyone.

[emooi]

Hey Guys,

Here's my final Merlin sketch and ready for everyone's critique :)
For my 4 characters i wanted to attach animal ref's in each piece since Japan has allot with animals gods and spirits.
That's why i chose the Tengu for Merlin.
I decided to not give him the small silly black hat that the Tengu originally wears.

I also added some boxes in different shapes where he can collect leafs/ingredients or other stuff to mix his potions or other things. The shoulder pad get feathers attached to the bottom to give him more reference to the birds. The color of his skin becomes red. And since he's half god/forest spirit i didn't give him upper clothes and made his skin bumply.

The hero - Red dragon
The magical advisor - Bird/crow
The temptress - peacock (i think)
The villain - Tiger

hope you guys like it.

[Thomas Mahon]

Awesome work JakeB, really impressed with how much you've explored the poses. But I feel your sketches are more natural and have more energy than your more fleshed out stuff. From the four pushed ones, I like 1 and 4, but when you went to flesh out 4, you changed the position of the dragon, now the way he's near his leg, kind of makes him look like a small minion instead of a sand dragon wrapping around Merlin. Don't want to be nit picky, you're doing great overall

@Emooi

Really nice sketch man! but It's a pretty distracting the staff to run behind the arm like that, looks very unnatural.

[emooi]

@Thomas, thanks for the feedback! I wanted to do something else than the standard staff in front of the arm position :) But i will try some other things for it. Thanks again :)

[KyTran]

Thanks Jake, I agree completely! My design needs a lot of work and it's definitely lacking in more ways than one. Your new sketches are good ideas but i think the anatomy is a little off. it might be a good idea to draw the anatomy under the cloths first and then dress him. Also for a pose like that, a worms eye camera angle maybe worth trying, where the viewer is looking up at him.

[BenFlores]

update on king arthur (still a long ways to go)

#2 is a sketch for merlin and #3 is a mongolian king arthur. ignore the other ones, ive just been trying to expand my visual library by drawing random characters daily

[JakeB]

Ben - The Arthur's coming along great. The rendering on the face and body is very nice, although I think the head may be a teeny bit too big. Other than that, looking good.

So, pushed this a bit further. Cheers for all the feedback guys. I know the poses lost something between the sketch stage and the slightly cleaner versions. So tried to push the movement a bit more. Thomas, I see what you mean about the minion. In that sketch the dragon almost looked cute lol. So, switched him up. As always, any feedback is welcome :).
Oh, and in other news, today I handed in some forms so I can take a year out of my Graphic Design degree, and focus on this kind of stuff. Couldn't have done it without the Daggers showing me what a real work ethic looks like.. Cheers all :).

So, to glow, or not to glow?
Been messing around with colours, the same way as I was with the hand studies earlier on. Kinda fun, but I definitely need to study lighting more to know what I'm doing. :)

[BenFlores]

hey jake thanks for pointing that out :) i did a quick paint over of your design, i think it would look cool if you made him look like he is controling the dragon with his hand

[Thomas Mahon]

So the other day my photoshop crashed, and corrupted the painting, so I had to work from an earlier jpeg. 2 days of progress was wiped, so i fell a little behind. i think it's going alright though, hopefully i can finish it by sunday. i haven't worked on the hands or face at all yet really

[KyTran]

Thomas, thats a bummer man. Your Merlin is looking great though.

Emooi, the design is looking good. I think it would be a little better without the katana though especially since your Merlin already has a staff and a magic orb.

[JakeB]

Ben - Thanks so much for that man. I guess I was trying to go for the whole "control" thing with the glowing eyes, and having them both look in the same direction. That works much better though, and it breaks the parallel thing. Thanks for doing it though, really appreciate it :).

Thomas - Shit man. Not cool. It's looking good though. One thing, the strap around the tortoise is pretty similar to the shell. Might wanna keep an eye on it, that's all. Know you're still working on it. Looks good :). The little orb of incense looks awesome. Nice rendering.

[emooi]

@Kytran Thanks for pointing it out :) i gave him the katana if he's getting into close combat situations :P but i'll see what it looks like if i remove it. But i appreciate the comment ;)

@Thomas, sorry to hear that 2 days of work is gone to sh*t. So it's good to see that you're up and running again because Merlin and his turtle is already really looking awesome!

I just got back from work, so the pizza is in the oven, and my wacom tablet screams for attention! I'm excited to get back at my Merlin and try some feedback you gave me guys and render the crap out of it before Sunday :D

Draw like a rock star everybody, and keep up the good work!

[malan]

Here are some color variation ideas... still trying to get it right, and struggling again with rendering... So, which one do you like? :)

BTW, thanks for the previous feedback everyone! :D



hi res here-> http://bit.ly/PZur6L

[emooi]

@Malan, i would go for genie/Merlin number 6 and for the smoke number 3. In that combination you have some color tint from the smoke into the clothes ;)

But witch one do you like the most?

[malan]

Thanks emooi! :)
Hey, I like that idea of having the same color on the clothes and smoke, I will try it! :D
And the ones I liked the most, were 1, 5, 6 and 10 :)

[emooi]

No thanks man, glad i could help out.

The reason why i suggested it was that in this case: Merlin ride's, sits, stand and floats on his cloud. So that's makes him almost the "driver" and from that idea i rolled into Moto GP and formula 1. Almost every driving sport the driver wears the same colors as his vehicle :) design/style wise to become 1 with the machine.

Yeah i know i can go far with my thinking for solutions but in the most cases it works fine :D

[Thomas Mahon]

I like 6 the most.

[JakeB]

Malan - Liking 2 and 6. Design's looking solid on the whole though :).

Been working on this, trying to apply Ben's paintover. It's weird I've been working on it for most of the day, swear I've not changed all that much. Uh oh. Learning a ton though.



Edit: Still need to play with that hand. Fuck hands man.

[DavidFisher]

Thomas: thats sucks man hate when that happens hope you still get a chance to finish

Malan: nice color thumbs im looking at 6 and 4, keep it up!

JakeB: I like the direction your heading coming along nicely, if im wrong someone will correct me but imho, i think you could still push the dragon a little bit more as far as for the comp, you could really use it to help push your shapes and lead the viewers eye around your merlin character i think. but good job man really want to see it finished!

Soo heres where i am i still need to add more stuff from the sketch, and im not totally digging the tattoos I hear about that sort of thing a lot and i dont want my character to fall into cliches, i need to examine my motives for adding them in the first place my initial idea was to add more body paint in other place of the body besides just his face so that part of the design is repeated, then i started feeling like I added it because i didnt know what the hell else to put there and didnt want him to look plain so the body paint design now is a placeholder because idk if theyre staying. but ya couple problems i see now are 1) color looks super dull -which is something im working on understanding 2) lighting on the form looks forced and rigid and flat-something that pisses me off about my work soo much lol 3) the waist-piece seems a little void of clarity as its hard to tell where it starts and ends, and 4) i really like the headress and the way it flow around the head and goes down to the right leg i think it adds to the composition this way, but on the other hand its broken because it doesnt look like it connects to the other side of the headdress anywhere. so just some stuff i want to fix before moving on adding more stuff. I prob shouldve fixed some of these issues before i started rendering but i didnt see them until after but still im having fun with this character and im learning. comments and crits..go!

[Thomas Mahon]

woah david, really nice job! I would maybe add some more interesting clothing, maybe a necklace, your clothes and tattoos are the same colour too pretty much. really like the concept overall though