Portfolio Class- Character Development!

[JakeB]

Malan - Looks awesome man, the smoke's great. Not sure, but you might want to lose some of the outer edges of the smoke, so it looks a bit less solid. I dunno though, it definitely reads as smoke. Just a thought :).

So, by no means is my Merlin perfect, but I'd already been noodling around with him for a few days before sunday, not really going anywhere. I kinda feel like my Arthur is holding the set back more at the moment, so I've been spending the time this week totally repainting him. I kinda liked the costume, and overall design, but I'd somehow made him look like a square, and the pose was pretty poor.

Basically, I'm at a block with Merlin, but I learned a ton, so I'm going to try and apply that to Arthur as well, bring him up to the same level. :).





I realise he's crazy dark atm. Working on that. :).

[ssandulak]

Not sure if it's too late to start in, if not figured I'd toss my own Arthur into the mix, I'll attempt to catch up. Took the last 2 days on this one and REALLY should have spent more time in the basic stage as I'm still struggling with certain things.
I'm going with a Persian/Arabian style as well. Trying to work in some of the other weapons Arthur is mentioned having (little white hilt, the spear) as it sort of fits the culture. Plus I figure a king around this time would be fairly well versed in most things that were important at the time. So sailing, horse riding, fighting, obviously.
I kind of like the idea of a nice straight sword as well, kind of contrary to the more popular Scimitar but it turns out that a lot of the prophet Muhammad's swords were straight edged and the curved edge didn't come into play until later Turkish influence. I figure mixing the Excalibur/Caliburn sword with a messenger of God would be kind of a cool way to merge the histories together, to show the sword being older than him, perhaps passed down.
Planning to have silk draped over him, perhaps his overcoat, or more worked into the turban wrap as it shows wealth...probably doesn't come across in the b/w yet.
I'll post more as I do it, but any crits would be more than welcome.

[emooi]

*update

- Smoothed some colors out, so there's less dark/black colors.
- Lighted the skin up so it's no more the harsh red tone.
- Added smoke and sparkles to the magic "wind"
- Corrected the rings in the staff.
- Les black in the background

[JakeB]

ssandulak - Looks good man, the face is great. Just looking at your silhouettes, it might be worth changing the pose of the sword a bit. At the moment its pointing a long way down, and not breaking the silhouette much, so it looks pretty relaxed. Some of your silhouettes where the sword is a lot clearer, just look a bit more "kingly" I guess. Other than that it looks sweet. Nice design.

emooi - Colours are looking much better man. Nice work.

Took this a bit further :) Getting there.

[malan]

So, finally, here is my finished Merlin. Learned A LOT on this one, thanks for all the feedback! :D
Hope you like it :)
Cheers!


Hi Res here! --> http://bit.ly/10HTgGl

[mateusrocha]

Hey guys :)

ssandulak: awesome sillhouettes, and as for the character, I agree with jakeB, I think the way he's holding the sword is a little bit weird, don't know if is the anatomy of the arm or the overall shape of him!

jakeB: hey man :)) nice work on the arthur. really liked how you put that scary face on him xD

malan: good job on the merlin! that mist gave the character a very unique feeling.

Here I'm posting my finished Arthur. Going to work on the merlin now. I'm trying to catch up with you guys, but I'm a little busy with college + my first comission :P cheers all.



Edit: thanks Jake! fixed the floating issue :D

[JakeB]

Mateus - nice work man. One thing you could do really quickly to step it up, is add some sort of cast shadow on the floor. ATM, with the soft bg you've got, he kinda looks like he's floating. That's all. Looks good though. Nice one. :).

[DavidFisher]

malan: I really like the design in yours and how you rendered the smoke

emooi: Nice i think lightening up the background and the skin really helped, i think the image is more clear now good job man

so heres my final merlin, pushed and pulled some stuff from my last update. had my last crit in mind the entire time haunting me but i learned a lot so thanks again for the feedback guys, comments and crits are welcome

[Thomas Mahon]

Woah David, really impressed! Keep up the nice work :)

Here are my finals

[PTimm]

after a lot of mixed reviews on my last piece I did another one, but learned quite a bit yo

[malan]

Thanks everyone!
@David great character man! very really powerful concept, that head dress really pushes him up! :)

And, here is another final for Merlin. I pushed and fixed the colors a bit more. :)



Hi Res: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8069140/merlinFIX.jpg

[JakeB]

Nice work everyone.

David - Love it. love the movement you managed with the ice and the headdress. Awesome piece.

PTimm - Looks great man, really like the patterning on his clothes, done really well. Nice one :).

Here's my finals. :)
Any comments more than welcome, I keep hitting a wall where I just don't know what to do anymore, so they take way longer than they probably should..

Arthur


HiRes http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me1nrm...1_1280.jpg

Merlin


HiRes http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me1nrm...2_1280.jpg

[DertyPaws]

I have been following along with this mentoring stream. Lots of improvement happening here.
I did a series of rough sketches for the Merlin character. I wanted to go for a wanderer. Probably not of the culture but had absorbed some of its aspects. I dumped the idea of the staff and wanted to work with the wilder looking guy.
Thanks.

[ImSkeptical]

Everyone's pieces are looking awesome! I'm glad we got this week to cleanup, looks like we all used it :D.

Here is my finals! Tried to clean them up as much as i was able to.




I feel like i could've done better on Merlin :(. Tried my best to push the jaguar theme, but i think it ended up too subtle? Hopefully i learn from failure xD. Looking forward to Morgane next, gonna have to think really hard on that one.

[KyTran]

Here's where i'm at. I'm not very satisfied with it but I learned a lot about the early stages of designing a character. early on I wasn't very happy with my design but kept going with it away so it wasn't very fun or easy to work on. Hopefully I wont make the same mistake on next one.

[Tadas]

KyTran, I like how you painted the mask and feathers. I think your work would look stronger if you use more defined lighting and add some cast shadows or something. Right now it's hard to tell from what direction the lighting is coming from

ImSkeptical, I really like the details on the Arthur. I think Merlin looks a bit plain compared to him. You could add some more ornamentation and small details to make him more interesting

DertyPaws, I don't know if you checked values, but make your picture just black and white and see if the form is still readable. Right now everything looks a bit flat. It looks like you paid more attention to textures than form itself. Nice try though, and best of luck with your next piece :)

JakeB, you've got nice rendering skills, but proportions are off on both pieces. You've got similar anatomy problems as I do :) and you should study faces some more. They look a bit like toys right now

malan, nice design as always. Don't have much to say :)

PTimm, really like his robe. One thing that you should definitely fix is his arms and hands, they are huge :) you should make them shorter or you should make his legs a lot longer

Thomas, love the way you render. Especially the way you painted the tortoise

DavidFisher, nice design. I think you could push the contrast a bit more

mateusrocha, some cool details in here :) you should fix the face though. Use some refs or mirror and you will probably see the problems yourself






here's my character, I tried to push it as far as I can. Used some reference for anatomy, but still not happy about it

[Dan Warren]

Woooooooooooooooooooo

[KyTran]

first Sketch, mostly for anatomy study. Tried to do it without reference to see what my imagination was missing. Please feel free to tell me If the anatomy looks odd.

[Zipfelzeus]

I really want to help to keep this thread going, because I enjoy all the designs and learned a lot. (I'm not joking! this was a life saver for my job).
So despite having no time I promised myself to do 3 sketches each day till wednesday.
They are not suppose to be detailed or fleshed out in the silghtest. The goal of these sketches is to complete 9 (hopefully) absolutly different designs for the task.
And on wednesday till friday I'll go in and flesh out 1 or 2 designs I like the most.

Day 1:





@KyTran: I know this is just a first sketch but be careful with the face and feet. At the moment the features of her face are all over the place. Big lips are often used to make girls look sexy but when done wrong they make your character look like some big mouth beast.
I do this mistake all time and wonder why my ladys look so weird, so I just wanted to point that out. Otherwise keep pushing man!

[Thomas Mahon]

some studies from photos to get the feel of geishas



here are a couple of loose sketches with no ref, i was thinking of incorporating magical fans into her design. still need to do more research, and i suck with lines :( might carry on with the middle one