Portfolio Class- Character Development!

[JakeB]

Looking good Pixeltuner, face looks better :).

David - 2 5 8 and 10 look cool, at first glance. 12's cool as well, but it's a bit more 'warrior-y' maybe? I really like the shortness of 8. Not sure why, just looks interesting :). Nice work though, your silhouettes look good in general.

Been working on this a bit more. Gonna push a couple tomorrow. Feel like I'm getting into the swing of it, but I have the opposite problem to Thomas, and haven't come up with anything I'm happy to settle on yet. There you go though.. Learning

[Thomas Mahon]

Okay so I gave these to dan, and he was really helpful and gave me an awesome critique. Posting it here for transparency and goodness.

What I sent:



Dans critiques!



Needless to say I'm gonna roll with the crit

[Pixeltuner]

Aaaand with colours. Not too sure about the yellow but let me sleep on that.

[malan]

@Cj_marsh wow, thanks a lot man! that's a really, really good idea! you got me re-thinking about my concept haha. I will probably use that :)

@Thomas sweet improvement man! those colors look really nice! D: really impressed with what you have now :O

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@DavidFisher Those silhouettes read a lot better! you did very interesting shapes this time man, good job! :)

[malan]

So, here are some thumbs for Morgane.
I think I already decided the design and the costume elements, I just need to decide about the pose. Here are some different variants for some of them, and some slight changes on the skirt details, textures and head. Let me explain.
The ones I liked the most were from 1 to 5, on these, some of them have some sort of scarf/hood and others have just the hair with some ornaments on the head. Number 6 is just a front view of what I'm thinking to do with her head (just an idea, not intended to be a pose variant) 7 and 8 have another pose, with two flames and different heads (8 has the head from the first ones) and on number 9 I tried a frontal view.
Which one do you like? :)
And thanks again to Cj_marsh for the fire idea. It made me think about Ifrits, those fire evil beings similar to Djinns, so it might be a good idea to use that to oppose the Merlin idea and make her more magical. Maybe she is summoning one of them, or something like that. :)

Click here for the hi res. -> http://bit.ly/SfIpjk
Someone knows how to avoid photobucket's resizing thing? :(

[Dan Warren]

pixeltuner- for the purpose of teaching (this is a mentorship) I have to essentially smack your hand after you started reaching for the cookie too soon. the body is skewing on a tilt to the left, the head is too big, and the limbs too thin. those are the size of ankles with no clothes on them, let alone layers and boots. look at where the shoulders are in comparison to where the chin of the face is- what kind of neck is that? also the arm on the right looks like its folding over the body to the left while somehow reaching out to the right.

with that being said, you have some interesting design ideas at play in here- but as i said on the last stream and as im going to hammer home for everyone- A design is only as good as the frame you put it on. fix the drawing first, and it saves the painting later. making those aforementioned changes now will take much much longer than if they had been adressed beforehand.

slow and steady, with an emphasis on a quality result- not the quickest to the finish for finished's sake.


This is outta love- just tryin to help. Trust me, more focus on the fundamental early on will only strengthen the design later.

@Malan- cool thumbs, interesting stuff. One thing to avoid- even if you see it in the culture- stark horizontal stripes are something to avoid on a female design. they stretch the eye to the left and right and their regularity interrupts the design (like a cough during a good movie). try diagonal stripes, or some swooping with the body movement in order to break up the monotony.

[malan]

Thanks Dan! you say that because of the skirt, right? What about a plain colored one? I'm not very sure about using a texture there, because the belt area will have a lot of small coins and details already, so, that way the eye can rest on the lower area, right?

[Dan Warren]

sure sure, sounds good

[Pixeltuner]

Dan: Thx so much! That's why I'm here. Well to have some fun in the first place, but it's good to get my ass kicked and be told what's wrong with my stuff so I can actually improve. :)

[AaronJordan]

@Malan -plus horizontal stripes make you look fat.

[JakeB]

Nice work guys. Looking forward to seeing how everything comes out. I know I'm struggling with this one.

Think I'm gonna push ahead with this. She's got sand like running through her fingers, but the pile of it is gonna be red hot, and glowing, as a light source. That should give a bit of creepy uplighting.

[emooi]

nice work everybody, i'm still working on mine. I'll make sure that i have a line drawing this Sunday.
Had a ruff and busy week....

@Jake B you need to make her head bigger. now It looks like there are two kids in a large costume :)

[JakeB]

Yeah, coz the two kids stood on top of each other are a symbol for... Well.. Y'know.. I mean...



(yeah, I'll fix that, cheers!)

Edit: That's all I can see when I look at mine now. Goddamit. Thanks for pointing it out man.

[KyTran]

Been really busy with other obligations but i think ill have some time to get some work done. I decided to incorporate an instrument as one of the major design elements for my final design. here are some thumbs. I was thinking sh could use magical instruments to be all devious and to manipulate people.

I'm impressed with everyone's work! Awesome

Zipel: It wasn't harsh at all, I really appreciate it.

Jake: I think your Morgana looks a little unnatural because the torso is a bit long. I like the direction it's going though.

Anyways here are some more thumbs. Now to tart homing in on on the final design.

[PTimm]

there's some pretty awesome ideas goin down in here folks!

here be my sketches for a morgana idea, i read about a slavic god that had a head of a woman and the body of a bird, so i thought putting some feathers in the dress would be cool, almost thought about giving her bird feet, but maybe thats too risky. The tiger idea was just to give her an animal to contrast the bear i gave merlin...wrong direction?

[malan]

So, here is my clean sketch for Morgane. Maybe it has a lot of things to improve :)
As I said the other day, I was thinking about using the help from a friend that does belly dance, and take some reference photos, but I haven't had an answer from her, so, maybe I won't be able to do it like that :( That's why I defined as much as I could on this sketch.

[KyTran]

Malan: Wow it's looking really nice!

PTim: I think an animal could be a nice touch. I chose to put a crow in mine because though it would match the personality I imagine my character would have. Usually when I think of tigers I think of strength or a strong will.

Here's my sketch. I'm not set on it yet and i may scrap it entirely. I tied to make her feel like a devious sly character.

[JakeB]

PTimm - Yeah, like the idea for the feathers man, think you're right to avoid the actual bird feet though. Maybe you could incorporate talons somewhere else? Like as an embellishment on something, or as a design motif on the shoes perhaps. Not sure, but if you want to run with the bird idea, might be worth thinking about. Not sure about the Tiger, it looks awesome, don't get me wrong, but I guess using an animal might just look like a crutch. Not sure though, sure you could make it work :).
Oh, one other thing, on all three the hands look a little big, quick to fix though!

Malan - As always, looking sick man. The pose is great. One thing you could do is push one foot back in space perhaps, to give it a bit of depth. I just find having the feet level sometimes looks kinda flat? Nice work though, looking forward to seeing it finished.

KyTran - Cheers, yeah I might have to work on the torso. Looking good so far man, you could maybe add to the design a bit, it's kinda bare atm. But I understand you're going for something very minimal. Like the feathers btw, they look sweet.

Final Lines


Some progress, and some studies..

[Zipfelzeus]

Sorry I couldn't make it. I'm shit :( I'll try to get the finished lineart done till tomorrow.

@malan: Amazing! I kinda wanted to comment on your stuff earlier but I deleted it. I mean really the whole design part isn't really your problem. The pose is great, the outift is great as far as I can tell. The only small nitpick I can offer is that I would rework the nose a little. I think the left eye should be a little closer to her nose but I guess you should just wait for dan crit.

@JakeB: Huge, huge improvement on the colours man!

@thomasmahon: I like were this is going. The whole batwing and spike stuff really gives the feeling of and old school fantasy villianess :)

crap:

[Thomas Mahon]

EDIT: Just submitting these for final

Don't know how happy I am with the values at the moment, seems pretty light, but I suppose it would be with a light emitting snake around you. I added some rim lighting at the bottom because it was getting abit dark down there, not sure if I'll keep it.

The values by them self look a little weird I know, I think because I'm not used to working with line and then painting the forms underneath, I usually just go for form straight away.

Lines + valuez




with values and lines:
http://i1255.photobucket.com/albums/hh63...1354407714