Portfolio Class- Character Development!

[JakeB]

David, looks good man, I like the collar and the design for the most part. The foot/leg looks kinda manly atm though. I know you're still working on it though :).

So, I jumped ahead like a moron, but this is where it's at now.

Any comments welcome, I know I've put time into rendering it a bit, but I'd really appreciate any crits as if it were still a line drawing. This is all a learning thing, and I'm happy to start again from the ground up if I need to. If nothing else, I learned some rendering techniques ;).



Higher Res: http://blog.ohbullocks.com/image/37291319407

[KyTran]

Zipfel: really liking the design and confident colors! I think the red mass on the left side is a little distracting and draws a lot of attention though.

David: I'm liking your character's costume a lot. The way the skirt is cut looks nice for the composition but it looks like it would be really inconvenient to move in.

Tried to strengthen the native american theme more and tried a few things on the arms and legs but none of them worked so i'm still working on that.

[Jmob]

Hey guys, specifically Dan. Unfortunately I was already at the color stages of the Morgane piece by the time you guys were wrapping up the Merlin crits. So, unfortunately when hearing the command to stay in the preliminary stages of staying at sketch phase so that it could be revised it was too late. I thought I could just push it to finish since I didn't have that much more to go. I probably am guilty of wanting to impress. But I feel those were not wholly my intentions. My intentions were to work on this project before finals came and to make the uninteresting look interesting by copying Leyendecker's style. I only wanted to push the Leyendecker because I knew my design was uninteresting. This is where I think my biggest fault is. In disregarding the class's whole purpose: to make an interesting, memorable, story-telling character design, I did everything backwards by barely focusing on character design and more on the type of finish (though that is important to some degree perhaps, idk.. I don't know much). What I can tell you though is that I'd love to be teachable and mostly to learn as much as I can. I would be grateful if you could crit my piece. I have taken it back to the sketch phase and written down some notes over the drawing (more like tracing) for you to understand my process and for you to correct it where it went wrong. I didn't draw everything like specific patterns (for example: the design on the helmet and staff/cage) but for that you can see through the transparent layers. Anyways, sorry for causing you grief (in knowing that I wasted my time more than yours (I know you have good intentions) and just know that I have the least intentions of wasting your time and my time. I want to restart this project with your advice. but a crit would be much appreciated so I can have a fresh perspective. Hope all is well with you and the rest of the CD community. Cheers!

[malan]

Ok, a new update on my Morgane sketch, I'm using the photo references I shot, and I managed to make her look more dynamic and interesting, fixed some details and gave the fire a more interesting look.

[Jmob]

12/6/2012nice milan! not going to crit you because i have no idea what I'm saying... anyways, here's to starting over for me... Here's some faces for my new morgane piece before I go to bed. settled on the one that i got kind of carried away with. 5 minute faces. probably should have used ref and done more faces... but i found the result i wanted early on. any crits would be helpful. willing to start over again if necessary... rofl.

12/7/2012: not able to post much since i don't have much to post... 2 poses that i tried to really push. will be doing more tomorrow. have to work on finals now, cheers.

[PTimm]

revamped sketch, hopefully I'm going in the right direction

[Dan Warren]

JMob, in response to your post above- I have to ask (and this is more for you to think about than to give me an answer- i dont need one as it wont change anything) why would you jump ahead to the morgane character before we even finished merlin? I hadnt even assigned the character or talked about the restrictions and how to approach it yet. the point of following a class is to FOLLOW the class, not look at a preliminary list of what i propose to do and then blaze through it. Thats a waste of your time, and a waste of mine. If the point of a mentoriship is to learn, and you skip ahead before ive had a chance to describe what im looking for, how can I teach you anything at all? just something to think about in terms of motivation for doing these assignments- theres nothing to gain by rushing them out as fast as possible just to have something 'done'. the idea of 'done' is way way overrated in a learning environment. Id rather see 10 unfinished images in here with major improvements from piece to piece than 10 totally finished broken images with all the same flaws one after another. the idea is to learn at a gradual pace, not blow through and apply small polish changes after a crit. you learn nothing that way. Its the portfolio equivalent of putting a hood ornament on your car after the body shop tells you the engine needs to be replaced. and as far as leyendecker- while we can all agree he was a fantastic advertisement illustrator with phenomenal brush and line economy- i have no idea what you mean when you say you wanted to apply his methods to improve your design. your design has absolutely nothing to do with the style you choose to render it. a bad design will be a bad design regardless of if its colored in via leyendecker, mucha, rockwell, or frazetta. thats the ENTIRE POINT of why im trying to get everyone in here to reel back the rush to finish in here. almost everyones work so far in this class has its most major problems within the first 2 phases of completion (thumbnail sketch and drawing). the mistakes are made before value and color are even applied! therefore, if we all want to learn and get better (which, after all, is the point), its time to STOP worrying so much about showing something that looks 'done' and to START worrying about showing something thats 'better'. trust me, they arent the same thing. at all.

this goes to everyone in every class and i mean it wholeheartedly-

If youre doing these classes just do them, and arent willing to invest the hard work and restrictions necessary to revise, change, and learn, youre wasting your time and will get absolutely no benefit from them. Going through the motions just to have 4 characters after 3 months gets you nothing. Im not your boss and this class isnt your job- dont try to impress me with things like speed and execution. Its about a willingness to get outside your comfort zone and approach things in a new way you normally wouldn't in an effort to expose flaws you may not see in the day to day.

[malan]

Ok, so Dan gave me a crit about the last post, and here is what he told me:

"the design you had for her before, where she was kind of leaning back and it looked like she was calling the fire high before her, had a lot more power and mysticism to it. if you could use the photo to tweak your original drawing, i think that would be for the best. the new piece with her bent over looking down makes the magic less impressive. the body turning up forces an idea of wonder and 'wow!' on the viewer, as if shes conjuring something tall and impressive- looking down feels almost like a disservice to the original. again- photos are great, and use them to inform good ideas- but dont change a good design just cause the photo is different. use her face details and the lighting scenario, sure, but that first sketch had a lot more power."

So, I fixed it again :)
Hope it looks better now.

[Dan Warren]

Malan- this is looking a lot stronger. the hands are much less of a problem now. one crit is to maybe make the fireball less fat and to raise it higher. at least to meeting her eye level. she is slender and slinky and curvacious, so i feel the fire should echo that. it can be fatter at the top, sure, but lets keep it within reason so its a secondary element and not wider than her torso. lookin good tho!

[malan]

Ok, so what about this? is it good to have the fire the same height as her? or keep it a bit shorter?

[Dan Warren]

better. sorry to keep nitpicking, but thin out the zigzag. that horizontal line it makes in the middle really flattens the energy. the whole thing can be thinner and more swirly. hope that makes sense.

[malan]

No, it's ok for me! :)
Here's another two, A is the previous one fixed, and B an inverted and more swirly one.
Maybe a mix of both? the orientation of B and the shape of A?
Oh, details haha :)

[Jmob]

the idea is to learn at a gradual pace, not blow through and apply small polish changes after a crit. you learn nothing that way.

Dan, I'm sorry. I want to change. I'm starting over and will pace myself in a contemplative manner when thinking about design. I will be behind in my process though I think that matters very little since I'm approaching this to learn differently and more efficiently. I will mostly be going off of the crits you gave others since I have no other header. Cheers.

[Tadas]

been busy with other things this week. Just started working on it today, but hopefully I'll finish it over the weekend

I tried to fix some things which were mentioned on the stream.
Her left foot is supposed to be slightly lifted. It will be easier to see it when I'll put a shadow underneath it


tried some other hair variations as well, but I'm not happy with any of these. I'll probably try to do more of these tomorrow

[Dan Warren]

hey, no need for apologies jmob. it was a misunderstanding and a problem a ton of us have. being that morgane is half done, i dont see a point in you starting your characters over. instead, try to learn and hop in for mordred. this is a free thing and it isnt graded, theres no reason for you to feel you have to do the characters- rushing to redo them now would be just as bad as rushing to finish them before. hop in on the next one and approach it at a methodic, focused pace.

[Nimao]

sorry for being so late with that...
some morgane sketches..

[Tadas]

here's what I've got so far. Still a long way to go :)

[malan]

Ok, so Dan gave me a better idea about the fireball, giving it more interaction between it and Morgane, so, here is the new idea and the flat color ideas and variations. Which one looks better? I want to use darker colors for her, making her a more creepy, grim character, and going against the classic idea of the colorful bellydancer or arabian maiden, and the ones with the red dot next to the number were the ones I liked the most and have this idea.

Please, watch the hi res image here for full detail -> http://bit.ly/YZdKMn
It's a big file and photobucket resized it way too much :/

Cheers friends!

[PTimm]

running into lots of trouble with this one, did a rough cut of where i want the patterns to be, still not entirely satisfied, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

[Thomas Mahon]

So I lost my password and can't recover it, so I quickly made a new account to post my wip.

I feel pretty bad about not being able to work on this much, because I'm taking on more freelance work than I'm used to. The only reason I decided to take on more work now is because I need get some funds together for the London workshop. I've spoken to Dan about it and he understands. I'm not abandoning the mentorship, but I'm probably going to fall behind a little.

Also, as you can see, I'm struggling with a cool lightsource, not used to using them. Remember that this is still really early D: