CC 1 GoT: Crackedskulls whips

[crackedskull]

Hi.

Heres some notes.


 "Both characters have a hard set face, a look of determination. The house itself is quite reclusive and does not involve itself in many events of Westeros. They live in secluded forestlands. They still keep contact with kings landing through ambassadors and their trading convoys offer a unique selection of herbs, medicine and craftwork. They are also higly skilled in hunting, medicine, poisonmaking, botany, woodwork. They live in treehouses and caves mostly. They are fairly capable warriors and specialize in archery and scouting, rarely do they get ambushed due to their ability to scout ahead. When It comes to close combat they gravitate towards spears, they are not very adept in swordfighting. They usually wear light clothing that is made up from leather. Some wear little to no clothes.
-bodypaint is an important part of the house, it marks the role of the person in the society and represents a different bug for every ranking. For warriors it is different beetles, for ambassadors it can be butterflies or even spiders.In a sense they can be compared to the wildlings, however they have built up a much stronger civilazation and culture and are officialy accepted as a house.

In the land of westeros the house of Negrea is considered mysterious, intimidating and wise. Due to that the other houses dont mess with them, but they are unlikely to be on good relations with them aswell. Their poisons and medicine are valued higly and some vagabonds with the house orgins are higly sought after due to their good scouting abilities.

The house has 2 sects: The beetles and The spiders. Leader of the beetles is the lord and his queen is usually the head of spiders. It is usually the spiders that do the poisonmaking, pigment extraction and medicine. The beetles go and hunt, they also specialize in protection. Both the beetles and the spiders are gatherers. It is more common for the spiders to act as assassins, they wear small knives coated in lethal poison.

There are also those who are unspecialized they help both the spiders and the beetles in their tasks, but are usually the lower class of the society.
Also in the unspecialized are children and adesolants who havent passed the tests.

The beetle on the banner represents the emperor of the house, who has the highest ranking beetle insigna on his head "the emperor beetle".

The main reason why other houses will not perform hostile acts towards Them is because they will mark their leaders and nobles. The ones who are marked wont live long. The house of negreas assassins are nearly unstoppable in completing their tasks.
One of the most dangerous tools in their possession is the poison incence. A candle is placed in the room of the target and withing coming into the contact with the poison scent, the target will die.



-burly bearded man with numerous scars and ragged hands, covered in nature made armorset. Reddish shade of face. Similarities to wildlings. A front line soldier of house negrea.
Has a spear.
A beetle facepaint on his forehead.
To show the beetle the hair has been cut and looks like a certain samurai haircut.
Light fur and leather armor
travelling supplies(pouches and satchels
short bow and arrows
intimidating appearance
An eagle on his shoulder
A tamed wolf by his side

-ambassador woman with a cloth embedded with 100s of beetles, spooky headwear and outlook, similar to melisandre in mysteriousness and implied evil. Gaunt face. Tanned skin tone.
scroll pouches
clothing combining gold and dark red with greenish tones.
unstettling appearance.
Face painted white with dark pigment make up accentuating lips and eyes.
Spider on forehead
sleek look."

With all that stuff figured out its time to get to the drawing part.

Here is some initial sketches.

[BrushNoir]

That first sketch looks really promising imo.

[KurtJeremy]

first of all cool stuff, your notes are very descriptive it explains alot about house negrea.
Just narrow it down as much as you can, as to make the idea cohesive but not too complicated.

[Hobitt]

Ill agree with what Kurt said, and try different ideas variations its sometimes gets very easy to get too focused on 1 design ( guilty of that myself), looking forward to more!

[crackedskull]

Thanks for the advice guys :D
yeah the notes are all over the place, It was fun to do and I just went with the flow, but it did give some insight into searching references and designing the character. As for variations Im in a huge comfort zone and what I do is I take the one design I visualised in my head and translate it onto paper, then over the course of the work I modify it, add suble changes here and there, change parts, etc. Once I have a strong visual idea in my head it is hard to trump that with following variations, they feel uninspired and havent usually helped me much.

So this character is from the northern sect of the house, the environment there is partially snowy and that explains the light furs he has.
Heres the first sketch I did from head, to see where my weaknesses lie, right now the biggest ones seem to be feet, the wolf and the bird. Also HANDS.
Time to do studies and use reference. Also now that Ive stumbled on my own, it kinda motivates me to do studies more.

[kazenodino]

I feel you man once I have visualized it rarely anything changes my mind.
can feel the tension on your comp, he looks angry :P

[Piotr Jasielski]

tl;dr :P

Looks interesting. Just keep in mind the final piece should give some of the GoT vibe (not saying it doesn't but a lot can be conveyed through rendering). Main houses are wealthy and their outfit usually has something that indicates their position (even the northener rough clothing style). Could be just well made, not worn out stuff or some expensive-looking elements like rare metals/stones or meticulously crafted ornaments. Don't over do it though, just the right balance. Good luck :)

[Eyliana]

Cool stuff, I really like the describtion you made to give yourself a sence of direction. Good luck with your studies!

[crackedskull]

Kazendino - thats good to hear :D

Piotr - Thank you for the good advice, I will add some ornamental elements when Ive figured out the basic designs.

Thank you Eyliana.

I tried to start with parts I struggled the most today and focus most studies towards them, will refine them in the future.

[BlackDelphin]

Left arm/biceps looks weird. Also the left foot looks like it's in the air,only toes touching the soil. I like the older sketch beneath it better. But personally i think it would be better with a more solid,wide base, taking the foot and moving it to the side,not to the front.

Great start so far! It's good you know exactly what you want and now refining it with details and studies.
Keep going!

[Amit Dutta]

Great approach Cracked. I like how you are using your quick sketches to figure out elements to come. At this stage of the figure I see a couple of possible problem points. You have already a bit of design done, but the pose needs quite a bit of work. It has started to stiffen up a lot. Foreshortening/proportion issues in that front leg, right arm and the two hands don't really align as if they are holding something. So before you do anymore design, get a mirror and hold a broom and try and sort out those things and also see if you can quickly try some other poses. In your first black and white thumb, there was a bit of a sense of easy naturalness to the pose which kind of fits the brief description, while he is stiffening up a bit much now. I like your design overall, it really feels like it will start to fit in GoT, but definitely do research and try and push it further. Good stuff!

[Liberty]

Doing the right things, the wolf looks very good now. I Like the simple composition, tells this is the main guy. Keep up.

[crackedskull]

BlackDelphin - thank you for the critique, I tried to fix it. As for the wider stance pose I took that pose and it felt kinda uncomfortable. Thus I concluded that a more natural pose is the one I tried to go for.  I think a lot of poses that have 1 foot in front view and the other in side view are also good for showing off the design, but I kinda want to focus more on the illustrative aspect and making the character come to life.


Amit - Hey man, I am very grateful for your in depth critique. I did what you asked and observed the parts I struggled with, then tried to apply them to my sketch. Unfortunately the mirror was small so I couldnt see the feet positions lol.
Next part to make it fit more would be the color stuff, but I wanna have a solid base first, Ive had a few hard lessons in that regard.

Liberty - Im glad you like the wolf, it was challenging and I had to do it over a couple of times. Simple compositions can do wonders. I made some advanced compositional decisions aswell, for example the diagonal created by the spear, the flow from the bird to the character to the wolf, also the top down lighting(which will become apparent later). Composition is pretty much everything, every shape, value and color must be arranged to create the best composition and thus the best painting. It goes past the rule of thirds or golden ratio, its everything.
Try to see awesome shapes and setups of composition in real life and in the paintings of masters, it will be very helpful.

Update on the sketch, still got fixes to do. And then the background too-

[Hobitt]

Cool sketch but maybe pull the wold or something into the foreground more right now the picture feels a bit flat because of that since there is a background and a midground, feel free to ignore since it is a character design, do try to make more thumbnails, need to explore every option there is!

[Berebobe]

I like where the design is going. I'm glad you removed the beetle on the forehead, it seemed a bit too obvious design wise. Maybe work the beetle aspect back in somehow, though?

Keep going!

[JonHop]

Looking good, nice job on correcting the pose utilising the crit very well, the line work is starting to look very nice also. One thing that stands out to me is the width of his shoulders, possibly could widen the distance between them to give more of an imposing silhouette to match his expression and stance. Look forward to seeing how this turns out! (I also like the inclusion of the wolf!)

[JadeSky]

I liked his stance but it could be more exciting. I love the wolf but I agree he should be pulled out from behind the character. Maybe utilize him to make your character more appear more powerful. To make one think "Oh wow any guy who can control that thing must be bad ass". Or something like that anyways.

[KurtJeremy]

Good stuff !
I actually like the composition and especially the expression and the overall look of the character.
what stands out to me though unfortunately enough, is the stiffness of he's pose here I fixed it a bit.

Whenever making a pose try to avoid having too many straight lines as it will result into a stiff pose.
gesture helps heaps with these as the human body has alot of asymmetry going on because of how it works mechanically.

[crackedskull]

I managed to finish the character lineart, now moving on to the environment.

Thank you all for giving me advice, you guys rock :D

Hobbit - I will try some different positions with the wolf, or I might add some rocks and branches to the foreground

Berebobe - I followed your advice and worked it back, there are some beetleclaws and minor ornaments that are beetle themed.

Jonhop - Made the pauldrons more wider and noticeable and tweaked the fur to fit them.

JadeSky - I see, perhaps I should add another wolf too, since I removed the bird. Maybe the 2nd wolf could be in the foreground more.

Kurt - Im glad you showed me that, I was too caught up an couldnt see the stiffness. I did some liquifying, but I think I gotta redo some stuff more.

[smrr]

Duuuuuuuude, I loved reading about your ideas and all that. Like, damn <3 inspiring!

Your line-art clean up is really something else, great bloody stuff crack3d!
Now looking forward to see where you take the enviro