calliedci

[calliedci]

Creating an A3 Character poster

To start off with we needed to begin with blocking our character ideas out as silhouettes, with a few different ideas on how they could look and trying out poses, as one of the most important things in character design is having recognisable silhouettes. I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted my characters to look like so a lot of mine were trying out different poses.

unfortunately, I was a bit behind on this part, so the next part was a bit rough. At this point we had to make a few different designs for a poster, then print them off for a group crit session. I had only finished one at the time, and only partially ended up working on another one.

Because I only had feeback for the first design, I ended up sticking with it. A lot of the feedback was quite positive, encouraging leaning into the setting and design elements on display. The main complaints were characters heads making tangents with the backdrop and some suggestions on making where the characters were looking more clear to better convey emotion, as well as adding a glow of some sort to Lenore's Ghost and adding more perspective. Additionally, Giving the ghost a "tail" of sorts was now largely a redundant idea as it wasn't very visible in this pose, so it was suggested to give her legs instead. From this feedback I took this first draft and began to iterate a more refined version of it, trying to work on some of the problems as well as add some suggested elements, such as adding a sort of zig zag into the design to draw the eye.

This was the next major draft, and a lot has changed. The ghost now had legs, and I had also decided to put more effort into the backdrop, based on some gothic castles, as well as a Church/clock tower inspired by some really cool intricate ones I saw in Deltarune. This was a definite improvement, but it still had quite a few problems. not only was the backdrop still very flat, but the overall perspective of the illustration was nonsensical and contradictory in several places. With some help from Toby I used a perspective grid to concept a more realistic3 dimensional layout for the space, and made things a bit more clear, as well as making use of the distort tool to use my detailed facades in a more 3D concept while keeping the designs.

This was the result, and it was a marked improvement over the last one, while keeping it's same strengths. The characters are now sitting on a wall instead of an ill-defined edge, and the setting is now clearly an abandoned courtyard or plaza, with the tower and other buildings looming over and heading back into the backdrop surrounded by rubble. Honestly I was genuinely floored by how much of a difference a proper 3D perspective made to the whole illustration and I'm a lot happier with the general composition as a result. I also at this point decided to Redo the title, attempting to draw a Gothic script based on an image, and it looks so good! I'm really happy I went back and did that. Next I solidified The linework, and finished off the deatils o the characters and their facial expressions.

I'm really happy with how these designs came out, and it was fun to mess around with the Opacity for Ghost Lenore to make her appear more spectral. As you can see, I also began work on adding values at this point, though I had only got as far as the characters. That was my next step, and in the next draft the values were complete.

You can see at this point I had some of the lighting in the scene worked out with moonlight coming in at one of the diagonals. Also worth noting is that here I began using some curves filters on the characters and messing around with them to make them stand out more. I ended up keeping Ghost Lenore's one at a higher setting to ensure she stood out, but I was unsure how it would look for the automaton, so when I started experimenting with colour I had two different versions to choose from: one with a curves filter for her and one with the curves nearly turned off but not quite. shown in order below:

as you can see, the former one using curves for the automaton ended up looking too light and washed out, so I went for the latter option. After that, as you might be able to tell, a lot of the colour work revolved around trying to get the lighting and shadows on the Automaton Lenore right, as she is made of reflective metal. The main light source close to her is the glow emanating from the ghost so a lot of the highlights and shadows were based around that.

After I was happy, I began adding this rest of the colours to the different sections. At this point I also painted in some more shadows from the buildings, as well as a glow highlight using a softer brush around the ghost to demonstrate the light emitting from her. After that, and some more minor adjustment to the line work, the poster was finished!

I am so unbelievably happy with how this came out! I think it would great as the cover for a graphic novel or a webcomic! Before this course I was worried it wouldn't go well but I feel like I've improved a lot!

[calliedci]

Light and shadow excercise

These are some experiments we did practicing colouring light and shadow on 3D objects. Obviously this is ust how one kind of material would react to light so there's a lot of variations you could do with this.

[calliedci]

Creating and Refining a character concept

After finishing the group project we are moving onto our final project. an A3 Character poster to promote an original character we have to come up with in a fictional piece of media. Part of the project requires us to create a full backstory and profile for our character then summarise it in a 100 word paragraph. Before this we are required to come up with a few different character Ideas to refine and decide on our favourite one to move forward with. Here are the two concepts I created.

Basic Concept:

- Fantasy Automaton ,she’s custom made in the form of her creator’s (an inventor or craftswoman of some kind) dead lover and programmed to be like her, that’s also now possessed by the same now dead woman’s ghost (kind of two characters in one)

- One of a kind machine, creator now dead, has awakened in a dead world, now possessed

-Person she’s based on was a noblewoman who was secretly in a forbidden relationship with her creator (class divide etc)

Need to think of a name (both have the same name) LENORE

Setting:

- Dark Fantasy world filled with ruins and ghosts (kind of a semi afterlife/giant graveyard/ruined castle similar) and giant  horrifying monsters

Goal:

- Put the ghost of the woman she’s based on to rest (complete unfinished  business from before she died decades ago) (maybe untarnished her name/family name?)

- Survive in the harsh conditions

Internal challenges:

- Struggle with Identity and purpose (am I the same as the person I’m a replica of? What does it mean if I’m not? What is my purpose in this dead world? Do I agree with why I was created?) (also similar things with the ghost, is it worth trying to fix things that happened while I was alive that happened years ago? Did I want to be back from the dead?)

- learn to work together (the automaton despite being intended to be a replica of her is initially a bit more reserved and subservient as it was made to be able to follow orders in emergencies, but the ghost is morose and temperamental and prone to being sulky and unhelpful, guarded and prickly from what happened to her) ( she was murdered by an assassin hired by her own noble house)

- coming to terms with the creator/now dead lover (She created the automaton to be her companion after the woman died but now the creator herself is dead and her lover is alive in the form of the automaton and the ghost) (was it right to make the automaton?)

External Challenges:

- Ruins are a challenge to traverse, full of monsters, and spirits and such

- Complete tasks to fulfil the ghost’s business- trying to find certain people, lost objects, going to certain places where memories were made

-find the Ghost’s grave

- find the creator’s grave

- She is also  partially broken and due to here and the ghost not being fully in tune she’s a bit uncoordinated physically (this becomes less of a problem as they learn to work together)

Talents:

- Very durable body, able to withstand a lot of punishment

- has to learn how to use a weapon throughout the story as neither of them know how and she needs to protect herself (they are also both left-handed I don’t know where else I can mention that)

- able to talk to the ghost and understand it - no-one else can

- can project light from her right hand with the help of the ghost (can only do this when the ghost is willing and concentrating)

-The ghost can temporarily leave her body and affect the world around them, pass thru walls etc.

- Her body can interact with mechanisms in some places built by her creator ( to pass doors and such) they have to fin out how to do this

- Her body is also quite strong, able to lift quite heavy objects

Plot concept:

After She turns on and finds herself in the ruins, Initially things are a bit confusing for both of them as the ghost doesn’t remember fully how she died and the automaton has sections of her memories deleted, and the ghost is reluctant to provide information to help on their quest. Things are initially also quite dangerous as she has no idea how to use a weapon and there are many dangerous creatures. They begin to work together more and work things out between them (they also slowly remember more) as they complete a few of the things the Ghost wanted, and beat some crazy monsters, (as well as finding a few travelling companions)  but the automaton becomes more disillusioned with who she is as opposed to the Ghost. This comes to a head when they find the grave of her creator and the ghost’s lover and they get into a big argument about whether or not she should exist and the morality of the creator. The Ghost ends up leaving her for a while and they both go on their separate ways for a bit, and both of them end up struggling a lot without each other, and figure out a lot of their feelings about themselves and each other while apart. The Automaton begins to realise herself as her own person who can live with her own goals and personality and purpose with her new friends, and the ghost ends up deciding that lingering  on the past and her dead lover is holding her back and making things worse for the automaton. They then meet up at Her grave, and have to work together one last time to defeat a gigantic godlike creature that has taken over the cemetery it ’s in, before the ghost departs on, leaving the automaton to find new purpose in the future instead of the past.

Basic concept:

1920’s horror detective lady

Setting:

in the big city (let’s say Boston)

Goal:

Solve mysterious string of murders with strange occult clues at the crime scene

Additionally get recognition for her police-work

Internal challenges:

Decline of sanity - is any of this real, hallucinations

Struggle with nicotine addiction - cigarettes

External challenges:

Serial killer, possibly a cult? Trying to summon a demon or god of some kind

Working with higher ups - they don’t know if they can trust a female detective in the force, sexism etc

Talents:

Super perceptive

Can only see in monochrome

Has to learn how to interrogate people well

Needs to become a better shot

Plot summary:

She’s a new detective and this is her first case. case Starts off a bit mysterious but quickly begins to get creepy. She meets a singer at a bar who becomes her local contact. After another murder is committed she manages to see the killer fleeing the scene and gives chase but falls to catch them as well as missing a shot at them. Around this point she begins to have strange hallucinations, which get worse as more murders and crime scenes are discovered and she gets closer to the truth. Before she can figure it out she’s thrown off the case and has to go rogue, with only her contact for help. She figures out that a cult is trying to use the murders as a ritual to summon their strange god, and arrives at their secret hideout to take them dead or alive, barely managing to succeed.

after this I ended up settling on Lenore, the possessed automaton character. At this point we had to create a wordcloud and a moodboard for our character to help lay out the ideas in a visual way.

For the moodboard I split it between Automaton Lenore and Lenore's ghost. For the automaton a lot of my inspiration came from fantasy machinery from games like the Elder Scrolls Series and Jedi: Fallen Order, as well as a lot of statue-like qualities to show off her artificial nature. For the ghost I was inspired by a lot of various ghosts and princesses and medieval dresses and similar from various media, but especially the Spectre from Slay the Princess.

next was the 100 word description. Here is the final version I turned in: Lenore is an Automaton originally built by an artificer to resemble her dead lover, a noblewoman of the same name, and be her companion in a fantasy world. Lenore was built to be durable, and stronger than a human. Lenore has suddenly reactivated decades after a great catastrophe, her body possessed by the ghost of the real Lenore. Lenore struggles with identity and whether she is a separate person from the other Lenore, with her own personality. She must put to rest the original Lenore’s ghost, who’s traumatised by her death and struggling to come to terms with her past. 

With the concepting done and a more fully realised idea of my character(s), it was time to begin working on developing art for the poster.

[calliedci]

Poses and character Analysis

Today (well not today a week or two ago now) we worked on posing characters. We started by practicing the proportions of an average human to use as a base model which we could easily move around ad draw limbs and parts in different positions. We were then given a short dance video and recreated 8 different poses from it using this basic skeleton.

After this, we had to pick one of the poses wed drawn and use it as a base to draw a character in the same pose. I drew this lovely dapper hatted and suited man doing some old fashioned dancing with a cane using my first pose as a base.

This makes for good practice for dynamically posing characters for our poster.

[calliedci]

Group Design project (part 2)

After finishing our first designs for Scrungle, we were given the first designs for Detective Sable to review. They were pretty disparate in design so our main request was to make them more similar. after that, we recieved our feedback for Scrungle. Here are the most relevant parts of it to my illustration.

with this, we began to create some new second variations on our designs, with the feedback in mind. Here are my results! I didn't really end up incorporating the "Alligator Arm" but apart from that I included most of the feedback as well as a few changes to make my design more consistent with the others from my team.

with that, all that's left of the group project is to present our designs in PDF format on Monday.

[calliedci]

Group design project (part one)

After being grouped up, we crafted our character brief for raven Detective Sable. Sending that off to another team, we were then given the brief for our character: Scrungle, a, *ahem*, creature of some plushlike material created in a magical accident that despite it's proneness to bad luck has become the plucky yet mischevous mascot to a small TV Studio. Here is one of my iteration sketches from when we were figuring out the design.

And here is the base design for the character we settled on to make iterations from as drawn by Abby.

I was assigned to draw Scrungle in a digital animation style. I went with this, and tried to make a less rough, more smooth and consistent version with a relatively consistent line weight. here is my finished lineart.

Next I added some values as a base to see how the colours would compare at different brightnesses.

after this I added some colour, keeping it relatively simple to be consistent with the animation style.

after a brief reflection on our work so far we move on to part 2.

[calliedci]

Finishing initial character study?

I have now finished an initial value study for my character, along with a different option with alternate values for a lighter look.

I also drew an additional possible alternate version with magical arms, but I realised I was accidentally recreating Raven from Teen Titans so I decided not to finish it.

last of all, here is a possible colour variant I mocked up.

[calliedci]

Linework, Value Study, and basic character work

this is from a couple of sessions so It isn't as specific. Around session 2 and some of session 3, I worked on lineart from a reference template to practice for drawing a proper character. Here are the results so far.

next, we did a value study to help us a get a feel for colour, light and shading without a focus on lines and too much detail using a picture of an eye as reference. I am still planning to work more on mine but here is its current state.

After that I began work on a basic character design to improve on line work and values. a lot of the inspiration for this came from characters in video games like Hollow Knight. Here it is part way through assigning colour values to certain layers.

[calliedci]

Session 2: layers and fills

today we made a start by drawing a shape with multiple sections to fill. I made this burger.

We then made use of the magic wand tool along with expanding selections to fill areas with different colour intensities, which we then adjusted with command+u.

[calliedci]

annoying that I can't change the format after saving this as a draft but this was experiments with the drawing tablet as well as the basic brush settings in Photoshop