The Major Project - Progress on Character

I've been getting the final monk character designs ready for production.

Here were my first two attempts in front and side views.





While I quite liked the second one, I couldn't quite work out where the shoulders were and whether the arms were too long.

I also practiced at drawing cloth.




While you don't see much of his body, I did realise that I needed to know what his body shape was to correctly understand his proportions with the clothes on over the top.

I started with some rough front and side view drawings of his body, gradually retracing and refining until I got something I was happy with. I then traced the clothes on too.

Here was my progress on that.



The final body.


The final clothes.


The final Monk.



But then after looking at the final picture, I didn't like him at all. Partly because of the way i'd drawn his face, but mainly because his overall body shape looked wrong. I decided that the overhanging belly was too much, and the bit which looks like a skirt was too short and skirt like. The sleeves had lost their size somehow, and his head looked sunk into his body.

Even after changing the head and a few other things, he still didn't look right.


Well after all that careful drawing I decided to start again.

I did a quick test where I outlined where I thought the body shape of the monk was over the top of this painting with his clothes on. I much preferred that, even though it was a rough painting with a rough sketch.




Anyway from there I quickly re drew another body shape, less fat, and with longer legs, with looser clothes. I stuck the painting of the head I did on top too, just to get a better idea of his character, and I have to say that I am liking him more than I have in any of my other drawings.



So from there, I started to refine this, by retracing a bit neater. What I've done is separated the body from the different elements of the clothes into different layers with different colours, and this is where I'm at now.



I want to get the side view at this stage, followed by a proper pencil sketch and a coloured painting. I then want to do separate orthographic views for the head hands and possibly the sandals, as they lack detail in the main body drawings.

And then I have to do the same for the kitten!
In the meantime I have experimented with the brushes in Photoshop, and had a go at painting a kitten. My final kitten could look something like this. Although not necessarily grey.


More to come.

A Flock of Pixels.