Character Overhaul

So, you may have seen in a previous post how my character work wasn't going too smoothly. Well, I am still struggling, BUT all is not lost as I've had some nice progress and am quite happy with the direction I'm heading in now. The best thing is, so are the tutors :D Having them support my designs and able to see the potential in them is very encouraging, so hopefully I'll have a lot more work done soon. In hand with that I figured I should put up the work I've done so far, so that you can all see how it's working, and hopefully give me some advice on how to go further with Buffy herself, and (when I get some sketches up) how to do the men.

Anyway, yes, here are my recent sketches of Willow, now finalised, and WIP sketches of Buffy, still designing.

This is what I did when I was still working on the old designs. I liked the colours so stuck with this palette, but as you'll see, the character is completely different.


I did a number of sketches to get to this point, but I didn't really want to put them up on here lol basically I started elongating the figure and making her more humanesque while still trying to keep the flowing proportions on her hands and legs, and the teardrop shape of her torso. She changed quite a bit, obviously, and it took a number of sketches to get her to this form. But I really liked it, and decided to fine tune it until it was ok for finalising.


I tried a coloured one to see if it would work in pencil but it was too rough and the colours weren't quite right, so I felt I'd just do it on photoshop.


This was the pencil sketch I did of her that I really liked - I'd done one or two costume versions and this is the one I preferred. I then did a very quick colour on photoshop to get the colour palette right, and then tried simple burn shading. A texture improved it too, but I decided I really wanted to go all out on textures and really explore how 'stop-mo' I could get it.


This is my first version of the final Willow. It's only from the same quick sketch, so I'm going to redraw and ink it properly, probably in a number of poses too - the reason I put a black pen link on is because some of the outlines were spoiled by me not selecting things properly. I liked the black line in the end though, and will ink one in for the final, though probably not as thick. I like this colour palette, and the textures were really enjoyable to do - this is encouraging for me as I really want to follow that type of career path *colourist and sequential artist* ^_^ but yeah, I like this, but lots of improvement to be done.


Buffy I am struggling on. This is what I drew when I first knew my old character designs weren't going to work - I went entirely the opposite and made her completely human with an odd head, which just didn't sit right. So I tried to meet the designs in the middle from then on.


This is the collective sheet - as you can see I'm very unsure as to exactly how I want the character to turn out. I know I want her to have chunky upper arms and legs, to represent her strength and speed as a fighter. I'm happy with her hair and mostly her face, though things keep moving around.


This is just one that I accidentally left off the collective sheet. I quite like her shape though, and it is a rough idea of what I'm leaning towards.


This is a horrible quick colour in to see if the shapes would look ok fleshed out a bit. Of course, the shading is horrific, the outline is grey for some reason and the perspective kills me lol so I'll do a new one asap that's done nicely like the Willow on :)


So yeah, that's around where I am now, and I'll try and keep you updated on the rest of it.

Quick Tests Dump :P

Here are a few more experiments for Beth. I'm going to be redrawing this anyway, along with doing the three or four that Mat's drawn up, but I just wanted to do some quick tryouts for different things. I'm just starting the scraperboard title shot, so in a few hours that should be done :) hopefully anyway lol. But yeah, onwards and upwards :P

More Bethness :)

Another try for Beth, hope it's better ^_^ again, a few different ones, just showing progress or options :)

Avoiding Character Work -_-

I have been, unfortunately lol but I did take some time to look at doing a background for Beth - I'm working on some others at the moment, but this is the only finished one so far (I've done it twice actually, but accidentally deleted it the first time -_-). I wanted to put it up here as I've loads of different versions of this one because I used different combinations of two sheet textures and four floor textures. Putting them all up on here means Beth can see and tell me which one she hates the least XD They're very different from the other background artist's - his have much cleaner lines and he's started using this lovely spirally thing on the walls, all black and white inkness, very nice :) so nevermind, at least I got to do some stuff, and I still have more to do :) Sorry though Beth >.<
So yeah, here you go ^_^

*sigh*

So, not feeling particularly fond of what I'm doing at the moment. Had a sweatbox today and, while being very helpful in critical parts of the work, it was also a little confusing from a students point of view. I'm struggling with the style of my Buffy characters at the moment, as the simplified shapes is just not how I draw usually, and I think they're plain and well, ugly really. I mean, Willow and Buffy I mainly like, but the whole set is just no where near where I want it. Usually I'd go for a much more human-esque look, but tutors and fellow students all said they really liked my shape-based designs, and I thought I was on the right track. Yet in the sweatbox, they just said they didn't work at all and they simply didn't like them. It's annoying because I already hate them lol and I can see why they don't like them because I feel the same, and it's been a frustrating process just getting the designs this far. Sometimes I just don't know what I'm supposed to do. Sitting down and typing this helps my thoughts get into some sort of order, and I see now I haven't gone far enough in making the characters work as stop-mo designs - I forget that, as models, they can be detailed, complicated and intricate, like the work I've always loved, as long as they are buildable. I've been lost and just drawing for the sake of it, instead of really thinking about how I want these pieces to look.

I'm going to step back from what I've been doing and really look at how the characters are and how I want them to be portrayed - I do like the shape-based design, but on top of that I think there's a lot of room for a very stylised pen look, bringing back my Burton and Gorey influences, and then painting them up a lot in ArtRage or Photoshop in a very 3D manner, to try and get that Stop-Mo feel. I've such a long way to go, and I don't even want to do this area of work, so it's hard to keep motivated, but meh, let's just get on with it -_-

On the plus side, I'm enjoying my Star title sequence stuff and using ArtRage is fun - a lot more traditional feeling and the look is really lovely :) I'm doing some interesting Collab stuff for a 3rd year too - backgrounds using a lot of texture, and one using scraperboard, which will be great fun to do :)

Other than that, I've been honing in on the areas I enjoy - fixing and colouring animation in Toon Boom is something I really want to work more in, so I'm really looking forward to doing Sian's film, and learning more about sequential art and comic books too, because that's where I want to go: sequential artist (storyboards, comics, graphic novels, webcoms etc) and Toon Boom colouring ^_^ do NOT want to be a character/background artist, I'm just not good enough and I don't have the passion lol

Oh well, moan over, back to work!

Back To Production :S

So after a few weeks of Advanced Tech, which technically we're still in the last bit of, we start back up on our Production part of the Final Major - eeeek! Still, it should be interesting, though I was horrified to see we now have to do Sweatboxes, which means regular presentations of our work >.< I hate that stuff, but I know it'll be vital practice and well worth it for the feedback, so I'll just grin and bear it. In the meantime, I'll pop my Advanced Tech stuff up on my main blog, and post a few things I forgot to put up here before. So here are some Buffy base colour tests, expression and pose sheets, and my Production breakdown/charts.