Scanned in sidekick

Scanned the finished sketch into Photoshop and set up the channels to make it into a line art piece, making it easier for me to colour in and make variations. I really enjoyed this process and didnt take me long at all, im very pleased with the outcome and has boosted my confidence a bit about the whole project.

This is the line art, simply made a new layer and draw over the sketch to get a crisper and thicker line. Then iI made a channal layer so I could colour in and not lose the lines, also I edited areas to make the proportions more realistic such as making the back legs thicker and the head larger.

I started adding colour but there are areas I still need to fine tune such as the mouth, paws and claws

This is the finished product, as you can see the paws are alot neater and the mouth is alot more anatomically correct. I changed the colour or the eyes to get a more wolf like feel

Sidekick

So I thought it was about time I started one of my other character designs just to make a start on them. I started a sketch on paper of the wolf I wanted as the sidekick first looking up referances of structure facial features etc. I drew the face first and after I was happy with that I found a stance that I liked from reference and drew that in, the whole process from start to finish took me about 35-40 minutes (I havnt drawn traditionally in a while) I was happy with the outcome but new I was going to scan it into photoshop later so I wasnt to fussed over much detail.

First front face sketch

Not a very good picture but heres the finished

OMG IM STUPID!

Im actually really doubting my intellect as of late, the pen and tablet that I have had for nearly five years has basically been working as a glorified mouse! I was working away on my character when my teacher noticed something, he said have I got the pen pressure on? and I said yes because the icon is selected in photoshop saying so..... not the case.... the whole time I have had the tablet I never installed the driver that came with it because I thought it worked just fine because you just plug it in and away you go..... *face palm*..... so the basic tools like pressure and opacity hadnt been working at all and thats why I been faced with some difficulty with my work because I was individually sieving through EVERY colour tone to get shadows and highlights and having to manually change my brush sizes when I could just have utilised the pen pressure ability. Oh dear jess..... So with the help and patience of my teacher (who wasnt even teaching me at the time he just noticed it walking past me) downloaded and installed the correct driver from the website. Now the graphics tablet is an entirely new experience for me to work with in short its bloody brilliant! cant believe how difficult I had been making it for myself over these years! You can see the difference below, this only took me like half an hour!

Restart

Ok I started again, even though everyone one has been telling me not to, I just feel it inmy gut that if I start again n an entirely new technique I will get a better outcome, this time I wont draw an outline and colour it in, this time I will use just colour and use layers to build up an image, so far it has been going well and I have a better feeling towards it, below is a basic 5 min progression of the technique I hope to work in

I used some reference images of male torso's and muscle groups and simply drew a realy rough colour block of head and torso shape and then I created a new layer and drew a rough head shape and features such as the coller bones and shoulder indentations. I the erased the outside of the line and started using rough colours to highlight and lowlight shadows and facial features. Already I feel better about this concept

best so far

So after some more feed back from my contacts, iv managed to get it looking as best I can, I'm still fed up of it looking so cartoon like. I have been mirroring the image to get a different perspective on it and I realised how out of proportion the top right of the head was in comparison, its funny because at the angle iv been working at, i thought the face was fine and in proportion, strange how your image of something can be distorted by changing the perpective. Had i kept working at one angle i wouldnt have seen this huge fault. below is the comparison between the before and after of my character after working at a new angle

As you can see the whole top right of the face and eye has been brought in and lifted. I'v also worked into it a little bit more, the eyes ruin it for me though, if you cover them the rest of the image looks a higher quality. Im really leaning towards the idea of starting again.

:S

Iv been looking at my design and its actually driving me mad and I'm hardly at the level I want to be and I know it, but I feel like my level is not progressing and it's not at a standard where anyone would hire me :( I keep tweaking it slightly and its better than it was before but I'm too scared just to be more loose with my drawing style and you can tell how strict im being with it. Thats my wall that I need to break through. So here is the most up to date version and you can see the difference from the last post, I've been getting feed back from some contacts in the industry, its been very helpful and its seriously making me think about just starting again in an entirely diffents art style- no outlining, just working into colour.

The eyes are driving my mad still ARGHHHH!!!! and the eyebrows are too prodominent and the eyes still look cartoony -.-

Taking shape

After working into one of the heads a little bit I thought I should add a colour version only because the more I worked into it in black and white the more he started looking a bit zombiefied. I'll do more colour and style variations but for now this is what I'v come up with....

The start of something AWSOME

So after doing my three quick head variations, I wanted to really make clear differences in there appearances other than just changing the facial hair, so my next three were alot more diverse as I changed facial structure, hair styles and age. Im happy with how they are coming along but there are features I struggle with drawing masculin characters as I always end up making them look a bit feminin especially around the lip and eye area, so that is something I am going to need to work on. Also as well I really want to start making my drawings look more realistic as my art style has always been a bit cartoony or cell shaded stylee, to try and work away from this habit I need to stop drawing a black sketch outlind and then trying to work around it as iv noticed on a lot of tutorials I'v watched for speed drawing for faces that the artist works into a block of colour rather than doing a clear outline and working around that. Practise practise practise, but for now just while im getting the general feel for how I want my character to look I dont really need to worry about it just yet. Here are the next three heads I did with an attempt at working into one a little bit, I;m pleased with the way the hair has turned out as that was also a feature i struggled with but I'v become more acquianted with photoshop now and found an awsome brust that makes it look more realistic ^.^ happy jess is happy. What do you think?

The bottom left looks a bit Deus Ex-ish and the right is looking a bit Uncharted-esque so I need to start making them 'my own'

inspiration

I want my character to be a lovable rouge type and I want there to be that fatherly like air him. So for inspiration I am going to use my dad as a foundation because he has the exact type of look im going for with distiguishing quirky features such as, scars on his nose from an accident and slight bumps from where it was broken and a rugged beard and an earring (il post a picture because im making him sound like a biker gang member or something ^.^).
I started by going a really quick byro sketch on a scrap piece of paper just to get a initial idea of how I want him to look whilst looking at a picture of my dad for inspiration taking key features. After I'd drawn it, I scanned it into my computer and imported it into photoshop and started making variations of that head (pictured) I only did some slight changes just to get a feel of what I wanted to do later and some lines and shapes I could achieve. Below are some pictures of the  sketch, the first three heads I did and the inspiration from pictures of my dad from when he was a bit younger (and me when I was five sorry :/ ).

 First sketch up taking features from the images below

 When his nose was a bit straighter bless him, handsome chappy

 lol he looks like a lumber jack ^.^

thick hair and eyebrows where another feature I wanted. Here are my first three 'warm ups' I suppose you could call them

FMP character foundations

For my main character I wanted to create a sort of dad like figure that the hypothetical player would empathise with but he would still be a a tough nut. I want to create a character that is a break away from the normal 'slick/hard' type bad ass and for him to be a sad soul almost but to be relatable, like he is capable of looking after himself but he is still capable of feeling and showing fear. The idea of my backstory for the character is that he was at some point a husband and a father (but he loses them) and I really want these qualities to show through, I want the character to look hard but have a very emotive face.
The Animal idea I had, along with the theme (sci-fi) is that it is a cybertronic dog that is his sidekick and had useful features like communications to base and computer hacking ect (basically R2-D2 in dog form). It would be the 'guardian' of our main character in a 'state the obviouse' kind of way, like if the building was on fire the dog would comment 'I think we should get out now', think jarvais in Iron Man. The dog will feel like it should have been part of the main characters past life along with the family he had, that is why there will be a sense of comfort while it is around (if that makes sense)
The enemy (if I have time)will be something that will have been man made and it turned on the creators, again and feeling robotic type cyborg figures and wernt quite 'finished' so there will be something rather monstrouse and maybe animalistic about them.

When it comes to actually transferring my complete designs into 3D modelling I will be using multiple softwares to broaden my knowledge so i will create one character in 3DS Max and one in Maya and then for detailing I will use Mud box or Zbrush (or both).

Start plan

So for my final major project I'm going to play to my strengths and do a character design, there are a few aspects I will cover in character design:-

• Sketch design
• Digital artwork
• 3D design (in 3DS Max and Maya)
• Animate
• Physical clay crafted model

At first I thought I would do vehicle and weapon design as it is an aspect I haven't really explored before, but me and Jamie (class friend) decided we would do a collaborative project where he would design a level using unreal and I would create a character for that design. I decided against the vehicle and weapon design for two reasons, firstly the level design software Jamie that was using has its own weapons and vehicles and secondly I want to primarily specialize in character design so I wanted to hone my skills further and learn new software in the process.
I initially wanted to do some kind of bad ass female mecca pilot as it is something I had previously looked into on a past project but felt as I had already done this before that I should try a male character as the structure would be new ground for me to explore as I always draw slender features and structures. As well as a main male character I wanted to look into creature creation maybe a monster or animal, so I will create an enemy for my main character and an animal sidekick. The theme throughout will be heavily sci-fi based with the focus being towards robotics and cyborgs maybe even future based.