Mallaria character design improvment thread

Mallaria

Heyy~~
I really need to improve my character design. It always was my main interest in drawing i love doing that. I can draw other stuff, but character design is my thing  
i hope doing this thread and posting my stuff is going to help me. Im counting on polycount community Ive been lurking here for some time now, and decided to make 2d thread with my works. I posted couple of my 3D stuff on 3d too.
Anyway if anyone is interested in maybe taking any of my concepts and try to sculpt them or whatnot. Go ahead just let me know ^^ and show me  results! 

Some of my previous works: 


This one \/ is made for final classes of CGMA Character illustration for games nad film with Bjorn Hurri, i recommend it a lot! I sadly didn't fisnish it as much as i would want to, although i will try to in near future  

Mallaria

I been working on these for some time, i would like to know your feedback. As which one should i work on more further  

Mallaria

Hey!
I started working on number 3 concept as a warm up.
What do you guys think? I already got some feedback to change heads from 3 to 1st body. But i'm not sure about that move as i'm not into 1st body  

RainbowRat

I really like the first character design sheet you posted, the character´s pose and anatomy looks cool! Plus you captured that "native" look in the headshots well. With some color it´d have been perfect : D
As for the most recent sheet, is there any background info to it? Any kind of story? Don´t know about others but for me it´s always kinda difficult to judge a character design without any background... the armor designs look very interesting though <:

Mallaria

Thanks! I didn't chose that pose especially because if one day i gave it to a 3d artist he would probably like to see character as a whole and since it was from a side, it wouldn't be possible to see it. I though it just might be nice to see her front
About character story. Ive while drawing previous sheet i was thinking about warrior-type characters. But different styles. In recent  one i was going for a fantasy or sci-fi. Since in the beginning the drawing was a simple i though i might just experiment with it later on While drawing this one i had in mind "Warrior, feminie but badass and confident. Something more than just a warrior, maybe something with higher rank"  
I know in the real world i would have already a short brief or at least a small history of a character. but i didn't had it when i started sketching first sheet of character. Just couple of keywords.

RainbowRat

Hm, well I think the "higher rank" part suits the first design of your last post best. It has a tiny little Lightning (FF13) taste to me which definitely supports the badass, confident women thing :D Higher rank would also mean an emblem of some sort, depending on what kind of unit she´s in. You could add some details like that on her armor or cloak so the viewer could wonder what it means? I also think her shoes look a little plain, a buckle or something similar  would be nice I guess.
 The other two designs don´t look that much of a higher rank or leader to me, mostly because of the waving hair. The clothing also looks a little too badass, they give me more an impression of sidekicks

Mallaria

@RainbowRat
Thanks! i decided to go with 1st concept and changed hair from 3rd concept ^^'
it looks like that now:


I need to fix hands still and then i will do side and back view, and might color her. 
any C&C will be welcome!

ryebot

Your technical skills have definitely improved from the work earlier in the thread to this one. Her pose looks a little unbalanced, like she's leaning to the side a bit? As a concept, it seems fine, but nothing really grabs me about her silhouette or design. There aren't really any unifying elements — her boots, chest , and shoulder all have a different design language, so it might be nice to see a little more connection between them. I think it would help bring the character together a bit more.

I'm sure you've made a lot of progress since this post too!

Aaron Barnett

Definitely seeing some improvement here! I would mostly focus on better correlating the outfits, i.e.; matching gauntlets, boots and chest pieces etc..

Also keep working on more unique and prominent silhouettes. This will really help your characters stand out from the rest and keep them from getting washed away in a sea of generic warrior types.

Keep it up!

beccatherose

Great improvement going on in here Personally, I really love when you're allowing yourself to handpaint images instead of relying on textured brushes (like in the first one.) Have the confidence to keep handpainting, you've gotten a good handle on it! Keep going!

Mallaria

Oh my my! Thanks everyone for your opinion. I already finished that girl loong time ago tho, but I will take all things you said into consideration while doing other characters Its right while designing characters I doint think much about unyfing  outfits. I really want to make more appealing silhouettes, but its not an easy task :c 
Ive been doing more texture work and 3d lately, and didn't draw much characters, but im going to break that flow, since I need to work on painting male characters waaay more.
This is what  I just finished. in between work and 3d work  
I know these are pretty generic, but since I suck at drawing females, Im just trying my best here to come out with something that resembles males, as they still look feminine, the one in right especially xD