jonjon does concept art!
polycounter lvl 6
Hey everyone!
I'm starting this thread for several reasons. First is I've been going through polycount for several years now, usually just checking out the recaps and various competitions but never really making myself known. I want to change that, so this is my start of me becoming a more active and worthwhile member of the site.
The second reason being I want to further my skills as a digital artist. I'm wanting to really push myself this year and try and land a concept art job in the industry. I'm aware of how hard that is, so I guess it's time to hit the ground running!
To start the thread off I've set myself a little project. I've come up with a few ideas for interesting characters that would fit in a fantasy based game like the various MOBAs and class based games out there at the moment e.g. DOTA, LOL, Fable, Smite. I want to go through a studio-like design process for the characters, coming up with a rough concept for each character and then breaking them down into key features which I can explore and refine further through design pages. I'd love some help with this process from anyone willing and I'm open to any critique people have.
The first character I'm designing I call the Culinary Wizard/Dinner Lady. I wanted to add a bit of comedy to the classic idea of a wizard or witch and decided to go for the idea of a magic user who includes food within their spells, for example chili peppers would create fire based magic. Here's a rough concept just to get the idea down on paper so to speak. I'll spend the next week doing design pages for her various features, such as her head, hair and body, and I'll pick my favorites for the final design. I'll post up the design pages on here too so you guys can give me your opinions and critique too!
Thanks guys and sorry about the long winded first post :poly124:
I'm starting this thread for several reasons. First is I've been going through polycount for several years now, usually just checking out the recaps and various competitions but never really making myself known. I want to change that, so this is my start of me becoming a more active and worthwhile member of the site.
The second reason being I want to further my skills as a digital artist. I'm wanting to really push myself this year and try and land a concept art job in the industry. I'm aware of how hard that is, so I guess it's time to hit the ground running!
To start the thread off I've set myself a little project. I've come up with a few ideas for interesting characters that would fit in a fantasy based game like the various MOBAs and class based games out there at the moment e.g. DOTA, LOL, Fable, Smite. I want to go through a studio-like design process for the characters, coming up with a rough concept for each character and then breaking them down into key features which I can explore and refine further through design pages. I'd love some help with this process from anyone willing and I'm open to any critique people have.
The first character I'm designing I call the Culinary Wizard/Dinner Lady. I wanted to add a bit of comedy to the classic idea of a wizard or witch and decided to go for the idea of a magic user who includes food within their spells, for example chili peppers would create fire based magic. Here's a rough concept just to get the idea down on paper so to speak. I'll spend the next week doing design pages for her various features, such as her head, hair and body, and I'll pick my favorites for the final design. I'll post up the design pages on here too so you guys can give me your opinions and critique too!
Thanks guys and sorry about the long winded first post :poly124:
Replies
Good that you're working towards getting better, I have some critiques that I think will help, first on the design.
You have some good shape language going one, lots of round shapes, even her pot, hat and ladle are round, makes her feel very friendly and non-threatening, like an ordinary cook that happens to use chili-magic. Awesome.
But right now there isn't anything in her design that grabs your attention, no focal point or detail change to entertain the eye. You could have some magical designs on her gloves, apron and hat, or a necklace, or maybe even some layered, designed pants or shirt.
Her breasts are a bit off, breasts tend to hang and sit on the ribcage, so they wouldn't be so rounded as you have them now. The shirt overtop also wouldn't stick to the contours of the chest so tightly, it would bridge the gap in between the breasts like this.
On your rendering, there are a few things that stick out to me.
Lots of the colors are very high-contrast, while the ladle and fire/chili are very low contrast. To make something look hot or bright, it needs to be against something dark. If you made the ladle dark, it should do the job.
You have no bounce light in the scene, so the darks just get darker, but there should be reflected light lightening up the dark sides of object.
Light objects won't get that dark in such a lit scene, the shaded side will still be quite bright. When you paint an object, it doesn't need to use the entire value range. The dark side of a white hat, for example, might still be brighter than the light side of a dark boot.
I did a paintover to show what I'm going on about.
All I did was paint out some of the contrast on some of the objects, added some details to the shirt and apron, I gave her some fancy boots, and a magical ladle, which I made dark so the fire feels brighter.
You could go farther design-wise, having material changes in the clothes, other cooking tools on a belt, and different details/wear on the rest of the outfit.
I know I tend to be long-winded when giving critiques, but it's only because I get excited, haha.
Keep it up!
Her design is super boring at the moment but that's what I plan to explore in this project. I've gotten down the basic idea of her, now I'm gonna do some design pages for her various, like her hair, hat, apron etc. and add those various magical elements to her. Eventually I'm going to create an entirely new illustration with all those new elements applied and showing her at her best (much like a league of legends splash art)
I totally agree with you on the lighting front, so far I haven't really been that brave in my attempts at bounce lighting but I want my final illustration for this character to be as perfect as it can be so hopefully I'll get it down by then!
Thanks again!
So after doing that rough concept the other day I decided to explore some other ideas by doing some little sketches. I created these eight characters and used them to explore a few possibilities, for example with number 3 I explored the idea of the dinner lady riding on this huge walking cauldron whilst she mixed her potions and spells.
The second sketch is a combination of the ideas I liked the most. I liked the body shapes of 2 and 4 but I really liked the over sized ladle that number 8 is wielding. I also liked number 3's walking cooking pot, but came to the conclusion that having her ride it like that would make her less of a magic class and appear more like a tank class of some form. So I shrunk it down and decided to have it more as a familiar instead.
The second sketch is in no way a final design or pose, I just wanted to have some way of seeing how my favorite ideas would look together. I'm going to explore this particular design further now. I think first I'll go into the design of her face and hair/hat. If there's any other ideas that you guys have or if you think I should expand on any of the existing eight just let me know
Sorry for replying so late, hope my comments will still be relevant.
Nice thumbs! Bunch of cool things going on, and the new design feels nicer, but I think still needs some work.
#s 1,6, and 7 are my favorites, they have that impact of when you look, you keep looking for a second or two.
#6 has the large, fiery gloves and the tall wraithlike-look, which is interesting.
#7 is my second favorite. She looks like a traveling cook with that big pot on her back. It's an interesting silhouette that reads more than just a cook, but leads you on with more questions.
#1 is my most favorite. With the tall, floppy hat, the large sack on her back, and especially the almost out of place cut-and-slash sleeves really make you want to know more about her. Maybe she was royalty at one time? Looks like she has clown makeup on, so maybe a jester/cook to some crazy king? She has a really good stance too, looks ready to kick some ass.
The girl on the second image is interesting with her large ladle and familiar, but I think you really need to push her to make her stand out. The ladle could be made much bigger, almost like a mages staff. Her clothes, hairstyle, and general look just says 'normal medieval town wench' to me.
Something that might help is to imagine a story behind her.
Something like, a royal cook was cooking some mushrooms that were brought in when, boom! The whole thing blew up. Apparently they were demon mushrooms and now the pot she was cooking in is now a demon familiar, she's a magical soup-witch and the ladle was transformed into an ultimate ladle of hell-magic. She had to fight her way out of the castle and now lives on the run cooking children to power her ever growing soup-magic.
Kind of silly, but a story can give you ideas as to what she's wearing, why is it in the condition it's in, and even what her familiar looks like.:D
Good luck!
The second image I posted was purely a rough silhouette as reference for myself, but reading what you said about establishing a back story has helped massively! I'm currently doing a page of head designs and some of the heads I've sketched just haven't been working as well as I'd have liked so this could really influence some ideas for that
As for her attire I'm quite fond of taking the makers from darksiders 2 as an influence. I really like their clothing styles and I'd like to put a bit of that into my characters style. If you're not familiar with the makers at all, here's a pic for reference. Although I do really like them I do want to explore other ideas as well just so I know I have all my bases covered.
Something I'm trying to work on is to keep the original design language in mind. The maker style is lots of concentric circles, cut off arches, bunches of celtic influences and dangling metal bits. Sometimes that can help out a ton when throwing down shapes or figuring out how to end a sleeve or what detail to put on a weapon.
So since I last posted Ive done some head designs for the Dinner Lady character. In the first image I was just exploring any ideas that came to my head. I really the character that I came up with in the top right and decided to explore that one further. After talking to a friend he pointed out to me that she looked liked she might have a Gypsy background and I really liked that as an idea so thats what I went with when exploring her design further. Thats what the second image is all about. Im still undecided on which I like the most. I think for the final design I might combine my favorite elements of some and see what it creates.
The Next step for me is to explore clothes and armour designs, I'll post them once their done.
Let me know what you think guys, questions, comments and critique are welcome as always.
Once I've got a final design for her costume and I've finally decided on her head Ill be designing her Ladle/Staff and her cooking pot familiar. Let me know what you guys think!
On the last lineup, I like a lot of the ideas you have in all of the costumes, but I think the one on the left works the best as it is right now. The two to the right have lots going on, so it's hard to focus my attention anywhere. The girl on the left has nice rest areas on her dress, draws the eyes to the little string things around her hips, which act like lines leading the eye to her belt buckle.
All three have lot's of cool things going on, they are all easily so much better than where you started. Can't wait to see more!