Liam Juckes: Character Production
Brainstorm
Early on in the brainstorming process I made the decision that I wanted to make a character centered around the military as I believe trying to create accurate uniforms and the way the clothing drapes over the body will be quite an interesting challenge to try and sculpt and draw. My other main ideas were pirates or an astronaut, I decided that pirates were too common and wouldn't be as interesting to try and draw and develop and creating an astronaut would be interesting but would lack any research into the anatomy of the character because the space suit does not drape over the figure like the other types of characters clothing would.
Character Background
My character is a 19 year old only child from quite a poor and deprived family, he is a very timid and shy person who would try and steer clear of conflict of any form as he feels like he would not be able to defend himself in these situations.
He has been called up to fight in the second world war against his will just like many others meaning he is therefore terrified of what lies ahead and severely under trained to fight, with his shy and timid personality he is going to have a serious life lesson when he appears on the frontline.
Character Appearance
My character is quite small for his age and is also quite obviously badly malnourished because of the lack of food in the family especially during the time of war. On the frontline he is going to be wearing the generic uniform used by british infantry in world war 2.
Weapons
The choice of weapons for my character to use were the Thompson submachine gun, the Sten submachine gun or the Lee Enfield rifle, as well as this he would have a Webley Revolver as his sidearm.
Initial Sketches
These were my initial sketches that I did to try and get an idea of how to draw the uniform of a british soldier, these sketches were strongly influenced by some of the reference images that I have used, I chose specific areas of images to do sketches of because i think that these specific bits would help when it comes to my final concept piece.
Silhouette Poses
Once I had done the sketches I then decided to do some digital work by making some silhouettes of possible poses that I could use in my final concept piece. Out of the silhouettes that I created I decided that I should use the drawing in the middle on the bottom row as this would be the correct pose that I wanted having one knee on the ground and the other sticking up while the character is aiming over a wall.
Character Silhouettes
I then decided that I should then make some more detailed silhouettes to test what kind of clothing and equipment would look best on my character. The top set of silhouettes were tests to see what the same soldier would look like with more or less equipment and also what another rank of soldier would look like. The second set of images are a mixture of different poses that i could use for my final concept.
Developed Character Silhouettes
Before moving onto drawing the final concept and the orthographic views of the characters I decided that I should develop some of the previous silhouettes to see how the folds and creases would look when you just change the value before adding any colour to it. I will then try and use the same techniques when it comes to creating the final concept piece.
Character Orthographic View
These are the orthographic drawings that I have done of my character, I chose to have standing in a pose where he standing at attention so it relates more to what my character actually is rather than just putting him in a generic t pose. I put in washes of the base colours that I had from the reference images just to give it a bit more context rather than leaving it as just a plain pencil drawing. I also used the reference images to make sure that I included all of the equipment that a british soldier would initially take into battle. In the final concept I am not going to include all of equipment because I want to give across the idea that he had been in battle for a while and had thrown away some of his gear to release some of the weight that had been dragging him down.
Character Concept
This is my final character concept art piece, I have chosen this pose because I believe that it is giving the effect that he is in motion more so than it would if I just had him in a standing pose aiming his gun. I then decided to draw my background with the idea that the character is in the middle of a full on battle. By doing this it has also added another light source which adds an interesting direction of light over the character.
Character Mudbox Base Model
This is the how the model first looked after taking it straight into Mudbox from 3ds Max, from here I then went through each separate part of the body and added subdivisions so that I could then add more detail.
These were the different stages of detail that I applied onto the head, at first I added more shape to the face by applying more to the jaw and the cheekbones so that the face looked more realistic. The next stage was adding the strokes of hair to the head before I added the texture so that it didn't look flat and lifeless. I added a texture that consisted of skin, pours and hair to try and make it look as realistic as I could.
Early on in the brainstorming process I made the decision that I wanted to make a character centered around the military as I believe trying to create accurate uniforms and the way the clothing drapes over the body will be quite an interesting challenge to try and sculpt and draw. My other main ideas were pirates or an astronaut, I decided that pirates were too common and wouldn't be as interesting to try and draw and develop and creating an astronaut would be interesting but would lack any research into the anatomy of the character because the space suit does not drape over the figure like the other types of characters clothing would.
Character Background
My character is a 19 year old only child from quite a poor and deprived family, he is a very timid and shy person who would try and steer clear of conflict of any form as he feels like he would not be able to defend himself in these situations.
He has been called up to fight in the second world war against his will just like many others meaning he is therefore terrified of what lies ahead and severely under trained to fight, with his shy and timid personality he is going to have a serious life lesson when he appears on the frontline.
Character Appearance
My character is quite small for his age and is also quite obviously badly malnourished because of the lack of food in the family especially during the time of war. On the frontline he is going to be wearing the generic uniform used by british infantry in world war 2.
Weapons
The choice of weapons for my character to use were the Thompson submachine gun, the Sten submachine gun or the Lee Enfield rifle, as well as this he would have a Webley Revolver as his sidearm.
Initial Sketches
These were my initial sketches that I did to try and get an idea of how to draw the uniform of a british soldier, these sketches were strongly influenced by some of the reference images that I have used, I chose specific areas of images to do sketches of because i think that these specific bits would help when it comes to my final concept piece.
Silhouette Poses
Once I had done the sketches I then decided to do some digital work by making some silhouettes of possible poses that I could use in my final concept piece. Out of the silhouettes that I created I decided that I should use the drawing in the middle on the bottom row as this would be the correct pose that I wanted having one knee on the ground and the other sticking up while the character is aiming over a wall.
Character Silhouettes
I then decided that I should then make some more detailed silhouettes to test what kind of clothing and equipment would look best on my character. The top set of silhouettes were tests to see what the same soldier would look like with more or less equipment and also what another rank of soldier would look like. The second set of images are a mixture of different poses that i could use for my final concept.
Developed Character Silhouettes
Before moving onto drawing the final concept and the orthographic views of the characters I decided that I should develop some of the previous silhouettes to see how the folds and creases would look when you just change the value before adding any colour to it. I will then try and use the same techniques when it comes to creating the final concept piece.
Character Orthographic View
These are the orthographic drawings that I have done of my character, I chose to have standing in a pose where he standing at attention so it relates more to what my character actually is rather than just putting him in a generic t pose. I put in washes of the base colours that I had from the reference images just to give it a bit more context rather than leaving it as just a plain pencil drawing. I also used the reference images to make sure that I included all of the equipment that a british soldier would initially take into battle. In the final concept I am not going to include all of equipment because I want to give across the idea that he had been in battle for a while and had thrown away some of his gear to release some of the weight that had been dragging him down.
Character Concept
This is my final character concept art piece, I have chosen this pose because I believe that it is giving the effect that he is in motion more so than it would if I just had him in a standing pose aiming his gun. I then decided to draw my background with the idea that the character is in the middle of a full on battle. By doing this it has also added another light source which adds an interesting direction of light over the character.
Character Mudbox Base Model
This is the how the model first looked after taking it straight into Mudbox from 3ds Max, from here I then went through each separate part of the body and added subdivisions so that I could then add more detail.
These were the different stages of detail that I applied onto the head, at first I added more shape to the face by applying more to the jaw and the cheekbones so that the face looked more realistic. The next stage was adding the strokes of hair to the head before I added the texture so that it didn't look flat and lifeless. I added a texture that consisted of skin, pours and hair to try and make it look as realistic as I could.
Replies
Before moving onto something further down the body I decided that I should get the helmet detailed and textured. The main detail that I added on the helmet were slight dents on top and a textured surface to the strap to make it look like leather, I then added a scratched metal texture to the helmet itself and the leather texture to the strap.
The next stage of the character was improving the torso and arms which is one of the most detailed parts of the body because of the uniform. The first bit of detail that I needed to add were the creases which I tried to make look as natural as possible by looking at real references images of the way that clothes fold. The next part of detail that I added were the pockets, collar, buttons and fabric texture to make it look as much like a British WWII uniform as possible. I then added the necessary colours to the right areas of the uniform.
The next part of the body I needed to add detail was the belt, this was quite a simple part of the body to add detail to as the main parts I added were just fabric, leather and buttons. After I did that I added the texture of the leather and fabric.
The next stage was adding detail to the hands, the main parts I needed to add were the more definition to the knuckles and bones in the hand to make it look a bit more realistic. I then added the skin texture with some extra pours to make it look a lot more natural.
The trousers were the next part to improve, these were also a very detailed part of the body as there were a lot of different parts that I needed to add in order to make it look a lot like real trousers on the British uniform. The main detail I sculpted on the trousers were the pockets, creases and fabric texture which I believe look quite realistic. I then added the texture which consisted of a the same type of fabric as the torso and also the buttons on the pockets.
For the boots I added detail to the laces and the rest of the shoes to try and make them look as identical as possible to the reference images I found of the boots that they used to wear during the war. Once the sculpting detail was done I then added the leather texture to the boots and fabric detail to the ankle pads.