Unnamed Project

princette

Goodness, I'm bad at naming threads. Couldn't decide which project of mine to post work from, so lets start with this one! I still don't have a name for it unfortunately. >.<;; Just going to be posting art I do in relation to this project here, and character design and such. I'm very inexperienced but would like to improve, so critiques are certainly welcome! on my art...on my character design...everything's game.


The main character (at least at the moment) is named Vanna, and this was the original picture I did of her:

princette

Vanna has two girlfriends, Circe (first picture) and Anise (second picture)! not totally sold on Circe's design yet...

princette

Sketching some things as I work on a merchant design. This old bird hag was a golem of sorts made of various magical items, which gained life.

She's also really short.

Adam Chilton

First peice of advice would be to go back and start again (sort of).  These look to be pencil work, so am I right in assuming these are the first pass at everything?

Try drawing over each of the characters with different concepts.  Take the same drawing, erase the hair and then draw new styles.

When it comes to designing concepts.  Leave the technique at the door, and concentrate and how many ideas you can come up with.  Once you have a few down you can settle on some ideas, but until then continue to adjust your concepts.

princette

the drawings of circe, anise, and the second picture of the old bird hag are traditional pencil work, yes, and in the case of circe and anise they are the first drawings I've done of them (that picture of vanna is the first I did of her, and the digital sketch of the bird hag was the first in her case)

thanks for the advice! I guess I did sort of neglect to do that with this project, even though I've done it with some of my other projects....

RainbowRat

I love the way you did your character´s faces, really cool! As for the hag or character design in general, do some shilouettes! A whole bunch of them! They´re so fun to make plus you can control whatever the character should express in the end way better. And references, of course: Birds, feathers, cloaks etc. Pinterest is always great for clothing : P Do you usually draw bust or headshots of your characters? Then you should probably do some anatomy stuff as well <:

princette

thank you! I wouldn't say I always do bust/headshot drawings, I simply did for these guys cause I had no idea what kind of clothing I wanted. maybe I should stop putting off checking out pinterest...
silhouettes sounded fun! I don't have much experience doing them, but I suppose I'll try some when I get the chance!

tried some different hairstyles for circe! I was gonna wait to post this until I did some for anise and vanna too, but I got impatient;;

RainbowRat

These look cool! I´m struggling with hair and hairstyles myself, definitely need to do more research on that. Is Circe more of a snooty type? Then I think first two (up and down) look best. Now that I noticed it, put little letters or numbers next to the heads so people can name them better! : D
I think it´d be also fun to think about all kinds of movies which feature characters which are similar to yours and check out their hairstyle and how they emphasize the character. Maybe details like hair clips as well etc

princette

oh gosh yeah I should have labelled those. whoops. And I don't know if snooty is the word I would use, but I do think I'm going to keep the long hair (first one) for her yeah.

did some merchant silhouettes!



gonna use B for the old bird hag, A looks too blobby and her necklace doesn't look good in the silhouette imo so I'll either remove it or only have a bit of it show inside her hood/cloak, C doesn't have the diminutive look I want for her, and neither does D, nor does it have the aged look I want... however I really like D so I'll probably make a separate merchant design based on it.

RainbowRat

When it comes down to shilouettes it´s always good to try lots of different things. Different brushes, refs, techniques etc. I always have a bad conscience when I don´t do a whole bunch of them xD But if you can settle down on a concept quickly it´s hard to come up with different things... (using different methods makes it more fun and easier for me).
I did some own interpretations and added some details like a skull or a root cane. Plus you could add a turkey-like lappet to imitate a wart xD Or some more fuzzy feathers. Or nothing and all and stay with your ideas ^.^

RN

Not sure why I did this, an idea for the smoking pipe.



EDIT: Forgot to say, very nice characters. I wonder in what kind of project (short film, game) you're going to use them?

princette

oh rainbowrat those are lovely! but I suppose I should clarify, my lil merchant isn't literally a bird. I want her to kind of...evoke the sense of a bird, and a very old lady, but the truth is she's a sort of golem comprised of magical items, which happens to have gained sentience and now sells you stuff and sits around smoking with a goddess she's friends with.

speaking of said goddess, I just realized I never posted a picture of her.



old drawing, not the best, and I still want to explore her design, but this was my first drawing of her, done back when I did those initial drawings of the girls.

also that's a super cool design, rn! might have to be tweaked a lil since it doubles as her walking stick but I really love it!
also thank you, and I'm hoping to make a game with these characters! ^^

princette

Haven't done anything SUPER important on this project recently, so have some misc. doodles I've done over the course of starting this. (bottom right doodle of Circe and the one of Vanna above it were kinda joke pictures drawn for halloween prompts on tumblr)

RN

Hello. Awesome designs. I wish you would finalise some of them (digital ink & paint etc.).

You can get Krita for free, then you can set up the Stabiliser feature and inking becomes very fun (provided you arrange a few custom brushes for this).
The Stabiliser makes you feel like you have the hand precision of a robot. It also stabilises the pen pressure, so you can add clean dynamic weight to your lines.
I only use Krita for inking -- I save the lines as a PSD and continue in Photoshop, which to me has a bit smoother workflow.

I wanted to practice L*a*b* colour picking, so I hope you don't mind me borrowing your design for that...

princette

I'll have to check that out sometime! Inking is practically the bane of my existence at the moment.

and no, I don't mind at all! that looks fantastic, thank you!