Genre Artwork 3 (25/1/2013)

Looking over the new character credit card concepts that I drew in order to get a better understanding of what my final piece would look like, I decided to draw two final pieces and then pick the best one from the two.
You can see the credit card concepts again below:

I decided to go with pose 1 and 6 as the first one had a good stance and therefore I felt would look even better extended to include an open leg stance instead of a boring straight one. Also I chose number 6 for its originality as I haven't seen too many female characters in this position before, although I recognise that her upper body needed to be in proportion to her lower body.  

Spending quite a few hours on both pieces was necessary in the end as not only was I drawing A4 versions that required more detail than quick credit card sized ones, but I was also drawing a female character and therefore am still practicing their anatomy.

After a lot of erasing and changes I finally came up with the two following pieces. I also decided to scan both of them twice in order to show the rough versions of them before the penned versions.

Looking at the above I could see changes I need to make. Therefore I decided to draw the second image with a longer t-shirt so as it would not only cover most of her trousers, but also make it look like an XXL size. I also went back to my research images and noticed what I was doing wrong with the foot and therefore decided to change it for the penned version. Finally I had forgotten to do the camouflage patterns on her combat trousers and will make sure to include these in the final piece.   

The penned versions came out even better than I had hoped and whereas I notice that I went over some of the lines by accident I know I can rub them out on Photoshop. Sadly, I can see that I messed up the first image's eyes as her pupils look different. Hopefully I will be able to correct these on Photoshop, otherwise I will find it hard to forgive myself for such an error. 

Overall even though I am pleased with coming up with two final sketches I recognise that I still need to work on my characters hands and feet as they are either not in proportion or are too 'spade like' e.g. fingers and toes are the same length.

However, I feel that from drawing a female character for this task not only has my skill at drawing improved, but also my ability to draw women. Therefore I hope this skill increases over time so as I can one day feel completely confident in my work and not worry about mistakes. 

I will also make sure to draw more lightly in the future as even though I only used a 2H pencil the lines came out darker than I had expected. Therefore taken a lot longer to rub out and sadly still showing up in my sketch book.

One to One Lecturer Feedback (22/1/2013)

During this session I spoke with my lecturer in order to find out how I was doing in this module.

Below are bullet points of the notes and advice he gave me:

• Measuring future sketches may help me get the correct proportions for a person e.g. take the size of their head and measure their body with 7 heads.   
• Bleed shading together so as to make my cartoon like lines into realistic lines.
• Use lost and found lines as your eyes fill out the lines.
• Use Z-Brush in order to create my ideas before drawings them. That way I can get the right perspective and shape as I originally tried to do with my space ship.
• Don't bother doing poses for my credit card concepts as they don't really count. However, drawing different poses later on to get an idea of what pose to put the character in is a good thing. 
• Try and experiment with more realistic drawings and try and include shading in future works. Therefore expanding my style and creating more detailed works of art. 
• Try and do hair, clothes and accessories before the credit card concepts as you can then mix and match your ideas. Similar to how I did the space pilot and my recent character with her hair under her hat.
• If I find the time then I should go back and add darker lines to my original environment piece I drew as my lecturer thought the bottom of it was separate to the rest of it, almost like a comic book. Therefore adding the dark lines would give it the correct perspective as the closer something is the more clearer it should be.  

At the moment my lecturer says that I am looking at a 65 grade for my research which is a high mark and a 55 grade for my drawing which is a middle mark. This is because, although my chosen cartoon art style is very good, it does however limit me in a way as the characters seem too flat. Therefore, to gain a higher mark I will need to bring them out a bit more. I will also need to make sure that my final character piece for my current project does look female as my other character sketches looked male by accident. Therefore he showed me an art book that had good examples of how to draw women and said that in drawings they tend to have rounded shoulders, long legs and necks, short arms and wide hips. With this in mind I also asked the advice of my friend Bonnie who is very good at drawing women. She couldn't really explain the process, but she did do a rough sketch in my book on how she draws a clothed female character.

After the above discussion, I started new credit card concepts for my character rather than the skeletal poses I had done before.

You can see these sketches below:

My lecturer also recommended that I look at work by Chris Foss and Daniel Lieske in relation to my drawings to which I did.

Chris Foss does fantastic space crafts that not only look original but also have elements of building designs on them due to their bulkiness and great use of pattern and colour palette. Looking at his work could help me get a better understanding of how to shape my vehicles and buildings rather than the 'Minecraft' look they have at the moment. Maybe one day my work will look something like the example below.

Whereas Daniel Lieske has done some amazing drawings of characters and environments that look cartoon like but well detailed. This is something that I could do with learning in order to turn out more detailed versions of my own style and perhaps something similar to below.

On week 26.

Referencing:

• Foss, C (1981) Nathan [Online image]. Available at: http://cwarden.org/warden/personalPage/graphics/chrisFoss.jpg (Accessed: 22/1/2013).  

• Lieske, D (2010) Welcome to the Wormworld [Online image]. Available at: http://www.wallpaperhi.com/download/view?resolution=1600x1200&file=MTI4MHgxMDI0LzIwMTIwMzE2L2ZhbnRhc3kgY2xvdWRzIHRyZWVzIGRhbmllbCBsaWVza2UgMTI4MHgxMDI0IHdhbGxwYXBlcl93d3cud2FsbHBhcGVyaGkuY29tXzguanBn&name=ZmFudGFzeV9jbG91ZHNfdHJlZXNfZGFuaWVsX2xpZXNrZV8xMjgweDEwMjRfd2FsbHBhcGVy (Accessed: 22/1/2013). 

Genre Artwork 2 (15/1/2013)

For this session, after finally coming up with a name for my character I decided to work on the clothes and accessories that Elexia would wear. A woman who wears overly casual clothes that wouldn't necessarily match due to her mental disorder. 

I knew from the start of this project that I didn't want my female character to be a sex symbol as other women in gaming sadly often are. I also wanted to draw a female character as I find women harder to draw than men and thus wanted to give myself a challenge.

Even though I knew what clothes I wanted her to wear and hoped that they would be original, I feared her head wouldn't as I kept imaging her to either look like Jade from 'Beyond Good and Evil' or Faith from 'Mirror's Edge'. Both these girls have short dark hair as seen in my reference images below.

 

Therefore I started this session by looking at an assortment of messy hair styles and clothing as Elexia is meant to be a fun and causally dressed young woman, thus explaining why I always imagined her with baggy trousers and an XXL T-shirt.

With my first page of possible character designs I spent a long time looking at hair so as to capture the messy look I wanted whilst staying away from my reference images. Although the character would be mostly seen indoors I decided to draw designs for hats and accessories anyway as I just wanted to see if any of them caught my eye and gave me a new angle on what she could look like.

 

Within the second page I decided to not only draw the XXL T-shirt and combat trousers I imagined her wearing originally, but also an assortment of other designs so as with the other page I could see if anything 'grabbed me'. I also messed around with shoe designs although I imagined her to be bare foot and even symbols that could be on her clothing perhaps as she is obsessed with her TV and therefore may wear branded items.

Now, although I did draw a sports bra and vest on this page I would just like to point out that these would only be included under something like a T-shirt. Otherwise the flowing and large necked nature of an XXL T-shirt would lead to showing players what was underneath whenever the character does anything athletic. I also found from thinking about this design flaw that it would thus open up new ways to animate the character as whenever she swings the hammer she uses the T-shirt could billow in the air. Thus giving her combat grace and beauty.

After the session I then went away and drew four models for possible character designs that you can see below:

I found drawing numerous designs really helped as it allowed me to look physically at both my original concept (number 2 with a hat added instead of hair) and other designs I had thought of. Whereas I do like design number 4 I feel that it is perhaps more suitable for a male character. Personally I really like seeing people in turtle neck sweaters for some reason, however, for design number 1 I felt this design along with the tight trousers were too out of place for the character's casual nature. Now, whereas I really like the design and layers on 3 I feel that they would perhaps suit a male more and just can't imagine Elexia wearing them for some reason. Therefore I have decided to go with my original design concept of number 2, however, I will be including number 3's hair underneath the hat and possibly the same symbol seen on the T-shirt.

Although pleased with my designs I can see looking back at them that I made the shoulders for the female poses look far too broad and masculine. Therefore I practiced sketching some shoulder designs as seen below so as to be ready for my final design. I also went back and practiced drawing the creases caused by the layers and weight of the clothing she is going to wear as baggy clothes should hang off her more. Finally I practiced drawing her hair under the hat so as to make sure the design would work.

• Unknown (Unknown) Jade with her camera [Online image]. Available at: http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111107205908/theirisnetwork/images/thumb/9/9a/Jade.jpg/270px-Jade.jpg (Accessed: 23/1/2013). 

• Unknown (Unknown) Faith jumping [Online image]. Available at: http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR6nuU5GpcDyso2TjcqoygJnSkP0FZzd9d8FdOEngccjl5LjMVi7g (Accessed: 23/1/2013).