Sunday 20 January 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.



Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)