Project: 2x Fantasy Characters

#1

Hello everyone!

I’m working on two fantasy themed characters. One of the characters is a human, and the other is a fantasy creature. The final characters are going to be modeled, sculpted and textured, but for now I focus on the 2D- stage and would love to hear some feedback and critique as I work on the concepts!

Characters

Outdated, the characters evolved a little bit :stuck_out_tongue:

The creature’s workname is “Lempo”. It’s a large, agile land creature. Their young can breathe fire, but lose the ability as they grow older. The human character carries lempo’s cub with her and the mother wants it back. I’m really interested in including some mechanical aspects and repeating patterns to the creature (not going to make it a robot/cyborg though) for visual interest. Similar to what Giger and WB Hand have done in their works.

The human character is currently a nameless blacksmith. She’s a bit burly and relatively strong gal, about 35-40 of age. She is a wandering smith who carries several tools with her along with other necessities. She uses a young lempo as a blowtorch to help in her everyday life and crafting. I want to create some tension between the two characters and I feel that using the cub as a tool is both a good motivator and gives the work a little bit of comedy value.

Style-wise I’m aiming for a look similar to Darksiders. I don’t want to exaggerate things as much, but other than that I love the visuals Joe Madureira designed for the series.

Here’s the first ideas:




#2

Some more rough sketches and silhouettes. I’m leaning more towards the short snout for the creature and I’m happy with the direction of the latest creature concepts. Not completely there yet though.

For the smith I like the pear shape with more weight in the bottom and tons of stuff she carries with her.





#3

I meant to work on the smith today, but got stuck with this guy. I don’t mind though. I’m pretty happy with the heads 23 & 24.



#4

Played around with some colors and tried slightly different heads and necks.

#5

Some character silhouettes. She was originally supposed to be a blacksmith but she is slowly evolving out of that description. I still want the character to be female so I need to work on that since she kind of turned into a man while I worked on the designs. I want the character to have visual aspects from both conquistadors and pre-Columbian cultures, but I’m really worried about the potential clusterfuck + I’m becoming blind to my work and overthinking everything. :frowning: I regret trying to come up with a story for the characters beforehand because I almost never do that and it has slowed me down.



#6

Still playing around with the character design here. I think these work better than the ones I posted yesterday when it comes to mixing mesoamerican cultures with conquistadors. I’m pretty happy with the creature design and I was just searching for a nice pose for the concept art.



#7

I’m not sure if it was intentional but a lot of your monster face designs look extremely surprised and very excited and happy to see whatever it is they’re noticing. In some cases, like number 17, to the extent of looking a little goofy.

I’m liking the designs quite a bit all around, and depending on your intended mood for the finished piece the happy faces could work well, but I’m not sure I’d go with them in an intense battle or serious scene.

#8

Heh. Most of the faces look happy or surprised because for a long time I wanted the creature to have chesire cat- kind of grin. It doesn’t fit in though for the reasons you mentioned so I scrapped the idea.

EDIT. Also when I draw grins I rarely intend them to be happy or surprised, but rather creepy or sinister.

#9

I’d say the creepy/sinister portion is betrayed by the eyes. You seem to have a lot of arched brows or peaks which add more to the surprised look. Try recessing them into the skull further or eliminating the arches. I was trying to find a particular piece of concept art from Resident Evil 2 of a Tyrant concept that had a similar look and feel to your creatures but I can’t find it to save my life right now.

#10

Thanks for the tip kromano! I’ll give it a try. I started working on the final concept art picture for the creature. I’m going to improve the overall musculature (namely the neck and limbs) for the next WIP.

#11

Creature update. The right hind leg is difficult to get right. I played around with some colors as well.


#12

Getting there. Not quite finished yet. There’s something that really bothers me with the creature but I can’t figure out what it is… It might be the high saturation (toned it down already since it was furiously bright and colorful on another screen) or some particular detail/area that I think works but is actually causing trouble. The collar was one such area for a long time and I had to cut it from the middle. That being said, the arm is still causing headache. I’m bouncing between making the muscles prominent and covering the whole thing with some feathers/fur. Prominent muscles would be cooler to sculpt, but softer, broader forms suit the creature better. Also, the longer I work on the picture the more I feel that the left front leg should be somewhere else. I need to try to move it and make the limbs further back a little bit smaller.

#13

The collar and border between fur and the belly area have been causing nothing but headache. I took the collar off for this one, shrunk the back legs, moved the front leg so it doesn’t block the neck anymore, improved the neck/head perspective and tilted the tail among other things. And what do you know: the instant I take the collar off I start to miss it though it’s been pain in the ass. :smiley: I doodled some lines over the other character as well. I’ll leave the creature be for now and work on the conquistador beastmaster/trapper/hunter gal. I want to exaggerate her equipment to be more in line with the character proportions.


#14

Progress shot.

#15

More progress shots! I like where she is headed, though she still looks too much like a “he”.

#16

I’ve been working on the creature over the weekend. I’m in a really nasty loop with it: I’ve spent hours upon hours working on it but the progress is really minimal, which is super frustrating. I tried to make it a bit more dynamic so I tweaked the pose just a tiny bit. The right arm is just a black hole of work hours. No matter what I do I’m never happy with it and I’ve probably used like 30-40% of the time spent on this piece just on that damn arm. I’m somewhat happy with how it looks now, but I don’t want the paw to be that boring. I’d hate to change it again though because I’m afraid that changing the paw causes a chain reaction of “Damn! The old arm doesn’t work with the new paw! I need to change that… Hmmm, the leg’s posture should be different with this new arm design…” And after having spent 4 hours on the thing I realize that the original was the best. I’m also playing around with an alternative face with a small beak. I saw a really cool gryphon face design in dA and just had to try it on this guy.

I started working on the 3D models for both characters today. Just some super rough blocky ugliness so far. I’ll create a new 3D thread once I have the basics working. I hoped to get the concepts done before the 3D stage but I’m working with a schedule. I’ll finish the concept art in my free time.

#17

I’m done dilly-dallying with this guy. I’m just gonna call it done now. I might still add a background to the picture. I like the blank blue sky BG quite a lot, but it might give off an impression that the creature can fly.


#18

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