WIP Card Challenge - 2 of Clubs

#1

It’s been forever and a day since I’ve really sat down and drawn anything. I’m feeling pretty worried that I can’t produce anything that’ll make me happy. Darn it! I’m not going to let that stop me! In fact I’m going to use that as an excuse to get started again.

Though I’m still playing around with exactly how I want to put it together, the concept behind this two of clubs is adorable little club guards who are pretty bad at their jobs. I just doodled this guy out during a project meeting as a starting point.

I want to try to have one guard sleeping (the half erased legs in the background are the start of that concept) with the other one possibly standing at attention. I haven’t decided quite yet, given I stumbled upon this waaaaaay late I’m not sure I’ll have time to finish anything.

I’m hoping to produce further cards in the clubs series so long as there’s available numbers and I finish on time.


My scanner is unbelievably awful, I’m not sure why the scan quality is so poor given it ought to produce reasonable DPI and resolution.

#2

Concepting costume ideas, positions and other random ideas related to the card.
I wonder what the deal is with the dark spots at the corners of the image? Terrible scanner ):

#3

Trying a couple concepts for the spearhead. I’m debating between working the number 2 into the spear or using another club symbol as in the image above. I switched to my tablet to attempt to work out hairstyles by cloning a 3/4 head sketch and drawing different hair but I quickly remembered why I don’t use my tablet much. I have zero hand-eye coordination when using a tablet. Lack of practice more than anything I guess, but I get frustrated very fast. My end results before quitting after 10 minutes can be seen below.

One of the other items I’m toying with in the costume is whether to work the club in as a giant dorky pope-hat or as a kind of cowl or attachment on the back of the jacket. Like a battle standard. The terrible drawing at the top right of the tablet sketch was attempting to concept that out just before I stopped.

#4

You should fist sketch out the composition for the image. This is very important because a card design means you have graphical elements that you must incorporate into the image and work with, and you want to make sure compositionally everything’s well-balanced.

#5

Thanks for the feedback, Lunatique. I really appreciate how active you are with advice and comments in this forum! I’ve been thinking about composition from the beginning but haven’t put pencil to paper yet on it. Composition is one of my weakest areas because I’ve spent very little time putting together a finished image with full background and characters.

While I was concerned with inclusion of the Club symbol within the image, I hadn’t given consideration to the classic design using an equal number of pips to the number of the card. You’ve given me some ideas to try to incorporate into the design, thanks!

#6

So checking out Tibbi’s 7 of Hearts, I liked a comment Kirt made about the form of the Pegasus resembling the number seven so I’ve been trying to work that concept into my design as well. A 2, however, is a bit rougher to fit in clearly and I’m feeling that I’m either stuck with a flat, cluttered, incomprehensible composition, improbable physics, or just otherwise not getting the idea across. My recent forays into layout below.

#7

It seems strange to have guards use a scythe. Scythes are actually quite unwieldy and not at all an agile weapon, and it is also commonly associated with the Grim Reaper/Death, and doesn’t really go with the cute character design you have.

Don’t try to force alphabets/numbers into your composition if it doesn’t feel natural. A highly contrived composition tend to look overwrought and not organic enough.

#8

Ugh, I totally let myself down on this one.
Thanks for the feedback again Luna. I totally agreed with what you were saying about the scythe and forcing the design. I intended to do some more sketches to post before replying but I kept making up excuses and wound up not finishing. Though I missed the very generous deadline, I do intend on finishing this anyway.

#9

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