Character design part 20: Scenery

For the final lesson of Character design we had to make a scenery based on the theme that was given to us, mine was hazardous forest.
I first made some small rough drafts of my own image of a hazardous forest and then I made bigger versions of them.



The first image is a forest with Ivy's that act like tentacles with a wastlandic appearance. I don't know what I was going for in this picture but I like how it has an uncanny feel of something familiar and unknown at the same time like you are on a different planet.


The second image resembles more of a hunted forest look, I had talk to some of my class mates and they said I should of put more dangerous stuff in it like bear traps, bumps broken logs and such, but I like how unwelcome it looks.

Character Design part 19: Ulysses(Sidekick) Finished Design

Here is the last character Ulysses the sidekick, like the rest of the other characters he has a main outfit and an alternate one.
His alternate outfit is his alien space clothes I think this works for him because it gives him an out-worldly feel.



His main outfit is his Victorian clothes which is meant to help him to be hard find for Mordecai(Villain).


I have made his body construction as well to show the type of shapes used to make him.


Finally I have made all of Ulysses' expression sheets ranging from him being happy to sad to pulling a puppy dog face to get what he wants when Felix(Hero )said no.

Character Design part 18: Mordecai(Villain) Finish Design

Last week I have finished making the final design for my Villain Mordecai.
I wanted to give him a very high sophisticated appearance but still look evil and scary. In his Turnaround sheet I have also made the back of his head without the ponytail to show where all the tubes are connected.


I have made the construction sheet for Mordecai to show the type of shapes used in creating him.


The last sheet I have made is his expression sheet, showing his main expressions he will use most of the time. I am pleased on how his angry and rage expressions came out especially when it changes from sparks flying from the eye to electricity violently moving.

Character Design part 17: Mordecai's Armour Design

The next part I was designing was the rest of my Villain's Armour, the purpose of the armour is to give the villain, Mordecai, an increase to his power. Designing the arms gave me the most trouble because I gave it a lot of detail for a more steampunk appearance by adding bolts, tube, a support to help the Villain to lift his arms, adding a circle in the palm and finger details. It was all worth it in the end though an I think it really brings out a sense of fear or coolness to the armour.
I was also design the power pack which is the main source of the armour's energy, at first I was going to merge it to the armour but I thought that was not interesting so I decided to make it a separate piece of the main armour that just get fitted to the suit and it works.

Character Design part 16: Mordecai's(Villain) Equipments part 1

For the past week I was designing my villain Mordecai's equipments. The first image is his eye patch, this was pretty fun because I started with a generic eye patch and develop it further by adding tubes, wires, riverts and screws. The main body of the eye patch is meant to be made out of leather. The final design of my villain's eye patch can be seen at the bottom left corner.



The second image has an example of what my villain looks like with his patch on as well some designs for his helmet of his armour. I wanted to give Mordecai a scary appearance for his armour so when he is in battle he can scare his enemies as well intimidate them. I used insects as a reference for his armour to give Mordecai the extra fear I was going for.


The last image shows Mordecai's final helmet design, some how it resembles the Shredder's helmet from the turtles. I chose this design as his final design for his helmet because to me it carries the bug like feel I needed. I purposely made the left side of his face different because Mordecai's eye patch is big and takes a lot of room on his face so I thought the unevenness on his helmet works well for him.


If Justin is reading this or anyone else please please leave some feedback on Mordecai's final Eye Patch design and Helmet design.

Character Design part 15: Felix(Hero) Finished Design

Here are my final designs for my Hero Felix.
The first image shows how he is constructed, it starts with the guide bones first starting with the circle for the the head then placing the guides and markers for the arms, elbow, legs and knee and finally adding the mass for the amount of thickness for Felix's body. For his shirt there should be six buttons two at the top should be unbutton and the stitching on the right leg of the trouser should be halfway below the knee with four stitching marks.


The second image shows how Felix's head is constructed, starting with a circle then adding the jaw. Then add some guide lines for the face, be sure to polace one guide line near the top of the head since which should then resemble a cross, this will be Felix's third eye. The ear should be place near the eyeline and the nose line. He should have three lines on his head the first line should stop atleast halfway of Felix's right ear while the last two should be short and placed on the his left side. Once the set up is done fill eveything in, the two eye's should be ovals that are slanted the nose should sit near the middle of the two eye's, the third eye can be done by following the cross but don't make it too big or there won't be any room for his eyebrows. His hair should all follow the hair guide lines exept the hair at the bottom of Felix's head, from starting near the head make a zig zag line going downwards ending at the chin, there should be three zig zags. Finally just add some details to him, lines to show his hair, a line for his ear and add some eyebrows, he should have only two of them the third eye dosn't have any.
I have also made some of his facil features to show the type of character he is, I think the represent him quite well.


I have designed his alternate outfit, He should wear this if he is in a hot place or if he is indoors.


Here is Felix main outfit, he wears this most of the time when he is going on his journey with his sidekick, Like mentioned in a past post he lives in the slums so his clothes are quite tattered and I know he can see the future but that does not mean his clothes will be alright.


Please leave feedback.

Character Design part 14

Here are my old designs of my Hero and Villain characters. The reason they are old is because they are just rough drafts of my characters, I even did the characters rough drawing construction guides as well.


I have shown them to Colin and he likes them and he also gave me some tips and incite to make my characters look better. As a bonus he gave me his autograph and drew two characters that my sister likes from one of he favorite films Watership Down, Big Wig and Hazel, if only I remembered that my sister also likes Jessica Rabit I would of asked Colin to make a quick sketch of her.


Finally I have also made the height differences of all three of my characters. To help me with this I made a model so I can roughly figure out where should the head start and the feet ends. The height range goes as followed, the Sidekick is the smallest, the Hero in the middle and the Villain the tallest.

Character Design part 13: Jetpack Jones & Grok

Last week in Character design we did something different, we had to get into a group and design some characters for a toy series called Jetpack Jones. What I last remembered I think we had to make the Hero, Sidekick, Love Interest, Spy, Villain and Villain Henchman.
I designed the Henchman named Grok, a dinosaur alien who was experimented by the Villain. I based his design around a raptor because his height is roughly around a outhouse and I added a big mechanical arm, a laser gun for his tail and a headphone attached to his head to show he had been experimented on. For his costume I was going for a futuristic warrior look to show he means business.



I also designed the Hero Jetpack Jones, he is a galactic law enforcer who was wrongly accuse for, I think, being a spy or a traitor so he is on a quest to clear his name.
For his appearance I was going for a bird motif mix with a rocket because of the name jet pack. I have also gave him a big laser gun so he can fire at his enemies. When I shown his design to Justin he said that he likes the design but I needed to make his jet pack more appealing and need to make his gun look more futuristic.


I have even designed his logo which is a bird flying downward, may not look much on it's own but when seeing it on Jones' chest it looks just right.

Character Design part 12: Sidekick

The next character I was designning is the Sidekick Ulysses. Getting the right design was very hard because I had no experiance in drawing children but I did asked help from Jusitn and Colin White to give me pointers in drawing children by making their heads bigger and their body more roundish. Which I did in his later designs when I was comming up with ideas for his clothes and I really think I captured his cutness. I am going to design two versions of him, one where he is wearing his alien clothes and one where he is wearing his vicorian street urchin clothes.

Character Design part 11: Villian

The next character I have design is the villain Mordecai. I first planned out his shapes to get a general idea of his body physic, which is the typical tall skinny man appearance. I gave Mordecai some big hands to show he uses them a lot in combat and gestures. I shown him design to Justin and he helped me out abit by making his forearms also bigger and making his fingers pointy to give his hands more of a sinister appearance.
To help me to get more of an idea of the type of character Mordecai is I made his poses more powerful by giving him a one arm that will shoot a powerful energy ball, a pose of him in a star jump to represent him dispersing huge amount of energy around himself, a thinking pose to show his genuineness and a hitting the earth pose to show more of his power.
While reviewing this I think I show too much of his power and not enough of his intelligences or his smugness.





Again these are just sketches of his personality not meant to be his final designs.

Character Design part 10: Hero

Here are some of the images of my Hero Felix, I am still making some fixes like how big his eye should be and how muscular he is. I thought my hero won't show too much big expression but he does have some . The ones I thought the expression that would suit my character so far would be scared, angry and a decent smile, I chose those expressions because since my character prefers to be alone he doesn't smile too much and if there's trouble around him he either gets scared or very angry. I have also drew some poses which I think represent my character quite well, the poses I have made are a scared/surprise pose, an annoyed pose and a thinking pose, the running pose was just a sketch of how I see my character running.





The images that are showing Felix's expressions and poses are not my final designs for him but it is a starting point.

Character Design part 9: last two weeks of lesson

Here are my images from the character design lesson I have done for the past two weeks.
For the first two images we have learnt on how to use reference pictures to make new character. Justin gave us a theme to help us on making our characters, mine is Gangsters form the 1930s.
The first character was a generic tough guy gangster, I purposely covered his eye by shading it to give him more character.
The second character is a typical fat gangster boss, his hat gave me a lot of trouble so I need to work on drawing hats on characters since I have two or three characters that wears them in my main character design project.
The third character is a female gangster, she didn't gave me too much trouble but again I need to work on drawing hats.

The fourth character is a is a gangster boss behind his desk, I was going for an intimidating look. Finally the last character is meant to be a tough gangster who is the right hand man of the gangster boss, but he ended up looking more like a detective then gangster, maybe he was a gangster but turned good when he was betrayed.


After that we then learnt about silhouettes. Silhouettes are used to work on the form of a character by making a black/shaded or outlined figure with no detail on it. Once done you can then do some editing on the shaded figure to give them more shape, an example of this can be seen on my second silhouette under the first one. You can see the different on the separation on the feet to the raised up pony tail.


On the second week we have to use reference pictures again but this time using them to create a new animal with the theme that was given to us, my theme was jungle.
The first animal is a combination of a deer, a bison and an elephant. It is a merge between strong animals who are also quite gentle, the deer part is only used for the patterns on the back.
The second animal is a combination of a tiger and a wolverine. I wanted to try out a fusion between a big animal and a small one. While creating this creature I notice that a wolverine is much hairier than a tiger so I used this as a learn experience on working on hair.


The third animal a vulture and bat combination. I first did a sketch of a bats wing anatomy first to give an idea of the shape then I transferred the bat wings to the vulture. This creature was well received by some of my class mates.
The forth combination is an elephant with a gorilla, I was going for a gentle yet strong creature that's why I chose the elephant and gorilla for their gentle appearance.
The last merged animal is a lion and a panda, I did not like how this one turned out because I rushed drawing it. I wanted to see what type of creature would come out I think it would of look better if I really took my time on drawing this.

Character Design part 8: Story summery and Character information

I have came up with a story for my character design to help me to understand my characters a bit more.
The main plot is an on the run story where our two main characters Felix(Hero) and Ulysses(Sidekick) have to keep moving and keep a very powerful artifact away from Mordecai(Villain).

The summery is about a small alien name Ulysses who landed on earth following a distress call. He soon learnt it was a trap, set up by Mordecai a very powerful mutant who wants to know more of Ulysses' people technology. Ulysses escaped with a very powerful artifact but was heavily weakened from the encounter and was finding refuge in the slums of a steampunk city. There we meet our main character Felix, a mutant bouncer who can see the future. He takes Ulysses to his home so he can recover his strength. Suddenly Mordecai's men came to Felix's house to search the area for Ulysses. When they do find him Felix puts up a fight and successfully defended him. Ulysses saw how useful Felix is and explain his situation to him and asks him to be his bodyguard on his quest to get home. Felix reluctantly accepts to help Ulysses' quest to get home and so their adventure begins with them constantly chased by Mordecai and anyone who wants the artifact Ulysses' holds.



I have done some brainstorms on my characters to define them even more as well explaining what is the artifact and what is Mordecai's goal, the first character I was defining was the Hero.

The Hero's name is Felix, he is a three eyed mutant with the power to see small glimpses of the future when he is in danger(like spider sense), his job is a bouncer for a pub/bar. Living in a bad neighbourhood he has to take care of himself even at a young age. Felix became Ulysses' bodyguard when he fought Mordecai's men while protecting Ulysses. Of course the sensible thing to do is to turn Ulysses in but he knows that Mordecai would still punish him for defending Ulysses in the first place, besides is not that type of guy. Felix prefers to be left alone but when he decided to be Ulysses' bodyguard he slowly opens up to him and become more relaxed.
Before Felix had a job as a bouncer he first started out as a fortune teller for a circus when he was young, he could see ten or more years into the future. However looking into the future too many times put a huge strain on him that now he can only see a few minutes of it when he is in danger. He was then kicked out of the circus and his parents disowned him, after that ordeal he had to fend for himself.
Even though he prefers to be left alone he is a nice guy when given a chance.

The next character I was defining was the Sidekick

The Sidekicks name is Ulysses, he is a small alien from outer space. He came to earth following a distress signal only to find out it was a trap set up by Mordecai. His spaceship was destroyed by Ulysses' orders so no one can learn it's secrets. He could of tried to escape in his spaceship but Mordecai used his powers to keep it down.
Ulysses' powers consist of super strength, flight, speed, telekinesis, able to read minds and many more he has yet to discover. However using such powers takes a lot of energy from him since he is still young and small so he doesn't now how to control them properly.
Ulysses is a kind and gentle character but is quite naive around the planet he is on so he see Felix not only as a bodyguard but also as a guide for him as well as his first friend on earth.

The last character I was defining is the Villain



The Villain's name is Mordecai. He is the strongest mutant on the planet, or so he claims. Unlike the Hero Mordecai lives in a more sophisticated life so he wears expensive clothing and has very high tech weaponry with him, he is also a leader of his own group of law enforcers which their job is to keep order on the steampunk city.
Mordecai's powers involve kinetic energy where he shoots powerful energy balls, he can also create a forcefield to defend himself and has the ability to fly.
He was always renowned as the one man who can catch anyone, but when a criminal had defeated him and escaped Mordecai perfect reputation was ruined. Even though his colleagues didn't think much of his lost to Mordecai it was a lost that really effected him. He then decided to go on a trip to clear his mind, while on a trip he found a mysterious artifact, when he accidentally activated it Mordecai's strength increases to a whole new level he felt very powerful and nothing can stop him. When he came back to the city he track down the criminal whole got away from him, when he did find the criminal Mordecai crushed him with his new strength, with his new powers Mordecai became mad and plans to use the artifact for something terrifying in the future. His plan is to remove all the mutants powers and increase his own to make himself the only strongest mutant in the world. If he succeeds then mutants that needs their powers to survive will die, but he does not care.
His personality is your typical stuck up pompous villain who looks down on everyone and thinks of himself as a more perfect being. Even before he lost to the criminal he still treated everyone badly. He also wants to make no mistakes if he did any then he will correct it by any means necessary.

The last thing I wrote was the purpose of the artifact. The artifact is used by Ulysses' people as a means to give themselves more power if they are in trouble but it uses a lot of the user's stamina. No one knows how it got to earth in the first place but it's up to the heroes to keep it away from Mordecai for as long as they can.

Character Design part 7

During the two weeks of Character design lesions I have learnt some new techniques.
The first week we had to add some facial features to a theme that was given to us, for me the theme was garden.
To help me design my characters I first listed the objects I know that are used for gardening. The objects I have wrote are big and small lawn, garden sprinklers, mini garden fork and spade, a bucket and clippers.
The first character I drew on the first page was a big lawn mower, I thought to give it a gentle relaxing expression because I seen this type of lawn mower being used in a cartoon and the character always seemed relaxed.
The next characters I have made are the two mini garden fork and one spade. I gave the spade a cute big eyed expression and I gave one fork a type of intelligent look and the second fork a more evil look, I pull the evil look off by making the fork more pointy.
The next object was the sprinkler I wanted to give it a an angry bug like appearance because I saw one of these sprinklers and I thought make it bug like would fit, I gave it an angry face because I thought it would be funny.
The last object on the first page was a bucket. I didn't know what was I going for with this but while I was looking at my bucket it reminded me a plant pot so I did some character development on it and came up with a happy broken pot with a small single flower, to me this pushes the cuteness because it's a broken pot that has a small plant and it's happy.


On the second page I drew some clippers that had some animal like features like a parrot clipper. I made most of the clippers look visious by showing how shape they are. I also drew one small lawn mower that for some reason has an expression like it is looking for something.


On my last picture I added a new object which was a lawn chair and too me that screams lazy so I added some lazy features by giving it some sleepy eyes and wraping its chair arms around it's tummy. Justin saw this and he likes the idea and helped me by giving it actual sleepy eyes, a big tummy and a happy face. Also I made one last clipper.


On the second week I learnt on how to make poses by using some guide lines to tell the expression on the character, we worked on this by using our class mates as models for our drawings. I actually felt this helped me a lot on using guide lines to show the expression on the character's body also on the second week I learnt on making facial expressions. I don't have pictures of it because they are on my actual character design but don't worry I will post it.

Character Design part 6

From the past three weeks I had lessons in creating characters. As I mentioned the first week lesson was to make characters that was given to us(LINK to my previous post on the first character design lesson), and I said I have lost my paper. Well I have found it in the most unusual places(my laundry bag :() and here is my image of the first lesson.

If you need to know what they are here is the LINK to the previous post.

The second week was about using shapes to create characters and each shape actually have specific uses, the main shapes for creating characters are Squares, Circles and Triangles. Squares are used for strong and heroic looking characters Circles are used for soft cuddly characters and Triangles are used for dangerous evil characters. By looking at the two images at the bottom I believe I need some work on using shapes to help create characters.

The third week was to use a type of guide bone structure to help create the characters body and position. I felt that this tool was quite useful because it really help me to get an idea of the length of the arms and legs of the characters. We practice this by using pictures of actual characters like Disney's Hercules, Danger Mouse or in my case Tigger.

Once we have figured out the bone structure of the character when then have to make a female version of them, which was quite tricky because a females anatomy is different from a males anatomy. At the top left corner of the image is my female Tigger, which wasn't very good compared to the female Tigger in the center that the tutor had drew.

Finally to end the third week we had to do a side view of another iconic character, I've got Obelix from Astrix and Obleix. This is meant to show use that side views are more different from front because it you look at a fat person from the front you would think they would have a bulging tummy but from the side their tummy is actually quite flat. Same can go to chins from front it looks like it is pointing out but from the side it is quite close to the neck. Sides are also help in giving a character some form because in real life peoples legs are shape in a way that the body doesn't collapse so we need to transfer this into our characters show they don't have a physic that looks like they can collapse any second.