March wip - Fairy Tale Traveler - Critique
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Playing around with looks.
Playing with some goblin designs. It's hard to choose a style for this whole thing. I love detailed gritty, but "simple" cute is nice too. I would love to do picture books, but all types of art interest me. @_@
I've had a story in mind for the last couple of years, of a young character who's village is destroyed, and everyone they know is killed. They have to struggle to survive on their own, while trying to find a purpose to keep going. This prompt, might help push that to happen. I've struggled to design characters for the idea, but I'm starting to have fun with it.
*Females have larger tusks than males, they get larger as they age. Some choose to file them down.
They wear their hair in braids as a way to keep it out of their face, as well as aesthetics. Some will weave beads and or flowers into their braids.
They live in a lush valley full of fruiting plans, there is a large river flowing through it with plenty of fish for the taking, but the winters are harsh and the river freezes over, so thick that they use it as a travel way, setting up boats on skids, and traveling to nearby villages to trade. They prepare food during the good months to keep them going through the colder months.
During the winter months their hair thickens for extra warmth. During unbearably cold days, they will unbraid their hair, and go full fluff for the extra insulation. When spring comes along they have special grooming time, with food and drink, which helps them shed winter fur, and strengthens bonds between each other.*
All my links: https://APHOTICMOTH.carrd.co/
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I'm really enjoying the range of gritty to simplified that you're working in here. Like skexis/gelfling range. Great to see how many explorations you're going through on your way to deciding on a direction. Thanks for sharing your process.
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Something didn't feel right with the other designs.. I love the braids, but hated how they overlapped so much with any movement. The hair, was ok, but was kind of harsh looking. I love soft fluffy things.. So I went with a puff ball, reminiscent of a dandelion at seed.
Gave them a longer neck, to give room for the braids, and I liked the look.. Gave them little giraffe nubs to break up the hair, and it also looks a bit like false eyes at a distance. So they are a bit of a combo between bunny, giraffe, and llama.
So I think I have my character figured out.. Now to design some travelers gear, and work on the final poses/expression.
Still open to critiques though.
Part of me would like to add more than the prompt requests, but is that seen as bad? Delivering less than requested of course would be very bad, but more would seem like a positive to me.
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Made more changes to the design. Felt too humanish, so I gave them some hoof feet/fingers, and a longer tail with a puff ball on the end. Made the neck a bit shorter, and the head a tad smaller, hoping that they would look a bit younger.
Playing around with some travel gear; food pouch, hunting/fishing pouch, water gourd, trade pouch that slips over a waistband, and a walking stick.
Dropped the rounded hook as I saw someone else did it, and I've done it many times in the past. The gem hanging from the sick glows at night to help keep away certain baddies that love the dark and fear the light. The gem glows when wanted, only having to touch it to light up, touch it again to darken.
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Got rid of the hanging gem, as it would flop around, and I didn't want to draw extra anchor points, too detailed, but boring details. So I embedded the gem right into the head of the staff.
Really happy with this now, might have to go back over the last two pieces a bit more, things seem a bit off.
This whole time, I've wanted to put giant gauges in their ears, but thought it would make them look less "innocent, naive".
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Sitting pose. I drew this much smaller than the others.. Its about 2 inches tall, and I think it shows... It's grainier to me. Is it obvious to you?
Thinking I need to redraw it, or atleast touch it up. I know the 3 scans looks different color wise, I will fix that when I place them all into once image.
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I don't think his knees showing works either, they are covered in the other pieces, but I thought it would slip up, but he does have the knee ties, and it's baggy pants.. So Time to redraw..
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Redrew the sitting pose.
BEFORE
AFTER
Much happier, just drew the first one way too small, and rushed it. Was working on about 45 minutes of sleep on the first version.
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Work in progress. Need to adjust the whites, I can see some shadowing from separate scans.
Going to do some color exploration next.
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I love the hair now I just want to run my fingers through it lol!
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I really want white hair, so that's set. First thought, green like a dandelion stem. I'm liking 3.
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I really want to design a big puffy spiderish creature that looks like his head. I still feel like his nubs look like false eyes, and his bangs look like mouth parts..
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@Asyas_illos Aw. It does look like bunny fluff now.
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I like two and three it’s the brown fur I think looks better with the outfits I like the color combos
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Love that this creature could be a boy or a girl, great expressions!
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@Larue I'm glad you think that. I was going for a bit androgynous. I've been saying they, them, child. If it were a book, to keep neutral terms, to me would mean that anyone reading it could relate/identify/place themself in the story.
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Hmm. got one vote. We both like #3, and I want to work on this, so 3 it is.
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I think I'm going to call this done.
Feel free to critique, I'm not submitting it to the final thread just yet.Made some changes to the clothing color, all green was boring. Switched to brown pants, and it was just too much brown overlapping,
The first poses are bland because the prompt said "neutral pose" which I took as a generic action figure pose. Left one looks like they are in time out since they are looking into the corner.
All my links: https://APHOTICMOTH.carrd.co/
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@CLCanadyArts
I've loved seeing your progress and the end piece looks great! Thank you for sharing all of it!Personally, I would like to see some of the accessories you detailed on the side put on each of the character poses. It doesn't need to be all of them on each character but they're so intricately rendered and I think it would give the viewer more reason to observantly linger on each character. Impressive stuff though!!
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@Jeremiahbrown Thanks for the feedback. I was thinking the same, but kept it a bit simple. Are initial poses supposed to be plain, so you see the character themselves, and then others with their gear/accessories? Maybe I'm thinking about animation, or 3d too much. For now I will keep this one as it is, but I will keep that in mind for the next ones. I get what you mean about the extra detail would help keep peoples attention longer, more to look at and pick apart for sure.
