Topic: Some Character Work

So I am slowly working on putting together some form of comic, likely to be in web form. But I am a long ways off. Currently I am trying to solidify my art style, and in the background the characters and story.

To that end, I thought I would throw up some of the character design work that i have been tinkering with lately.

This is a cycle of emotional states that I created to work as baselines for the characters. (If anyone knows what I might be doing wrong, the gif will cycle everywhere else I look at it, but once i put it in my post, it plays through once, and then just holds)
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/2551/animatedmood.gif

I also threw together in 10-15 minutes a test of the phoneme shames that I settled on for now.
Granted as a comic this would not be needed, but 1) It allows for me to be able to have stills of characters mid conversation that makes sense for the dialog and B) I am trying to make a design style that works cross different mediums
From an objective view, this seems to have a few to many shapes, that busy it up, but ... for a 1st go, I'm relatively happy with it.

And beyond that, there are base forms for the character models.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Jin1vPeb5_Q/UPT0IBXlpnI/AAAAAAAAIlk/XT8xaOfRJTI/s612/Female.png
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ilK6zmB8Gd8/UPT0II2Fg1I/AAAAAAAAIlg/xwt85XBLawA/s612/Male.png
The original idea, was that the base character design would be relatively generic, though I am working on a "tubby" and "buff" model shape. With the character differentiation driven by wardrobe/costume design, and hair shape, that would build off the base model. Allowing for characters that would be able to stand out, from an easily created crowd of "generic" people.

As an example, these are some years old iterations that I created based on comics & Doctor Who
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-QvsFUOhff7I/UPT1titq4PI/AAAAAAAAInA/Fn22Wr60fXU/s831/v03_Doctor_Who_over_Time.png
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-hfElLWkQ3Qc/UPT1jIzjjwI/AAAAAAAAImY/eFluT1Tomkk/s824/CharDesign_F_01c.png
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Cb_tX-wan_o/UPT1svzasXI/AAAAAAAAIm4/JVOq2Z8UroQ/s824/CharDesign_M_03c.png

Last edited by Seth_Brower (2013-01-15 06:35:22)

See what I've worked on recently here:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2869151/
And ways to get in touch with me at:
http://www.google.com/profiles/SethBrower

Re: Some Character Work

This is awesome. As someone with no knowledge of comic anything, even web comics, that's really all I have to offer.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Some Character Work

This is awesome. As someone with no knowledge of comic anything, even web comics, that's really all I have to offer.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Some Character Work

Oh, I'm realistically a ways away from the actual production stage.
It helps me to have a long term goal in mind though when I'm working on something. It gives me a reason to be on and off again tinker with the designs.
I tend to be a bit ... scattered in my time with the odd project, so this may never get much beyond this stage, but its relaxing to work on something not work related when I'm at home.

See what I've worked on recently here:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2869151/
And ways to get in touch with me at:
http://www.google.com/profiles/SethBrower

Re: Some Character Work

I was a complete idiot, and posted this further information in one of the other threads that I had started, so ... yeah it's a friday. as that as based on my compositing reel, and led to some confusion as to what aspect of the project I was talking about, I am moving it here, and putting up a "my bad, with link" in its place.

Well, had a random thought, figure I'll throw it out there.

I have ... creativity issues. I love a lot of things, and end up reading or viewing a large amount of stuff. Unfortunately this has led me to second guess my creative nature when it comes to trying to create something original. I am beset with concerns that I am being highly derivative, even if I can't quite recall what specifically I am referring to.

To that end, I think I'll just embrace the concern and go with it.

I thought that I would essentially do not a wholly original project but ... an adaptation of a lesser known property into a "graphic" form. I have seen some impressive fan works in existing properties <looks around> and have really enjoyed a fan Doctor Who webcomic http://comics.shipsinker.com/?id=18. And while inspired, I don't really want to tread over already broken ground.

I however have a great love of sci-fi, world-building, and old school pulp adventures. I recalled out of the blue an old series that I loved growing up, never did finish it, but thought that it would really be suited to a long form adaptation. If anyone has read it, would love thoughts on Simon Hawke's Time Wars series.

An interesting series that was told over 12 pulpy relatively short books. clipped from the TVTropes entry :

After the invention of Time Travel, the world has ended war in the present. International conflicts are resolved by sending soldiers into the past to fight in wars that have already happened, but the soldiers have to be careful not to cause a Temporal Paradox, which could have disastrous effects on the timestream. The main characters are members of the Time Commandos, a unit with the job of averting paradoxes by carrying out "adjustment" missions in the past.
The main recurring characters are Lucas Priest, an everyman type who's the main audience identification figure; Finn Delaney, a career soldier with an exceptional service record and a serious discipline problem (he has very little patience with any officer who doesn't earn his respect — which is nearly every officer he's ever met); and Andre de la Croix, who was born in the 12th century but wound up emigrating to the 27th and joining the Time Commandos after getting mixed up in an adjustment mission.
A recurring antagonist, Nikolai Drakov, was introduced partway through the series. One of his plots resulted in attracting the attention of another set of recurring antagonists, Time Commandos from an Alternate Universe who became convinced that their own universe's survival depended on them sabotaging the protagonists' history.

A few interesting things were that while each book had one setting in the past that was the focus, they also each focused on a largely fictional setting based on a bit of classic literature. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Three Musketeers for example. Also there was a fair amount of world building and decently far out there sci-fi.

I am working on getting copies of the books, and will now in tandem with the character work, which can now be a bit more focused with actual characters to work towards and settings to put together, I can start to break down the books to figure out what and how to adapt to a graphic panel story telling structure.

Again, I tend to pick up projects for a time and then put them down when I get busy with other things, so even if I only get this a little bit further along, it is further than I had gotten before.

See what I've worked on recently here:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2869151/
And ways to get in touch with me at:
http://www.google.com/profiles/SethBrower

Re: Some Character Work

Right, in reply to the original question from the other thread.

The idea would be to take the story's of the novels, and in a similar way that HBO is adapting the Game of Thrones series one book to a season, or they did the Harry Potter/Twilight/ect series to a movie each, translate them to another medium.

Rather than a full vfx laden acted out production, that would be cool but WOW well out of the realms of feasibility, I hope to translate them into a "comic book/graphic novel" format, but most likely distributed in a webcomic format.

I am thinking now, without the books in front of me, that it would be doable, and I'm thinking the heavy setting/backstory exposition might be done in the form of a "hitchhikers guide style cutaway" reminiscent of Terry Pratchett's use of footnotes in a graphical way, rather than trying to force the information that flowed relatively well in a narrative novel into one of the characters mouths as needless exposition.

See what I've worked on recently here:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2869151/
And ways to get in touch with me at:
http://www.google.com/profiles/SethBrower

Re: Some Character Work

I live my life in terms of what life lesson has just suddenly started making sense to me. This past couple of months is the first time one of those lessons wasn't already a platitude.


You're dead right that you'll never be the first at something, but you can damn well be somebody's favorite something.


I have nine acapella acts that I follow. Though Zarban, I know many film commentary podcasts. I can name fifteen movie critics. I can personally name the top four live-loop performance artists on the planet.

Of all of them, I have only one favorite for each. And it has nothing to do with originality. It has to do with execution. Make something that feels significantly true to you. Don't worry about folks who know as much about Subject X as you do, worry about your reaction to it, and about the folks who have never seen anything like it before. Do you think the Wachowskis give a shit about folks saying Dark City carried many of the same themes?

Do it well. Perfect what exists. Damn the torpedoes. You might not be Orson Welles, but you can certainly be Steven Spielberg.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Some Character Work

Awesome!

Loved the super-hero sketches. How would the DIF crew look sketched out in your style?

---------------------------------------------
I would never lie. I willfully participate in a campaign of misinformation.

Re: Some Character Work

Actually a thought that I had last night as I was turning in, definitely something I'm going to start tinkering with this weekend and possibly this week.
Who knows I might be able to put something cool together.

See what I've worked on recently here:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2869151/
And ways to get in touch with me at:
http://www.google.com/profiles/SethBrower