Siyok - Final Cover Art

The final design of the character after it is finished and the brightness and contrast is tweeked. This art will be used for one of the 2 final comic book covers that will be produced for the final outcome of the project.

The character has come out with all the elements I wanted initially. I do think that it needs something more to tie it to sci fi as I feel that it could potentially fit into a fantasy setting also. Possibly it will read better when seen in the context of the story. Perhaps some sort of equipment could help this issue also? Something to consider if i take this project further after the end of the semester.

Looking at the finished painting i realised that the head is a wee bit too tall (from jaw to the top of the head) which I will be careful of when producing the final cover that features Siyok. The other issue I have with the anatomy of the character is that the chest looks too human. I feel the pectoral muscles could have been designed differently just to give the character a more alien look. If this project is taken further I will look to nature more to see how this could be adapted anatomicaly.
Another mistake I made with the production of the image is that I flattened the original sketch into the render and failed to get tidy of it all so this still shows through slightly.
Colour wise I think the painting works well. The character looks like he fits his background and with the lighting running across the character helps to tie him in. one of my peers has pointer out that the lighting works across the character apart from the spots on the character's skin. They have all come out the same colour from head to tail rather than having the transition from light to dark like the other skin colours do.
Overall I feel the painting works well despite the issues.
The intention of the painting was to give the feeling that the water is clear but quickly gets less inviting the deeper it goes.The texture on the background was to give the impression that where the water  looks clearer at the top there is an impression of gasses and unsettled sediment.
Though there are the issues outlined above with the painting I am content with the final outcome. The character looks like a bottom feeder and looks very amphibious. I am glad that I went with this colour scheme as it helps to tie the character into the murky, amazon like water environments outlined as the characters home planet in the series bible.

Siyok - Character Final Cover Art WIP

WIP shots of the final painting of Siyok. I thouroughly enjoyes doing this painting and felt i learned a lot doing it. I have managed to work out a bit more as far as my pipeline goes as well as new techniques when applying colour to an image.

Half way through the process, just as I had started to apply colour I realised the whiskers were all wrong. The left whisker looked nothing like the original intended design and was way longer and thicker than the right, it looked like a great big green bean. So luckily this was caught and fixed before I got too far with the colouring.

Siyok - Final Design Colouring

This is the final markings and colouration of Siyok. Having spoken to a group of my peers there were multiple designs from the previous post that were pretty popular but this was chosen consistently. Most of the feedback I received was that this scheme gave the impression of a villainous character and that it was more relatable than most of the others yet still could pass as an alien species.

This colour scheme was heavily influenced by the markings of the Hellbender Salamander, however I wanted to have a contrasting element to the green.

Having looked at a lot of cat fish species I decided to lighten the underside of the creature as this theme is consistent throughout nature and I felt this would give a more realistic/believable look to the character.

Iain McCaig - Visual Storytelling

The Art of Visual Storytelling is a 4 part Gnomon Workshop DVD set in which Iain McCaig creates his own Sci Fi take of the story of The Little Mermaid. 

McCaig retells the story in beats through visual means, designing the characters as he goes. He starts by plotting out the structure; beginning, middle and end, producing sketches for each. He then fills in the gaps with story beats, again producing sketches for each one then fills in the beats in between them and so on. By the end of the first DVD he has plotted out the entire story with each event illustrated. In the later volumes he goes over his process of designing each character from the story from traditional sketches through to final digitally painted character concepts.

Why oh why did I not discover this sooner??? 

The whole process is incredibly intuative and rather than writing pages and pages of story by the end of the first volume the whole story is effectively written visually.
McCaig went into more detail about the construction and structure of stories which gave more great insight into the process I am working through making the bible. Watching the DVD brought me back to McKee's book "Story" specifically the sections of the book regarding structure, events and value. While the character themselves are very important, in a story it is the external forces and the character's reaction to them drive the story forward.
This way of going about setting up stories and worlds is an incredibly effective way of starting the character designprocess. This way of working and formulating stories visually would be extremely effective as it would mean that at every stage up to writing the actual scripts the author would be working on improving their illustration skills. I feel that this would be very a great jump off point to carry on after the series bible is produced.
At the end of the semester I intend to try this work method to plot out the first issue of the comic.

Siyok - Colours and Markings

When looking to colour Siyok I looked at a variety of sources; Fish, Snakes, Frogs, Amphibians and Whales were referenced.

Out of the options I feel that 2 and 6  look the best for Siyok, I feel that these are more in keeping with the bottom feeder look I keep banging on about. Others such as 1, 5, 4, 7 and 8 look like hey might be better suited to protagonists in the story where as 3 looks like an ice lolly.... though I quite like his eyes.
The darker, more natural colours look more believable and ground the character though i feel that 6 would be more suitable as it looks more like an amphibious animal like a Salamander where as 2 looks a bit too reptilian.

Siyok - Final Anatomy

Having spoke to a few of my peers the idea of combining elements from 5, 7 and 8 was the way to go. 

This design helped to further push the idea of the character being a bottom feeder. The large muscular head, low set eyes and feelers giving the impression of a catfish species such as the Mekong.

This design I feel portrays the character's nature the best and also taking into account the issue of a character being redrawn and being recognisable. This render was done to be taken forward for colour tests where I will work out the overall colours and markings of the character.

Kara - Iterations

Moving forward with the iterations of Kara I wanted to keep the overall silhouette and base of the previous post and focus on varying the detail on her gear. 

I wanted to have the character be comparable to current military and special forces. I feel that this makes the character more believable and easier to identify for audience.
As with the other character in this joint project I will seek feedback from peers, seeing which design is strongest before going forward with colour tests.

Siyok - Iterations

Iterations based on silhouettes from the previous post. Again I will see which my peers think is the strongest.

Im leaning more toward the characters on the bottom as they have more of the bottom feeder look I am after. I reckon itll end up being a combination of 2 of these iterations as individually they feel a bit bland.
I have to mind making the character too complicated as it is for a comic rather that a game so will need to be redrawn numerous times and remain consistent.
I am still not convinced with the spines and sails running down the upper back of the characters however I do like the idea of the bottom half of the back featuring some kind of structure to aid in stability and extra thrust when swimming.
I still feel that the large protruding lower jaw of the top group gave more of a slow whitted feel.I chose to split the chin and jaw. The thinking was that taking this feature forward could mean the jaw could open vertically as well as horizontally.
Character 5 appeals to me as the low set eye gives the impression of a whale but the shape of the head and mouth looks more like a whale than a bottom feeder which makes me think of a more intelligent, good natured character.
Like the silhouettes I found myself spending WAAAAY too long on these for what I produced.

Kara - Initial Redesign

When starting to redesign Kara, like with Siyok a quick series of base sketches were done which were used to base the silhouettes on. These help me to produce more accurate silhouettes.

The sketches were then blocked out and detailed. Using reference collected before I am aiming for a character that is not too far removed from a modern military look.

After asking for the opinions of a couple of my peers I decided on 2 of the silhouettes to take forward.

I thought the more heavily armoured character felt a bit clunky so decided to move forward with the unarmored variant.
Like with redesigning Siyok, this design will be taken further and iterations produced before a final design is chosen.

Siyok - Initial Redesign

A quick series of sketches which were used as bases for silhouettes. I find that a few rough sketches help me to visualize the anatomy of the character I am aiming for more than just blasting out the silhouettes straight away.  

Using various sinister looking creatures mentioned in my previous post as well as sharks, angler fish and squid I fired out a series of silhouettes to suss out the anatomy of the character.

Doing the initial silhouettes has helped to start to produce a sinister antagonist. I find that whenever I produce silhouettes I end up with a bunch of cardboard cut outs. By starting with a bunch of really quick sketches I am able to get more of a sense of the character's form.
I find myself being far too precious with blocking the silhouettes whether I do it this way or just with flat tones, trying clean them it up. I need to break this habit and just fire them out.
This is something that in traditional work I got past by doing a lot of life drawing, quick gesture drawing and other quick fire exercises. Ultimately I think it comes down to confidence when working digitally.
A few of these stand out to me as having fairly unique silhouettes such as 2, 3, 6, 10 and 11. the large muscular build and heavy jaw of 2 and 11 could ne good to work with however I feel that these look more slow whitted characters so if these are taken forward I will need to be mindful of this. 6 could be enjoyable to work on, looking at the head as it looks very alien but I an mot sure how realistic or cumbersome the large spines would be.
Going forward I plan to get feedback from my peers on which silhouettes are the strongest, take the most popular 2 or 3 forward to produce a few of iterations of each one before deciding on the final to take further.