ART WAR | 2D | Snilk, the Mongrelfolk Inventor | vadstart

[vadstart]

Name: Vadim
Email: vaderxv@gmail.com
Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artist/vadstart
Tumblr: http://vadstart.tumblr.com/

Hey everyone! My character Snilk (working title, hopefully i can change the topic name later :3) is joining the Art War on the side of Fantasy - he's a mad inventor from a physically weak, but cunning subterranean race of mongrelfolk (another working title) - crafting crazy, but weirdly effective contraptions from improvised ingredients (and smaller creatures ) to strengthen his Fantasy allies and defeat his Sci-fi foes.

My primary goal with him is to show as much personality as possible through the shape language, face expression and gesture/pose. Plus design all of his contraptions to be self-explanatory only through their visual design, not necessary requiring long text descriptions.

Right now i'm working on appealing shapes for his face and figure, without equipment for now (it will come next). Now that i've looked through other great submissions here, i think i'm going to do a couple of silhouettes so i can focus only on the overall shape and ignore small details. General design is based on the Elephant Shrew and other similar small rodents (in the left bottom corner is a Ratogator, his pet).

[vadstart]

I finally found the face shape that i like - a right mix of crazy and cutesy!
The body design is also coming along and the ticked version is pretty much what i'll choose eventually - just need to play around with the limbs scale a bit more.
Also starting on the equipment design tomorrow and i want to finish composition thumbs before the end of this weekend.

[vadstart]

Fixed proportions to make Snilk look more cunning and the first draft of equipment and how it will look like on him. Tomorrow i'm going to work on making their individual design cooler and more DIY/scrapped looking.
Kinda want to jump to colors and rendering, but i feel that it would be better to finalize the design first. Also, i promise not to be lazy with line weight

[bazuzu]

Похож на бандикута)) Отличный выбор основы для персонажа!
Looks like bandicoot! Original character shall be in finish!

[vadstart]

@bazuzu лол, точно! Изначально базировал дизайн на землеройке:
lol, true! Here's my main ref for the character, elephant shrew:

Allright, i finished the general design of Snilk's inventions:

And designed some more clothing variations (i'll probably do 1 more with just a beanie):

Can't wait to jump to colors as soon as possible tomorrow!

[bazuzu]

Бандикуты милые! ^___^
Bandicoot cute

[katya_cyan]

Улиточка очень милая) и работа крутая)
Snail very cute) and cool job)

[vadstart]

@bazuzu @katya_cyan Спасибо огромное! :3 Thaaaaaaanks!

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A few more options of clothing:

And color schemes exploration:

Which options do you guys prefer?

In retrospective (and after looking at amazing process of other participants) i feel that the colors are too motley and not very harmonious - that's probably because i started coloring my line sketches without doing b&w designs first and prioritizing different parts (for example, darker bottom, lighter head and very bright equipment like potions and a toad).
Also, design is probably looks to cluttered right now with all the accessories, so i'm going to do a big final character sketch with enough space for everything.
Anyway, i'm off to making thumbnails first.

[vadstart]

Some rough thumbnails to explore composition options, i want to showcase both the attack and support abilities of Snilk:

[vadstart]

Thumbnail refiment - wasted a lot of time on perspective and poses, so tomorrow i'll just focus on getting as much rendering as possible!
Anyway, i'm happy with the general composition, the only tricky part is showing two actions at once and trying to keep the viewers eyes inside the picture:

[meonika]

Nice composition and so funny character! I think i like more the version with opened mouth. It adds sly emotions.

[malcom]

Really love the character. I can see him in a movie and animation short or something like that. Good work. Best of luck in these last 2 days.

[vadstart]

ahhhh, i ran out of time before rendering phase and back view of the character:

@meonika @malcom Thanks a lot for the kind words! You're right about the opened mouth, gonna return to it. I learned a lot from the other contestant's processes and i'm still going to finish this one off-contest. And join the next one EARLY this time

[bazuzu]

Не успел?, жалко( Доделаешь работу после?

[katya_cyan]

Интересно былобы увидеть финал) ваш персонаж очень интересный и сама композиция выглядит очень хорошо)
It would be interesting to see the final), your character is very interesting and the composition looks very good)

[vadstart]

@bazuzu Ага, уже доделываю!
@katya_cyan Спасибо огромное, вдохновляюсь финалами других участников и работаю вовсю над своим
Thanks a lot, there's a lot of great inspiration in other contestants threads and i'm working hard to finish mine, even outside of official competition.