Some more brainstorming.
I addded my personal information to the first topic, so I am now elligible.

Also, I settled on a name, though it is still subject to change...
With help of the trusty fantasy name generator I found a couple of names I like.
In no particular order:
- Endeis
- Vestele
- Lyra
- Airya
- Veryre

They are a warrior from a humanoid birdlike race.
I will mix features from birds of prey and birds of paradise and perhaps some other animals.
The design will be elegant, but the character will be bulky and tank-like.
I might think about doing some sort of armour, but I might like the character without clothes, so I will have to experiment.

10 days later

There we are!

Here are my first design sketches!

excited to see your progress :smile: keep up the good work!

YES BIRD PEOPLE! haha. I love your idea!
A few months back I was obsessively drawing harpy's and then recently I had to design a cartoon and made my villain a bird lady. haha. I really cant wait to see what you come up with!!

Now this is interesting.. I love birds and I love people so I'm gonna like this one for sure

@Steve_Kim Thank you!
@ajramsey Cool! I love harpies! The way this design is going this is going to be a harpy too.
@sanguine Thanks! I love birds as well. :wink:

New sketches. I pretty much settled on the base anatomy, so I tried drawing out some details.

(Also, I kind of drew this in reverse. I started with the base anatomy on the left, but then I drew from the far right to the middle.)

Colour variations:
[wrong picture, whoops]
Based on the colours of a couple tropical birds. I will do a couple more I think.

nice! you should definitely try out different colors from different birds, not just tropical. tropical birds are very colorful and saturated, and you might not want your character to carry that bright and whimsical mood :smile:

@Steve_Kim Will do. Right now, I'm still experimenting. First I'll try out some other birds and see what I like. I will probably end up mixing and matching.
Also, I just noticed the colours are way more saturated here than they are supposed to. (I realised, I saved the file as cymk, that's why the colours are all wonky. Oops.)

Here is how it is supposed to look:
The colours are still bright, but not as straining to the eye.

The white orange, and brown green looks the best for me! It's eye catching and looks glorius! Keep it up man :smile:

10 days later

@Kreyhardt Thank you. I think so too. However, I still have a bunch more iterations.

More tropical birds, with more muted colour schemes this time:

More colour schemes. These are based on birds of prey:

I collected my personal favourites in one picture and included the names for those who are curious:

Right now I am leaning towards either nr. 1 or nr. 2, but I also like elements from nr. 6.

Playing with colour schemes on the faces:

I like nr. 2 and nr. 5, because the red resembles warpaint and I like nr. 3 because it looks alien.

Mixing and matching my favourites:

I'm liking the resplendent Quetzal myself. The red breast really stands out the most. Wings are a little bland though, maybe spread some of that blue to the tips?
Or maybe you could think about adding a red breast to some of the more recent, muted designs?

9 days later

Whelp, I seem to have misplaced my tablet pen. :confused: Usually I find it within a couple of days, but it's been more than a week now and I am pretty sure I looked everywhere.
So I don't think I will be able to finish this piece on time...
I've been looking into replacing it, but a new pen would cost than my crappy old tablet is even worth anymore, so I might as well get a new tablet. So yeah, I'll be doing that. :smile:
I will be returning to this piece later. I could do some basic sketches and thumbnails traditionally in the meantime.

@moirae
Thank you. The red breast seems like I good idea. Sadly I didn't get to try it out.

1 month later

Obviously, I am not going to make the deadline...
(I went without tablet for almost three weeks and then I was sick for a while and now I am swamped in other work... :cry: I will finish this in my own time. )

I wish everyone else the best of luck. I already saw some awesome entries out there. :smile: