Just quickly refining a bit one idea for the final illustration, that could depict Zumbi's last stand, apparently he took refuge in a hidden cave behind a waterfall with the few remaining people from Palmares, while his best friend was captured, tortured, and forced to lead the portugese soldiers to the last refuge of the king.
Sounds absolutely like a made up story but that's pretty much how historians describe the event.
Some more references from a 1985 film, "Quilombo" that tells his story:
Just to show some fails in the process, I felt like wasting time on this first skecth, as trying to think about anatomy, stylisation, posing, and perspective all at once wasn't super efficient, so I had a look at Daz taht's actually free and way easier to use than character creator I felt, and very easy to pose once in Blender with the space mouse.
That allowed me to remove the perspective from the equation, so I could focus a bit more on design, still with this technique of having one layer per elements (skin, hairs, cloth, jewlery ect.. each with a color, so it's actually faster to design and iterate on each elements independently from the others.
Now I need to start ietarting more on the design, I think the current direction is too little original, normal proportions ect.. I could test him more slender, or more bestial, he was seen as the incarnation of the African god of war, an orisha, so could go crazier.
