Been a bit longer since I updated this and I'll warn you now, this is gonna be a long one, reason being I started the Personal project stuff. I wanted to have at least one character piece finished before I shared anything, which I have accomplished, however the result is that I've got a giant pile of the prep work to share as well.
I like world building, so this bit is very much in my wheel house, a big part of why I'm doing this course is because I want to write, draw and animate my own stories (I am aware that is way too much for one person to do alone realistically for any extended period of time but I'll figure out where to compromise when I get there). I didn't want to overcomplicate the project however so I avoided using any of the concepts I have loitering around my house/sketch books as, while in one or two cases they are probably in a place to be viable for this, I don't want to use them for the first attempt. I'd rather learn how to do it with an idea I am less attached too and come back to those idea's when I am ready to properly develop them into something more concrete.
I started by doing a few quickish painting/sketches of a few different things while looking at a bunch of different scenery photo's and such for reference. The idea was to give me a feel for whether I actually liked a setting enough to spark anything more like characters or an idea for a story but not spend more than a couple of hours on each one. Main thing I was focused on was creating a setting that could have clear, obvious, simple conflict between two (or more) distinct groups, I didn't want to stray to far from the broad stokes shown in the class video.
First Pass:
This first one didn't get very far as you can see, the idea was a two groups of people stuck on precarious orbit of a black hole fighting over limited resources to stay alive because they could maintain distance but not escape the black holes gravity well. Don't know where I was going with giant floating woodlouse, thats where I kinda went, nah I don't like this and dropped it.
Second Pass:
I got much further with this one, I stuck with the shattered rocks orbiting a black hole concept but I found a picture of a mad tree that was clinging by the roots to the edge of a cliff, kind of like it was suspended over a gorge. I thought that could be neat if it was massive, partially hollow due to a lightning strike and had a city built inside it. I liked the idea the lightning started a fire at the tree's core and that never went out so the city used it for power or a forge. There wasn't much room for conflict there though so I thought maybe the tree gets hit by an errant asteroid that had some kind of biological contaminant that created a zombie like effect on the citizens. I don't hate this idea still but I didn't like the limitation of my two factions essentially being the same but one side with progressively more malformed and distorted so I put it to one side.
Third Pass:
I decided to move on from the black hole idea and try something simpler and focus more on guaranteeing conflict between characters. I thought an area of abundant resources surrounded by a world of sparsity is a very simple way to ensure conflict, (I may or may not have just watched Mad Max: Fury Road at the time and had deserts on the brain...), so I went with a sort of land before time style crater with an oasis in the center, surrounded by a desert, the idea being that there were people in the crater, there were people in the desert who are in charge of protecting the crater and the people within and then the conflict would come from outsiders trying to take advantage of the crater and its resources for themselves and the crater people and the guardians can fight them off. I finished the picture but in the brief time it took to finish I decided I didn't like the idea overall. In no small part because I hated how the desert came out.
Forth Pass:
This is the one I stuck with in the end, the general idea is pretty generic but it was more interesting than the last one and there was more room to do some cool stuff with it. Similar to the previous concept, I went with a city in the desert but with a giant drill like space ship lodged in a mountain above it. At first I thought maybe the city could have sprung up around the remnants of the ship, like the culture developed its technology based on what they could salvage and figure out from the wreck but I abandoned that relatively quickly. I liked the idea of the ship being part of a space pirate fleet that ravaged worlds for their resources and then abandoned them to die and thought it could be interesting if one of those ships got left behind and the crew abandoned, and that was the premise for the conflict. I could have two distinct races and an obvious conflict of interests (though once I fleshed this out more I decided it was more interesting to have both sides being after the same end goal, the Invaders leaving, but pursuing different means of accomplishing it).
Like I said before, I was just trying to do quick idea sketch/painting things so I'm not thrilled with quality of these but they gave me a starting point so they served their purpose.
Next I did the actual world building (culturally more than like more biomes or anything like that, any story I'm telling through the project is going to take place in the desert or a ship so I don't really need to develop any further regional locations) and character back story stuff. I think I went a bit overboard detail wise on this, (on the whole thing if the length of this post is anything to go by) but I'll put the stuff I wrote for it here next. I think as a whole, my concept is a little basic and derivative (its kinda just Dune mashed with 40k and a dash of Biker Mice From Mars) but as I previously mentioned, I was trying to come up with something that gave me a reason to draw some cool stuff more than anything else. All this to say, please excuse the fact that the following is not particularly well written so to speak, I ramble a fair bit and repeat myself and this sort of thing isn't something I'd usually share but it was part of the checklist so I feel like I should. Also I'm terrible at naming stuff so everything and everyone just has placeholder generic reference names, names are always the very last thing I think about and honestly I'd probably just use a random name generator.
Portfolio background story characters
Invaders
Invaders are a nomadic warrior society, they traipse across the stars conquering and pillaging planets for their resources in order to continue their trek through the stars, leaving the planets and civilizations they encounter devastated and on the brink of full collapse in their wake. Planets that can provide the resources the fleet demands to maintain itself are few and far between and it has been some time since a planet capable of meeting the fleets needs has been found. However, one has been located. All males in the fleet are forced into soldiering, women have the choice and so fulfil all other roles in the Fleet’s society as well. From politics to engineering, all roles are filled by women. Children do not differentiate their gender until they reach the cusp of adulthood and so children are trained in all facets of Fleet life and their gender is decided by the needs of the Fleet at the time (not consciously but as an unconscious response to the general needs of the fleet (like bee’s kinda)). Male Invaders have their feet claws removed to enable them to wear boots and a heavily trained in both weaponry and hand to hand combat, women and children traditionally retain their claws as a means of self defense as all are trained in a kicking oriented martial art from an early age.
Each ship has its chief and each chief answers to the fleet command. Chiefs are expected to uphold the order in the ship’s, strength grants position, the weak are left behind. The Ship we are concerned with is (THE STAR LANCE (PLACEHOLDER)), the chief of this ship has committed a grievous offence against the fleet, his son and a trusted officer, stationed on the ship at the behest of the fleet command to keep an eye on the chief to ensure he has no aspirations of taking sole command of the fleet, got into an argument and the disagreement escalated into a fight. If blood is drawn, fights are to the death among the soldiers of the fleet, and never to be entered into lightly for the fleet is only as strong as its ability to field soldiers. When soldiers fight, the loser is to be immediately forgotten by the fleet and its crews, so their weakness cannot spread, the winners only reward is proven strength. Upon discovering his son, who was losing the battle quickly, fighting this officer the chief interceded on his son’s behalf, beating the officer to within an inch of his life and forcing a blade into his son’s hand to finish the man as though he had earned his victory.
As punishment the Chief’s ship was given a relatively barren patch of the next world to harvest, though as luck would have it there were plenty metals deep beneath the desert that could be traded with other ships for more immediately needed resources such as food and water. Traditionally the fleet would engage The Star Lance as an enemy vessel, conquering it and taking its resources to distribute among the worthy of the remaining fleet. However, the Star Lance is a formidable and storied vessel that, though it would undoubtably lose the conflict, had the potential to inflict massive damage upon the other ships of the fleet crippling it and leaving it unable to conquer the coming world it approaches. The Fleet has been stretched to breaking point as it has been too long since they last encountered a world of the sort needed to sustain themselves. So, unbeknownst to the Chief and his crew, the Fleet Command has also arranged for the ship to be sabotaged and left behind as further punishment.
Left on a ruined world in harsh and unforgiving environment the Chief and his remaining crew must restore their ship and, in the Chief’s eyes, grow the fleet anew and conquer the weak and traitorous fleet command that would abandon his people rather than fight them as custom demanded.
Residents
Civilisation is sparse in the desert, there was one town/city that could be considered worthy of the name and nothing else for miles around. This is where the invaders chose to land, driving the residents out, killing those who fought back, enslaving those who surrendered. In the process of taking the city, the Fleet Commands act of sabotage became clear and gave many residents an opportunity to flee as the Invaders hurried, flutily, to minimise the damage.
The people of the desert are hardy and have existed here for millennia, they know the desert well and can survive its conditions when necessary though it is no less a dangerous prospect than it would be for any regular person regardless of their knowledge. A more traditional society consisting of mostly of tradesmen, the town grew from mining the precious metals beneath the sands and distributing them among the other societies across the planet. Some farming was possible though to do it on any large scale would have required vast amounts of water to the point of being unrealistic, so most families maintained a small plot for themselves with hardy foodstuffs that did well in high temperatures and don’t consume lots of water. A few families also managed small herds of creatures capable of surviving the harsh environment of the desert, but most worked in the mines and refineries.
The town/city had no formal military, the few warriors in this isolated community were more akin to peacekeepers and guides. Highly trained in desert survival and capable of using the terrain to their advantage, they acted as guides for those who would visit the city as well as investigate and prevent criminal activity. Effective fighters though these peacekeepers are, they were no match for the strength of the Invaders both physically, numerically and technologically.
Scattered, the Residents learn that the same fate has befallen every civilization on the planet, in many cases to far more egregious devastation and the Invaders have taken their plunder and returned to the stars. Alone and facing a superior force they look for a way to keep their remaining people safe, whilst others argue the only way to truly accomplish this is to drive their invaders out.
Secondary characters
The Saboteur
The Fleet Command officer who was killed by the Chief to save his son did not board the ship alone. His wife came with him, she was who Fleet Command entrusted to carry out the sabotage order. Driven by vengeance and loyalty to the Fleet she damaged the ships enormous drill, redirecting its cooling systems from where it was needed so that it would overheat and the engines driving it would rupture. She also sabotaged the ships take off systems, rewiring them to jettison all fuel on the next attempted launch. Knowing she was dooming herself to be stranded with her enemies she chose to act in order to her family and husband’s honour. Having covered her tracks well, she continues to be a wrench in the chiefs plans to restore his ship and take vengeance on the Fleet, operating as long as she can, knowing she will eventually be discovered and executed.
The Peacekeeper Father
An older member of the peacekeeping forces in the city, his son was a newer recruit. When the Invaders attacked the Peacekeepers did their best to slow them down, but their efforts were in vain. Seeing his son in danger as the Invader Chief cut through their defences, the Father attacked the Chief to give his son and the other peacekeepers time to escape and evacuate the citizens. The Father held his own briefly against the Chief, impressing him, but was eventually swatted aside and overpowered by the larger, stronger Chief. Instead of killing him, which the Chief should have done to honour an enemy combatant according to the Fleet’s customs, the Chief took the Father captive and made him serve as his personal manservant, treating him better than is acceptable (but still pretty bad), seeking insight into his own choice from the Father. Forced to serve, the Father shows no deference to the Invaders, which is met with heightened aggression from the Invaders. He begins working with the Saboteur, which is how he learns why the Chief has taken him hostage, though he wants to defeat the Invaders he see’s the opportunity to help the Chief realise he acted out of love and that’s not weakness. His ultimate goal is for the Invaders to be driven from his home, which means at some point he will have to betray the Saboteur, as her goal is to keep them here for as long as possible.
The Smuggler
A female Resident who has made their living getting contraband in and out of the city for years as well as hijacking shipments of mined and refined materials being exported from the desert city. She was the Peacekeepers most wanted but they were never able to find her or her base of operations. When the Invaders forced the people of the City to flee, she is who the Peacekeepers were forced to turn too for help hiding the civilian refugee’s as well as planning guerilla attacks on patrols as well within then city via her smuggling routes. While she was reticent to reveal her methods to those who so recently had been doing all in their power to end her enterprise and most likely her life due to the harsh penalties for disrupting the peace in the city, she did so as she recognised the bigger threat the Invaders posed and in exchange for immunity from her previous crimes. She is more interested in acquiring and repurposing the Invaders technology though, as such an advanced gear would give her the ability to dominate not just the criminal world but potentially legitimise herself and take control of the whole region.
Main Characters
The Chief
The path to running an Invader warship is bloody, anyone in your way, friend or foe, must be cut down. Showing mercy just creates a future problem that will revisit you tenfold. The traditions of the Fleet are designed to keep the bloodshed in check. The Chief of the (STAR LANCE) rose to that position young, taking control of a mediocre ship and building it and his crew to one of the most formidable in the fleet. The Chief has always held strongly to the Fleet’s traditions, crediting them for his rise, but he has come to see the Fleet Command as weak, squabbling politicians, and as time progressed, traditions began to chaff, driving a wedge further between the Chief and the Fleet’s leadership. Tribute to the fleets communal shares, redistribution of crew to other ships, limitations of fuel and water reserves, all were leveraged by the Fleet Command to bring the Chief in line but none had the desired impact. When greater tribute was required the Star Lance plundered twice what the other ships of the Fleet could manage, when their best soldiers and crewmen were requisitioned to other ships the Chief’s popularity only rose as tales of the Star Lance and its conquests spread, prompting those crew to be swiftly returned for fear of the consequences of their influence, and some how being given less fuel and water never slowed the Star Lance down an iota leading Fleet Command to suspect that the Chief had quietly been building his own reserve. Sure that he was plotting rebellion and to install himself as a War-Chief of old, Fleet command ordered one of its most decorated officers to be stationed on the Star Lance as the Chiefs first mate under guise of a future chief in need of mentoring from the fleets best. Though he balked, the chief could not refuse, tradition demand he accept this obvious spy aboard his ship and treat him as a brother.
The man did not endear himself to the crew, he was there to sow discord and he did his best, stirring up resentment, challenging the Chief’s decisions when the ship was put before the fleet and fostering rumours that the Chief planned to plunge the fleet into the bloody chaos of their earlier history, where they were more likely to war amongst themselves than bring entire civilisations to heel. The Chief took it, he trusted his crew to see through the ruse, but it grated on his son no end. Eventually his son, a young man, competent but green, took matters into his own hands, and challenge the officer to fight. His folly was not understanding that, even among the rest of the fleet, a man such as this does not rise to his position without great combat prowess. Watching his son be viciously beaten by this man sent to destroy him by weak fools, the Chief snapped, interceding in the fight, the officer put up some challenge but was no match for the Chief who broke his limbs one by one and beat the man to within an inch of his life. The chief thrust a knife upon his son to finish the broken man, as though by him finishing the job, tradition would some how be upheld.
Upon learning of this grave infraction, Fleet Command had all the excuse it needed to be rid of the Chief once and for all. They knew however, that his crew would not unseat him, and in the unlikely event any tried they would probably meet the same fate as the officer. That left them with the one remaining option of the Fleet turning on the Star Lance to mete out justice to its chief and crew as tradition demanded. Supplies were low however, it had been several years since they last encountered a world with suitable resources to pillage and though one was on the horizon, a prolonged engagement with one of the fleets most decorated warships was likely to cripple the rest of the fleet and leave it in no position to seize what was needed from the civilisation upon this new world for the Fleet to continue on. They decided the best thing for the fleet would be to exact punishment in a more surreptitious way. They gave the Star Lance a less punishment officially, bequeathing it the most barren and inhospitable region of the upcoming world to plunder, and quietly enlisted the help of the Officers wife, who had been adopted into the Star Lance’s crew with her husband and remained there still, to sabotage the vessel and ensure it was left stranded when it came time for the fleet to move on.
Now the fleet has left them behind, the Chief is stuck in a barren wasteland but for a few precious metals and a ship in dire straits. He wants vengeance on the petty politicians who, in their fear and weakness, have marooned his entire crew to die dishonourable deaths. His plan is to rebuild his ship at any costs, seizing any and all resources in the surrounding territory, and build a new fleet at his command to hunt down and conquer his betrayers, burning whatever worlds necessary between him and them in order to pull it off. He is still haunted by the fact that it was his choices and his breaking of tradition that has led his crew to such perilous circumstances however, and he seeks to understand his actions through probing the thoughts of the native inhabitant warrior he has taken prisoner.
The Peacekeepers Son.
Fleeing into the desert with the other refugee’s from the city and the few remaining Peacekeepers, the son of the captured veteran resolves to retake their city and drive the invaders out. First though, he needs to help the survivors to safety. He and his peacekeeper partners seek out the aid of the most notorious smuggler/pirate in the region as she has the infrastructure and knowledge of the desert to keep the refugee’s safe and arm those wanting to fight back. Knowing she has ulterior motives outside of simple altruism the Son has to decide whether their assistance is worth whatever advantage she may gain that he hasn’t thought of.
Through the smugglers secret routes into the city and around the desert the remaining natives are able to frustrate the Invaders efforts with hit and run guerilla tactics initially but as time progresses the Invaders begin to hunt the resistance with greater strength and purpose. It’s up to the Son to think of a means of making staying on this planet too painful for the Invaders to justify. Unaware of their inability to leave, his actions are unintentionally extending their stay, though they are also preventing the Invaders from stripping what remains of the region dry which would inevitably spell doom for his people.
That's a whole bunch of words isn't it. If you read it, well done, if we ever meet in person I owe you a beer.
Once I finished with that I moved onto the general character design for both the races. Its going to be mostly actual drawing now I promise.
The idea was that the desert dwellers were leaner and more adapted to desert life where as the Invaders were big and strong but ill equipped for the environment and so I put that in mind when I went to design the generic outfits for each race.
Might revisit the designs for the Female desert dwellers and the Male Invaders, would like the armour to look a bit more sci fi and less medieval and I'm just not fully sold on the female mouse lady clothing, I'll probably leave it as these are just everyday generic people not character or heroes or anything though.
The general concept designs complete, I decided the first character piece I'd do was going to be the Saboteur. I had the clearest picture of what I wanted her to look like in my head (I thought...) so it seemed the best place to start as she wasn't going to be a overly complex design, basically just a Invader woman in an engineers kit. I don't know how I managed to bungle what I was trying to do so many times but I did so I'm gonna show you all the wrong turns I took for... I want to say fun but I don't think that's the right word.
Started with a couple of different pose constructions:
I figured the 2nd one was kind of what I was looking for so I sketched it a bit and promptly abandoned it because I hated it. (I didn't have enough references at this point, if this piece taught me anything, its make a mini visual library for what you're trying to draw, but not too mini because thats also problematic)
So back to construction I went to try more poses
I liked this one so this time I decided to draw the muscle groups on top of this to have it for reference when I started shading. I probably wont do this again except for in the cases where I'm drawing very muscular characters for reasons that will become apparent later.
That done I moved back to sketching
I was reasonably happy with that so I added some background
That done, I was happy I was going in the right direction so I started shading
Having finished shading the character I realised that I, once again, hated it. I had made her too buff, and while her face was passable in the sketch, once I shaded it, (poorly, multiple times, this was the best pass of a bad bunch), I didn't like it. I've left the sketch line art over the top too, it doesn't look too much different without it but it does work better with the line art.
So back to construction I went. I decided I wanted to have a more interesting, dynamic pose (this was a bad idea), so I tried something looking down on the character.
This seemed ok so back to sketching.
And I hate it again. Looks like a alien relative of snap crackle and pop. so MOAR CONSTRUCTION!
Having done some animating and taught myself I defaulted to this contact pose and at this point I just accepted I had fully lost my way and was just throwing shit at the wall hoping something would stick.
So, knowing this, I decided to go on ArtStation and have a look at what sort of poses most characters from professionals were in when they were sharing their work. Unsurprisingly this is when I realised I was overcomplicating it. The majority of pieces I looked at were in a simple, relaxed standing pose so as to show off all points of the head to toe character design. There were of course some that were in far more dynamic action poses but these were designed to demonstrate something more than just the character design, such as world building, fighting styles or visual effects. The dynamic poses were definitely the more interesting pieces but they were clearly centre pieces to larger collections, the majority of character work was fairly simple, pose wise, so I decided to start by finding a few reference poses to figure out where to start.
I went with something veeeeery basic.
That done, I went back to sketching. I felt the background I had previously used was still good enough, wasn't complicated but did what I needed it to do. I got loads of references for every aspect of the character I wanted to draw from the goggles to the creases in the boiler suit. This was the thing that probably made the biggest difference. If I could go back and change something with the finished piece, I'd reduce the breast size, I couldn't quite get the shape I wanted in the shirt so I think I got lazy and made them massively oversized rather than think about how to do it right.
Now I was happy with the sketch I shaded it, I corrected the perspective on the gun later when I decided the piece as a whole looked much better with Line Art. I did the Line Art after I did the shading but I'll put in here because this is where its relevant really.
Shading and Line Art
Next I did the colours for the character via gradient maps, I didn't do any flat colouring on this one because the gradient maps came out good enough that I felt it wasn't necessary.
Then Shaded the back ground and gradient mapped that too
Then final details
After that was done I really needed a pallet cleanser, so to speak, before I started on another character so I decided to try do a scene from an entirely different story I've been playing with in a style closer to one of my favourite comic books. I was initally planning for it to just be black and white but I did end up colouring it because I wanted to see how it would come out. I'm fairly certain I prefer the final version but I am partial to the black and white one ("Shading" one) because its closer to what I had in my head when I started.
Construction
Sketch
Line Art
I hesitate to call this shading because its more just expanding the Line Art to reflect the lighting but I suppose technically it is Shading
Colour
Final
Once again, I'm sorry this one is so insanely long. If you read through the whole thing, I do appreciate it, even if you just skimmed it honestly, you're a trooper. I'll make sure the next one is far more reasonable and not a giant rambling mess but I stumbled a lot with the first bit of the personal project so sharing that seemed the thing to do.
