[Drawing] War

The second Timekeeper to be redesigned is War. Since the original design I have added a lot more detail to his design and bulked out the details to make him look more solid. An important part of his design is the basic shapes he is built from, these are a huge help when animating as it helps to draw the character from other angles and in new poses. The main part of his body is a large box shape, that works in the same way as a "strong character's" chest area. This also helps to make the head look smaller, which reflects the characters low intelligence. 

The picture above was done by a long time friend of mine, who's illustration work can be found here. I learned a few things from this picture's style that I could apply to my work. The first was the focal point (the head). The rest of the design is rounded to make this the center point. For example the hovering fan below the character, notice how it tapers away from the center point of the design. This helps with the hulking appearance of the character. Another design choice I liked, but decided not to use was the points on the elbow area. These helped to break up the design just a little, while keeping the appearance sharp. I also took the idea of a third colour from this design. War has a dark red and black design, so in the image below, I added a blue glow to add some contrast. This could add some interesting lighting effects in dark scenes.

Mori also suggested changing the fan on the bottom of the character. With the regular guards, it was a comedic effect that the large bodies were supported simply by a tiny fan. For the leader however, this would be a huge weak point in combat, so I decided to create a ring of "energy" below him that carries the fan motif from the other characters.

The new design also reflects his personality design a lot more. An element of Timekeeper characters is the amount of power their bodies take up. War had a number of glowy parts and gadgets, which use up more power. All this power usage drains his intelligence and makes him a childish brute obsessed with conflict.

[Drawing] Pestilence

The main aspect behind Pestilence's redesign was to make him look more agile and slippery to represent his deceitful personality. I also turned his tail into a weapon, removing his robe in the process, this just makes him look more intimidating and adds more dark areas to contrast with the striking green glows. It was important to keep the character thin and flexible as he prefers to use manipulation from behind the scenes, using the visual metaphor of a snake allowed his design to translate as much of his characteristics as possible. 

[Animation Practice] Animatin' 'splosions

Part of my next video needs some colourful explosion effects. INSPIRATION TIME!



Will update with results!

[Influence] Expressive character movement

This video was floating around Twitter. These style of videos are done using Source Film Maker as well as models from Source compatible games, in this case, Team Fortress 2. I normally skip these sort of videos as the quality varies, but this one was surprisingly well done. One thing I've noticed with my work is a lack of expression in characters, this video shows the sort of level I'd like to be at, but in 2D. I also picked up some clever staging examples in this video too, that compliment the words and animation. The characters are also in 3D space which allows depth to be put between them a lot easier, which is another thing I hope to translate into 2D this year rather than having my characters on a flat plane.