Character Design Challenge 3 - Mermaids and Mermen

   As the post title has pretty much stated, this month's theme for the Character Design Challenge is Mermaids and Mermen. While I was initially planning to go back to another old character design of mine, I decided to instead do something similar yet a little different. I had originally designed a Chinese jellyfish fairy sometime ago and had wanted to do a revamp of that very much like I had done for the previous character design that I had done. But as it was yet another Asian-oriental related design, I felt that I would save it for another time and do something different. 

   And so, I began quickly looking into a variety of other Jellyfish types before eventually coming across the Black Sea Nettle Jellyfish, a contrastingly darker species of jellyfish as compared to the pearly sort that I had given my other design. Known to be found in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Its range is thought to be from Monterey Bay in the north, down to southern Baja California and Mexico. Those locations further added to what I had in mind for the character design itself.

   After seeing some really lovely examples online, I decided to use one of the many images available in NASA's Royalty-Free Image Resource and placed it over my sketch to aid me in the design's colour scheme as I went along. I did struggle with this design for quite a bit and erased and repainted several parts over and over. This was due to the fact that I was trying to avoid making it appear too busy as well as give it a decent silhouette shape (Which I still believe can be done much better). 

   I ended up placing that planet texture over the entire thing again as I eventually erased and painted over most of it while struggling with my character's shape (I even drew a fish-shaped outline over her for reference after awhile, namely 3 triangles). I also experimented with a lot more brushes this piece as compared to the previous one, there isn't much shading for this one in comparison, either, but thankfully the character still does not completely blend into the background itself.

   And this is pretty much my very last character design for this module, but I hope to continue dishing out more original designs for months to come as this has been a really good if not enjoyable practice. This one is already getting more notes on Tumblr than my previous piece (Though neither of them are going to beat the Zelda piece, seeing that it is fanart, regardless of how God awful it actually is...) so I can only hope to garner more interests in my original works as I keep improving with each submission.

   I might try to get a few Qwertee designs done before I round up this studio brief once and for all!

Character Design Challenge 2 - Heavy Metal

   Taking what I have learnt from my previous submission, I took the opportunity to rehash an old character design of mine that I did a couple of years back. While originally a fandom OC for an existing game series, Shi Xiang became so heavily developed in terms of her backstory and character that I decided to eventually place her into an original series (Which I am slowly still writing up). But the main thing is, I felt that I learnt a lot from my previous submission in terms of presentation and attempted to do a better job for this one.

    I decided to go back to a more comfortable style of drawing and painting for this one, and so there is notably huge difference in terms of the art style used for this one as compared to my Princess of Zelda piece (Where I actually attempted to copy one of the styles normally used for Disney concept art). And while this piece took two days (A rough sketch on the first day before I finished it up about a week later), I felt that the process didn't necessarily drag on as much as it did with the last piece. I also made sure that there was a stronger contrast in terms of colours, lighting and shading for this piece (A huge issue that I saw with my previous submission). I suppose the few problems I ended up facing was the fact that the lightning took away a lot of details, making it less noticeable that she is a decaying undead, and so more details had to be added in there in hopes that it would be made to clearer to the viewer, aside from the short description that would go with it, of course.

   I was really pleased to see that this piece was much more well received than my Zelda piece, and while it didn't actually go over 20 likes, I am still really happy that there were some folks that took notice of my first submission. Coming up next, my final character design submission for this module (Seeing as we will be submitting everything by this month), with the theme being "Mermaids and Mermen", it's definitely going to take me sometime to figure out something a little more original for this theme, as fun as it is... and there really isn't much time left.
   
   So stay tuned.

Character Design Challenge 1 - Legend of Zelda

   I stumbled upon the Character Design Challenge community about nearly several months back whilst surfing through Tumblr. And for the time being, all I really saw it as was reference and inspiration for my own works in other modules, before finally realising that it would actually be an enjoyable challenge to participate in as well. Looking through the site's basic guide, it was incredibly simple to join this group (All you need to do is simply join it's Facebook group, where you will also be submitting your work there during each challenge). Aside from getting to enjoy the works of others and finding new artists, the very same could be said if you should so decide to participate. You will not only be able to build up your portfolio from this challenge, but will also have the opportunity to share your work with others from around the world. And so there are most definitely other perks aside from winning when joining in on this challenge, though winning would also be a plus considering the fact that a Special Guest judge is invited every month to look over everyone's works.

   I initially thought of skipping last month's theme (That being "The Legend of Zelda", seeing as it would require for us to work on something more related to fanart than original, and to add to that, I really was not particularly familiar with the series), I eventually decided to participate to better familiarise myself on how to submit my work and perhaps how to better improve when it came to my next submission for the theme that would be announced the next month after. Also, I always was a sucker when it came to fanart (More so a curse, than a blessing, especially when I REALLY need to get more original works done). 

   Choosing a character was simple, I absolutely adored Princess Zelda's design in Hyrule Warriors (As did many of my cosplay friends), and so decided to do some sort of illustration based on that outfit. The rules were pretty simple from what I could see, and they were:

1. Stick to the theme of the month
2. No environments or overly detailed backgrounds
3. Design a full figure (Not just a head or a torso)
4. One single character (Additional characters and creatures like pets are acceptable)
5. Only one design for each challenge

   And while there are more rules when it came to this challenge, these were certainly the main five to abide by should you wish to have your work accepted into the challenge. I was certainly relieved to know that this challenge was kept as fun and stress-free as possible for all of us. And so, after rereading the rules at least one or two more times, I decided that it was time to get on with my first ever submission into this challenge before it was too late.

   For this submission, I was aiming to create something a little more stylistic than my usual works, and so played around with several brushes and made heavy use of geometric shapes whenever possible, while of course basing it on the original design itself. This probably took a lot longer than it should have (About 1 and a half days worth?), and so I hope I can learn from this experience to create next month's character design with more efficiency. A lot of design elements were simplified (Such as her shoulder pads) heavily from the original design with very basic if not textured shading used (Based on some of the stylistic artworks that I absolutely adore from some Disney concept artists). After believing that my work was ready for submission, I then included my link (I wouldn't really consider it a watermark) at the bottom, so that others would be able to find my site. While there is a chance that the group could still share my design on Tumblr, they don't necessarily link each work to their respective artist, and so this was a pretty important little element.

   By the time I decided to submit in my first 'character design', I realised that my monitor tablet was not as closely colour calibrated to my laptop as I thought it to be. And so in the midst of my submission, the colours were incredibly off (Too light if not horrifically saturated) from what I had seen whilst I had been working on it. After trying my absolute best to tweak it the best I could, I simply told myself then that I would learn from my mistakes and simply submitted it into the Facebook group after... it took me an entire day before I was able to calibrate that thing the best I could, but at I won't have to keep switching between screens to check and see if the colours are decent enough now.

   I wasn't too surprised to see that I didn't get as many likes as compared to the other submissions (And yup, I shared it on my page), though I did get more notes when submitting it on Tumblr than I did on the Facebook group. While the winner would not be judged based on the number of likes they received, I still knew that I wouldn't have any chance of winning, it was still a good trial and error sort of thing for when the next theme came along, either way. And, speaking of that...

   This month's new theme is Heavy Metal, so expect updates soon on that submission!