Character Concept Sketches- Persephone

[Arin]

These are a few concept sketches of the 2nd protagonist/antagonist; Persephone.

What is and isn't working? Any designs working better than the others? Any suggestions on improving appeal?

[rusko-berger]

Hi Arin,

Got your message, and here I am. (I'll refer to the drawing as you have them laid out: row 1: (1,2,3); row 2: (4, 5, 6).

You're obviously working hard, and there are things that are working, and things that aren't...and I'll just bet you know which is which already. Here are my observations:

From a char design point of view, you've captured (and included visual references to) her personality & story. 1, 2, 3, 4, & 6 all show a heavy-lidded and pretty melancholic young woman. Her poses and gestures in those portray a kidnapped maiden who's longing for release or understanding. The flower in her hair is a good and subtle touch, but it needs to be way more specific and have more personality. At the moment it's almost less than a symbol. 5's pose doesn't say anything to me about her character or predicament.

Technically, there are several things you need to practice (hard!), and I'm going to give you some specifics to keep in mind as you, ahem, practice them,

1. "Hairy" drawing. This is a term my beloved high school art teacher drilled into my head. You can be as hirsute as you like...in the *underdrawing*. When you see draftsmen, cartoonists, animators, etc do quick, sketchy, (hairy!) marks, it's either strictly a gesture drawing or its as a sub-structural guide. If you're doing gestures (either from life or invented), then they need to really READ as geature drawings. Get the sway. Get the feel. Don't bother tightening down any, and use these explorations as future reference guides. If you're using them as structural underdrawings, do them very lightly...and then make descriptive and good looking marks over them--once--to delineate your form. If you don't like what you did, erase, then make your Decisive Mark until it works.

2. Proportion & Anatomy. You ned to reaaly, super-duper work on this to make believable art. Cartoony or not, this has to be rock solid. Look, see, practice, look, see, practice. Ad infinitum. If you haven't already, find reference (or shoot some yourself) of poses that you want to draw (and that mimic your drawing's poses if you're doing it after-the-fact), then draw from those. There is absolutely NO shame in working from photo reference.

3. For clothed figures, draw the underlying human form first, then drape it. Again: reference. Even if you have to do it piecemeal from a bunch of different photos or life drawings. Cobble them together...then drape.

4. Work a bit larger--maybe half again as large. Working small (I can tell by the pencil line scale) seems easier, but it's not. You get cramped up, and every mark takes on greater significance, and there comes a point at which important subtleties of form are verrry difficult to translate.

I hope this helps! I'd apply all of this to the Anubis drawing as well.

All the best,
Nick

[rusko-berger]

One more thing: keep your eye from getting used to your drawing as you work. After a while (and this applies to you, me, everyone!) the eye adapts to your drawing. It starts to accept whatever's there as a "fact", and it becomes much harder to critically evaluate your own work. Flip it upside-down, step back a good distance. look at it in a mirror. In addition to those things, as I'm working on something (in this crazy-great era of digital photography!), I take series of pix that I can load into PShop to do various Xforms on to change up my perceptions. For Xforms that are tough or impossible to maintain in real life (like mirroring, etc) I'll make a printout that I can keep next to my drawing.

[Arin]

Thanks! I really appreciate the imput! I'll definitely put your suggestions into action and continue sketching to reach a final design.