Other World Inhabitants

[Raw Apples]

My goal is to work as a professional illustrator/industrial designer in 3 years time. I am practicing backgrounds and environments as I feel they are my weak point. These are a few of my attempts to create another world with this species. Points I am looking for help on:

- Have i given enough information or is the background still too rough?
- Are the characters of interest or do they look like more of the same old?
- Is the character design appealing or does it appear to hide a lack of lighting knowledge?

Any of these questions answered and other tips are greatly appreciated. Thanks for any help I get!

[David_a_ray]

Both backgrounds are basically just fog. So, I would say that they are way too rough. The characters are little more than silhouettes, and don’t really show any kind of design. I will say however, that the bottom character has the best look, but it’s still not much to go on.

If you want to design your own characters and environments, you need to study different cultures, and how they dressed and how they designed their architecture. An example would be my current project. I’m designing a variation of the ancient Egyptian race. My race lives close to an ocean, instead of a desert type area. They make smaller pyramids out of obsidian, and their clothing reflects oceanic animals instead of the animals of Egypt. So, you can see that there’s more to designing interesting characters, than just scribbling some color on an interesting silhouette. If you want your designs to be cool, they need to seem like they could be real.

[Black Spot]

Neither tells a story. Why is the guy crossing the bridge? Is that object being held a piece of dung and from whence did it come? I don't mind foggy backgrounds, but the pictures are boring without some context.

[Raw Apples]

David_a_ray- Thanks. Good point, these drawings had no research behind them. Do you have any suggestions on researching various cultures? Are you able to find what you need via websites or are you also relying on books?

Black spot-Thanks. It's funny, I recently gave someone similar advice. My wife and I laughed about the dung comment. I'll work more on informing the viewer.

[David_a_ray]

Books, websites, lectures, videos, and life; these are full of information that you can use. The more you learn about various cultures, the more you will be able to incorporate into your own designs. The stuff you put out is only as good as the stuff you put in. It 's all about building a library of knowledge.

[Raw Apples]

Great, thanks for the tips.

[Raw Apples]

concept for men affected by various degrees of clock mutation