Assignment - Developing Characters
Assignment - Developing Characters
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Character Design Monster Lab

Developing Characters

Assignment - Developing Characters

181

Assignment - Developing Characters

181

Assignment

Select 3 to 5 of your small thumbnail drawings from your ideation sheet, and let’s take ‘em a little further. The idea is to begin pushing towards a lineup similar to the one I’m developing here in the course. Remember to post your work, for a chance to be included in the video critique.

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Cyril Cory
Hey guys, Here's what I got so far after following the whole course (I can't do the digital part so I sticked to paper :)) By the way, this course is still flagged as "in progress", does anyone know if and when will there more videos ?
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idkcallmewhatever
yeah there properly is
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Ireneusz Paszkiewicz
Here I selected couple of my Forest Constructs to refine them later. I was going for the variety in their characteristics and giving them different roles in a party
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idkcallmewhatever
i love how there is a small dude holding hands
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Mitchell
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sean_wolfe
Howdy, nice to see all these ideas solidifying. I hope this slides in before the deadline. I really struggled with this one, maybe I was over thinking it. I feel like what I did wasn't enough and that somewhere in my head is a better design... Does this frustration pop up often when designing characters? So, how could I edit these down to get a stronger "message" that unifies the designs more, if that's the right question to ask? I was trying a "cursed county fair" angle with these.
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Ricardo Campos
This is the 1st one I decided to push a bit further, it's a hulking fungus monster who uses the faces of previous victims to lure humans and to consume them. I'll be posting the rest on a few days, had an unexpected trip that is delaying me . Really cool to see the variety of styles people can do.
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Andre Camargo
Hey Ricardo, the shapes look great. Bulky and heavy and mean :) Nice idea with the head on top!
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Garry Gray
Not sure in my last post I put it in the right section , still pretty new to Proko. Thought the comments and assignments were going to be merged. My bad for posting this image twice. Was hoping for some feedback:) I kept pushing these designs of mine on pages . I chose 5 and even pushed them more. Hopefully looking not too crazy ,haha. I got a heaving , one that does magic and even minions with four arms that walks on them with other cast of characters. I dig the pumpkin harvest so much so went with that idea. This is such a great class! Btw look at my previous post for more thought process and ideas with writing and thumbnails. Thanks
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Ricardo Campos
That number 3 stands out for me man! And the 4 evolution also gives me a funny villain vibe!
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Garry Gray
Ok so here's more pushed characters of mine. The sketches are the new ones based off the colored. Not sure if I pushed the designs too far . Things got a tad crazy ,haha. Chose 5 I really liked and gave them more of an edge. I drew a bit of the same process as Scott Flanders, only I drew them mostly digitally. Rough light gesture sketch , came in with darker lines and drew more anatomy . Then filled with a base shade of grey , flats. Then added a shaded block in with darker grey shading. Last , I went over the sketch and darken the lineart , outlines. Hopefully they read well. Loving class! Learning a lot. Btw if you want more of a description on them, feel free to see my previous posts :) Wrote a decent amount of stuff.
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Andre Camargo
Hi Scott and all the rest! I hope I am not to late for the assignment! I only had one and a half days due to work and travel so I tried to give it my best shot within the time I had. There were many ups and downs during the development (with a lot of garbage) and there are (definitely) parts I really would like to research and explore in more depth. But for now... let me introduce: The Pumpkin Brigade! A ruthless band of mercenaries who does all the dirty work you are not willing to do. Checkered Leader - takes care of the contract and coin Warlock - freaks the shit out of people and calls for supernatural backup Tank - hits things with his big hammer Shadow - gets into places and creates confusing with his pumpkin spice grenades Tinker - has the right tool and trick for every situation They might be a bit icky and carry an unpleasant smell, but they get the job done. I copied them together and added a few colors, just to get a better idea of the size and proportions. Good day to everybody, Andre
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Scott Flanders
You're good. Not late at all :)
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Nate
2yr
Dang, I actually love how you put together your lineup! I am definitely stealing the solid color background shape. Really makes stuff pop when it breaks the plane of the shape.
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Damien Dederichs
Hello everyone. Here are the next parts for the "farmers controlled by plants character designs". Pages 4,5 and 6 are part of the ideation process for the 3 selected characters for this assignment. The actual assignment is on page number 7. Thank you again Scott for the first assignment video, I tried to take it into account as much as I could considering the time I had. Have all a nice day and thank you again.
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Andre Camargo
So much expression and emotion in those sketches! Wow
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Ricardo Campos
It's like Plants vs Zombies - REVENGE OF THE PLANTS!
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Nate
2yr
So in keeping with the goal of developing characters based on archetypes and creating a lineup, I ended up deviating quite a bit from my initial sketches. A lot of my Potato Famine ideation sketches, while cool, felt more like minions than main lineup. That said, I still took plenty of ideas from those sketches into this next phase. Rather than doing a lineup of 5 totally different archetypes, I did 3 and repeated them on each side of the conflict. The side of good being those who are fighting the minions of the blight and the side of evil being those who have succumbed to its power and now do its bidding. The three archetypes are basically Leader (doubling as DPS + Rogue/Dual Wield Ranger), Tank (doubling as Outsider) and Wizard + Summon. Notes on each with some more backstory are in the images. Also included are some exploration sketches I did to get to each of these characters. One thing I struggled with a bit was presentation, especially of the Blight side because they have a lot of strips of goop and flesh that don't lend themselves well to strong shape definition. Also in general I had a hard time lining up the characters in an aesthetically pleasing way because I did most of the drawings individually or as pairs, so I didn't feel their pose or orientation was as strong in a lineup.
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Andre Camargo
Hey Nate, I also drew everything individual on paper and had lots of problems putting them in a line up. Mine are not coherent in proportion and feel pretty weird and unconnected. The light outline emphasizes the shape, I really like that for the individual characters, for the line up, it separates them a bit. The shapes of the ideation are just amazing. For they are my favorite of all the posts you have here so far.
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Blaise Chambers
Here’s my five! I’m wondering how to go about making interesting and appealing shapes. Also, how to go about posing from a front view. Thank you!
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Andrea Rubbini
Looking at the assignments of other students I realized there was an opportunity to study their work and try to do better with mine. I went ahead and redesigned the whole team, and I think I learned a lot from the amazing works posted here! This is the Leader, with massive HP and immune to Ambush. I'll share the rest of the team in this post to avoid spamming the chat.
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Andrea Rubbini
This is my fourth archetype, the pet of the family, specialized in Crowd Control. I'm glad I managed to get this far with the line-up. One more and it's complete.
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Andre Camargo
Mom and Dead really got me! Such a cool idea.
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Ricardo Campos
This is fun mate! Nice!
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Ted Kalamov
Part 2 of the Assignment, took my 5 favorite characters and developed them further with 3 variations each, trying to exhaust the different facets of each archetype. Enjoy!
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Andre Camargo
I could imagine those on a board or card game! Very convincing body language. I am so jealous.
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Rubén Frutos
These are awesome man! Great clear shapes and all the characters just look so fun!!
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Wiktor Budzinski
I am in the midst of moving from Europe to the US so I did not have much time to draw. I am posting my first monster just in case the critique is around the corner 😉 I will work on the next four in the next two weeks and post them as a comment here 👇 This is the Cow of Doom, a tank class character in my party 🐮🐮🐮 Recently I really started to like stylized characters, so I tried to embrace that! Hope it worked out! Feedback is welcomed!
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Andre Camargo
The linework and colours look great. The shapes are really convincing to me! Cool :)
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Ricardo Campos
This is awesome!
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Wiktor Budzinski
Here are two additional characters :) Hellhound is a leader of the party, and the Bunnisher is a striker 🎃🎃🎃 EDIT: For some reason the website cut offs the legs of the Hellhound, so you may need to click „open the original”.
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Andrea Rubbini
I've gone through another round of Ideation and I come up with a theme I'm fond of, a family of monsters running a horror farm. I have other two archetypes but they need more work, probably more Ideation time. If I can't make it for this assignment I'll add them to the line up during the next one!
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Scott Flanders
Awesome Andrea. That's a great theme. You should have time to get the other 2 ready. I will be recording the next critique video in 2 weeks I believe. We'll be announcing official submissions due date soon.
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Samuel Lemons
Here is the fifth creature variation.
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Jean-Rene Losier
Here is my assignment for the second step of developing characters. I decided to focus on the Bee Hive idea that I had initially as I really liked the square shape of the hive. I developed the idea thinking about how each character could link together in a common theme and decided to go with the idea that the leader is someone who can manipulate bees to do her bidding. What results is "Hive Golems"! We first have Queen B who manipulates the bees who is carried by little bee hive minions. Then we have the Crawler who moves around on his hands. Then we have the Guardian which is the muscle and finally, the Tower who is simply a huge tree that also carries with it, a bunch of beehives from it's branches/hair.
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Nicholas Geier
Really like your shapes and gestures! You’ve got some really cool diversity of body types, maybe posing them in different ways will help suggest different actions and roles for them? The skinny Tree hive one is pretty pointy which lends to a stab by striker pose, Or you could lean into a cowboy hat side and make it shoot bees?
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Scott Flanders
Right on Jean-Rene. These are cool ideas. Next thing I'd like you to do is to begin composing these characters together as group. A "lineup" as you'll hear me refer to it pretty often. Part of the point of doing that is to see how these shapes will relate to each other. It's going to help you see where you need to push and where you need to adjust the scale of your characters relative to one another. As is, I see what are essentially 3 tank class roles. That's not necessarily wrong but I'd like to encourage you to attempt to differentiate them further. I will likely address this more directly in the next critique video. I'll probably be recording that this month. Again, nice work man :)
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Samuel Lemons
I did some more variations on 4 of the 5 creatures I picked for my lineup. I will do more variations on the fifth creature asap. I drew these on an 8"x11" piece of copy paper with each creature being about 3" to 3.5" tall.
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Scott Flanders
Bro..you're getting better. Seriously. Your drawings are looking pretty clean dude. Keep it up.
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Will David
This is my final developed characters page. I did one of them a bit small and forgot to put my paper down a few times so smudged;p. Thanks for the great assignment Scott, got me practicing lots, and I hope everyone learns heaps from it!
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Scott Flanders
Dude..nice shadow shapes Will. Seriously...all you guys are gonne be better at doing this stuff in pencil than I am at doing in on the pc :O
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auno
2yr
Hello comrades. This is my current line up, I plan on doing 2 more but I'm retrying the ideation phase and this time aiming to stray away from the illustration side and more focus towards shape language and thumbnail drawings, as per the advice given in the critique video. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. I'll continue to try and make adjustments through error.
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Scott Flanders
Much better comrade Auno. You make the motherland proud :D Seriously though, these are much better. I like huge arm archer. Have you read Murder Falcon? (If you haven't you should. It's really fun.)
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Gift card for art students to use on anything in the Proko store
About instructor
Chief Creative Officer at Little Bang Inc. I'm especially passionate about character design, creature design, and sculpting.
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