Visual Communication

With initial start of this module I began to look at various different characters that I wanted to base my idea on. To begin with I looked at more manga and anime style drawings as I felt this could flow nicely with the various ideas I had in my head. First off I looked at female characters, because at this point I was unsure whether I wanted a male or female character concept, I then drew up some images that I had seen on the internet to gain more understanding of the proportions as well as to gain confidence in my drawings to get them towards a professional standard.

This is the research I want to involve in to my character and to create my different ideas:

 

I began looking at different types of superheroes, as well as film and game characters, the reason for this was to broaden my ideas of the character I could create. After seeing the majority of superheroes coming up being male I wanted my character to be female which inclined me to find as many female characters I needed to identify a good reference. After coming up with my initial ideas I started focusing on the type of clothing and style that would work for me. The style that I liked and thought would work was an anime type look for her. This allowed me to have the feel of something cartoon like whilst keeping a serious feel. I also began looking at different props like Staves Guns Masks and Hats. I believed could work with a possible character concept and began to test these to see whether or not I wanted to take this any further.

These drawings are warm ups allowing me to get the style of drawing I want as well as proportions and improving my skills.

                                                

I began to experiment with an anime based drawing style whilst trying to add more realistic and alien like features to my character concepts to create a more unique feel but at this stage I was still not sure what the right direction to go was.

I then started sketching out the full body and adding different clothes and different feels to the characters to broaden my work overall as well as to find a good direction.

These were three different ideas that I came up with each supporting three different backgrounds to my character, I decided from there that I would move forward with the character to the right.

Now adding colour and texture to these two different styles of characters I was beginning to sense that I had created a character that wasn’t what I had in my head, this led to me scrapping this character and referring back to my research to see how those characters were successful and how they had their unique look.

This was the character that I came up with, there were some elements that I had decided to keep from the previous concept but I modified this to look like a more modernised outlook. I then brought this character in to Photoshop to see what it would look like.  

Although there will still some aspects of this character I really did like and definitely wanted to pursue forwards with the characters just jumped out at you with the feel of an anime school girl, which is something I wanted to avoid. Also I believed that with the character being a so called ‘Superhero’ the action posed lacked and real definition of the word as well as there being proportional issues.

I finally developed a character concept that I was truly happy with, I also felt that the proportions fit nicely with the style that I was going for.

I also created an action pose that I believed added a more superhero feel to her, as well as showing off the character and the way she is able to move. I then put all three of the poses in to Photoshop to colour and texture them.

This is my final character completed with colour and texture. Overall I am happy with the way this has turned out, as well as the fact that I have stuck with the anime feel, and to me this paid off. The character is an assassin in the year 2015; she is called Darya, but has no known last name, she originates from Russia where they have been modifying humans with different computer chips and metal facial parts. The reason she has a red eye is because there is a chip inside which can sensor motion all around her, as well as seeing movement in slow motion. The mask is there to allow all the different parts of the head to stay well connected and allow her to breathe.

Anatomy of the character

With my character being a human it was relatively easy to find usable references to draw up my own bone structure for my character.

This is the bone structure for my character, the only difference being the skull is around 35% aluminum and carbon fiber.