How the fighter is shaping up.

It has been an absolute age since I last updated my Blog. This is due to a mixture of not spending enough time on my MA because I have been incredibly busy at work and also laziness when I got home. However, I haven't been totally ducking my MA work and I have actually finalised the design of  this "fat fighter".

Here are some sketches that I did in Sketchbook Pro on my Mac. I'm really, really liking the app and prefer to draw and paint in it over Photoshop. I did some test painting on my ipad but I'm not very happy with the results. So here are the sketches....

This turnaround had the proportions that I was happy with. He is supposed to look like a bit of a thug gone to seed. He's still imposing with huge arms, massive fists and a colossal neck/trapezius. And a pot belly. I asked Mark Penman for some feedback and he was very helpful and gave me the following.

So obviously, some work was needed on making the character symmetrical and the side profile was all wrong. So, after a few more tweaks, I came up with the...

The front view looks much better and the side view is improved but I was still not very happy with it. So some more work was needed. Also I was not happy with the head - it lacked detail. So those were the parts that needed some attention.

This turnaround was looking much better with the addition of a more detailed head on the front and side view and the posture of the side view was much improved too. I decided that I should work the head up in a little more detail.

I am happy with how this was shaping up. And this will be the basis of my modelling. Now for the head.

So the above image was the first attempt at fleshing out this fighter. Not bad but thought the nose looked too wide.

After a few tweaks.

Then darked the skin tones a little and removed the double chin. Not entirely sure what to do about that, whether I should have a huge wobbly double chin with lots of folds or more like this.

Here is my first attempt at painting the side profile.

It looked much better darkened up. But not sure about how the chin would look from the side. I think that I am happy with this look and not have him have folds upon folds of fat on him.

So here is the finalised front view with a tweaked nose and improved eyelids. I think that this is the look that I will use on painting of the textures too. Overall, I'm happy with the look of this fat fighter and I am looking forward to the modelling of him. I will create a couple of versions. One sub 3000 polys and one around the 1000 poly mark with tutorials to create them. Now that will be the tricky part. 

There's lots of work ahead of me but I'm certainly in the right frame of mind to crack on with it.

Thanks for reading.

Here's another little sketch

Just thought that I'd do another little sketch before I get the turnarounds done.

Added some colour

Just added a bit of colour to it with my iPad while I was sitting at Snakes and Slides waiting for the kids.

Sketches

Here's a quick sketch of the fighter. I had a go at making a much more extreme caricatured version but it just didn't sit right. So here it is. Quite happy with how he's looking. More to come....

Painting....moi?

I thought that I'd resurrect my Blog and carry on with it on the remaining time on my Masters. After Josh came down to see us at Futureworks Towers, I'd decided to model my next fighter - based on Eric "Butterbean" Esch. My character is going to be over the hill, fat but still a bruiser.

Also instead of doing another realistic character using photo manipulation for the textures, I'm going to be doing some more painterly stuff. I was really inspired by an animation that Mark Penman showed me called Meet Buck. I really like the look of the texturing of one of the main characters, seen below.

Another influence would be Valve's TF2 characters that are very similar in their cartoony painted look.

So now I have a firm direction to go. So I set about doing some painting tests on my iPad as well as on my computer. So here they are....

The main dude in Meet Buck

Repainting the texture for my previous street fighter in a "painterly" style.

Saw this pic of Rupert Murdoch in the press and wanted to do a paint over....love his creases

Then a quick sketch of my 8 year old on my iPad.

Finally on topic - having a play with doing Butterbean based on some photos taken off the interweb.

One more realistic in proportion, the other a cartoon version. Both done on the iPad.

Finally settled on a style of painting that I'm happy with. This was done on SketchBook Pro on my Mac. This Butterbean based on another pic off the web. I'm happy with this style and think that I'll be doing something like this. Might even take a look at some Lucien Freud paintings for more inspiration. 

That's it for now. More to come....