Finished Pieces

Finished Pieces for Tales Of Darkness!

Hello guys,

Today I am going to show you all of the 5 characters I created from scratch for my future game Tales of Darkness. Moreover, I am going to reflect on it. 

Aura the witch

Dante the Demon

Jack the Exorcist

Reaper 

Dave the Scarecrow

I started this project 2 months ago and it was a great experience for myself since I got better through practice and developed my style.  Although, I made many mistakes such as: colouring Aura's sleeves wrong in the side view, having trouble with the colours of Dante's and Dave's pants, I learned from my mistakes so I will not make the mistakes again. 

I was surprised by the amount of improvement I made in these 3 months because when I compared these character  designs with my old major project for Digital Ar, I have seen the difference in skills and the improvement I made.

Colour Pallet for every Character.

Process

The process

Hello guys, 

Today I am going to show you the process of my major project Tales of Darkness.  It has been a long journey and I am amazed and really happy with how the project turned out to look like. Please find the steps below.

Firstly, I have started by sketching the character in different views ( front, side and 3/4 views).  This step was done by a normal mechanical pencil.

Then, I have inked the character with my pigment ink pens and erased the pencil lines for a cleaner look.

Here, I have started colouring the character with my copic markers as seen in the eyes and the tattoo in the reapers face.

Then, I continued colouring using the markers and added thicker lines by using a black copic marker and a thicker pigma ink pen.  You can see the close up of the thick lines in the second image.

After that, I used the highlight pen to draw highlights and make the character pop out more.

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I scanned my work using a scanner.

Then, I sent it to my computer and saved it in 600 dpi resolution as JPEG.

Done 

Practice

Practising 

Hello guys.

Today I am going to show you a couple of sketching practice I made during my 2nd term to get my body proportions and time management better for the major project.  To make my skills better, I kept on doing figure drawing practice that consisted of different poses.  

Please note that every drawing only took me 1 minute to make to make me faster and more efficient.

Below you fill find some of the figure drawings I made

 

As you can see I struggled a little bit at first since I was trying to cover the whole body with its details instead of focus.

So one of my more experienced friends told me that I should focus on how the pose looks like and draw with minimal lines since I have limited time.  It actually worked and I started covering the whole body in this limited time because of their advice.

This practice made me develop and get better drastically since I am now faster in doing my work and I draw body proportions because I practised figure drawing a lot.

Further Research

More Research for the Reaper 

Hello guys,

Today I am going to add more research for my Reaper since his design was Cliche and normal.  I have found interesting research for my Reaper and I was really happy to find it. 

Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead)  

It is a festival that got celebrated in Mexico on Tuesday, November the 1st, 2016.  It is known for its amazing Skeleton Make up and that is why it is an amazing reference for my reaper.  Moreover, not only face paint is done in this day but art installations and sculptures are made to celebrate this day.  

A picture of people that are celebrating the day.

This day has been celebrated from 3000 years ago till now and it is a catholic ritual to honour the lives of their loved ones that died, so people make dolls, designs, installations, face paint...etc to celebrate it.  In this day people started protesting too for a good cause.



This is an example of an installation that was in the festival 1 year ago.

This is all interesting and useful research for the Reaper since I can get new ideas for how the face skeleton will look like when I design it.

Link to the Article

More useful and interesting Designs for inspiration:

Here, I have added more designs to my research to get some inspiration and ideas for the character design.

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Tales Of Darkness

Tales of Darkness 

Hello guys,

Today I am going to talk about why I changed my project from a horror farm setting into a character design project for an RPG game I am going to make in the future called Tales Of Darkness.

So what is Tales of Darkness?

Tales of Darkness is an RPG “Role Playing Game” set in a fantasy world called Alrad the land of the brave that I am going to work on in the future using a software called RPG maker.  RPG is a game genre where in the player controls a fictional character to do quests and level up.  My major project is going to consist of 6 fully coloured character designs in which 3 of them are evil while the other 3 are good to make the game even and fair. My characters in game are going to portray distinct persona's such as: Dave the scarecrow, Dante the demon and Reaper the collector of souls, while there is Jack the exorcist, Hunter and Aura the white witch. I chose the name “Tales of Darkness” for my game because the main component of the game narrative is that the evil in the world is in control over Alrad. You can see Dave the Scarecrow on your right.

I created this logo by my own by sketching it, inking it and colouring it with copic markers which is a simple process.  I thought that it would be a great idea to have my own game logo since it will make it unique on its own.  I chose orange and purple since it gives a fantasy like feeling to the game which is what I am aiming for.

Why I changed

The reason I changed from the horror farm to this project was because I did not think it was a good idea and it was too clichéd and not creative which made the project look bland for me.  So I went and changed my project into something exciting and different from what I do to challenge myself and feel inspired.

You might be thinking what is an RPG 

Just to repeat that RPG is a game genre where the player controls a fictional character to do quests and level the character up.  It is considered one of the most popular genres out in the game industry and they are mostly known for their gameplay and story. 

To add to that, many RPG games tend to be different than each other in how they are played, graphics and views. 



Final Fantasy 15



Diablo 3



Joe's Battle Chasers

These 3 games are considered RPG games but they are all different from each other although you do quests and level up your character.  The first picture shows the popular game Final Fantasy 15 published by the gaming company Square-Enix and as you can see, the camera angle is in 3D where you can lock around and explore the world.  Other games like Diablo 3 have a different angle for the player to play in which is the eagle view where you see the whole game from above.  Battle Chasers has quite the same view as Diablo 3 but the camera angle is a bit lower.  

Now let us talk about the gameplay, Final Fantasy 15 and Diablo 3 requires the gamer to control and move the character whenever they want and fight in an action packed game play (Basically command the character) while Battle Chasers is the type of RPG that is turned based (you still command the character but you will have to wait for your turn, you cannot attack freely).  Please watch the videos of how the games are played to understand fully.

You can see how every game is played from the links below:

Final Fantasy 15 Gameplay

Diablo 3 Gameplay

Battle Chasers Gameplay

Meet the Characters

Meet My Characters

Hello guys,

Today I am going to show you in depth my characters for the Tales of Darkness game that I will create in the future. 

My Characters 

Meet Aura the White Witch:

Blood type: O

 Favourite food: all food (can't resist food)

 Location: Alrad the land of the brave.

 Likes: flying with her broom.

 Dislikes: annoying places

Here are the initial sketches and ideas of my witch character where I added what here clothes might look like and what accessories she will be holding with her such as: the broom stick.  Moreover, she will have a small creature that is her companion that will help her out when she is in danger.

I managed to finish only the head character design of Aura and I created her broom stick and the wand for her.

Hunter:

 Blood type: A

 Favourite food: Steak (any type)

 Location: Alrad the land of the brave.

 Likes: Chess.

 Dislikes: Orange juice (No specific reason)

Unfortunately I have stopped creating my hunter so I can make the other 5 characters in more time and more quality but I will definitely make a whole character design for him when I finish the course because this game means a lot to me.

Jack the Exorcist:

 Blood Type: B

 Favourite food: Drum sticks

 Location: Alrad the land of the brave

 Likes: Smoking

 Dislikes: Demons and all its kinds

Here are the initial sketches of Jack the Exorcist.  I draw what clothes he might be wearing in the final character design and added some of the things that he carries with everyday such as: a pistol that is covered with holy water and the most important thing for him a cigarette pack.

Dante the demon:

Blood type: Unknown

Favourite Food: humans

Location: Dave's (The scarecrow) House near Alrad

Likes: Comics

Dislikes: Sun (He is not a vampire)

Here are the initial sketches of Dante the Demon where I drew different ideas of what he might be wearing and what kind of eyes and hair he has.  Moreover, I thought about adding horns or wings to the last result of the character design.

Here are the character head design and weapons that Dante uses to defeat the people of Alrad.

Reaper:

Blood Type: No Blood (he is a skeleton)

Favourite Food: Souls

Location: Dave's House Again near Alrad.

Likes: Motorcycles 

Dislikes: Dave although he lives with him.

For the initial sketches I had 2 ideas of drawing the reaper.  The first was the skeleton type of reaper while the second idea was inspired by the Japanese Shinigami with the mask. I even added different weapon ideas for the scythe and what he might be carrying with him including a light or a sand time.

Here are the head character design of the Reaper and what he will be carrying with him.

Dave the Scarecrow:

Blood Type: Unknown

Favourite Food: Corn

Location: His house next to Alrad

Likes: His crows (They are his family)

Dislikes: Reaper (its competitive)

For these initial sketches I took a different approach and focused more on what type of outfit Dave will have since I had no idea what he will look like at first.  I ended up choosing the one in the middle since I found it the most suitable for him because of his character. 

Here are the head designs of Dave in addition to what he will use as a weapon which are his claws.

In conclusion, the research that I have done for these characters helped me so much since I could not have had any good ideas if I did not look for inspiration from different artists, comics, series, anime and manga.  I think that making the head designs and giving the characters characteristics  was my favourite in this post because it made the characters look alive by adding different emotions and characteristics to their character.  Moreover, the initial sketches helped me get a grasp of how the characters will look like and what they will be wearing when I create the final result.  I hope you stick around to see my final full body character designs including colours!

Detailed research for every character

Research

Hello guys,

Today I will show you my research for my characters for the purpose of development and inspiration of my characters.  My research consists of American Comic books, series, games, studies, character designs, illustrations, anime and manga.  My main artist research was Joe Madureira which I had a specific post about him and his artwork.

For my witch Aura:

For Aura I looked at different characters from different Japanese games and anime including the anime by studio Trigger called "little witch academia", The popular game "The Legend of Zelda Win Walker" by Nintendo (It recently got a new game called "The Legend of Zelda Breath of The Wild") and a character named Vivi in a game called Final Fantasy by Square-enix.

Let us start with the Little witch Academia Character Designs:







These character designs were made by Studio Trigger (an animation studio set in Japan).  They were made by the character designer Yoh Yohsinari in 2013 for the movie.  I chose Little Witch Academia as my inspiration for my witch because Studio Trigger has one of my favourite stylised character designs compared to other animation studios in Japan.  I always recognise their animation series because of their unique style on how the eyes, hair and outfits are drawn.  Moreover, I also chose this anime series specifically since it talks about witches and it has witch character designs which makes it a really good and useful reference for my witch for drawing the outfits and the colours that I am going to use.

All Images and Information from here

Vivi from Final Fantasy:


 

Vivi is a character in a popular Japanese Role Playing game called Final Fantasy made by the gaming company Square-enix.  His design was inspired by another Final Fantasy character from the game "The Black Mage".  I chose Vivi to be my inspiration for the 2 pets of my witch.  I was mostly inspired by Vivi's eyes since they are simple and cute looking.  Another inspiration I took from Vivi was the hat on his head since it looks witch like, it inspired me to develop my witch hat design into something unique and creative.

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The Legend of Zelda: Wind Walker is a game made by Nintendo and it is a sequel made for the console the Wii U.  I chose this specific sequel because of its cartoonish and unusual thick line work made by Shigeru Miyamoto. The main character Link is shown above in 2 different illustrations for the game artwork; I used these illustrations for inspiration for my witch clothes and making different line work since I normally work with minimal lines.

Article Link About the artwork

For Dave the Scarecrow:

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For Dave, I have researched about Scarecrow the villain from DC comics in both the New 52 edition Comics and Batman the animated series. I chose Scarecrow especially these 2 versions of it since I adore how the designs of both of them look.  The first one was a comic panel drawn by David Finch while the other picture was a screenshot from Batman the animated series.  Moreover, since I am doing a character design for my scarecrow, I thought that Scarecrow was the best character to use as a reference to my character because it is simply a scarecrow as my character.

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For more inspiration, I have looked at a character named Fiddlesticks from the popular game League of Legends.  I thought it is a good reference to my scarecrow since it is going to have ripped clothes and this will help me out to draw them as a reference.  I adore the League of Legends artwork since I like the artists usage of colours and the way they draw their characters are mostly inspired by anime characters and comic book characters but they make it into their own style.

For Dante the Demon:

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Dante was mostly inspired by anime series that were adopted from a manga comic such as: Tokyo Ghoul by Studio Pierrot and Blue Exorcist by A-1 Pictures.  The reason I chose Blue Exorcist as my style was because of how the faces and body are drawn and the main character's tail in the character deign shown above.  I though that taking a full body reference from the character design would be useful since I tend to lack human proportions.  On the other hand, the only thing that I used inspiration from Tokyo Ghouls are the eyes since I wanted my demon to look scary, weird and different from other characters.

For Reaper:

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Here I have looked at the Grim Reaper from a new game on the PlayStation 4 called Let it die.  I used this as my reference since I loved how they mixed the ordinary reaper with modern times by adding modern clothes, glasses and a golf like scythe which makes it unique and creative. I took this characters clothes as a reference for my reaper. 

 

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This is Leonardo Da Vinci's Skeleton and skull study.  I chose this study for my reaper as a reference to have a grasp of how to draw the skeleton and skull.  I think that Leonardo is the best and is the most reliable reference for studying the human body,

For the Exorcist:

 

   For my Exorcist I was inspired by John Constantine both the TV series and the Comic book series since he is an exorcist himself and I thought that it would be a great idea to have him as a reference to my exorcist character.  Moreover , I looked at artists like Aco and Jim Lee which both worked for DC Comics to study their American Comics art style since this style has different line work, proportions and style from what I draw.

I think making the exorcist and the reaper will be the most challenging part of this major project since I am going to be drawing in a different style.
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