Update

Have been too swamped with work to update this lately, find i't more useful to do the work than blog about it with an encroaching deadline. I did the best i could, i got my models completed if slightly over the poly count, i managed to cut them down but they're still slightly over. I only managed to get a crappy rushed texture done for my low poly character which i'll need to improve over the Christmas break, i didn't even have time to unwrap my high poly character but she will likely need changing anyway. I think my schedule was near enough on target bu i just spent too much time establishing what character i wanted to go with. To kick it off this is my design sheet for my high poly character showing the final design and some of my design work. 

She ended up being more crazy graphic novel character so i did a more flat colour and ink colouring method,  i some of it worked, could have done with some better presentation.

From the last part of this character i put up, i believe it was the line art, i did these variations. I was getting the feeling from the character that he just wasn't hitting the mark so i kept what i liked, the tin foil crazy guy hat, the head and the general shape. I tried different hats to give him a more distinctive silhouette and different colours to see if i could bring out the crazy that way. I ended up liking the homeless military look, i felt that gave him more a visual story, an old army vet going crazy, he knows stuff man, you don't know you weren't there.

Here is the design sheet showing the final design, it need more work, a back view, finish colouring him and things like that.

I smartened up his coat a bit, which in retrospect i should have made it a little more untidy but i wanted to show off the body shape, i also changed his pants to being newspaper pants to try and get across the homeless aspect, or the crazy aspect, which ever works for you.

Characters update

I haven't posted in a while and i got quite a bit of work to put up. First off both of my characters have been through some changes leading up to final designs, i haven't posted anything on my female character in a while so i'll do that first.

From my thumbnails i developed these two, the one on the left is the head i liked from the thumbnail page but developed into a full body character, she has the whole distressed and deranged mental patient thing going on. I also gave her a burn scar on her arm, i liked the idea of her being a bit messed up due to a childhood trauma. The other design is more psychotic criminal looking, in handcuffs, tattoos and markings on her body.

From there i went onto this character who was kind of a mix of traumatized mentally ill killer, thought he character was a little bland, i felt if i was going to go with this kind of graphic novel style deranged mental case girl i may as well go full on.

so since i found the last design to be quite lack luster i went back to the basics with it her and looked at the silhouette, trying to make it stand out more and be more unique than she originally was. From these i liked numbers 3 and 5 the most, the kind of medicated look of them both, i also like the kind of reckless look of number 5.

Here is the design i developed. I like the kind of disregard for her appearance  like she is out on the wings and doesn't realize her fashion faux pas. I've started modeling her but I've been wondering weather or not i should change the see through shirt  to give her a more distinctive shape, i think i will change the hair when it comes to modeling the head.

Character 2 design

So here is what i arrived on for my stylized character with a mental illness. He is basically some crazy homeless guy, if that wasn't obvious already, i quite like the shapes but he needs some refining, i drew him with his coat open because i initially though of having some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder where he collects things, when it came to it i just though what would be the weirdest thing to see inside someones coat.   So i put in a weird little person hiding in his pocket, i though it might look like some little imaginary friend but frankly it looks more creepy than anything else. Though you can't really tell here he is supposed to have a tin foil hat, an aspect i liked from the Futurama episode where they are all in wearing different tin foil hats. I'm fairly happy with him though, i will get some feedback and do some development sketches.

Stylized character moodboard

Here is a mood board of some of my favourite stylized characters. I looked at some games like borderlands, Team fortress 2 and Super Monday Night Combat. I tired to look outside of games too, i looked at some Pixar artwork from the movie UP, Pixar are some of the best character designers around and always have recognizable characters built from shapes.

I looked at one of my favourite artists as well, Mike Henry, he does extremely good stylized and cartoonish character art. His deviant art profile is here http://zatransis.deviantart.com/.

I also looked at an animated short i saw last year called Backwater Gospel.

Character sketches 2

These are the male sketches i talked about, i'm still drawn to the more detailed and realistic drawings simply because i'm better at them. I know that the lower poly model won't be able to show this much detail and that causes a problem with my idea of having the characters linked, they will in the end look fundamentally different due to the poly count restriction. Because of this I've tried to do some more stylized sketches as well, they haven't worked out so well and think i need to research some more stylized characters to see how they do them so effectively.

Mood Board

I thought i had already put this up but anyway here it is. 

I got a bunch of images together of some of my favourite characters with mental health problems from different media.

On here is some of the more obvious ones, The joker who i already covered, both Arkham city and Health Ledger joker. Some concept art of Harley Quinn. Two face from The Dark Knight. Donnie Darko. Kai from Heavenly Sword. The guys from Fight Club, though only one actually has mental health problems, the whole imaginary friend thing might be a good way to go with these characters. Guy Pearce from Memento. Some characters from Shutter Island, one more important that the other but i remember that old lady being creepy as hell in the movie. I also put in keanu Reeves from A Scanner Darkly in there too, although his condition is drug induced i still find him interesting and the portrayal of his mind degrading in the movie will be healthful inspiration in the future assignments.

Character idea thumbnails 1

So i think i'm going to do one character that is suffering from some kind of psychosis (undefined as of yet), and i will have another who is trying to catch and bring the person back to their room (institute). However they perceive this person as some kind of evil monster or just deranged person trying to catch and kill them. These are just my first thumbnails and they are all women, i will do male ones for the same character idea and then the same for the other character.