So, this is one of the mandatory assignments at school. Below you see the criterias for completing this.
Be influenced by this chosen text to design a character that looks part of a 'gang' of other characters.
Present your final character design in a model sheet.
Model a minimum of three accesories from your character design. One accessory must be footwear (or barefoot).
In the model sheet include renders of accesories ( 2d and 3d elements) and visualization of character analysis.
Complete a minimum of one (1) full colour hyper-linked reflective journal post with criteria outlined number 4 below and here."
Okay, it took me a while to get my ass in gear, lots of things to do, so little time to do it. So after realizing we were not to find a 1960's story but PRE-1960's story, I quickly searced around the wide web to find myself some decent reference material and text search. After a while I found a piece of text from the Eyrbyggje Saga, about a man called Ketil Flatnose. It appears this man was a Viking-Samii, or so it is believed. I found this a quite intriguing feature which I wanted to somehow have in my character. Ketil was also a great viking chieftain, whom had great victories in his time.
I also deciphered the project text in a perhaps a bit diffuse manner, in the way that we were to find a relation to a "gang". I interpreted this gang term in the way that allows for a bit broader view. Gang = A gang is a group of people who, through the organization, formation, and establishment of an assemblage, share a common identity. Which in my mind fits well for a bunch of vikings rampaging the seas.
This also triggered a small feeling that I perhaps wanted to have my character beeing the Unnamed source of these great victories, the reason why Ketil had the Gods on his side, or something in that direction. So from there on, it was decided he would be a Shaman of some kind.
Yeah... A VIKING-SAMII SHAMAN! And on top of that, make it anthromorphoric! Now theres a character for ya!
Biting off to much, you say...?
I have to admit, yes, I did. Anthro is HARD to get right. Especially added my slowness in getting started on this. I have drawn a lot, but not so much this kind of anthro stylized stile. I would have usually spent a lot more time researching into it, drawn the skeleton of it, figuring out better how this character would actually move, and how things should relate.
So after the research comes the sketching.
And sketching it was done.
This is two of the first tests to check my direction as to where I wanted to take this. I knew I wanted this Anthro Viking-Samii Shaman, the next issue was to decide what animal to go for. And for this, I "naturally" decided upon the Norwegian reindeer. Could have gone for something like a wolf or a weasel or something, but I felt the reindeer look would be more cool and apropriate. I wanted to have a dark and mysterious feel to him, an aged look if you will. This did not translate to well to the final piece, as he looks much younger than I wanted to.
Regarding the first sketch there you can see the kind of darkend eye area/glowy eyes and bent over hunchy back, I kinda liked. Wanted to keep this feel, though it did not make it all the way.
At this point in the drawing I felt I was doing pretty good.
In the first picture you can se the more of a shaman type of an outfit, which also was my intended first choise. I really liked a lot of the reference I found for this, and especially this outfit, of a traditional Noaidi samii-shaman. The amount of detail is amazing and I just love it.
The second picture shows more of a armour kinda setup. I like to try find different clothing setups for my drawings, and doing small sketch overlays like this can be really fun. I did not feel the armour feel would be suitable though, for this character.
The third picture represents more the traditional samii outfit, not sure how old this style of clothing is though, but I felt I needed to try it out, just ot see.
All in all, the one with the better feel was the first one, and below you can see my progress after many more hours fiddelling in the clothing layer.
First one is the "nude".
Second is the "nude" with clothes sketch overlayed.
Third is the finished piece.
Fourth is the finished with clothes sketch overlayed.
As is obvious from looking on it, there is no colour on this piece. Also the side and front looks terrible (imo). But they are there, though I see I should have made a back view too...
To conclude this journal entry, I am going to reflect a bit upon my work here. Which is going to be short and clear.
I failed. I failed to finish the required amount of work needed to pass. I have learned not to overestimate my own speed of drawing. And I have learned that I still have much more to learn..
In the end, I must say I have worked hard on getting this this far, I would estimate a good 50 - 60 hours labour has been put into it in total, counting research and sketching/rendering and so forth. But due to my own misjudgement of time, it seems this was not enough.
I probably should have gone for a much cleaner and "easier" way of drawing this, but whats done is done, and what has been done I am pretty pleased with, and something I will continue work on for a while to come. It may also be that this creature may see itself turn 3D one day, as I think he could become a very cool character done in 3 dimensions.
Im not sure what more I can say about this subject now, been a few days of sleepdeprevation, so therefore I call it done here, move on and say bring on the next assignment!