Bloodfeather Character Designs

Here's my massive and nearly-complete character design final reference package! All that's left is the full body neutral rotation... the most boring of the bunch. Anywho, it'll be up soon!

- David

Digital Tools - Monster Assignment

Step 1: Concept

Step 2: Lines

Step 3: Colours

Step 4: Beginning Tones

Step 5: Midway Tones

Step 6: Final Tonal

Step 7: Colour Experimentation

Step 8: Final

It is known as a Filth Beast (the Beast for short), which prefer to inhabit moist and damp environments. It is a notorious predator, and complimented with it large size (up to 45 feet long and weighing up to 60,000 pounds) it is a deadly threat. Another notable trait of a Filth Beast is it's nauseating smell. A person can easily tell if a Beast is nearby, generally by the fact they start vomiting when the rank stench enters their nostrils. 

The Beast has been known to wander into the sewage systems of larger cities however, where it consists on a diet of waste and filth until it is discovered. Considered one of the most dangerous omnivores on the planet, it eats with little regard for living, dead, organic and inorganic meals.

Mating season for a Beast is the worst time to meet one. A male Beast tries to gather as many corpses as possible and gift it to the considerably larger female Beasts. These mating rituals generally involve the deaths of livestock, animals and quite often people.

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In terms of the painting, however, I tried a different approach. I began with literally drawing the skeleton (based off that of a Giant Ground Sloth), and then built the muscles on that structure. I also considered making the colour scheme based on that of a swamp one, as per the backstory of the Beast. In the end, the rendering of the Beast was paramount, and I made sure the tones were solid before bringing it into colour.

Once again, there was a lot of difficulty in combining the grayscale render with the colours. I used multiple clipping masks with overlays in order to get the desired effects.

After much experimenting, I ended with the final piece.

Head and Hands Painting Assignment

For this assignment I chose to paint the character I created for Character Design class named Bloodfeather. I tried to encompass her emotion on the battlefield, which is bloodlust. I initially wanted to draw a much more contorted expression similar to that of the Maori Warriors, who stick out their tongue and while performing war dances. I quickly realized this looked incredibly stupid, so I intentionally made the look with more allure rather than a psychotic one. I then tweaked the anatomy and slightly changing the character design, I used the drawing program Sai to create the lines. I ended up doing the greyscale tones in Sai as well, before jumping into Photoshop to place the colour flats. After that, I created the skin tones using a multiplied layer and overlay, playing with the possible tones. I decided to use a light blue background as that would complement the earthy-toned character. After placing some wrapping blue shadow and gradient, I finished off my painting of Bloodfeather.