Greek gods and goddesses revisiting designs

Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to try and update over here with stuff I’ve been working on over the last couple of years.  Tonight’s post is Greek mythology themed.  I revisited my pantheon designs, and then upon finishing one pass through went about refining them: fixing poses and proportions, updating costumes, and refining palettes.

Psyche

Eros

Greek Mythology Illustrations

Here are some of the illustrations I worked on during my 6 month absence from here.  Most of the stuff I've worked on is not on here or not ready for posting yet.  If you came by my table at CTN these were two of the prints I was selling.

 

Artemis Takes Aim

Psyche Enters the Underworld

Art from January and February

It's been another busy couple of months!  I've been to McCall, Idaho and Portland, Oregon with a birthday in between.  Last weekend was the annual Doctor Who convention, Gallifrey One, where I got to hug Captain Jack Harkness himself, John Barrowman.  I also managed to get quite a bit of art done as well.  I'm working on some sketchbook ideas to sell at CTN next year.

I've worked my way through Doctor number 5 and all of his companions since my last post and will be moving on to the 4th Doctor soon!

I've finished my design for Psyche's father.  I've realized that I've missed a few of the gods and goddesses, so they'll be coming up soon.

This last image is one that I am extremely proud of.  It's probably one of the most challenging illustrations I've worked on.

See you next time!

More greek gods and goddesses

Over the last month, I've been busy working on getting more of the cast of Cupid and Psyche fleshed out.  I'm probably half-way through the Greek pantheon right now.  Most of the gods and goddesses are more of back ground characters, but its fun coming up with designs for them.

I loved the idea of having Athena be a woman of color.  The Athena that lives in my head is basically voiced by Gina Torres and is pretty much Zoe from "Firefly" so it wasn't that much of a stretch.   I decided to make her ponytail reminiscent of the plume that is on her helmet.  As much as I love the design for Roman helmets (I prefer it actually), I had to give her a Greek one as she was loved by the Greeks where Ares was more popular with the Roman crowd (he'll be getting a Roman helmet).

Persephone's story is probably my second favorite myth, so I'm pretty fond of this young goddess.  As a young springtime goddess, I had to put her in pinks and/or greens.  Overall, she's very pink.  When we see her in Cupid and Psyche she's in the underworld.  I want her to almost glow against the background.  A spot of light in one of Psyche's lowest moments.  In my head, they become close friends after everything is resolved.

Hades was a bit of a tricky design.  He has to look very much older than Persephone, but I also didn't want to make him look like an old man.  So I pulled the "they're gods they can look however old or young they want" card.  I imagine Persephone being about 18-19 to his early to mid 30s appearance.  While its still a large age gap, it doesn't feel as creepy in my opinion as a grandfatherly looking man with this almost underage girl. 

Our male lead, Cupid.  Cupid was fun to work on, though the wings are a bit of a challenge.  I wanted him to be carefree man-boy.  He qualifies as an adult, but still has the energy and cheek of  a child.  He's impatient and has to get his own way. His major character development arc is going to be him maturing and becoming more responsible and understanding.

As I've said before I want Psyche to have very little fuss about her. Her sisters are going to be more elaborate in costume and hair.  They're going overboard trying to look good.  Aphrodite is going to be all sex appeal.  I want it so that she doesn't look like she's trying to be pretty.  She's naturally pretty and doesn't focus on it.  She tries to hide it and fade into the background.

Until next time!

Psyche Dialog Test

I've been working on a dialog test for Psyche over the last few weekends to test out her design.  I'm pretty satisfied with it.  This is the furthest I've taken my animation in a while (where I've made an attempt at cleaning it up).  I also voiced Psyche for this one as I have not been able to find sound clips I like from the actresses who I've mentally cast as Psyche (mainly Amanda Seyfried and Emma Stone). 

I'm trying to figure out how to work my newish Storyboard Pro program so that I can start seriously storyboarding out parts of my script.  I'm also working through the script editing it.  I'm also going to try and get one of my sisters to look it over during their spring break, fresh eyes and all.

See you next time.

New digital painting stuff

I've been doing some digital painting stuff in photoshop over the last couple of weeks, and since I don't have a keyboard directly in front of me yet on the cintiq I haven't been able to comfortably do any posts.  Here are a couple of the paintings I've been doing.

I've been browsing through Modcloth since my sister and I are planning on going to DapperDay at Disneyland in February and was inspired by all of the pretty summery dresses.  I love the way dresses look even if I rarely wear them myself.

With this one I decided to play with a somewhat limited color palate.  I used yellow, orange, red, and violet.  I never really work with a limited palate consciously, and I need to do that more often.

Now onto some animating!

Cupid and Psyche character sheets

When I get bored or art blocked I like working on character sheet for stuff I'm working on.  Here are some character sheets for Cupid and Psyche.  I'm working on ones for Aphrodite right now.

I've had these character sheets finished for a bit now, but no time to do up a blog post.  I'm going to try and get better about being more regular on here.  I don't know if there will be a post on Sunday as I my cintiq is coming in at the end of the week and I'll probably be getting it set up.

Psyche Discovers Cupid

I've been working on this piece on and off for the last couple of weeks.   I thought I'd put up a breakdown of how I worked on it.

I had a rougher sketch before this.  I refined it, figuring out better posing and started figuring out the lighting.  I also broke down Cupid's pose to get a grasp of how everything worked together.

 I created a gradient background to get a better idea of the overall lighting in the piece.  I also started a rough clean up of Cupid.

Laying down flat colors to get some idea of the local color and overall idea of what I was going for.

I started refining and getting a rough clean up of the drawing.  I moved Cupid's lower wing to a more comfortable looking position.

I did a final clean up line freehand so that it would have some variation in line.  I also put down a neutral background to lay the flat color on.

 I put down the final flat color and set what color the shadow and light would be (the two color blobs next to Psyche)

Here's the final piece.  I laid down the shadow and light and set their layers to different modes.

Work in progress sketch

Since I'm going to be out of town for the next week or so,  I've decided to post a work in progress sketch of what I've been working on.  I'll hopefully be able to go further once I get back from NY, but it all depends on how my Intuos is doing.  I'll probably be upgrading to a Cintiq sooner than I planned...

Over all I'm pretty satisfied with Psyche's pose, but Cupid is more problematic...  How does one sleep with great big wings on their back?

Psyche illustration and some character design stuff.

I've been trying to work on my digital painting skills recently and the above image is the result of one experiment.  I want to broaden my skill set to include background and more conceptual work.  I've also been working on character studies for Cupid and Psyche while I've been attempting to finish the script.

I'm still working on a full sheet for Aphrodite and some smaller ones for the secondary characters, like Psyche's sisters and parents, Apollo, Artemis and a chunk of other gods and goddesses.

Psyche Maquette: Part 3

Here's an early post since I'll be at Disneyland tomorrow.

I've been working on smoothing out the maquette and adding the more delicate details.  I'm just about finished sculpting it.  I've got some last details to add as well as some more smoothing of the maquette. 

Here are some detail shots of Psyche's face.

Psyche Maquette: Part 2

This weekend I continued work on my Psyche maquette. With my dad's help I got the holes for the armature drilled into the base and it set up.  Since the pose I chose for the sculpture is pretty much self contained I only need the one wire to hold the sculpture up.

I filled in the bulk of the skirt with aluminum foil and then used a bit more for the head.  I then started blocking out the large shapes with super sculpey.  I'm now working on refining the bigger parts of the maquette before I start working on the more delicate parts like the face and the hands.

Psyche Maquette: Part 1

I've decided to try working on a maquette, as I haven't tried my hand at doing one since I took character design in school.  I'm going to be working on my design for Psyche from the Greek myth.  I'm going to break down my progress as I work on it.

I first had to break down the design: her head to body ratio, overall proportion, a basic breakdown of her costume.  Psyche is about 5 heads tall.  Her legs are slightly longer than her torso.  She has narrow shoulders and slightly wider hips.

After I broke down her proportions I had to find a pose for her.   Psyche is slightly shy, but cheerful.  She is feminine.  The pose I've chosen to work from is the upper left sketch.

I took the pose and created a turn around of Psyche to sculpt from.  The drawing is the same height and proportions that the maquette will be (about 9 inches tall).

I have all of my supplies ready to go for the sculpting part.   I'm hoping to get the armature put together and some of the basic shapes down this weekend. 

Cupid designs

I really like my new Psyche design (shown last week and below), so I've moved onto Cupid.  I really had to think about his age when working on Cupid's design.  He has to look older than Psyche, but still be in his late teens.  I knew going in what I wanted his body shape to be, so I decided to jump straight into working on his head.

 

I started working with sharper angles and shapes than Psyche, and while the design above felt like a good start it didn't feel quite masculine enough for a leading man character.   So I decided to broaden his chin a bit and give his face a bit more definition.  I'm still playing around with some of the interior shapes, but I'm currently thinking that either of the top two (or some combination thereof) will be my final design for Cupid.

 

I tried going in a very different direction for the 4th facial design, but he turned out too old and too much like Jamie Lannister from Game of Thrones...

Reworking Psyche

I've decided to visit my Cupid and Psyche project.  I've been working on it on and off since high school, so for at least 6 years now.  I'm kinda stuck story-wise, so it's been slow going.  Each time I feel like I've improved in my drawing/designing skills I go back and work over the designs.  Some of my earlier designs for Psyche can be found on my deviantart page.  The last major design change took her from what you can see here: Deviantart to the overall look below.  While I've had the overall look down for a couple years now, I've been going back and getting more details down.

After doing some different face designs (a few of which are shown above), I decided that since Psyche is a much softer character overall than the other female characters I was going to have in the film (especially Aphrodite her main opponent) and that she is younger than the others, that her features should be softer and made up of soft curves and spheres.  My final design of Psyche face-wise will be very close to the upper right face.  It feels a bit too young, so her face will be a little less round around the chin.  Body shape-wise she is going to be narrower in the shoulders and overall more delicate than Aphrodite, who will have an strong hourglass figure and will be made of sharper angles and lines.

I'll try to get up more on Psyche in the next weeks as well as a start on redesigning Aphrodite and Cupid.