Walk-Cycle Inspiration and Trials

Inspiration:

Most of my inspiration comes from playing games - and most of the time, these games include some zombies or mutants or just absolutely ridiculously crazy characters. While I was trying to figure out just HOW a mutant like mine is supposed to walk (Troy had said, "draw from life!", but this is actually impossible in my case), I came across this video one just another night of searching the web for info on awesome upcoming games.

This video is from the upcoming game "Dante's Inferno," a game based on Dante Alighieri's famous Italian masterpiece "The Divine Comedy." I could probably ramble on and on about why this game is going to be AWESOME, but thats not really the point of this blog, is it?

Aaanyway, as I was saying before - I was kind of having trouble trying to figure out how a mutant, especially my mutant should walk... but then I stumbled across this video and I got some inspiration!!

When the character jumps off the massive fiery demon's back and has to battle Baphomet-like demons and these pale, naked hunched guys. You can especially see a few good examples of how these naked hunched guys walk in the last minute of the video:

Video Games | Dante's Inferno | SDCC 09: Gameplay (Cam)

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

I especially like the way that these characters seem to shuffle along quite slowly. However, I think that I'd still prefer to have one of his legs bigger/thicker than the other one - so that this leg shuffles along and the other, more normal one has to move faster in order to keep up. I think this will make the walk-cycle look all the more painful, and then the reaction of the audience will grow.

Also, I want to make his spine bend noticeably with his movement to further enforce the fact that he is having trouble walking and that it is very painful for him. The zombie-like characters in the Dante's Inferno clip don't seem to have a lot of movement happening in their spines when they walk.

Other than that video, there wasn't much else I could find to help me with this project, apart from a few really nice pieces of work on youtube:

This one shows really nicely how one leg larger than the other one can work in terms of it shuffling limply along and the other leg having to work harder and faster to keep the character from falling over. However, I will probably just make the 'limp' leg fatter so that it can still somewhat walk, just not very well!

I really like this piece of work. The zombie also has a limp leg, but the same deal as above -

I'd rather just have one of my character's legs fatter than the other one. Also, There needs to be

a lot more movement in the spine. I'm thinking also that my character's arms shouldn't move as

much as the zombie in this video, because it'll make the walk-cycle seem too corny. I'd rather

my character seem depressed and in pain and show that in his rather limited amount of movement.

I decided that since we don't have that long to do this project, and I think I've set my goal way too

high and possibly out of reach, I should start playing around with my character and the way he

should walk.

I found and used this as a guide for the basic steps in a walk-cycle. I figured that if I could make my

character walk in a very normal and generic way, then it would at least be a good start and I could

spend the rest of the time trying to figure out how to make him look as though he is in pain and

having trouble moving along at a reasonable pace. I also think that this is when I can really try to

emphasize the shift in his weight, which should be made quite obvious to the viewer as this shift

would be rather dramatic with the amount of weight on his back, his posture and his busted leg.

This image was found on: http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/walk1.shtml/

Of course, this is a quite bouncy, healthy looking walk, so I'd definitely have to change it a lot to make it suit my character and my project goals!

FLASH!!!

I have never ever ever ever used flash before in my life, and I am very very very nervous about having to do it now for such an important assignment. Despite being shown for a few lessons how to make a timeline, how to make keyframes, how to do classic tweens, I found it very hard to absorb this information and use it. I feel like I am constantly asking for help for the seemingly simplest things... Flash has really put me outside my comfort and confident zone!

With the last project (Character Design), Suren had told us to draw our characters in Flash, converting each part of the body into a new symbol in order to make this animation stage easier. However, Troy said that he didn't mind people using a program they're more comfortable with, such as Photoshop or Illustrator. I decided to stay in my comfort zone for the time being and use Photoshop. Suren had said that we might not be able to use these files for the animation and that we might have to redraw them in Flash for project 4.

Stupidly, I had decided to still draw my character in Photoshop. Aaand now, with all the stress already on us, and all this work to still start doing, I have to redraw my character in Flash!!!! I think that this is the worst program I've ever used for drawing... none of the tools work the way I'd expect them to, and they seemed to have a mind of their own at times, turning certain lines into boxes and making each stroke separate from the overall object... ARGH, it is so painful!!! Hopefully this means that some of MY pain will be shown in the walk-cycle!

Anyway, having had trouble redrawing my character, I decided to stop for the moment in trying to make him somewhat resemble my character from the previous project, and just draw all his limbs, convert them all to symbols and to use class time for trying to animate rather than to redraw. I figured that if there was time left over after I had animated him, then I'd spend that time redrawing him. Suren told us to draw the character in a star jump-like pose, but I don't really know why, when I'm going to have my character walking in a side-on position, but he IS the animator, so I just did what he told me. Here is a screenshot from that stage:

I think I'll definitely need to at least redraw the head, chest and stomach now to be able to put the character in a side-on position for the walk-cycle. The rest of the limbs I can maybe skew a bit to make them have a side-on appearance.

Before I tried to somehow put the character into the side-on position that is required for me to make him walk, I decided to just quickly to a mock-up in Flash using different coloured circles as each separate, individual body part to see how he would look side-on:

I don't think this turned out too bad, and I definitely feel a lot more confident in now somehow making the character in the image above stand in a side-on position... I'm just completely overwhelmed by the amount of separate limbs/body parts he has!!!

I think that the head in relation to the slouching back works really well, and maybe I can have it nodding or bobbing slightly with each step to show that he doesn't really have that much control over it or that he is just sore and tired from the effort of walking.

This next image is a screenshot of the character with his head, chest and stomach redrawn, and the rest of his body-parts skewed:

I think that this is a good outcome so far... You get a much more accurate idea of what the character is going to look like when he walks now. Still, I don't really like the way that certain body parts look in their skewed manner, but I'll have to wait and see if I can change this all a bit later on.

I also asked Suren whether there was a way to erase the black lines at the joint where one body part meets another, but he told me to ignore it for now and deal with it later. I tried later on to erase them myself, but for some reason, flash won't let me!!! I just don't get it!

Anyway, I am reasonably happy with this so far - I think the legs need to be a bit more bent though, and that I need to figure out what to do with all those arms!! I think that the back looks really good though!

I also have to make one of the legs fatter than the other. I thought, maybe the leg further from to the audience's view should be the bigger one, as it would take away too much from the other leg's movement if it was placed in front and would block the other leg from view most of the time.

This is an image of what the character looked like when I was getting ready to start animating, or rather, trying to learn how to animate:

You can see that I made his left leg fatter than the right one.

Also, I started him off in pose that seems 'mid-walk' so that I'd at least have a place to start where I can continue to make him seem like his walking... if that makes any sense!! Basically, If I made him stand in a position where he's basically just standing rather motionless, it would be absolutely too hard to know where to go from there!

I decided that I'd make the higher/upper arm on the right side of his body limp, so that it just moves when it is pushed by the other arm which is doing all the work. I thought that this might be a nice effect, but I guess we'll have to wait and see whether it will be successful or not!

The arms on his left side are moving in relation/opposition to the moving arm on the right side of the characters body - but a few paces from each other. One arm is always a little bit behind the other one. I don't know, but I'm guessing that if you had 3 working arms, one of them would be moving at a slightly slower pace and the two 'main' arms would be doing most of the work.

I also drew a line for this trial version to help me keep the feet in basically the right positions.

(

This clip above shows my progress with my animation after about a week's animating. As you can see, it is terribly jittery, and the character walks incredibly fast!!! Sadly, it's a very short clip, but you should get the idea!

I'll have to keep tweening it and find a way to slow him down so that it actually looks like he's having trouble walking!!!

Finally getting somewhere...

After a lot more hard work, I got the character's walk-cycle basically finished, and decided to spend some time making a quick background so that I could get help in class to learn how to loop it and put it all together. Here is the clip of my progress up until the end of that week's class:

As you can see, the character walks a little slower (though not slow enough!!!) and the background moves with him (though maybe out of time). Also, you'll notice that after a couple of steps the character and backgrounds stop moving. I have been considering including a clip somewhere in my walk-cycle where the character stops walking to shoot a laser out of his eyes. I thought, I probably won't have enough time to do this, or the skills, but I should at least know where to begin. I don't know if I'll be able to possibly pull this off though as I still want to redraw my character to make him seem a bit slimier and more similar to last assignment's version of him, and I still have to actually decide on and create my background.

Redrawing the character:

BY FAR, one of the most confusing things I had to face in this project was trying to redraw certain body parts of my character. I would start by double-clicking and therefore entering the particular body part, but sometimes, for some reason, anything i drew or erased would simply vanish when i let go of the mouse...

When I finally figured out how to avoid this problem, I came upon more. It was possibly the most frustrating weekend I've ever had (yes, it took me an entire 2-3 days to redraw my character, and he still doesn't look very good).

I found that when I erased and redrew lines, these would make themselves a different symbol to the rest of the body part, so when it came to wanting to use the paint bucket tool - well this was impossible! I had to manually sit there and draw and colour in every part of my character's body again from scratch.

When this was done, I decided to go back and add some basic rendering (the mid-tone purple I used in my last project) in an effort to make him look a bit more 3D and less clean. Again, this proved to be a most impossible and frustrating task. Each individual line or bit of colour I had drawn had somehow decided to make themselves separate from the rest of the lines and colours that made up that specific body part, so using another colour wasn't as simple as simply painting it on where you want it and there it is and there it stays, it meant entering each of these separate bits (and there were thousands of them!) to change them a little bit.

Maybe I need to read a book or two on how to draw in Flash, because I'm sure that I struggled this much just because of my own lack of knowledge and stupidity, but I still think Flash is a stupid program to draw with.

Furthermore, I had NO idea how to add subtle gradients to the characters, and the more I saw of Flash created works, the more I began to accept that there would be no blending tool or change of opacity levels to help me render this character to look more like he did in the last project, where I'd used Photoshop. I just have to accept and be happy with what I've got, which is a relatively 2D character.

Here is a screenshot of my final character rendering:

I don't think that this is too bad overall, considering the terrible time I had to get it looking anywhere close to this. I am a bit disappointed that he looks to 2D and so different to my character from the last project, but time is running out and my lack of knowledge and skill in using Flash won't permit me to change him much more.

However, looking at other people's work, I think that most of everything I've seen also looks pretty 2D. Perhaps these are just the limitations of using a program such as Flash.

I'm happy with how his limbs look, now that they are redrawn and the black lines I complained about before have been erased.

I'm also very happy especially with how the feet and head look.

Also, notice that I have finally added in the strange 'bones' in the areas behind his knees and from his ankle to his heel. I had previously forgotten to include them, but hopefully I remembered! Now I'll just have to animate them too!

Since the redrawing of my character, as well as his animation is now complete, I have to spend the last 2 days before this assignment is due in drawing his background!!! How stressful!

The Background:

I had been trying to decide between setting my background in the outside, town/desert like landscape where my character lives, perhaps walking past a few bomb shelters - or - inside his headquarters.

This was a difficult decision, as I had thought that placing him into the world I had designed in the first assignment would be wonderful, with several background features moving at different paces to give a sense of background and foreground...

However, sadly, I realised that I only had two days in which to make an entire background, and that this would be basically impossible to achieve - as it was, I'd have to stay up for those two nights till I literally passed out to make any kind of background.

So, after much thinking, I decided that it would be the smartest idea to place my character indoors, therefore making the foreground less essential and the background seem a lot closer and more important to the viewer. I could put him inside and probably get away with not having too many layers - if any - moving at different speeds.

As Murtagh is the leader of the Rebels, I decided that he'd be perfectly at home walking through the hallways which I could cover with elements such as windows, doors, photographs etc which would give the viewer a better idea of what he and his Rebels do and what their world is like from their point of view.

I thought that since the world is only a few years/months/weeks/days etc away from their hypothesised apocalypse, most other aliens would not be on their more rational-thinking sides. Therefore, I thought, his headquarters should be somewhat in ruin to show a lack of government funding for their cause and perhaps also to show that everything in the world is falling apart due to its extreme chaos and destruction.

Anyway, here is a screen shot of my background:

As you can see, hopefully, There are cracks all down the wall to show that the warehouse is falling apart. Also, there are stains on the wall and doors from water/liquid coming in from the outside, which is supposed to make the building seem even more run-down.

The first door is a door leading to a "Rebel's Conference Room" - the location of a lot of planning and discussion about the possible steps that they could take in helping their world.

Next to that door there is a window which shows a portion of the polluted, irradiated and jam-packed landscape of the world they live in.

Next to the window is a group of three photographs to show the Rebel members what their world used to look like as well as the iconic Mayan Temple on their planet. These are meant to contrast strongly with the image of their world in the window. These photos are meant to motivate the Rebels into trying to bring their world back to such a pristine and beautiful state - each photo even has it's own motivational caption:

Top: "Lest we forget"

Bottom left: "They will come for us"

Bottom right: "Preserve the natural"

Next to these photos is a notice board, littered with many notices. It is slightly askew to highlight the fact that the building isn't stable. Maybe this is also supposed to play into the viewer's emotions, to make them feel even more sorry for my character. This is also supposed to show that the building has a business-related purpose.

Next to the notice board is another door with a label reading "Nature Restoration Laboratory." This is one of possibly many labs where the Rebels and Murtagh experiment with erasing pollution, growing plants, cleaning water, restoring resources and other things that involve providing some sort of future for their world if their Mayan Doomsday passes without event. Therefore, it is a pretty important room!

And last of all, next to the door leading to the lab is a strange clock which reads "27." I thought that this would mean that there are only 27 days till the supposed end of their world. This would mean that the world and its inhabitants would be in an extremely chaotic, desperate and terrified state.

Lastly, before I begin to animate my background, I'll just show you a screenshot of my final piece - the character and the background put together at last:

Overall, I am relatively happy with all this progress so far. I sadly completely ran out of time and couldn't do the laser eye scene, but I will try to incorporate that into the next project instead.

I will put up the final animation in a new blog soon.

Character Sheet

Now that I've completed - or mostly completed my character design, it is time to work out the finer details about my mutated alien friend.

The hardest thing is to decide whether he should be good or evil... to me it looks like he could be both... both would definitely suit him.

In the end I decided that he should be good, as I had originally wanted the viewer to feel sorry for him when I eventually make him walk. He should look like he's in pain from his terrible posture and the way his legs bend and I think that this will be somewhat lost if the viewer feels compelled to dislike him due to him having an evil nature. If he is good, then the viewer would feel all the more sorry for him in his state of constant pain when he moves, and I would have achieved one of my goals.

I decided to name my character "Murtagh" - pronounced "Mur - tah" as this was one of my favourite characters in a series of novels by Diana Gabaldon. It was between the names "Murtagh" and "Thorr" - an infamous Viking God. As I am quite obsessed with Viking/Norse mythology and history, I definitely had to include something "Thorr" or Viking in my work - as I usually find a way of doing!

I decided that "Murtagh" was a more suitable name for my alien character, so I instead named his home planet "Thorr", making the race who inhabit it "Thorrians".

Next it was time to decide on some of Murtagh's history.

Here are some of the variations I came up with:

• Murtagh is a quiet resident on Planet Thorr who is addicted to Trans-drugs. While he spends the most of his time cleaning up his polluted and generally destroyed planet, he never lets an opportunity to acquire drugs pass him by...
• Murtagh is the leader of a group of aliens who oppose the Mayan theory on the destruction of the world. They think that it's all just hocus-pocus and spend their time trying to prove the theory wrong...
• Murtagh is a loving husband and father who has been kidnapped by his evil government to make trans-drugs. This is particularly horrible for him as he used to be addicted to them and hates them for the horrible mutations on his body that they had caused...
• Murtagh is a kindly old alien who spends his time nursing his plants. He hopes to one day fill his world once again with nature's gifts of plantation, which has been destroyed in the final years leading up to their doomsday...

In the end, I came up with this as his history:

" Murtagh is the leader of the 'Rebels' - a group of Thorrians who aim to restore natural beauty, happiness, cleanliness and hope to their planet.

He personally campaigns against the use of Trans-drugs, as these had mutated him horribly - many years of overuse morphed his body together with his twin brother's, who was wrestling him at the time.

Although they are usually of one mind, disagreements result in certain 'incidents' occurring, and these are disastrous for all present. His amazing charisma generally wins him his fights, but when it fails, he will ruthlessly resort to a physical alternative.

He is physically strong, but has a lot of trouble moving fast due to his terrible posture. As a result of his mutation, he is blind in both of his center eyes - however, when in 'fight mode', Murtagh has the ability to shoot lasers out of them to blind and stun his enemies."

I think that this is perfect basically! I think it's pretty crazy and funny and explains a lot about him. I also included the idea of him having a split personality, and even gave his two blind eyes an awesome function!

Once this was written, it was really easy to come up with information about his likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses etc:

" - Gender: Male

- Age: 218 Thorrian years; 31 Earth years

- Species: Thorrian

- Home planet: Thorr

- Strengths: Climbing, leadership, intelligence, dominance, melee combat, scream, speech

- Weaknesses: Slowness, lack of agility, blindness in center eyes, some split-personality

- Likes: Slow dancing, hibernation, healthy plants, campaigning, areas of unspoiled planet

- Dislikes: Trans-drugs, pollution, mental institutions, bomb shelters, chaos, clothes

- Weapons: Laser vision, melee, clawing, head-butting, ear-piercing scream "

I figured that he had 4 arms and 3 hands so he'd be able to climb well.

Also, as he has two mouths, I figured that he'd be twice as loud as a normal alien - making his scream one of his strengths, especially as a weapon. Perhaps it shatters the victim's eardrums?!

Finally it was time to create some extra 'actions and emotions' to further deepen the character and his personality. I did these by copying the head part of my alien 'front' drawing, and changing the facial features in photoshop.

I decided that he should be a pretty depressed alien, as his planet is very much in a state of chaos and his beloved world is slowly dying due to over-use of resources, pollution etc. Most other alien's careless actions make Murtagh angry, and as most aliens are VERY careless, Murtagh is mostly angry. This also explains the second emotion - "as happy as possible." As Murtagh is mostly angry, he would rarely be happy. A happy day might come where he has succeeded in growing a healthy plant or getting new followers or rescuing someone from a mental institution etc.

Another must have expression is a shocked face. Murtagh is naturally shocked every time something else chaotic or horrible happens in his world, and these things would keep happening on a day to day basis as the world comes closer to its apocalypse. I also thought that this face made him look as though he was whistling, and since he loves slow-dancing, he MUST love music too, so he MUST love whistling!

His appalled face would have a place on his face a lot of the time when his fellow aliens do something else that impacts the world or its race of aliens in a negative way. I also thought that this face made him look like he was speaking or shouting, so I decided that this could also be his "command" face.

The last face I included was one showing Murtagh using his awesome laser vision!!!

And with all of that, this project is completed and I am once again ready to submit and hope for the best!!!

I am overall very very happy with all my work on this project. I had an absolutely awesome time with every stage of this project, and I think the final outcome is very good. I have definitely already fallen completely in love with my character, and I can't wait to animate him!!!

Character Design

Character design experimentation:

Here are some of the rather crappy drawings I did for the character design project. I tried to combine some of the features from my previous blog (on inspiration) in these images in an attempt to explore some of the elements I liked.

In this page, I experimented with a few different shapes for 'elongated heads'. I like the drawing in the top left corner's head shape more than the two below it. I also like the way most of this character's features look, excluding the ears. I think I prefer for him to not have ears, or have invisible birds ears. I also don't really like the mouth as it would be hard to show emotions with a mouth of this nature. Also, note that he has needle pricks on the side of his neck from using trans-drugs!!! HOW EVIL!

The drawing in the top right corner shows some experimentation with the idea of making a character with two conjoined heads, or with two faces. The two center eyes are very distorted as they have been pushed together, and have therefore gone blind. I think I'll definitely make my character have two faces.

I don't really like the bottom two alien faces - they are too plain.

I thought about giving my character tentacles as arms, or perhaps just one arm could be a tentacle, but I think that it would be better if he'd just have one arm bigger than the other. A tentacle arm would make walking very difficult and therefore also very difficult to animate!

I like the arm I drew here, with the long nails. I think this kind of arm would suit the alien head in the top left corner of the page.

I also drew some goat legs to experiment with the different bone structure and joints, but I don't think this will suit my alien. I'd rather have him be smooth and hairless, and I think, as it is with my ideas, the character will already be hard enough to animate!

On this page I drew a simple gesture drawing to show the extent of the hunched/slouched back/posture that I want my character to have. Also, note how the legs have to bend to keep the character standing up - this is perhaps a good reason for me to give my character human legs - or mutated humanoid legs!

The drawing of the chest is just supposed to show how one side isn't in proportion with the other - perhaps caused by the character's terrible posture, or his horrible mutations. This should be particularly evident in the 'frontal view' drawing of my character.

The sketch of the alien below the chest was just another experimentation with potential alien ears, but again I'm not happy with them.

I think I might make my character have 4 arms as well, just as another sign of his mutation - and it would make him look a little less human, and possibly more interesting.

This is an image I drew, based on a few aspects of the aliens above.

I don't really like the way his elongated head looks, nor his ears, but I again like the idea of him having 4 arms and 2 legs.

In this drawing I made him have an upright posture and a fat tummy, but I think I like my hunched back, skinny alien idea better.

Also, I drew the goat legs to see how they'd suit an alien character, but I also don't really like the way they look.

I think he looks awkward enough without his legs adding to the craziness.

I think I'll just try to forget about this drawing!

I think I was possibly watching Star Wars when I decided to draw this character.

He doesn't really share many features of the aliens above - he has no arms or legs, but looks like a big fat slug.

At least he has the elongated head!!

No, I think this was another failure.

Best stick to a basic human body I think!

Again, I combined several of the features I had started exploring in the above illustrations in this drawing.

This alien, with the must have elongated head leans to one side due to his having a tentacle as an arm.

he also has some strange fungus or something growing on that shoulder and even partially on his face.

His chest has sunk lower on that side of the body too (to show the impact of his heavy load).

I used the arm I liked above as well in this image, which seems quite normal in comparison to his massive other tentacle arm. Although it is a nice comparison, I think I'd still prefer to give him four arms similar to the one on the left of his body (our right) and perhaps make them different sizes.

I also experimented with the goat legs again, but I think that they look way too awkward.

Maybe it's time to forget about the goat legs!

I don't really like this character design. I think that it looks pretty silly, and would definitely be near impossible for me to even begin to animate!

Here I decided to play around with one of the heads designed on a previous page above. It seems way too cutesy for the world he lives in though, but I thought it might be fun to try to make a mutated, elongated-head, chubby alien.

I think that's all I really need to say about this drawing - it basically doesn't suit the world I've created.

My alien should be more human-like but mutated.

This guy looks a bit like an evil teletubby elephant monster.

I thought that maybe taking a completely different path might pay off.

This alien wears a tattered and ripped uniform with a scary mask.

I thought that you could turn the semi-circular eyes to show emotion, but on second thoughts, I don't think this will be enough.

Also, I'd prefer for him to be more naked so that I can show how his mutated body really looks and moves.

Clothes hide too much.

This drawing is basically the same as one of the first ones above. I really liked it and thought that I should draw it again to see whether it feels right or not.

It actually felt pretty good.

I like this design the most so far.

Again, I'm not sure about that kind of mouth, or the ears, and I don't really like the spikey things on his head, but I think this kind of alien, especially with the elongated head done in a more realistic way will be the best way for me to go. This alien's skull was based off an ancient Mayan skull found by scientists which was also elongated in this way.

I tried drawing the goat legs again (I know, I know) - and yes, it definitely doesn't work.

More human-like legs will definitely be the way to go.

Also, he needs a more curved back and perhaps 4 arms.

The final character design:

This is the character I ended up designing based on my research, inspiration and experimental sketches.

I still haven't exactly decided whether he should be good or evil, or what his deal is, but I am happy with the result.

This is my good copy 'frontal view' drawing using fineliner, which I will then scan into the computer to colour in.

I have obviously drawn my character with two conjoined heads - playing on my old work and the idea of my character having some sort of split personality disorder as I discussed in my previous blog.

I decided that perhaps his two center eyes should be blind - maybe this is shown through the use of a different colour in later stages. This would somewhat make sense, as the conjoining of two bodies would ultimately destroy or alter certain bodily functions. I think it also makes him a bit more mysterious and interesting.

He is also hunched backed and has 4 arms, one of which is missing a hand. I think this just adds something interesting to him and could perhaps be evidence of a rough life.

I thought that perhaps he is a conjoined twin (hence the other face and two extra arms), so to make this even clearer, I added 'bones' to the back part of the joints in his legs. These would probably help to strengthen his legs so that they can carry the weight of the upper body at least partially effectively, and could also maybe assist with jumping or some other physical activity. Aside from all that, I think that it also makes him look a little more interesting and a bit stranger and more unique.

He has a loin cloth to show that he is perhaps not well off, or maybe that he is in touch with nature. On the artistic side of things, I wanted him to be mostly naked so that I could show his disfigured and mutated body in a more obvious way. Also, I don't want to have to draw alien reproductive organs. This was a good solution to all my problems =).

The rest of him is basically in the form and proportions of a human or humanoid creature. I think that this is fine, as it highlights his 'stranger' aspects. Also, I think that I changed him enough from an easily recognizable human form to create a character that would be considered 'alien'.

I had a bit of trouble drawing the 'side view' of my alien character. I thought that the most important thing with this view would be to show the curve of his back and his horrible posture which is meant to give him some personality.

I also used this view to show more clearly the 'bones' or whatever they are on his legs. Perhaps, looking at the way they seem to make his legs bend, this is one of the reasons why the character is hunched back/ slouching all the time... maybe they don't stretch very well and after years of walking with his legs bent, the rest of the body started following the example.

(What is wrong with this text?! I don't know why it's underlined =S)

Anyway, even more difficult than trying to draw the character from the side, was the 'back view'.

I found this especially hard as I had to somehow show that he is hunched back and has his knees bent.

After a lot of consideration, I drew lines extending from the 'front/side view' characters' limbs and main points of change from one limb or body segment to the next onto a new page, and used these as guidelines for where to place body parts for this view. I think that the technique worked relatively well as he definitely seems to have a hunched back, but I think that the overall drawing isn't of the same standard as the 'frontal view' drawing.

This, however, was still my best attempt and with lack of time and still so much to do, I decided that it would be best to accept it as it is and move on.

With this drawing, I really tried to show the back of the head in relation to the back, which i wanted to make as disfigured as possible. It was also a good way to show where the 4 arms sit in relation to each other.

Now that I'm done with the basic drawings of my characters, it is time to scan them in and then colour them using photoshop (I have never used Flash before, and my Illustrator skills are very limited, so using either of these programs at this time seems WAY too daunting!).

Photoshop Colouring - Final characters!

I don't quite know why I had decided to make my character purple, but I like the way it looks in the images below! I think that it was probably just to really push the fact that he isn't meant to look very human, and there is something quite exotic about that specific shade of purple.

I basically used 3 shades of purple to make him look somewhat more realistic and nicely rendered. The two darker shades were applied using a lower opacity and higher softness brush. I then blended them roughly together with the smudge tool on a low opacity to get rid of any clear changes of colour which made him seem too 2D and rough for my tastes.

I thought that this wasn't enough, so I used the smudge tool to give him the strange plasticy texture that he seems to have (especially obvious when looking at his arms and legs). it also helped in highlighting the odd bumps on his body, and just made him look overall more impressive and interesting.

Again, when choosing the colouring for his nails - in this case, blood red, it was purely chosen for its strangeness and to add to the character's non-human qualities. I think that the brightness of the red I chose really grabs the viewer's attention.

The colour of the loin cloth was basically just chosen to be an off green-brown as it is so easily identified as being a dirty colour. I think that it makes him seem quite poor, or environmental but who knows, maybe it is of the highest fashion and expense on his planet!

Lastly, the colour of his two center eyes are an off pinky colour. It contrasts nicely with the black of his two good eyes, and seems to imply that he is blind. It is an almost fleshy colour and seems sickly. I think that this really works well.

Overall, I am very happy with my character development here. The next step would be to decide on who he is, his history, his mission, his alignment in terms of good vs. evil etc, and then to put it all together on my character sheet!