The Number Nine: October 2013

Tuesday 29 October 2013

Hair/Headdress

The top two rows are before I fixed her colouring, but I'm pretty sure I'm always going to remain a fan of the cropped, eyebrow-less look for this character. It's well creepy.

And while I like the second and third of the second row, they're a teensy bit too common for what I'm thinking.

The bottom row are with the tweaked colours, and I've now realised that with red hair she looks mostly ginger and not so intimidating, so maybe I should go for a more desaturated hair colour...

So far number two, five and six of the bottom row are in the lead.

Number two is probably the most mage-like one.

Monday 28 October 2013

Crazy fleshy sleep-deprived evil

I threw together some alternatives for the colours on her face. They all quite dramatically change the feel of the character.

While I'm digging the crazy evil mage look, it feels a little bit extreme.

I considered making her scars kind of glow, too. It is possible they glow when she performs certain kinds of magic, I have to draw that! Like as if her flesh is luminescent and the scars haven't healed perfectly well so it leaks out.

The sleep deprived makes sense, but makes for a pretty boring colour scheme.

The pretty one has it's own charms, the kind of disturbing, deformed beauty with a wicked interior. But I just... don't like the look, not for her. It's not no-nonsense enough.

In the end I'm pretty sure it's between raw and fleshy and the muted, purplish colours.
Perhaps I'll combine them and make the scars fleshier, the skin shinier, and the eyes a little more bloodshot.

UPDATE:

I thought the general colour scheme needed more fleshing out so I redid them with some accent colours, as well as more defined looks.
After the tweaking they all look a lot more appealing.
I also removed the glowing eyes from the crazy evil mage one, to make it less WHOA LOOK AT ME I AM EVIL PLEASE HIRE ME TO BE A ROYAL ALCHEMICAL ADVISOR (I promise not to sacrifice the servants all in one go).

But this makes it harder because now either could work.
I still think the upper left one is a bit too pretty.

CDDA: Renaissance Occultism

The next assignment for Concept Development for Digital Application requires us to develop a character, a prop and an environment.
Again, I wanted a female character because well, there's a general shortage of those.

I did NOT want a warrior character, although I examined the possibility, focusing for a while on a misguided paladin with a bad stutter; I had a basic concept down when I changed my mind after I found this:

This is Jessica Alba starring in the 2010 feature The Killer Inside Me.

And those are some rad looking scars. I mean, some rad looking scar SFX makeup. I looked into a number of ways to implement this into different characters, and it had started going SERIOUSLY downhill (into some dark places even I was just not comfortable explaining to anyone else), so I had to stop myself and decide to combine it with something a lot less gruesome, something I enjoy researching and drawing.

So that is how I ended up finally settling on the 15th to 16th century time frame; I really enjoy drawing the fashion. Obviously this is early renaissance. I combined this fact with the crazy scars and it turned into a lady scientist concept, which then developed into a lady alchemist (the lines back then were blurred anyway), but then I felt like it was lacking a fantastical element so I added an occult aspect.

The final idea is now a female court alchemist in late 15th century Europe (Italy, for maximum renaissance mood, although it's possible I'll draw influences from surrounding European countries within the same time frame, as Italian fashions were at the time a tad benign and very extravagant) with some very questionable behind-the-scenes habits. The kingdom is only based on the real life setting, as I didn't want to limit myself to real, proven alchemy instruments and techniques (as well as historically accurate costumes). And also I want some real, bloody magic in the equation when there's a vaguely immoral alchemist involved.

So in summation: awesome scars, awesome gowns, illegal magic.