Characters Inspired by Talisman (GW)

[bwkeough]

I'm starting a series of character designs to flesh out my portfolio that are loosely based on the character classes in Games Workshop's 2nd Ed. board game.

The first two:

Monk (yes, I know he shouldn't be wearing armor, I said loosely :) )
http://nand.net/~keough/monk.gif

Ghoul
http://www.nand.net/~keough/ghoul.gif


Please crit, I want to get better!

[gallon]

One tips from me: get a kamera, digital preferred... think about your next image, then take some photos in the poses you wanna draw.... print and viola...is "life drawing". You get the anatomy, and if you do this a lot of times....anatomy will come to you :)
The reson why I posted this is the ghouls hand...looks a bit off...photo your hand in that position and you'll see

[badoli]

I generally like the colors and the shadow/lighting work. Also the compositions are nice. (Already two things, what a lot of people fail!)

What you definately have to work on is how to render materials. It seems to me you tend to do the "Gold is yellow, Hair is brown, Grass is green, Sky is blue"-Thing, meaning just giving things the color you are used to give, neglecting the typical attributes of the materials.

As far as it goes for the ghoul for example i couldn't tell if that gray around his body is cloth, metal, leather...? Is that hair on the monks head or a funny shaped straw hat?

Metal reflects, Hair has a highlight, cloth throws folds... my advice would be: work with more references!

[bwkeough]

good points about the textures. It's been awhile since I have tried working without reference (last couple things I did felt constrained by the photos I took) and It's hard to tell if what I'm putting down is reading the same way to others.

as far as anatomy goes, I was pushing the ghoul towards being hunch-backed and slightly arthritic/contorted with the hand in a tense, twisted position. I guess getting some photos of gnarled hands would help them look that way instead of incorrect :)

thanks guys!