Two simple character concepts for a game contest

[ender.saka]

Hi, this is my first post here.

I try to post these two Character Concepts... this time to get some critique.

I have posted them on a Italian forum (not for critique) and they destroyed me :P . Not all of them but negative critiques are bigger number than positive.

So I try here. I am curious to see the result.

Thanks

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/3454/alitabigsword012jf.th.png (http://img52.imageshack.us/my.php?image=alitabigsword012jf.png)
http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/4715/mayafinecleanup6vj.th.png (http://img65.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mayafinecleanup6vj.png)

[purb36]

hey dude.
can you tell us what kind of game you are supposed to be concepting for? that would help lead to more constructive comments when we know what we're commenting on. things that bother me at the moment: the first girl's left leg (right side of the page) seems to be at an extremely odd angle relative to her body, seems like it would be painful; 2nd girl, only thing with her that looks funny to me is her hand that is holding the sword (?), with the angle that her arm is at, we should see less of the back of her hand and it should be more in perspective and turned away from the viewer. also the sword (?) handle looks out of perspective; it should be more tilted up than it is, because the blade (?) is tilted back towards the girl. other than that, more information will lead to more and better critiques, methinks. they are nice and clean; good job. hope you enjoy your stay on CA.org; take care. :yayca:

[ender.saka]

can you tell us what kind of game you are supposed to be concepting for?

It is a RPG where characters have been leaved in a different world, where all people and aliens use recycled things, taken from other alien races or from humans. It is a planet where UFO leaved their hostages, the humans and other aliens they kidnaped.

This two concepts are only a part of the 20 I have done for the project but I prefer to not send all of them in only one post.

the first girl's left leg [...] seems to be at an extremely odd angle relative to her body, seems like it would be painful;

Yes, I was in doubt about that pose too. It is a pose inspired by a pose of scrima (medieval fancing). Probably in the attempt to reach that result I exaggerated.

About the second girl I am absolutelly agree with you. The angle of the hand holding the sword (yes it is a Maya sword :teeth: ) seams wrong and the handle of the sword is completly out of perspective.

The only thing I can say about that is that this concepts are in a really shetck stile, even if they are colored with watercolors.

they are nice and clean; good job. hope you enjoy your stay on CA.org; take care. :yayca:

Thank you very much! I am very happy that you like them :teeth: .

[blexarady]

I agree with the above, but I certainly dont think these deserve to be 'destroyed' like you said. The lines and shading are confident and, although I think the hands are perhaps overly large (or is this a tool to make the character more expressive?) I think they work well.

The story sounds like something by Ken McLeod, and a fun opportunity to mix modern humans wih some cool advanced tech and wierd creatures; I hope you get the gig!

[endercoskun]

i agree with the above comments, also i think the faces may need a bit more work. especially in the first one, the eyes are looking in different directions.
you from turkey, by the way?

[blexarady]

Me? No the UK. My housemate is a Turkish Cypriot the poor fellow though.

[ender.saka]

Thank you all for your appreciations and also for usefull critiques.

@blexarady: about the overly large hands. Yes I tipically use large hands as an expressive tool. But, to be onest, sometimes i loose the controll of this expedient :teeth: .

About the destructive comments I recived in the Italian forum, most of them commented that the concepts are not original and poor. But almost none of them critiqued composition and tecnique or anatomical aspects. Simply saying that my concepts do not move them.

@endercoskun: now that you have noticed the wrong direction of eyes I see the error. I think that probably the tufts confused my while I inked. I should pay more attention to these things.

Thank you.

[purb36]

hey dude, about the leg, i see what it is now: the way you shaded it made it look like it was pointing backwards. in that position, the knee should be pointing straight ahead from the hip, and the foot should be pointing slightly outward from that. if you slightly change the angle of her left foot and make it point a little more towards the viewer (instead of using a parallel line at the bottom, try a slightly diagonal line pointing in this direction, only a lot more flat ( \ ).
when you did the concepts, how did you go about developing them? did you do thumbnails and silhouettes and then pick the ones you liked best and developed them? if not, it is a really good technique you might like to try sometime. doing thumbnails and silhouettes saves you time in the end becuase it lets you get a lot of ideas down in a little time, and you won't spend hours developing something only to find that you don't like it at all and have to start from scratch again. anyway, good luck with the contest; take care.

[ender.saka]

Thank you very much for the suggestions purb36.

Yes I usaly do many and many simple sketches of poses. Exactly like silouettes. But this have been the very first time I tryed shading with colors.
And about shading I have improvised it without any guidelines. While pencils (contours) have been sudied a little more.
But, as you correctly noticed, contours studies are not enough when coloring.

About the contest, we did not win, but I still do not know the winner. The contest anyway is the Sony Yaroze 2006 contest for Playstation 3. I partecipated in team with a friend living in Japan, who concepted the story and some other characters and environments.