Greetings and Happy Easter!
I‘m writing comfortably on my couch at family’s after a nice meal and some good spring weather behind the window. This month was far more relaxing than I anticipated, starting right off with one of my courses being postponed over a month back, leaving me albeit frustrated but relieved at the same time so I could finally get some rest before the new semester started. I turned back to playing Baldur‘s Gate and doing stuff with friends and more work on my reference sheet:
Looking at it now, one would wonder why I actually needed a new ref sheet to begin with given how little things have changed over the years. I certainly have abandoned the many distinguished markings on the body and referred to a more tiger or zebra – like pattern to make it more natural and less spiritual in the world and it helped me with being more flexible when recreating the design. I also change dthe beak shape back to a more vulture-like appearance and removed the antennae which I abandoned doing a long time ago now. Now, when comparing this and the last sheets, I got a lot more stable with body and pose construction. The last one was a tad stiff and mechanical as I used the mirror tool to get proper symmetry. That‘s not to say things went absolutely effortlessly: the back pose was a lot of going back and forth with a raised-leg variant like in the front-facing pose. Eventually I settled with the simpler structure to keep a clean silhouette.
Oh I lost my trail of thought. My original intention to making a ref sheet was to experiment more with the design, even made a couple of head variants to experiment with colors and position up until I realized how accustomed I got to the color scheme which is – what almost 6 years old about now? Hence I abandoned trying to reinvent my character from the ground up to work with my island setting and just updated the ref sheet in a traditional sense.
What I wanted to add, was an outfit fit for the setting. Which was quite troublesome as it turned out. Originally, I wanted to go with a fancy pirate attire but reconsidering the time already spent on this island, I figured it would be more appropriate to show clothing that very well could have been made by one‘s own hands after the original outfit was worn out.
And I am only half way satisfied with the design, I gotta say. On the one hand, I like the clean yet ragged look with earthly colors – on the other, I can‘t help but feel pretty underhwelmed with it. It might have turned out too bland for my tastes and I should have found a compromise. Ah well, I‘ll continue to develop the character as I go on, might as well find more fitting outfits too.
Finding the right trinkets and keepsakes to add to this ref was also not easy to get to, since I rarely ever think about those kind of things in my works. Needless to say, I thought of a little story accompanying every bit of object I put in the ref sheet. For example, the bone flute was made by lizard people living on the island with which Souvillaine traded and grew to be accepted among them, so they taught him how to play on this flute made by a fellow lizard. Designing them will be a challenge I reserve for the future, though I‘m already very excited…
There wasn‘t much time inbetween for my next project to tackle.
I was commissioned with an exceptional prompt: a fun cooking scene of two friends in their kitchen. A very heartwarming scene I happily agreed to do. Doing 4 convincing concept sketches rather quickly, I realized how far I have come to start a project without proper warm-up or research in the field. Something I remember I had quite a lot of trouble with in my past. This gives me a lot of confidence now with accepting more unique commission prompts in the future.
So after the bodies were finished, I was at the task to tackle the kitchen environment. Usually, I merely sketch about and find a composition that fits the characters. Here, I only had the table and objects they were interacting with. Given a strict deadline I gave myself, I had to decide whether it was worth trying my usual approach or building the scene from scrap in blender. Crazy as I am, I decided to do the latter!
Doing this went surprisingly well. Working with an overlay of my sketch helped me set up the camera and align each piece of furniture in the back and front separately. And it was fun! I haven‘t worked with blender since a game project early on last year but I will continue using it for geometry in perspective. It wasn‘t exactly time saving but definitely more fun than trying to work all of it out by hand and it looks more convincing this way!
So, with a healthy dose of overtime, I managed to finish this piece in time before I was heading to my family’s for a little more vacation during the easter days.
Though meanwhile, I was setting up my workspace to start animating on my short film. It will be a steep climb to figure out the exact look of the film as I go along because I only wanted to start animating again.
I‘ll be facing a ton of work in the following months, now with me working for the festival for animated film again at the end of April and some more prep work to be done beforehand. As well as school and personal projects. At least I got a couple more days to lay back a bit and take things on slowly.
I definitely felt my lack of income this month compared to the past, but it fills me with comfort to know I get to force myself to find my income and luckily it is actually coming in with my efforts.
Alright please keep it civilized tomorrow, noone wants any bad pranks happening to them. I wish you a wonderful new month, better weather and hopefully no conflicts.
Have a nice one!
Souvillaine~