Tackling Model Sheet's Again

So ARMsmasters is being more seriously and diligently pursued of late. In fact I may be putting a website up related to it, or at least a dedicated blog, to chart the progress that's happening. It's been very cool and quite interesting. Here's an alpha line up of several of the characters as they stand so far.

I recently begun seriously retackling the model sheet process and started with a super familiar character in the form of Kongou. I found that I draw him somewhat differently then I did when I first did those face model sheet's some time back. My real intention was to do what is called a 'construction' test. For character animation, even the most simple characters need constructon breakdowns so that other animators can see the basic shapes involved and learn how to draw the character. Also when you are the designer and the animator and the artist it's easy to not think about things like this because you're doing it all but when you have a 'crew' of people, friends or co-workers, who also have to work on the same project, being able to decipher the what, how and why of a character is very important. It's no longer about your instinct.



A friend of mine tackled doing a construction drawing of Kongou's head and then I did a second pass over his rough sketches. What we found was that Kongou's basic face construction is somewhat egg shaped, though somewhat more bottom heavy much like some caricatures of a gorilla. Alot of his features extend around his head from the ears. There are other things that can be gleaned as well. I'll be doing more of these sketches now and also tackling the finer details of the character's face and then the body.