Week 1

I did two pages of these but I can't seem to find the first one, so here's the second!  I think one of my biggest take-aways was that the "Strength" characters were usually very top-heavy and bulky. 

I'll admit I wasn't necessarily focusing on proportions as much as shapes and poses. 

I was actually somewhat surprised how easily most characters seemed to fit into one of the three categories (or at least dominantly into one).

For Part 2 of the prompt I toyed around with a few ideas and ended up going "I wonder how anthropomorphic ferrets might look in those roles...." and much as I tried to go back and work on more humanoid characters, these guys kept calling me back.

Things I tried to focus on were that the "Intellect"-based one had a lot of random dangles and an overall complicated set of garb, but a very simple actual body-shape.

For the "Agility" critter I tried for more curves and a very "poised" pose as well as an elongated set of gestures.  I also liked the idea of him having an accessory belt. ;)

For the "Strength" one I went for a very broad upper-body as well as a lot more pronounced fur and claws.  I also shortened the tail, neck, and ears.

The "Strength" one also reminds me of a were-ferret. ;)

Week 1

Ooookay, so I had a really hard time with this one, and I imagine I will continue to do so through the rest of this. That's why they're a "challenge", right? My warm up silhouettes I was pretty pleased with, it's just when I had to get down and design my own that I had the trouble. I still can't draw things like I see them in my head quite right, but I guess I just need more practice. Warm ups are to the left.



And to the right here are mine. I couldn't decide what theme I wanted to go with for them, but eventually wound up with a sci fi type. I'm not particularly happy with them like I said. These are all supposed to be humans, I didn't feel like tackling aliens ;)

Week 1: Silhouettes

You guys saw the pre-existing characters sketches in the email so I will not upload them here, but here's the meat of the week! (EDIT: I was poked that I should post them anyway, so there they are!) It was specified that the silhouettes should be from the same world -- I made mine the same species, even. While there are some things that are commonly associated with brainy, agile or strong characters, these qualities are not always (or even often) mutually exclusive: how would you catagorize Beast? Peter Parker is pretty smart, too. Megamind is clearly brainy, but he also moves like a dancer.

So I took my ogre people and put them in each role. They would stereotypically be portrayed as the strongman type, and not very agile or smart, but I know better. They may not be Monkey or Thing or Prof X, but neither are they limited by body type.

That said ... it was actually the strong guy that gave me trouble. >.> I would rather have portrayed him in a more frontal position, but that would have been difficult to read as a silhouette. I was trying to stay away from the poses from the preexisting characters, as well, but if I did it over I might have used something like Thing's pose, just to have a different set of proportions acting the same way.

Week 1 Art Challenge: Silhouette of a Hero

Week 1 Art Challenge: Silhouette of a Hero

Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 12:28pm

Some highly motivated friends and I have opted to start up a sort of weekly challenge amongst ourselves in order to prompt us to be further productive and improve our art and I thought I'd share it here as well. :)

This week's (Wednesday to Wednesday) challenge/assignment is all about silhouettes! How we "read" various figures and interpret how they fit into their individual worlds is often highly related to their silhouettes.

The warm-up exercises will be to draw a variety of loose character silhouettes (black on a white background) from various pre-existing media, including anything ranging from comic books, movies, or games.

The challenge for the week is to create three original "Hero" silhouette figures who appear to inhabit the same world. One should be an intelligence based hero, one should be a strength based hero, and one should be a dexterity/agility based hero.

Due: Wednesday, August 3rd.