World building - Studies

With the character design I am also producing human studies both in 2D and 3D. Personally I think it's the most important thing to have the understanding of body proportions, anatomy and muscle flow. With that in mind, I know that I am capable of producing a solid character, that is both readable to the audience and has all human features even though they might be exaggerated. As I mentioned before I don't only draw studies I also use 3D software such as zbrush to sculpt and do get a better understanding of how body works in 3D space. This was suggested to me by one of the graduates that told me of the benefits of learning software such as zbrush. I tend to lock myself within the profile view of the character. I think this is caused by two things. Firstly, I think I am the most confident drawing character from side view, and secondly I think it is due to the lack of visual library in my head which could help me to recreate poses that I've seen before. With that in mind I am hard at work in expanding my visual library as well as trying to push myself towards more dynamic poses that could benefit my future characters.

I was also advised to study bodybuilders. Since my character is a big guy I decided to look into a character of Conan played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. At his times he was a competitive bodybuilder and I thought that both his body and the role he was playing would be beneficial towards understanding the anatomy of non-average person.

With this one I did not really follow any reference. I wanted to see if I was able to recreate a male torso from a top of my head. I am quite satisfied with the outcome even though some proportions aren't correct. 

I don't consider this to be a study. This was more of an experiment. I wanted to quickly sketch out my character using zbrush and see how it could look from different angles. This was quite an early stage of the character design, the helmet is different now as well as some of the proportions have been adjusted in the sketch attached in previous blog post. 

This might sound weird but I quite like studying things. I feel like when I do it I benefit from acquired knowledge. I can see a difference if I was to create drawing from top of my head, and if I was to study it before hand and then recreate it. I think this is because I have a better understanding of the object and I am more confident when it comes to reproducing it.