A Pirate, a friendly goblin and some characters

Hello everyone, here some of the stuff I have been creating and would like to share; it has been a journey with a lot of learning, joy and frustration (you learn to appreciate it, it is the one that allows the previous two). hope you enjoy and let's get started.

Orc Pirate 

This project began with the idea of creating a sculpt of an orc pirate. This idea would bring my current skill set of 2d drawing and a skill set I have had interest on, which is more oriented to 3d sculpting.

I began with a few sketches, imagining how would this character look on a stand. I had to think about his situation, his surroundings, his reaction about what was happening...

The ones with the dots on their right were the selected final options. The first one was more straight to the point and the simplest, but the second convinced me the most. It has more the vive of an orc descending to a cave with a treasure in it, having the sword in his hands being cautious of what danger might come.

The first few elements I wanted to explore on this character were his weapons, a gun and a sword. For the gun, I decided to stay on the small size range as it was what fitted the most on a pirate that has intense and quick fights. For the sword, I began to explore simple shaped forms, but quickly grew fond of the idea of the one sword that could become two in the midst of the battle.

I sketched once again the pose for the figure on a bigger scale, to have a more clear view of the elements that would have to be designed, and I went ahead and began to design the pieces.

After finishing the sketching, I made the base desing for the character in a neutral pose, so the pieces could be easily located and most of the elements could be seen.

As you will be able to see by its bulkiness and big shoulder pieces, is heavily inspired by Warcraft. After making the complete design of it, I learned to calm down with the level of detail for the next projects.

For the next steps I designed his weapons and some other pirate elements like hats and treasure maps.

As it can be apereciated, the previous logic of being agile in the battle was completely eliminated, and his gun, just like the sword, became two, the original small one, and a big one that shoots cannonball sized projectiles.

Wanted to know how his back looked like; but the page would look too empty, so I imagined this character doing some stuff, like fighting or giving orders to his crew; or maybe taking a rest after an intense fight.

One of the elements that I wanted for this character, was to not be a Warhammer 40k or a Warcraft, berserker kind of orc; I wanted to give him a more human behaviour so through his design I kept in mind to give him nor a hostile, but nor a friendly appearance.

Gobling Caveman

As strange as it may sound, one of the things I have most fun drawing, are big nosed guys, commonly dwarfs or goblins; I can go nuts and make the nose even bigger than their face. Maybe I enjoy drawing them because I suffer from mild breathing problems, and imagining these guys breathing just mesmerizes me (ngl, watching the dwarf breathing on the snowy environment on the first wow trailer makes me kinda jealous).

This drawing is quite special for two reasons; the first was the planning, that was almost none, it came out of a simple sketch.

The sketch just evolved to the concept (I can clearly remember referencing a lot of Brom drawings from his book, especially for the shoulders and the anatomy details), but the second special thing about this project was the development of the drawing; it is the first time that I go from line art, to grey scale rendering and then to color, in which I get to a result I am happy with.

This was just a quick project that I can claim as finished; I enjoyed so much creating it from a simple random sketch and I hope I get to create more ones like it.

Also, he is friendly, remember; if you show him your finger he will be so helpful taking them off your hand, so you don't have to carry those heavy sticks.

Jaze and Gor

Here I discovered the importance of story, it makes so much easier to create characters, it gives the base to know how do they look, how old they are, how do they act, what they wear..., it just solidifies a character as an individual. It is incredible when I have a story, I want to expand on these characters even if the project is over; I want to know what problems will they encounter, what adventures their journey is going to take them to; or at least that is what happens to me (anyone else?).

The idea for these characters was a girl in her teens that likes magic and tinkering, and her friend who is a beast that she rescued on one of her expeditions to the borders of her town. So the first thing that I did, was to sketch.

Mixed many kings of birds and mammals, but ended up going for the idea of fusion between an Andean condor (which is the nation bird of my country) and a bear, the fluffy neck looked like a mane on the bear body making it look beefier, while conserving the cuteness of a bird on its face.

For the girl I explored some of the magic symbols and many kinds of hats; I liked the idea of giving her mechanical wheel as bracelets to accentuate her tinkering side, as well as giving her some tools which combine her magic and tinkering skills (and of course I could not forget to add the grey strand of hair).

I chose the final pose and did the design for the beast, exploring its different life stages and possible colors; finally I designed many element that she is wearing.

When creating accessories, it was fun to think of today objects and find a different purpose for them if a person didn't know what they were and just found them; it was also interesting to design the symbols that represent the different kinds of magic that exist in that world and what they represent; like the duality of light and shadow, or the healing side of water magic.

What's left was just to put everything in place and render. The colors that I chose for her, were based on her water magic and the healing schools that are in her town; It was just a matter of getting where the blues and the whites were located.

As I said, I just loved how the story facilitates to know the character. And yes one of the big inspiration for her character was magical Trevor , ´cos the tricks that he does are ever so clever...

Lands of Union

Final project on this post, it is an ongoing project. It is about a world in which some alien species have come to earth and established themselves as helpers; true to be told, there is more to what they are doing on earth than simply helping humans.

The story goes around three strangers that meet in an unfortunate situation; and their journey around the world, discovering the truth of what are the goals that drive some individuals actions. For a way to organize the communities in this universe I separated them by factions and ranks.

The human alliance is the biggest human man-made community in the world; it is composed by the three biggest groups to which the principal character belong.

The group of aliens that came to help humanity are called the Dominators; the pirates and slavers are groups of aliens that came to earth to cause problems with the projects that the Dominators have, causing trouble with smaller human communities; they are commonly avoided or defended against by the human alliance fighting forces.

One of the leaders of the human alliance is Estelle, the leader of the druids; she is a tall and mysterious, the druids are a group of people that are close to nature; they are mainly divided by the skills that they develop towards nature and their strengths in communicating with animals, trees or fungus; their main goal is to preserve nature and peace. They avoid fighting, but if they do, they can use nature to their favour. When designing her, I went with the blond and blue eyes perfect looking tall woman to portray her as an immaculate character; I gave blue colors to her clothes to show her closeness to the moon and sky.

Another leader of the human alliance is Jackson; he leads the Riders, he is said to be the coldest and coolest human on earth by his own peers, this old aged man is believed to be more that 100 years old, but looks young and strong because his conviction and will to lead his people to the right path.

The Riders, a group composed by caring, but impulsive people; they are organized by communities named families in which people become brothers and sisters by title. The riders get their strength by the power of their will; they are capable of achieving feats that seem impossible, it is said between them that if your will is one of the strongest, even death can't stop you.

I made Jackson as an older man to show him as an experienced and calm leader, and of course he needed the sunglasses for the +10 in coolness.

One of the most misunderstood factions on earth are the Pirates; the fault might come from many places in the upper management of the other factions, but clearly, it mostly comes from the Slavers, who are their sworn enemies.

The pirates are lead by many people and one of their highest leaders is Ban. he is one of the strongest members in the faction; but his strength does not come only from physical strength; it also comes from his leadership and capabilities when dealing with problems. He is the guy that always appears to know what to do and the other people look up to him for his confidence. The choices for his design were done to give him a costume that would blend with the wasted environment he lives in, and a human appearance people could relate to.

One of the member of the druids, is also one of the protagonists of the story; her name is Sophie and she lives a free-spirit life, she is very talented speaking with the trees. She is an adventurous, kinder and happy soul, I also wanted to give her a tree as her companion; she can use the tree to fight or defend herself and the tree will use her to live.

I decided to get some inspiration from the Indian cultures; they are so many and so diverse; I didn't even scratch the bast amount of culture and meaning behind their doings; I used many elements from these cultures in which this character is inspired, like the paint from dancers (even if I do not know how to dance, I know how freeing it can make a person feel, adding to her extrovert personality), or the red dot on the forehead.

I like doing line ups of the characters; it visualizes the relation between characters and see if they are varied enough, or if they look from the same group when that is the goal (it also helps to see how much investment a project has taken and to see how much work has still to be done).

That´s all for my entry, I hope you enyojed it and that you live happily ever after ´til the end of your days dear friends, until our next meeting.