Rookie Awards 2022 - Howie Ortiz-Sherwood

Building my Character Concept Portfolio

I have spent this year improving upon my character design abilities and working on my portfolio. This is a showcase of everything so far. And of course, by the time this contest is over, I hope my work is even better than the work you see here, and that this becomes outdated.

This is everything I've done so far. If it isn't obvious, I am a massive lover of Sci-Fi. I hope you enjoy it!

Dimension Vanguard 

A character concept I created during my Mentorship with Anthony Jones. I did 5 initial designs and then took one to a more developed final render stage.

This was a Sci-Fi character inspired by the character designs from Destiny.

A little bit of the process from thumbnail to final render.

I also did some thumbnail sketches for a creature design to go with this character but in the end, I didn't take these to a more developed stage.

Some of the initial thumbnail sketches.

Disturbed Wings

Another concept I created during my Mentorship with Anthony Jones. This was an enemy creature design.

My original inspiration was actually the Geonosians from Star Wars.

Process video showcasing how much the final render changed from the initial thumbnail.

The original thumbnail sketches for the creature design. The enemies from the Halo series were a big inspiration to me. 

Stranger of Fate

A character concept I created during my Mentorship with Anthony Jones. I did 5 initial designs then took two of them to a more developed final render stage, and this was the first one of them - a sort of cyberpunk post-apocalyptic character design.

Video process, you can see that this design changed a lot throughout its development.

Duty of Justice

A character concept I created during my Mentorship with Anthony Jones.  For this one, I went for some kind of fully armoured sci-fi brute design.

Destiny was once again, a big inspiration for this piece.

The video process shows the changes throughout development, the head, basic shapes and composition changed a lot towards the end.

Legion Jaeger

This was supposed to just be a quick iPad sketch, but it turned into a lot more than just a doodle! Had Evangelion on the mind so there is definitely some inspiration here.

This is the video process. As you can see, it quickly turned from just a sketch into a lot more than that.

Anatomy Studies

Of course, there are a lot of fundamentals and foundations required to create characters, and anatomy is a huge part of that. So this year I went back to basics and have begun fully learning and studying the human anatomy, to help my character design ability, and help me sketch quicker. 

Studying the ears and the eyes. 

Studying the form and structure of the nose and mouth

Facial structure and a look at the sections of fat on your face.

Basic shapes, forms and skeletal structure.

Left is a looking at the Pectoralis Major and Sternomastoid. Right is looking at the Trapezius and Deltoids.

Left is looking at Abdominal Groups and Rotator Cuffs. Right is looking at Obliques and Serratus Anterior.

Studying the Latissimus Dorsi and Erector Spinae.

Where to go from here?

Keep up studying and learning and improving, of course! I am always studying and going through tutorials to improve my abilities and help better my portfolio.

Thank you for viewing, and thank you for your time!