Character Design Reference Question

[Xzara]

Hi everyone,

I do have a little question about finding references in a character creation process, when the character is not „referencable“. That means the character is a non-human creature, so I can not look at human reference, like gestures, proportions and all that stuff. Maybe this is too hard for a beginner, starting with non-referencable Character?
But I thought maybe some is knowing a course here on svslearn which could fit to my problem, which I could learn how to deal with it. The main problem is the lack of visualizing the proportions (3D) and all that stuff, to be able to really understanding the char to be able to pose/move the character afterwards in a storytelling key-moment illustration.

Maybe someone have any idea or course recommendation, this would be nice. Thank you in advance!

Alex

[AngelinaKizz]

@Xzara your character must have some connection to something realistic? An animal perhaps? Looks for poses outside of human anatomy. If it’s machinery. Study machinery, and look at jakes work for inspiration… hes top notch when it comes to robotics and machines. If none of the above, take the how to draw everything class. And the figure drawing class and go from there.

[Xzara]

@AngelinaKizz Hi, actually I finished the „how to draw everything“ class already. But I think I can not actually draw everything immediately right after the class^^ It will take a while of practice or maybe the problem lays somewhere else.

My character is imagined as a kind of stone-troll creature, so actually looking like a mossy stone. But its characteristics are completely different. It is meant to act like flowing water, dynamic, fluid and balancing the elements of nature. I am wondering if its possible to give a static and absolutely non-flowing thing like a stone fluid gestures, or if I should choose something like a plant, which is actually bendable and flowing in the wind and stuff. But maybe it only needs more time to experiment because I have already seen concepts with for example an elephant doing yoga and something like that xD Nobody would expect this kind of movement for this kind of heavy animal. So how could I translate the characteristics and movement of fluid water to a stiff stone or maybe a accumulation of stones? Oh, this just came right now into my mind! When it would be more then one stone, the group of them could be achieve the needed agility and movement in combination. Mh I need to think about that and play around with the idea of one creature consists of a combination of more than one element. Actually neither does a human body, there are connecting and bonding elements like veins, skin layer and so on. Maybe I could translate this with a combination of nature elements, reaching the same affect and breathes movement and life into the stiff character. Like basic stone elements, connected/bounded with plant routs and stuff to hold the stones together.. Maybe this could work Oo Haha, I am doing self talk, but it helps so much to write something down and to actually communicate that in a way with someone or somewhere, even the solution will not come from others but found by expressing and formulating the problem.

Maybe I am doing a little hard with this for a beginner, but this kind of stuff is actually motivating and challenging me. And I am not that real beginner, drawing-wise, I am just new in this illustration world. I do draw my whole life, but without nearly any direction so far.

Thanks for your input, I will look at that figure drawing class, but I am doing figure drawing already for a while, this is not real challenging for me (with reference). Challenging are the imaginative ideas, which I can not reference. But mostly some little thing always will be helpful and not heard yet, so I will check that out!
If I could come up with some new sketches for my stone druid, I try to post this in here

[AngelinaKizz]

@Xzara look at Disney's frozen trolls, they're rocks.

[Kevin Longueil]

@Xzara You could maybe make a sculpt of your idea to sort out the details? This is part of the pipeline for animated films. Real clay sculpts are still used but mostly digital (zbrush). I am loving Nomad Sculpt on my iPad. It is very easy to use and is very intuitive. You can quickly make a 3d sculpt of any idea you have.

[Xzara]

@AngelinaKizz that was already one inspiration for the idea! But these trolls are not fluid or dynamic at all^^ My challenge is giving that stiff and immobile element, fluidity and dynamic in movement possibilities.

[Xzara]

@Kevin-Longueil thats a great idea! I actually have air dry clay at home. But do you think my vision of the character should be a little more clear before I start sculpting?

[Kevin Longueil]

@Xzara hmmmm. I think it might be more challenging to experiment with air dry clay without a good roadmap. Digital is very easy to experiment with of course. I think starting with a good silhouette from front and side would be good for sculpting in real life. Maybe starting with a sheet of silhouettes until you find a few you like to flesh out.

[ArtMelC]

@Xzara your character design needs to be grounded in some kind of reality that the viewers don’t need to work too hard to figure out. In your example of elephant doing yoga, we are familiar with the shapes of elephant (Long nose, big ears) and the basics of some yoga poses separately. If you take away the heaviness of the elephant, you still have the shapes to clearly show it as an elephant.

Ask yourself, if you take away the rigidity of the stone, what will be left? Texture? Colour? Is it enough for the average viewers to tell that it is a stone?

Or you could go into movements of groups of gravels? For this you may want to study those ASMR YouTube videos of flowing sands, marble pouring, etc?