character Self Potrarit

[geldslaw]

for one of my modules, introduction to image making for computer applications using Adobe Illustrator we had to a self portrait so I did myself as a duckman. Here's the turn around and expression sheet.

I've also decided when my workload allows me I will turn it into a 3D Character as well

[Jelmer]

hehe looks pretty good, you can turn it into a new avatar. The emotions could use some work I think, the "joy" one doesn't look very happy to me, although "disgust" is very convincing again! Maybe it's the eyes that bother me, they look a bit strange to me. Don't take it personally though .

[geldslaw]

true I realised trying to make mouth shapes and keep a duck shape mouth was a challenge which is why when I did my lip synch sheet I got rid of the duck shape mouth



I agree with you the eyes could be better I've been reading and drawing a lot more eyes to understand the simplification process of communicating with the eyes, I chose a greyish colour to make them more silvery/specular but I'll go back to the drawing board and change them to standard black and see how that works.

but thanks for the advice

[geldslaw]

looks a lot better with black eyes, thanks Jelmer here's the new lip synch sheet

[geldslaw]

here's all three together, thanks for the feedback, its the only way I will improve and I am nowhere near even starting to be as good as I want to be. right now I am pleased I am making progress but its not at a pro level, so a few more years and a lot of hard labour to get there but its going to be fun and has been fun coming this far believe me. I was terrified of doing any kind of drawing and photoshop and illustrator terrified me, now they're my good friends lol

[Fisher]

dude i havent seen this till just now - this stuff is great!!! my first thought when i saw your first post was "i want to see your characters animated..." as in those first 5 characters animated as rotating in a circle to make it look 3d. =)

i think the change to black eyes was a huge plus.... but what about the eyebrows? do you have teal eyebrows? have you seen anyone with teal eyebrows? idk, im gettin old and i dont get out much, so maybe the kids these days are having teal eyebrows.... haha


im no 2d artist, but i *DO* know that you can express a helluva lot of emotion through the eyebrows, eyes, and eyelids. (i know this from watching hours and hours of Family Guy lol. ) and i say "eyes" because the shape of the eyeballs gives a lot of hint to the emotion of a character. I noticed in a lot of your pictures, the eyes stay the same... and ocasionally the eyebrows change... but it's the mouth that does the talking.



ooooo...... crap.... i just now realized that you were doing the lip synch stuff. yea... the lightbulb just turned on. LOL normally, i'd delete everything i said, but i want to post the comments so you can see my retarded input and have a laugh. heh..... man, i even made an MSPaint masterpiece demonstrating how you can show emotion with the same (blank) mouth features...


hmm... actually, the mouth serves no purpose other than to say "these are lips"... cover the lips up and you still have the same expression/emotion!

im sorry, i know im prolly preaching to the choir here, but i like what you got here and when you get some animations done, post em cuz id like to see them! keep it up man!

ps... just had to do this... lolz!



hahahaha

[geldslaw]

its all good, I take on board everyone's input and Jelmer's comment about changing the eyes, hhe was right, black works well, and I had forgotten, gray eyes are normally associated with blindness, well it was when I was a kid.

But thank your input, I'm reading at the moment Timing for animation , 'animation is a caricature of reality which is why everything is exaggerated, realaity looks weak when animated'

i probably had read that before but it took a while for the penny to drop and for that to sink in. Right now I was in panic stations about my final project, I went from an extreme idea to a mundane idea, and now this morning I decided the extreme was the best, well it wasn't extreme it was exaggerated.

today I pick up my A3 printer, its funny, but I ordered one off amazon for £171 it gets here next week, then someone contacted me about an add I had put in Flats to rent London, jobs in London, flatshare, free classified ads UK about wanting to buy a second hand A3 printer. I got back to them as they had made the effort to contact me, the add had been up for nearly 3 months.

Basically in the end they decided to sell me their A3 printer for £40 and I said I would sell the new one at a lost to make back some money, then they offered me for free a black and white dual try laser printer and two A4 scanners, all the paper for the printers and colour cartridges, cables and other bits for free as well as an offer to drop me home with all the stuff I was getting from them.

All I can say is this, fate has a kind way of paying us back with kindness sometimes