Developing The Characters – Visually – Fish (Updated May 27)

Wow. This is turning out to be a cool little visual journey.

In my last blog entry I posted a ton of pictures that started with some rough scene sketches, and quickly turned into a “development of the Lilypad in 3D”.

While I’ve still got a few tweaks left to do on the model, I’m moving on to the characters now. I started first exploring Poser, creating approximate 3D versions of the characters. Mostly to get the body type and musculature, poses and proportions down pat. Then, I’m going to start reconnecting with my drawing skills and see if I can’t bring these characters to life that way.

It was time to actually get a decent shot of Fish together. He goes through four visual incarnations in the story. These aren’t arbitrary… they actually serve a purpose to show us his general state of being. 1) When he arrives at the Lilypad, he’s unkempt, a little stubbly, hair a little long. A bit of a beach bum. 2) After two years of not bothering to cut his hair or shave, he’s major beach bum. He makes a joke about “hobo style (eating from the can) being the only way to eat beans”… it’s a metaphor about Fish as a character adrift in his life. 3) After Cassandra arrives, he shaves. It’s not mentioned by any of the characters, and doesn’t impact the story at all; it’s just a visual clue that her arrival’s changing something. 4) After spending the first 5/8 of the story pushing his long hair out of his eyes, Fish (the self-admitted naval academy washout) has to saddle up and be “the soldier” to rescue his friends, and put aside the “beach bum” he’s let himself slide into for so long. So, chopping off his hair wasn’t just a cosmetic change… it signified that Fish’s personal journey was taking him into an area he’d avoided thus far.

I based his face originally on a Poser face, but not exclusively. I just used the Poser face for a blueline general feature outline. I also wanted to see how consistent I could keep the face with the shot I’d done for the rain scene. Ultimately, the new face is a tad thinner, but no matter. Finally, I found that unfortunately, as can often happen when you’re illustrating an imaginary character out of nothing, it can start resembling a face you see every day… in the mirror.

Damn! Those features were starting to resemble mine. So… I picked a celebrity face (who I actually had in mind when I started writing the character in the first place) to use as a template as I massaged the facial features into place. In the end, he doesn’t truly resemble MMcC, but pushing towards his facial features helped me with the face.

Third time with the WACOM tablet. Getting better. Not perfect. That’s what practice is for.

Second time exploring the WACOM tablet. Learned from the first time. Drawing skills are rusty. I’ll keep plugging away though…

Swap out the speargun for a guitar and he looks like “Night Moves”-era Bob Seger. Still rough. Haven’t done much drawing in the last twenty years.

This picture below was created by redrawing the Poser figure, and using Photoshop filters to bring the background in line with that style. First time with my new WACOM Cintiq tablet. Most fun. Can’t wait to get better with it.

And this one’s the Poser/SketchUp/Photoshop mashup. While I don’t intend on using Poser for the actual illustrations, this was good for a “proof of concept” to see how the general approach was going to work out…. and make way for more exploration, like the pic above.