Excelsior Further Gang Designs

I combined all of the four gangs I had previously drawn out and created two new gangs. 

I used some inspiration from the Grinch with the curly boots on the first designs, and the stripes are inspired from Tim Burton character designs. I also looked at Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr Seuss and they heavily influenced the first design sheet. I also looked at the minions from Despicable Me and used the goggles design for the second sheet. 

Excelsior Gang Colour Sheets

 

 (Finished Sheet to be uploaded)

 (Finished sheet to be uploaded)

(Finished sheet to be uploaded)

I repeated each image of the gang and coloured it in then played around with them to see how they would look in different colours. I wanted them to look different and not just like a human gang, so knew that crazy colours would be ideal for hair and skin etc. 

Excelsior Gang Initial Designs

I decided to draw up a few ideas for some possible gangs that could live in the undercity. I came up with a wide range of ideas so that I could come up with some very different gangs for my final two. 

I used inspiration from Dr Seuss characters with the wacky hair and body shapes. I also wanted to express the types of characters and personalities the members of the gangs had. I then focused more on each gang:

After some feedback I was told that I should do some colour tests on these gangs to see if I could make them look more crazy or exciting to look at. 

Excelsior Monk Designs

The main character of this brief is a monk called Joeb. I decided to make my version of Joeb an eastern monk. Below is some designs for him: 

After doing these character designs however I decided I didn't like any of them. I was struggling to find a style of drawing for my character that would match the environment. I also knew that everyone of them was pretty much the same. Since I was struggling I decided to just leave this character for a while and work on the cities and and gangs. 

Excelsior City Ideas

After doing my research I started sketching out some ideas for the overall city, both poor and rich sections. 

I took the idea from my initial designs with the hanging houses and incorporated it into one of the new designs. I really liked this idea so drew out some more sketches to see how I could make it look. 

(Top image to be replaced by finished drawing)

Excelsior Research

After some feedback on my initial ideas it was suggested that I go in a slightly different direction with my ideas. I wanted to make my target audience children so decided to do some research into similar films to get some inspiration. 

I decided to look into Dr Seuss films. I love the look of the environments and how everything is off balanced and the perspective is all over the place. That is the look I want to go for, but make it my own. 

I also decided to look into Tim Burton films and character designs and it was suggested that I look into background done by Maurice Noble. 

(Above Images by Tim Burton)

(Above Images by Maurice Noble)

Excelsior Initial Ideas

For my initial ideas for this brief I came up with two first sketches. 

 For the first idea I thought it could be in the middle of a deep forest, therefore the city would be built on trees and be made to look like part of the forest. The pillars could be strong thick trees, the platform made out of earth with roots and dirt hanging down. I thought the houses on the rich part of the city could be made out of good, rich woods and be built to look important, whereas the poor houses could be made out of rotten wood and look more like garden sheds that are falling apart. For the undercity I also thought it could be held up by roots and vines, so it would be a bit shakey and unsteady. 

For my second idea I came up with a "candy land" that was built up entirely from sweets and cakes. I thought the pillars could have been made from candy canes, the main platform from toffee, strawberry laces hanging down as foliage, candy floss for bushes and trees, a chocolate pond, jelly bean cobbled streets etc. For this idea I also thought that there could be houses hanging down from the platform with little bridges linking them together like a network, and this would be where the poor people lived. 

Excelsior- New Brief

Scenario:

A science fiction or fantasy world. This world may be futuristic or may have a feel of an ancient culture.

In this society the population is divided into the rich and the poor.
The city is built on a platform and is supported on some kind of series of pillars. The rich live on top of the platform and the poor live below.
Among the poor exist the gangs and there are lots of these all radically different from one another.

In the upper city there is a monastery where the religious rulers of the city live. The monastery is not built on the platform but hovers above it.

The Hero:

Joeb is a young monk from the monetary. He belongs to a part of the order highly-trained in martial arts.

His mission is to go into the dangerous under city and meet with a mysterious individual who has a box for him to collect and take back to the monastery.

Blue Beetle Final Design- Changes 2

After getting some more feedback it was pointed out how wrong the character's left hand looked, the one doing the "thumbs up" gesture. He looked more like he was trying to get a taxi then a thumbs up to his sidekick. I knew this was right as I had struggled a lot when drawing the hand out. 

I still wasn't happy with this version of the hand so knew I still had some changes to make. 

Blue Beetle Feedback

I finally showed my work and one of the comments that was made was that the background should be a lit lighter because at the the minute the character kind of blended in and didn't look like he was in the foreground. 

I had also been shown a good way of shading that matched my style of drawing so added that as well. 

Blue Beetle Background

At this point I still hadn't got any feedback off my lectures but added a background anyways. I knew that if it looked almost complete then they would be able to help me and give me better feedback on everything that I needed to change. 

Blue Beetle Final Designs- Changes 1

After getting some feedback it was pointed out the neck on the beetle didn't quite look right, so I added an extra "neck" section to make it look slightly longer. I also added more spikes on the gloves. 

Blue Beetle Colour Final

 I then coloured in the outline as I was happy with it. I hadn't gotten any feedback yet and probably should have done as it would have been a lot easier to make the changes before colouring it in. 

I hadn't added any shading yet at this point because I knew that at least if it was in block colour and changes needed to be made it would be a lot easier to go back and fix then if I had already added shading. 

Blue Beetle Final Design

So I had done research, initial designs, further development and designed a sidekick and had finally come up with a design that I was happy with. I knew that once I had drawn up a "final" design that it wouldn't really be the final one and that after getting feedback I would have to make some changes as it wouldn't turn out right the first time. Below is the outline for my first go at my final character. 

Blue Beetle Side Kick

Originally in the brief it stated that there had to be a vehicle to go with our versions of the Blue Beetle. However the brief was altered slightly to match my style and because of initial ideas I was allowed to have a "backpack" sidekick that was a beetle instead. This beetle would help my character fly by acting as a backpack and clinging onto the Blue Beetle. 

Above is my design sheet for the beetle. I wanted to keep him looking quite simple since he would be clinging onto the characters back and if it was made into an animation then he would need to be kept simple as he wouldn't always be the main focus so couldn't have an intricate design to him. 

I gave him big eyes and a little tiny mouth which won't always be visible unless he has a strong emotion. I wanted him to look cute so that young children would like him and he could bring in a girl audience as well. I imagined him to have a funny, mischievous personality. 

Blue Beetle Design Taken Further

Out of all the designs I had drawn up I then chose my favourite that I thought had the most potential and the most character to him already that I could develop further. 

From the previous post; I chose the first design on the left on the second sheet. I felt like he had a lot of attitude already and that he would make a good, relatable character for children as he was obviously a child himself. 

(image to be replaced by finished drawing)

I then chose one of the designs off the sheet above and took it further. I decided I liked this character because he looked slightly older, maybe a young teenager so thought that children could look up to him as an idol. On this design sheet I experimented with shades for his sunglasses, different colours for his hair, slightly different designs for the front of his jacket and nose shapes. 

New Blue Beetle Initial Ideas

I took the advice given to me and came up with two sheets with designs for general character ideas.

                      (second image to be replaced by finished drawing) 
 
I tried to come up with a wide range of ideas; children to elderly men. I hadn't decided if I wanted my version of the Blue Beetle to be good or evil yet so tried to come up with a selection of both.

Blue Beetle Feedback

After presenting my ideas and sketches so far to the rest of the class and my lecturer it was then decided my style was more suited towards children rather than an adult audience. This made me feel a lot better about the project. I was also told to try come up with a general idea first, then think of the specific design features after. which is the opposite of what I had just done.

I decided to keep what I had done so far as reference but to start again on the design process.

Blue Beetle Inital Sketches

After my research and writing down my ideas I then started jotting down some sketches and idea sheets for different aspects of the character. 

First I drew out a sheet of head and shoulder shapes so that I could design different capes, shoulder pads, hoods, hats/helmets and neck braces etc.  

Then I looked at just head and helmet designs.

I wanted to think about arm bands, gloves and hand accessories as well for both men and woman as at this point I was uncertain whether I wanted my character to be male or female.The designs on the left are male and the ones on the right are for females.

I knew I needed to think of weapons or shields as well so made a design sheet of rough sketches of possible weapons inspired heavily by Egypt.

Blue Beetle Idea Notes

After doing some research I knew that I needed to think carefully about what I wanted my re-design to look like and how I wanted to make him or her different from the original. 

Below is a list of notes I made while I was trying to work out how I wanted him to look: 

• arm armour?
• neck armour?
• helmet?
• will he have pincers?
• wings?
• belt?
• pincers on his gloves?
• pincer shape shield/weapon?
• glowing eyes/goggles like a bug?
• attachable wings? 
• stripes- gold and blue like Egyptian theme?
• little beard?
• big hat/helmet
• shoot powers out his hands
• hyroglifics glowing around him?
• have an egyptian staff that shoots out energy with a beetle on top?
• Egyptian shaped eyes on helmet?
• Egyptian neck brace and matching belt?
• if it was a girl?
• bug glasses
• belt?
• a skirt like armour that fans out?
• bug backpack like the latest trends
• girl idea- floaty bits of material like jasmin off aladin on wrists or belt
• girl idea- hair style like Cleopatra with the bob and the fringe?
• spikes on gloves for climbing like on spiderman?

Blue Beetle Research

For my research I started by looking at drawings done by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee for the DC Comics. I found that the designs for the Blue Beetle were very similar to Spiderman. At this point in the project the brief had not been altered for my style so I was looking at the original designs and trying to think of a better way to redesign the character so that the outfit wouldn't look silly on a live action character.

I then looked into Doctor Fate, a DC character who looked very Egyptian. My dad is a huge superhero fan so suggested I looked at him for influence on possible Egyptian themes and how it can be portrayed.

This research was all very useful and made me realise I had to think carefully  about the costume so that it didn't look silly on a live action actor like the photos below.