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.