Upgrade

Got some feedback on my character lineups. The consensus was that the first character I should model should be the Spaceman because he is the protagonist but that the current design is too simple and boring. In revisiting his design I wanted to do two things:

1. Enhance the distortion in the figure for a more unique silhouette.
2. Add lots of detailing to his costume.

I went back to my research and did a bunch of sketching and came up with this. (Special thanks to this amazing Flash Gordon book I picked up at the library with hundreds of photos from the film serials) I think it still recalls the military uniform that I was going for but feels a little more high-tech and has lots of little things to look at. He ended up with a creepy sneer in the painting which I will avoid in the actual model.

Wolf Mount

I'm planning on doing a (pink) ostrich for the bird people as well to explain where all those pink feathers are coming from. Poor wolf could also make a nice hat for a king.

I painted this entirely in Photoshop with a process that forces me to be more geometric and considerate of building strong shapes. Would like to push the sculpts to be a little more "simple" like this.

Human Face

Started putting together the model for the female character's face. I was guided by a tutorial on Digital Tutors to create a "stylized female", but this is the first time I've built something to my own specs. The tutorial got me off to a nice start because I learned about creating good geometry around the eyes & mouth for animation, however I've had to deviate quite a bit because the demo model never gets as complex as mine. Still need to smooth some areas out and want to make the eyes more realistic with proper skin folds. (plus the ears!)

Thumbs & Color Studies

Here are some sketches that I did in preparation for the project I'll be building. I also did color studies of my 3 favorite scenes. I really want to do an image of the dog & females characters on the top of a building as well, but don't want to make an impossible amount of work for myself. I'm trying to incorporate a wide variety of materials (glass, fabric, metal, etc) into each image.

The characters that I'm working with are:

The Inventor: the father figure, inventor, and spy handler
The Android: a robot femme fatale designed in the image of the Inventor's mother
The Puppy: the Inventor's adopted son