Writing 3 (blog posts) for Crit3

Last critique I got a lot of compliments on my character design and some good advice on my environment sketch. I don't know if I'll have the latter completed by Friday, but hopefully I will. So far, I've got these two ready to go:

 

Both are characters from a story of mine where Earth has merged with another dimension that was a fantasy-styled world, resulting in magic (among other things) suddenly being introduced to the modern age. The first, Vivienne, has the embodiment of life energy living in her, and Belvedere has fire (much to his chagrin). It's been really fun to figure out what that world would look like, and to puzzle through how different parts of our society would react to it. 

I'd like to have at least three character designs from this world to show on friday. Here's what I have so far of the main character:

 

He has the embodiment of death living inside of him, and I've been trying to figure out how to convey how his power looks in my head on paper. I know he has the ability to make shadows rise off of surfaces and become solid, but I'm not sure how to show that yet.

During the merging of worlds, if a human from earth happened to be standing in the same location as a creature or object from the other dimension, the two would fuse together into something called a Chimera. More often than not, the Chimera would die instantly or shortly after its merging, but sometimes they survived. Sometimes this merging would result in a harmonious fusion of the two beings, but usually they're left horribly disfigured (extra limbs poking out of chests, two heads, and so on). They're social outcasts from both worlds due to their condition, but a faction has risen up comprised of surviving Chimeras that offers shelter to them. The leader of this faction is Alastor, who I'm trying to sketch down below:

 

He's been the most frustrating to draw so far, as I can't quite get him to look like how I want him to.  Since there's so much backstory to this world, I've thought about writing out a short synopsis and putting it with my drawings during the critique. 

In this latest batch of character designs, I've tried to focus more on a variety of body shapes and more fluid poses. For the latter, I've been studying an artist on Deviantart known as Kate-FoX:

 

 

 

I really admire her range of styles, and she has some really helpful pose studies and tutorials. I think I need to practice more, especially with hands and fluid poses. I'll try to make some time for that this week.

You should also check out Molly McVey's work:

http://mollymcvey.weebly.com/studio-critique-iii-16sp-art-650-01/writing-blog-posts-1

I'm not usually a huge fan of black and white photography but some of her photos are really stunning (I particularly like the one of the chandelier).  I wonder if she's ever thought about leaving her photos mainly black and white, but then having a small part of it be in color (Or vice versa)? I see in her writings that she admires photographers who can convey story in an image, and I think that color can be an extremely useful tool in that aspect.

Writing 3 (blog posts) for Crit 2

Time for round 2 of demon designs for my webcomic. To be honest, I was frustrated with how the last critique went. My fellow students didn't really seem to listen to me when I said that the three were meant to be designs and not "art pieces". I wanted feedback on if they were scary or not, and how to improve them. They wanted each to have a backstory, which I can understand for more important demons (Of which there will be a few). For those, I do have backstories because they're involved more in the story and need to be more developed character-wise. However, these monsters I'm designing for class are meant to be 'monsters of the week.' They will appear, be scary, then be defeated, probably to never show up again. It felt like I repeated this dozens of times but nobody listened and continued to look at the designs as art pieces, which isn't how I'm intending these to be taken.

Here's what I have so far. For these, I used ink and watercolor pencils.

 

Carlie Gernhart- Demon Design 4

  

Carlie Gernhart - Demon Design 5

 

I intend to have at least one more demon design by friday.  These are still oddly therapeutic to work on and are a great stress reliever. :)  While I've been looking at Stephen Gammell a lot for inspiration, I've also been browsing around the web. I've found an artist on Deviantart who goes by the username Atenebris who has amazing and creepy creature design:

 

Shamo by Atenebris 

 

Rigel by Atenebris

 

Kitty by Atenebris

I love how elegant and intimidating the first two are, and the eyes on the third make me want to play around with lighting effects more. It's also interesting to me how the last picture uses a color range not usually associated with scary things (it seems to have a cooler, cyan-ish tint to it, with a bit of magenta).

This week I'd also like to draw your attention to the awesome work of Mattie Parrigon:

http://mattieparrigon.blogspot.com/2016/01/writing-blog-posts1.html 

I really like her portraits, and like the sketchy quality her lines. Her series of nursing home portraits are my favorite of her works that I've seen so far (I'm particularly fond of the picture of the old man with the tattoos).