Monsters reemerged, TJ was redesigned, A Super Fighting Robot Guy changed the layout and Faux Captain Marvel struck a killer pose. Which leads us to this week's episode. New characters dominate the line up. Let's get into it!
As the text suggests, the character's name is Night Owl, a volatile vixen, who's more than handy with a katana. Trained from a young age to become a cold, calculating assassin for a mysterious Agency, bent on world domination (... or something), she parades around in the night felling all who stand in her way.She's yet another character I drew during my "4 drawings a day" era (ahh. What a time that was....). As I have said on numerous occasions, I didn't draw these characters for any particular purpose. Just for the sake of honing those skills and building up a my mental library. It's just that sometimes during the colouring process one's mind cannot help but wander off and invent a small backstory in the process. Speaking of process, this pic's layout took a hell of a long time! A lot of the elements on the page were deceptively difficult (I think I may just make alliteration my new thing... Coupled with parentheses, I'd be unstoppable!) to balance. I can only hope what I've presented is a halfway decent result.
This was an incredibly enjoyable picture to do, despite it taking longer than what it's simplicity suggests. I almost discarded the image for all it's anatomical inaccuracies, but I ultimately decided against it, and used this image as an opportunity to experiment (I don't know if I've already said this, but not every one of those 4-A-Day characters were gold. There was some careless and cringeworthy work in there, as well. So I've decided to simply pick out only the decent stuff to work on from now on). I toyed around with so many Photoshop tools that I normally wouldn't touch, just to get familiar. Overall, a very fruitful learning experience.
And then we get this guy. There's a funny story behind this image. This was so weird 'cause halfway through colouring this, the dude ended up looking like Ronald McDonald! I just couldn't shake the association! What a struggle it was to stop myself thinking of him as a gangster Ronald McDonald! I didn't want to change the colour scheme cause I really liked the colours. After hours of tweaking the hues, I think I've managed to sidestep a potential disaster (although I've probably just ruined it for you by mentioning this).
I don't really have anything noteworthy to say about him. I really like the design, though. I've recently had the idea of pitting some of my favourite characters against each other, and doing a series of battle stills. This guy (along with Faux Marvel) would definitely be at the top of the list.
Y'know, character associations are a dangerous thing(I'm not really sure if that's the appropriate term or wording, but by character association, I mean if one character reminds you of another, for some or other reason). The other day I showed this to a friend of mine and he instantly thought the character looked like a buff Robert Freeman from Boondocks. Ever since then, I can't see anything else, even though the colour scheme was rather arbitrarily chosen. I originally envisioned this old as a sort of King Pin-type figure who owned a chain of notorious nightclubs... Well. There goes that image!
And that concludes this week's episode. I'd like to mention that entry was particularly jam-packed so I could conclude the Character Design Saga and focus on other more challenging pictures (perhaps "conclude" is a bit... final. I'll still be doing the designs, just not as intensively as I've been doing as of late). Next time, a familiar character makes a special guest appearance and a legendary street fighter joins the line up. Ooooh! this is getting so good!
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