Some quick doodles I might get around to finishing later. When I was drawing them I felt like I had a lot to say, but now that just goes out the window. Basically, a couple characters for a project I’d like to pursue when I’m old enough/financially secure enough to focus on it if I don’t scrap the whole idea by then. Ronadelle, Charlie’s mom, and Julian. Charlie’s mom was supposed to be Charlie but very quickly turned into NOT Charlie so here she is, probably after domestic terrorists started coming to her house every evening which tends to age you, or so I’ve heard. Julian is short and basically half man, half bear and good with guns, and his design is supposed to be in direct opposition to Ronadelle who is basically the lovechild of a beetle and skeleton and tends to get bazooka’d off the side of the road. Ronadelle’s design I’m still playing with, and it has more to do with the body than anything, since he’s been a character that’s been bumming around my head for a long while. What’s fun about drawing/designing characters like him is seeing how far you can push a humanoid form into something obviously not human, but still make it attractive. Or rather, exploring what it is that makes a “sexy design,” - how far you can push something into the grotesque or unfamiliar and still make it appealing. Looking at the audience responses to designs in Mass Effect, for example, is interesting because you have a very large group of consumers who find certain alien designs attractive, even though they weren’t necessarily designed to be such. Pushing that kind of design is much more fun and interesting, in my opinion, because it allows for an exploration of what makes a design appealing, sexy, or attractive - what very basic design qualities would you need (proportion, shape, etc.) to still create appeal. That to me is much more gratifying, even as a viewer, than basically designing something that is a human with blue skin and a couple of tweaked features. Yes, yes, I know you designed this to be sexy to me, and it’s boring, and I almost feel insulted. Not to say that my intelligence is insulted when I’m thrown a design that’s basically “look look this is a sexy alien don’t you think they’re SEXY,” but TRY HARDER. I’d rather people squirm in their seat and wonder “this thing is kind of attractive why is it sort of appealing this is making me uncomfortable umm am I alone here?” Kind of like how I feel about Javier Barden in No Country for Old Men, because I think the character is totally sexy with the mop haircut and THE HAIRCUT MAKES IT SEXY and ummm kind of uncomfortable with that attraction should I admit that publicly? But that was a whole lot of word vomit for some scribbled lines and I don’t think Ronadelle’s design actually pushes the envelope at all in terms of what I said a paragraph ago, but that was just something I’ve been thinking about a lot. Whatever’s going on the middle has Charlie in it but is evidence that I should not be allowed to merge journal pens with sketchbooks.

Some quick doodles I might get around to finishing later. When I was drawing them I felt like I had a lot to say, but now that just goes out the window. Basically, a couple characters for a project I’d like to pursue when I’m old enough/financially secure enough to focus on it if I don’t scrap the whole idea by then. Ronadelle, Charlie’s mom, and Julian. Charlie’s mom was supposed to be Charlie but very quickly turned into NOT Charlie so here she is, probably after domestic terrorists started coming to her house every evening which tends to age you, or so I’ve heard. Julian is short and basically half man, half bear and good with guns, and his design is supposed to be in direct opposition to Ronadelle who is basically the lovechild of a beetle and skeleton and tends to get bazooka’d off the side of the road.

Ronadelle’s design I’m still playing with, and it has more to do with the body than anything, since he’s been a character that’s been bumming around my head for a long while. What’s fun about drawing/designing characters like him is seeing how far you can push a humanoid form into something obviously not human, but still make it attractive. Or rather, exploring what it is that makes a “sexy design,” - how far you can push something into the grotesque or unfamiliar and still make it appealing. Looking at the audience responses to designs in Mass Effect, for example, is interesting because you have a very large group of consumers who find certain alien designs attractive, even though they weren’t necessarily designed to be such. Pushing that kind of design is much more fun and interesting, in my opinion, because it allows for an exploration of what makes a design appealing, sexy, or attractive - what very basic design qualities would you need (proportion, shape, etc.) to still create appeal. That to me is much more gratifying, even as a viewer, than basically designing something that is a human with blue skin and a couple of tweaked features. Yes, yes, I know you designed this to be sexy to me, and it’s boring, and I almost feel insulted. Not to say that my intelligence is insulted when I’m thrown a design that’s basically “look look this is a sexy alien don’t you think they’re SEXY,” but TRY HARDER. I’d rather people squirm in their seat and wonder “this thing is kind of attractive why is it sort of appealing this is making me uncomfortable umm am I alone here?” Kind of like how I feel about Javier Barden in No Country for Old Men, because I think the character is totally sexy with the mop haircut and THE HAIRCUT MAKES IT SEXY and ummm kind of uncomfortable with that attraction should I admit that publicly?

But that was a whole lot of word vomit for some scribbled lines and I don’t think Ronadelle’s design actually pushes the envelope at all in terms of what I said a paragraph ago, but that was just something I’ve been thinking about a lot.

Whatever’s going on the middle has Charlie in it but is evidence that I should not be allowed to merge journal pens with sketchbooks.

  1. honeyhammer posted this