Digital art

Organic Photo-bashing

Speculative Evolution : Insectile Armoured Character

BRIEF INTRODUCTION & RESEARCH

week 1 - Thursday

I have chosen Option A: 'Animal Rider' Insectile Armoured Character

My mountable creature is a raccoon. What do people associate with raccoons? Thievery! But I don’t want to depict them as scavengers squabbling over scraps. Instead, I’ll sculpt a cute raccoon set within an elegant body of water, surrounded by lush greenery and flowers.

I imagine this creature and its rider wandering across lands, stealing treasures along the way. While researching armour references and considering the balance between a fully armoured warrior and a wandering nomad, I came across the word patina in a description of a warrior’s helmet. Specifically, verdigris—a weathered texture that perfectly blends the natural elements of insects and nomads with metallic warrior armour.

This led me to statues, and that’s when it clicked. I want the character to feel like an epic patina-covered statue brought to life, much like water fountain centrepieces or equestrian monuments honouring great achievements. They steal offerings from spiritual places to return to their own saviour—like the statues in fountains that silently collect coins from passers by. A silent, elegant, and stealthy beggar.

I explored industry examples of insect-like characters and those resembling knights, warriors, or nomads. I loved the entire selection and found them inspiring, but ultimately, I decided to strike a balance between the two. I want a character that feels both intimidating and grand yet also as if he’s running from something in his past, desperately clinging to whatever he can hold onto.

A list of Insects with beautiful textures that could be used for photobashing in my project:

Caria Chrysame
Dragon Headed Caterpillars
Dog Day Cicadia
Fluffy Tit Butterfly
Spinny Flower Mantis
Rainbow Dung Beetle
Gardenia Bee Hawk
Cone head katydid
Stink Bug

I want to make sure I improve from my past mistakes so I reflected on my character design work from last year. The main points I took away from this reflection is that I want to improve the way I visually tell the character's narrative. From this design it's hard to tell what her power is by just looking at her and it's only hinted at once you notice the clocks on her shoes. This shouldn't have been the case since it was meant to be a comic supervillain meaning it should have been blatantly obvious. this is why I should work on being less ambiguous with my designs. If my character is going to be a soldier go all out! if they are a wandering nomad who might steal things along the way then make use of stereotypical shape language to sell the idea instantly!! even if they are mysterious and secluded it should still be quick to recognise just through their posture, what they are carrying , showing, or hiding.

Refined Character Narrative:

A disgraced and cynical former knight who disguises himself as a weathered, verdigris-coated statue in religious spaces. By blending in, he avoids suspicion while stealing offerings - fruits, coins, and small treasures. Accompanied by a massive, loyal raccoon mount, he feigns devotion to a system he secretly mocks.

The insect influence in his design could be primarily in materials and clothing rather than making him a full-on bug character. However, he could have subtle insect-like traits - extra arms??? , unusual anatomy? (within reason), and spikes or protrusions emerging from his body.

This character would fit well in an RPG adventure game, given his reliance on traversal as a mounted thief. He could serve as either the main playable character—where the player rides the raccoon and embodies the thief - or as an intriguing side character. He should be likable despite his cold exterior, perhaps a villain you love to hate. I’m still deciding whether he leans toward an anti-hero or a full villain, but the ambiguity is part of the appeal - blurring the lines between right and wrong in his world.

Similar to Kena: Bridge of Spirits, this world operates under a deep spiritual belief system. Here, people sacrifice their most valued possessions to rid themselves of material desires. Naturally, thieves are despised, seen as selfish and corrupt but this character sees it differently - believing that beautiful things shouldn’t be thrown away and that it is a waste to do so.

Once a loyal knight, he abandoned his ruler and now exploits his appearance to blend into tombs, wells, fountains, and shrines, stealing offerings—primarily food and coins, rather than expensive valuables. He prefers to steal in silence, avoiding interactions whenever possible. However, if confronted by guards from his former allegiance, he is more than ready to strike

I need to design a humanoid male soldier, but I’m not confident in drawing muscular male figures. I hoped that doing a few figure drawings would make it easier to design and sketch silhouettes, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

While I found the quick figure drawings relaxing and easy, designing armour on top of them was really challenging. Every time I got stuck on a design, I went back to figure drawing practice, thinking it might help me spot any issues I’d missed. In the end, I realised the real problem wasn’t anatomy—it was my lack of knowledge in clothing and armour.

(References from Line of action)

Since I was still struggling, I started stacking shapes in unusual formations, cutting bits and pieces away to create rough silhouettes. If you unfocus your eyes, they vaguely resemble humans

Messing around with colour

I sketched four designs. I’ve heard professional concept artists say they often explore extremes in their first two designs: one grounded in reality - safe and predictable - and the other as wild as possible. This helps the commissioner quickly gauge whether they want something closer to the first, the second, somewhere in between, or if even the craziest idea isn’t extreme enough.

I tried to follow this approach, but I struggled to move past the predictable first design. They all feel quite basic - like cold, armoured knights rather than thieves. The hood on the third figure kind of works, hinting at thief-like qualities, but it leans more towards a mage than a rogue.

Ethereal, incorporate more of insect and racoon, thievery into the design. Craig liked the big stocky guy. And an asymmetrical poncho going across the body that reveals one side of the amour. I feel like it would be fun to go for a stockier guy so that it is a nice contrast from my slender villain from my previous character design project.. but a peer then mentioned how it would be difficult for a stocky character to be stealthy at stealing offerings which I agrred on..

advice for team projects: actually listen to teammate ideas and input, have all teammates look at each other's work so that we all know what stages we are at

I want to move silhouette 9 forward because it effectively captures both the essence of a knight - strong, powerful, and nimble - and the features of a bug, with its thin limbs contrasting against a large, shell-like body and oversized horns, represented through its large arms.

I also want to incorporate elements from designs 2, 6, and 13, as they enhance the thief narrative with hooded figures and large, neck-obscuring shapes that reveal only the eyes. A top-heavy body with slim legs reinforces his role as both a rider and a thief - his large hands allow him to snatch things easily, while his legs play a minimal role in movement.

racoon fur?? I should try to incorporate design ideas that makes it connected to the racoon mount?

I combined elements from the three designs I liked and created this final thumbnail sketch. I worked mainly from the middle design since both I and others preferred the silhouette, but I also incorporated the leaning posture from the top design and the armoured head and insectile wings from the bottom design. To save time, I enlarged the sketch so I could work directly on top of it for my final concept.

Feedback from my lecturers: They suggested the head might need to be larger with more form and value. It shouldn’t face away from us; we need to see the front design clearly. The armour on the body also appeared flat - it needs to wrap around the body, considering form and mobility. On the right is an alteration sketch made by my lecturer.

These points were really helpful, and I appreciated the feedback. Once I adjusted these areas, the character began to look much more three-dimensional. I understand why they wanted the head enlarged - it would allow for more detail and help 3D artists better understand the forms. Plus, the smaller head on the left did appear a bit shrunken and unrealistic. However, I still slightly preferred the smaller head design, as it felt more aligned with an insect’s anatomy.

I’m really liking how it’s coming along, especially the colour scheme, which aligns with my inspiration from verdigris statues. However, I feel that the slouched pose and thief-like aspects of the design aren’t coming through strongly enough. Since my main goal is to tell the character's story visually, I need to emphasise more thief-like attire. I plan to reintroduce a hood-like neck armour and incorporate stripes to mirror his raccoon mount.

At the moment, he’s coming across as a strong, stealthy warrior, but there’s no clear indication that he steals or often rides a raccoon. To highlight these traits, I could push his stance to make him look untrustworthy and unloyal. I could also recreate a raccoon’s mask on his helmet, use subtle stripes to match his raccoon's tail, add fur in key areas to reflect the fluffiness of a raccoon, and incorporate dangling treasures he’s stolen.

I was switching back and forth between greyscale and colour. One of my peers mentioned that the wide trousers were detracting from the strong, dominating silhouette of the top half of his body. I took this feedback and decided to slim down the trousers, which ended up working quite well.

I’m happy with the shapes I created for this character design, and for once, I’m satisfied with the colour scheme. I think I chose an interesting silhouette, which helped convey an eerie sense of power, even though I struggled to enjoy the project overall.

One of the most interesting aspects of this design is the multi-slitted helmet and the insect-like shoulder armour, which highlight the insect textures. I could have pushed the design further to make him look more like a statue, but I’m happy with the colour choices as I established the scheme early on.

The rendering isn’t quite up to my usual standards, mainly due to poor time management and a lack of passion for the project. I didn’t spend enough time refining the details, which I think affected the quality of the final piece. If I had managed my time better, I could have polished it to a higher standard.

I used only insect references for the photobashing, which was an interesting approach I’d never tried before. I definitely learned a lot from it, as it helped solve design problems and sparked new ideas. However, blending brush strokes and images was challenging. I’m still getting used to the process, and it threw me off when deciding when to switch to hand rendering.

In terms of design structure, I’m happy with the areas around the head, neck, and shoulder armour. The knight motifs and armour details successfully reflect his role as a former knight. However, I feel I lost some of the “thief” aspect in the design. I tried to show this through his enlarged hands, but it doesn’t come across strongly enough. To improve this, I could have added props, like a bag of coins or hidden jewellery beneath his scaly armour.

Overall, I’m not entirely proud of the outcome or my progression in this project. I didn’t explore beyond the usual expectations and didn’t push the limits of the design as much as I could have. I could have been more creative during the early stages and pushed the design further.

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