The inspiration for this project was a book my friend is currently writing and asked me if I could draw the characters in my vision. At first I imagined the characters very differently, the man (Ulric) was originally a lot bigger with more defined muscles and the woman (Bris) was supposed to be shorter and stockier. The only thing I used reference for was for Ulric as I had never drawn men before and really struggled to draw from memory. I originally used inspiration from Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson however didn't like how bulky he was and slimmed him down and based the body off of Chris Hemsworth. For the original sketches I used pencil and paper then moved to digital on Photoshop for the final design for both characters. My skills have dramatically improved over the past weeks as I struggled to draw facial features, front facing characters, men and hands. I'm very happy that I pushed myself to draw new things and learn new techniques and skills as this will definitely help me in the future.

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The colour pallet used for Bris was very muted tones to convey that she is more about function over fashion, whereas Ulrics matching outfit conveys that he wants people to be intimidated and possibly in awe of him. After talking to my friend about my concepts for the characters she thought that it portrayed the characters very well.

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I'm very pleased with the final pieces and concepts of the characters I'm especially pleased with how the hands turned out and the different angles of the head as I used to do a 3/4 turn facing left but I wanted to push myself and I'm very happy with the outcome. I would like to go back and redo Ulrics left hand as it looks very out of place and small but seeing as I went from not being able to draw hands to drawing them quite well (in my opinion) I'm proud. If I had more time I would have made a short clip of the drawings on AfterEffects to spruce it up a bit.

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I want to go into character design and concept art so this was a great place to start because not only did I have a brief to follow I also had something to base the characters off of which is what is likely to happen in the workplace and at university. My target audience was mostly for my friend and anyone who would be interested in reading her novel. My peers all understood the inspiration and two of them (one 3D one 2D) read the description of both characters and both agree I’ve met the descriptions very well. I spoke to a couple of the 2D artists for advice on how to draw specific body parts so I could take the best method and alter it to what suited my drawing style, I found some of this quite helpful.

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After much experimenting I’ve realised my specialty is mostly women but that will not deter me from drawing men in the future. I think the only way to over come my struggles is to practice more however unlike most times where once I’ve perfected a skill, I will move onto the next I will keep on practicing to refresh my skills so that I don’t have this issue again.

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For my next project I’m planning to draw some scenes and possibly some background designs based on the same book and that will probably be my focus for the year as this is a solid starting point as I have good communication with the author and easy access to the book.

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I think I planned this project rather well; it did change about a week into the course as I had no background for any characters I was going to design and am not the best story writer hence why I'm grateful my friend asked me to design the characters for one of her stories. Although I didn’t get to do the things I wanted to do on AfterEffects I am proud of how close I was to my proposal and next time will have a realistic goal and a more aspirational one so that if I have extra time at the end I can do some more work and the main proposal will still be completed and I haven’t missed out any work.