Three's Still A Crowd

It's been several months since I completed "Three's A Crowd", but I'm still frequently drawing the characters and their world. Zombie, Biscuit and Tlun all started off as completely separate characters with nothing to do with each other, but bringing them together for the purpose of my final film was a great decision and I'm thankful to my friends for giving me the idea. They all just work off each other so well, from their personalities to their colour schemes, and the TAC world is not one I've forgotten.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I got to try out a Cintiq, and this was another thing I drew with it. I wanted to muck about with perspective and stuff, and I'm happy with the results - so much so that I wish I'd been able to draw it earlier so I could have used it as a poster for the degree show! Ah well. Apparently, Zombie hasn't learned from the last time he pissed Tlun off.

Felt like drawing human Tlun for some reason, so I did. I think he needs to be more top-heavy and have white hair instead though, since he doesn't look enough like Tlun for my liking.

Zombie and Biscuit naptimes. Sometimes I feel like their horns are less like horns and more like ears.

Here Come The Girls

Every now and then I like to doodle Percy's genderbent equivalent, known as Persephone, and after a while I thought to myself: why not draw lady versions of all my robot guys? And thus, this came about. While mainly a creative exercise, it was also done in response to a bit of hubbub that'd been stirred up online - a member of the team working on Disney's "Frozen" had apparently claimed that female characters were difficult to animate and give distinguishing features, which of course bothered people because it's a load of tosh. 

While a source or context was never given for the quote, it admittedly bothered me too - I've always been annoyed that, for the most part, female characters don't have anywhere near the sort of diversity and variety in design that males do. There are exceptions, obviously (Sakura Oogami from the Japanese PSP game "Dangan Ronpa" is a good example because despite her unconventional appearance, she's an incredibly popular character amongst fans), but a lot of people seem to get into the mindset that women have to be conventionally attractive or appealing, which means the characters tend to end up pretty limited and same-y. Which, as someone who loves variety, is awful to see. 

So! With this image, I made it my goal to prove that female characters can have variety in body shape - by designing them no differently to how they're designed as male characters. Percy's a scruffy, messy, burly rambunctious guy - why would he be any different as a woman? Why should he lose his muscles and the overall feel of his character just because they're traits deemed "unattractive" in women? He shouldn't. Keeping the original feel of my guys whilst coming up with alternative appearances for them was a pretty fun challenge, and I'm happy with the results.

Various Doodlings

Aaaand now for some non-robot related drawings.

First off, some sort of... grinny tooth-y fish thing. I don't think it's actually capable of properly opening its mouth.

Zombie and Biscuit looking silly, because my characters just aren't my characters unless I regularly draw stupid versions of them.

A new misc was added to Team Fortress 2 recently known as the Pop-Eyes, which are now rivalling the googly eyes for my favourite cosmetic item for the Pyro. Here's the mercenary in question showing off his beautiful new eyes to the Scout.

And last but not least, here we have a very colourful dinosaur thing that probably can't stand up very well. I don't think many of my doodled creatures would be able to physically function in the real world.

Robots, Robots Everywhere

Despite saying it was time to get back into the swing of things about a month ago, I never actually did add any more posts. Methinks it's time I rectified that - this particular post will be focusing on a few doodles and drawings I've done of robots, mine or otherwise, over the past few months.

First up we have my guys in their semi-casual getup... only none of them really have much of an idea of what semi-casual means (or what fashion means; here's looking at you, big guy). Two of them are just wearing the same things they usually wear anyway. What a hopeless lot.

When Hard's not wearing ridiculously bright and gaudy outfits, he's usually too lazy to change out of his bodysuit when he deactivates his armour, so... he's wearing that. Those eyebrows of his are taking over his face, I swear.

Speaking of Hard and gaudy outfits, I made this silly little animation of him sitting down whilst forgetting that he weighs 3 tons. It's basically the animation equivalent of doodling, so it's nothing too complex, but I like how it turned out anyway. (Don't ask about the broccoli guy in the background - inside joke)

Ivan going for a little swim, which probably wouldn't be terribly advisable for a robot, but oh well. Maybe he's particularly watertight.

Silly size comparison thing, featuring my biggest character, my tiniest character and my skinniest character.

I realised there's still an unfortunate lack of art of Searchman, so I decided to rectify that the only way I know how: by drawing him looking stupid. (Really this was just a warm-up doodle.)

A scribble of Pumpman which was supposed to be my first warm-up doodle after having not used my tablet in a while, but it ended up more dynamic than things that I actually put effort into. My hands are fickle things it seems.

I can get away with made-up helmetless appearances for most robot masters, but Chargeman is one who doesn't really lend himself very well to that sort of thing (not least because his design is just plain silly). Still didn't stop me from coming up with a humanoid version based on my take on his personality. :^B He's a pretty thickly built guy who does a lot of heavy lifting and shipments as part of his job. He's also rather surly and looks down on slackers.

Silly warm-up doodle of some of the Megaman 3 guys. Can you believe these are supposed to be evil robots created by a mad scientist bent on world domination? 

More Searchman because Searchman is great. This was done on a Cintiq I was trying out, hence why the lines are a lot neater than usual. I accidentally made him a little too green though.

Initially just a doodle, but I like how it turned out. This is probably how Hard reacts when his brothers get annoyed at him after he playfully slaps them on the back and ends up knocking their head off by accident.

And we're finishing this post off with yet more Searchman. His colours are more accurate here, though I still have a habit of tweaking colour schemes from what they are officially.