[Intro]
Hey guys, it's Scott and we're back for another entry in the character design Monster Lab.
Last time we went through the ideation process where I brainstormed a bunch
of potential ideas based on pop culture archetypes that I wanted to build off of
for my army of pumpkin-headed Harvestmen. Go check that video out if you haven't.
This time, we're going to take one of those designs and zero in on it to figure out some
details. In the full course, I take five of those designs from the ideation phase
and flesh them out before I scan them and bring them into the computer,
where I developed them further into a finalized lineup that I could turn into a poster print.
To see the full process, follow along and submit your own Harvestmen for critique,
go to Proko.com/monsterlab. Okay, good luck, have fun, see you soon.
Okay, so I’ve done my initial rehearsal with my Harvestman character and you can see an example
of how that played out here and I really got to about like 75% of coverage on this page and I
did the majority of it before we actually started to record this course and that was just me like
actually trying to rehearse in preparation to be able to do a good job on this and um, but I wanted
to show that to you and not like hide it like I actually spent time trying to get in the zone.
Some of the better ones that showed up on here later, I’d say like this guy right here is kind
of fun, this guy right here is kind of fun, this guy like a lot right here with the triple heads,
this dude over here with the Pauldrons, kind of cool, this guy right here is kind of interesting.
These guys all came about after I’d actually began to dive into the - like real designing phase or
idea generation phase and that's right here, we spent an hour or two really just generating props.
Like we had an initial idea of the word "Harvestman" but that doesn't tell you
a lot and I wanted to come up with some genuinely unique takes on that prompt,
so we spent some time doing that and we came up with this idea of like an ettin or a construct...
The idea of the pumpkin patch, the big mutated asymmetrical arm with all the farm weapons
embedded in it, the idea of Pumpkinstein, the kind of Frankenstein trope, like more square head, the
big bolts, the big tanky muscular body with all the stitches on it and that could be interesting
with like the green - something about like stitching vines together could look interesting.
We explored the Highwayman angle for a headless horseman, the asymmetrical like drooping head
with the big massive like world record pumpkin, the Harvest Lich over here with the white pumpkin
and the scythe and the cobwebs and the corn cob husks. We explored the idea of the scarecrow
standard projecting out of the back and then these little baby pumpkin, little minions or sidekicks.
So, when we got to this page, we actually started to get to some more unique angles. These are cool
iterations but these are a little bit shallow from my perspective. These are just iterations
on one theme more or less. But here we start to like branch off into more unique or interesting
like sub themes and what we're going to do today is take some time to explore those even further.
Now, this is actually representative of the way I would do this if I was on the job and I - if
left to my own devices when I get to choose and if I’m working with a client, that is
um, that trusts me to do my job, I will make sure I take the time to go through a process just like
this and it usually will equate to like one or two sessions of drawing, like just some
paper before I even get onto the computer so that could be anywhere from like eight to 12 hours of
just like basically two days of work of thinking and drawing to generate a wide range of ideas.
Okay, so now we're going to take some time to really focus in
on these prompts we generated yesterday and those were[00:04:03] started off again - we're
gonna write down "Monstober Monster Lab", let's call this um, Harvest Hulk - I think
it's one right now I’m currently using that name to identify my like ettin guy,
I’m just going to write a little note down here. He's my asymmetrical etten construct, that's one
that I’m going to do then I like the Highwayman, headless Horseman angle then Pumpkinstein.
Yeah maybe the lich, the lich is pretty - yeah, okay, we'll see if I get to it.
The Harvest Lich, the white pumpkin undead fella and then the little pumpkin babies,
little pumpkins. Yeah, like a punk. Those are one, two, three, four, five - oh, I like that. Okay,
cool. I get to five. I usually like to work in odds with character groups, it's like a set of
three or five or seven, just kind of a rule, like some logic I use for myself. It helps reassure me
that I’m on the right path in terms of following my own process or staying true to my own process,
that actually helps me retain my confidence as I move forward.
It helps me keep my eye on the prize. So, I got five here, that's cool.
Now, you'll notice like initially, a lot of the drawings I was doing the first day,
most of these were pretty small, some of them got larger and are more representative of the kind of
standard regular way I iterate. But initially, the really tiny ones they
were really just like little visual notations. That's all they were. It's just like, remember,
he's big and he's got a lot of pumpkins on top of his back, but now I’m gonna dive a
little bit deeper and get into specifics - how many pumpkins are on his back? What are
the expressions on each of the pumpkins? What kind of farm tools are embedded in the arm?
This stuff becomes really important. This is where you make like more um, definitive,
like hard decisions on your shapes. So we're going to start with our Harvest Hulk - you may ask like
"Why do you spend all this time drawing in pencil if you could
hypothetically just do it on the computer?" and the answer would be that
"I don't think I can do it as well on the computer". Like this kind of thing.
Like when it really comes to gesture drawing, most of the actual hand-eye coordination that I’ve
built up over the last you know, decade or so or whatever, was done gesture drawing, like drawing
for imagination this way in my sketchbooks. It's these same kind of movements like with a pencil
and it's not that you couldn't do it, you totally could do it digitally but I’m just kind of being
honest with myself that most of my experience is using an analog tool. I’m comfortable using it. I
like using it. It makes me feel relaxed I like having something physical to show for myself.
I don't like looking at a screen all the time. Like there's a number of variables that
make me prefer doing it this way. It doesn't mean that it is the right way to do it.
There's some students[00:06:33] I you know I know now working
with students at LCAD and you know, mentorships and stuff like they've grown up using their
digital tools, like drawing with their bamboo and their iPad pro and all that stuff and
it's kind of a trip for me, it's really interesting because that just didn't exist
you know, when I was younger. This stuff didn't come out until I was in college,
it's like a dream. "You could draw on a computer? What!" and now that's the kind of stuff we got.
But, I still feel that basically, I get the most - the better results when I’m drawing in pencil.
Just my muscle memory is like working more naturally. I know when I’m laying in figures,
it's way more comfortable when I’m in pencil. I could do it on the computer but it's going
to be more clean up, more flipping canvas, more adjusting proportions.
I can do it, but I know if I do this, if I just take the time to slow down, use the skills I’ve
earned, then I can use those transform on a computer and make the process go way faster.
It's just that sometimes doing it on the computer in that way, is actually fun to watch - like you
see something it makes for entertainment - you lay it in, it's like magic happen
and then you adjust it and all that stuff. But again, that's entertainment,
that's not designed - we're focusing on design right now.
So, now, if you remember yesterday or you know, earlier when I was drawing,
working on the arms, I was treating them like just very simply, very minimal just like big lumps,
but I know - like for me, that was a short hand, I know it's just gonna be a big lump of
or a mass of entangled pumpkin vines.
So now as I’m making progress towards really understanding exactly what's going on with my
character shapes and thinking that through a little more, so you notice in this iteration,
this big vine arm, I’m starting to like you know, actually just slow down and show these
vines wrapping around in space a little bit
and I start to suggest this sort of um, intertwining musculature. It's a bit of
a suggestion of that, like some muscles of the deltoids coming across in the chest.
So, I’ve rolled one of the pumpkin's heads like forward onto the body, we're like projecting out.
You know, you get that kind of Ogre shoulders, like Troll shoulders, big hunched over vibe and
that one I’m going to make like a Cyclops. This other one, I’m going to have kind of sitting back
just behind the traps. Back behind here on the shoulders, it's almost like it's like perched
just back here like at the top of the shoulder blade or something.
Maybe that one is - where is it looking? Let's see here, which is where I want its head and looking
like from behind and kind of squash. It's one of the goofier - I think one of the goofier
faces that'll be on here. This other one is looking off, I want to bring another vine,
get that sickle shape. Yeah, that's cool.
Okay, so in this case, I don't know, I mean, maybe I’ll go a little bit simpler,
like I’ll just have the one scythe shape, the one sickle - that's kind of interesting,
so it's like at the end of that long intertwining whip.
Part what I’m doing now is just taking time, like slowing down to think through the shapes a little
bit more, being a little more thorough. So then, when I take this to the computer like really all
I do it's more like transferring it, you'll see. You know, the recent demo or the demo I did for
Lightbox, I mentioned the idea of like designing from abstraction and you're like
that could be like fun to watch but a lot of work actually had to be done you know,
right there in Photoshop because I hadn't taken time to think through what the hell I was doing.
I still got to a cool product, like an interesting series of shapes or character,
creature, but it's pretty different than what I’m doing right now.
Like now when I go to the community, there still will be some like you know, silhouette
kit bashing and some further exploration, like opportunity to push things when I go to Photoshop,
but the goal is to try to front load all the design work here onto paper to solve as much
as I can so when I go to the next step it's kind of like - it's kind of easy and fast actually.
I may even start to do like a tiny bit of
modeling on my drawings at this time which I haven't really done any of, we'll see.
Most definitely start to lay in some shadow shapes consistently across every sketch. I’m starting
to do a little bit more. Like earlier, I was just basically filling the whole character to speed up
and so I could assess the shapes when now I’m going to spend a little more time like considering
local values so like I’m going to let my pumpkins pop, let the eyes pop - there'll be some you know,
clear differentiation between the mid tones and the shadow shapes.
Okay, so there's a cool take on. I like that one, now it's kind of fun, nice and simple.
There's some interesting explorations earlier but part of them - like some of them where I
started to stack up too many elements - to me it felt kind of noisy, like this one for example.
This is like too many visual hooks. Scarecrow is cool but, scarecrow with scythe? Scarecrow with
scythe with crow on top, with pumpkin patch head, with asymmetrical tool embedded arm, with baby
pumpkin guy - it just starts to get to a place where like the signal is getting lost or it's
getting a bit noisy and I’m sort of like um, [C] I almost said blowing my load - I’m sort of like um,
spending all my design currency, you know. I’ve got like a bunch of these cool hooks
and I’m blowing them all in you know, one transaction - like investing them all in
one character, you know, and like that's you know, maybe that works. It could work.
It's not like bad looking but it's not quite - it doesn't suit my preferences. What I’d rather do
is take a couple of those really strong visual hooks and isolate them,
you know, for potential iterations. And that's useful for games because you need DLC. So,
I could take one it's like okay, one of these guys has little - the baby minions
you know, one of them is like the one with the scarecrow coming out the back, one of them is
the one with the pumpkin patch pack and I can get like a little more bang for my buck potentially.
It really does just depend, it's a fine line to walk to decide. Like and it also depends on the
kind of title or project you're working on - is this meant to be highly realistic? Is
this going to be really stylized? Is this game where we're prioritizing lots of um,
like visual interests? Like a high density of shapes and textures? And I’d say maybe a
game like um, like a roguelike, a lot of the really popular roguelikes right now,
a roguelite, roguelite, roguelike - people say - okay roguelike like are - roguelike like - you
know, that's not a lot of the ones that are popular right now, there's a lot more detail,
like higher fidelity shapes, more negative space and a tattered cape, more projections
coming out of a crown or a weapon. You know, the monsters, the higher fidelity of shape detail,
lots of crazy skulls and spikes projecting out all over the backs and that can be really cool.
It's not my personal preference for design, I’m just a little more interested in stuff that's a
little bit simpler, almost childlike, like a toy. So, that's what I’m going to start to hone in on
here is like really pull things into alignment with my sensibilities and the way I would
actually execute on it as opposed to some of these earlier ones where I was just like
going wild trying all kinds of crazy stuff, now I’m going to come in
and like curate a little bit more or uh, like really make some hard decisions.
All right guys, thanks for watching. If you want to see me develop more of my Harvestmen,
you can follow along at Proko.com/monsterlab. All right, take care and I’ll see you there. Bye-bye.
MONSTER LAB!