Assignment 4

Assignment 4 time. This week, our assignment was expression sheets, though like always, we had parameters to fill besides just the expressions. The rundown was this: Using a character idea from the generators found on the website, Seventh Sanctum.com, we were to create a character that fit into the universe of the game/movie/cartoon show we were given. We then had to create a small expression sheet of 7-8 expressions for them.

I was given Samurai  Jack for my style and on Seventh Sanctum, I used the Fantasy Fusion generator. That generator basically gave out fusions of human and mythological (sometimes not really - like a human/hippocampus mix) creatures. However, we were allowed to use the other generators and if there was something we didn't think would fit in our description, we were allowed to change it. I did that for my generated creature and had picked the following:

"The fearsome, world-weary female half-Kitsune soldier. She has a feminine build. Her wardrobe is artistic. She appears far more non-human than human."

I took the human part of this description, because as far as I know, there aren't crossbreeds like that in Samurai Jack. However, I do know there's aliens and robots galore in that show, so knocking out the human part of this character idea allowed for her to be an alien, which is what I did. Besides, the description says she more non-human looking than human, so I suppose it works either way.

So, for research I naturally looked up images from Samurai Jack and looked up images of foxes and kitsunes - the Japanese word for "fox" as well as a type of demon/spirit found in Japanese folklore. I also watched a few episodes of Samurai Jack online to get a feel for it. That and it's hard to find decent screenshots from that show online, believe it or not, though there is a very good blog that has a post featuring some of SJs background art: http://madaboutcartoons.blogspot.com/2007/07/samurai-jack.html

Also included on the fox/kitsune sheets are cartoon/anime/game kitsunes I know of, such as Ninetails and Vulpix from Pokemon and Crazy Redd from Animal Crossing. Another notable kitsune is the Nine-Tailed Fox Demon, or Kyuubi, from Naruto.

I didn't do too many sketches for this character, as I do with the other ones. I just looked at Samauri Jack art and watched the episodes and started basically with a silhouette of a character. I went and built it up from there. Here's some process screenshots I took while working on it:

I know the description said the character was suppose to wear "artistic" clothing. Well, as a warrior/soldier, I tried to make her armour very decorative, but I tried to keep it simplistic, due to the style. Originally though I did have it drawn really decorative, but changed it because it was much too much for SJs style. I also gave the character three tails, due to kitsunes generally having multiple tails. The more tails a kitsune has, the older it is and in some legends. pulling on a kitsune's tail will curse the puller, usually 1000 years times the numbers of tails it has. The character here is still fairly young then, considering she only has about three tails.

After her initial design (the top two images) I also did a short action pose of her in an environment. I pictured her traveling a desolate, dark wasteland, so that's where I drew her. The story idea I have for her is that her crew and her had crash landed on Earth and have been stranded here and roam the area, looking to find a way back home. However, they spend their time also defending the small settlements that scatter the land from the robots of Aku.

After the environment shot, I went on to working on the actual bit that matters to the assignment - the expression sheet of course.

These started out as silhouettes too and the expression ideas were taken from the 25 Essential Expressions Challenge meme that is found on deviantArt or here if you'd like to try it yourself:  http://napalmnacey.deviantart.com/art/25-Essential-Expressions-55523083. With the silhouettes, I was trying to see if I could get the basic emotion done with just the shape. Some of them work better than with others, as some of them look alike.

After that, I just started adding details to those shapes

And then of course, I went ahead and finished it up

So here you have the Kitsune alien warrior, Akako.

The name is of Japanese origin and means "red child." I wanted her name to be something that had red in it, being as kitsunes are generally based off red foxes and that, along with orange and yellow, is one of the common colours when one thinks of a fox.

In general, she's a rather proud warrior who knows her strengths and skills, but she can somewhat be cocky because of this. She sometimes gets in over her head, but most of the time, she'd hate to admit it. She tries to come off as serious, too, but it's easy to tell there's a gentler side to her. She's an adept leader and manages to keep her small band of other kitsune soldiers together even considering their situation.

Also, because I got this done so fast (it only took a few hours really because the style's rather simple) I went ahead and did another image of her up, this one featuring both her and Jack and a short description of her. I figure it would be cool to pair her with Jack, because if she was in the series, they'd probably meet up and team up to battle Aku's robots at one point.

It also helped with size difference, to show her general height, though not all kitsunes, I would imagine, are as short as she is compared to Jack.

That was another couple hour quickie, so that also had Dave assign me to do up backgrounds. I was told to do three, but I only got about two done and I don't know if I did them... "correctly." I looked at that one SJ Background art blog for inspiration, but I still don't know. I feel as if I might have simplified them too much.

The first one is the background I keep relating to Akako and her story and I wanted to do a bigger, more "finished" version of it:

Like I said, it's a desolate wasteland, but 's also very rocky, where not much grows. Scattered about this area are small settlements that have found little patches of fertile earth, but they are constantly battling against Aku's robots, that threaten the tiny communities food source on a regular basis.

The second background I did (and looking at now, failed at) was supposed to be a shot of the Grid from Tron: Legacy, but it's like... super blotchy and stuff and looks more like an abstraction. but... there you go... Egh... Gross

Ick yea... Bad. The only good part about this might be the sky... but even that's... crap. Oooo.... Well, I'll have to try again or something... But yeah... I kinda suck at backgrounds. Though I think I can let the crappiness of this go, as this bit wasn't really part of the assignment, but more of an exercise I think to help spend some more of my time.


I hope so, but if not... I failed.

EDIT: AHAHAHA. Okay! Turns out all this is actually due Wednesday, so bye-bye to that crap background. I'm just going to do up another one or two that look better and post those in a few. Cool, man, cool.

EDIT 2: Okay! Here are two more backgrounds. One is similar to the first and the other is a forest background or something.

Uhm, but yeah. That's assignment 4 for you and I'm gonna take off now so I can work on other things and not watch the Grammys. Take care all.