Masamune! Attempt One!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

So, I've been working on another character idea and having a little experiment with a full body character that isn't just standing up in various poses. The character himself is one I've been thinking about for a while, but has no real set colour schemes just yet, so pretty much everything with the character is experimental. This is just the first choice in design.

So, the character - what is it?

Well, I like to sometimes get inspiration from legends and such - my work on Dreamwalkers and Susanoo probably being a bit of a clue there, not to mention previous character designs like Nogitsune. So this character is actually based off the Japanese legend of Tsukumogami. A Tsukumogami is an object that, after a long period of time (about 100 years) gains its own sentience, essentially becoming a type of spirit. The one for this character specifically, is if a sword had gained sentience and became a spirit - admittedly one with a human form.

The character himself, which I named Masamune, I had several ideas of in terms of appearance, as mentioned, the main differences in my ideas being the type of sword he is based on and his clothing. So there will possibly be other design ideas of him in the future, with the final version becoming the fully finished product, including shading work. This is a work in progress, so hopefully it won't be judged to harshly, at least not yet.

So, of course, I began with the sketch work:

So with this sketch, the man parts that I was considering were the parts that would link the character to a sword. This sketch was pretty rough in places - one of his feet in the next version gets adjusted so his leg doesn't look quite so broken, but the sword parts, of course, were the blade arm and the wrappings, which, when they have more detail, resemble the hilt of a Japanese sword. The blade itself...originally the idea was some form of katana, but with a much thicker blade - likely closer in idea to a thickened Zanbato - a type of blade from the Heian period in japan that was used against cavalry. I believe blades like the Buster Sword from Final Fantasy 7 were probably based around that sword type, if I were to guess. A thinner blade probably would sword, but for this design it might not have blended into the arm. Of course, that isn't to say I wont give it a try n one of the designed versions, of course.

I then made a slightly more refined sketch to add in the details a little more that I missed on this initial sketch:

Apologies on this one being a little on the faint side. This is mostly because it was used in the base sketch and I somehow accidentally made it only come out faint. I'm not sure how. Yay my technical difficulties! Lol. Either way, you might be able to see that I adjusted the foot position a little for the sake of perspective, and I also put some details into the hair and leg wrappings.

As for the flat colour version.....I'm a bit unsure about the colouring at the moment. Due to the location the character lived in, I originally gave the character sandy or earth coloured clothing, though it has made him a tad washed out. I'm already considering different colours for him, to go with the 'metal' idea, at least for hair and eyes. But considering I'm currently going through a design process with the character and I'm not yet at the final design for him, I'll show you what I have so far:

As you can tell, the sandy, ever so slight rose pinkish hair doesn't really work, making him look fairly washed out. There is also bits of green in there, as I was considering maybe a green colour for the clothing in one of my next tests, along with the idea for silvery coloured hair and eyes to go with the metallic feel.

So, anyone have any thoughts on this? I'm always happy to hear what people have to say :)

Until next time!

Tara