Undertale Frisk

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

Admittedly this past week hasn't been massively productive, though along with my day job, my immune system decided that it was time for me to have yet another bad cold (at least I'm hoping its a cold, but it's irritating either way). While I thankfully rarely get seriously sick, I seem to have half a dozen colds a year. Maybe I need to start having vitamin supplements or something, see if it helps me beat off the colds. I'd love to go for a few months without hacking up a lung, feeling dizzy and yucky or constantly carrying tissues, but for now I suppose I'll be putting up with it and living off cold meds for a little while, all the while fighting off my dog who seems to have some fascination with stealing tissues, used or otherwise. Still puppy.

Oh well....

My winging aside, while I wasn't particually able to summon up the drive to do any focused, detailed work between work and colds, I did decide to at least keep my hand in on drawing and decided to draw something else. Frisk from Undertale, to be exact. I once did a more 'realistic' version once with less cartoony proportions, but that sketch went missing in my house somewhere during a cleaning blitz, much to my annoyance. This one, though, was looking at the sprite of Frisk and working on those kinds of proportions instead.

For those who have played Undertale, this Frisk is likely from a True Pacifist route. It came out a bit too cute to be anything else. Although it does make me want to draw a Chara at some point....Anyways, this is what I came up with (Note it is only in flat colour right now)

I admit that I didn't go with the yellow skin colour, mainly as Frisk started to look more like a Simpson than an Undertale character (That or a racist stereotype, something I certainly wanted to avoid). The slightly more tan look seemed a bit more fitting.

Admittedly, I have no idea what age Frisk is meant to be here, though I would probebly say they've not reached double figures. Or they have a ridiculous case of babyface. Admittedly the more 'realistic' one (that I'm upset went missing) looked around thirteen at the oldest, but ho hum.

Either way, I do hope to finish this off at some point when I'm feeling a bit better and my eyes dont feel like they're about to fall out of my head (Head colds are a pain, have I mentioned that before? :P)

Welp, until next time!

Tara

Character Concepts!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

As you may have seen last week, I had found a few concepts of the characters from Dreamwalkers, although admittedly those were more portrait sketches of the characters in some of there more original forms. On a similar vein, while going through my sketch books I came across some character concepts for the comic that had rivalled Dreamwalkers in what I would do first (and I will eventually get around to doing once I'm done on Dreamwalkers) called Devil Contract. I've shown one of the characters before in a flat colour drawing I had done in the past, and I've actually done a picture of the Hex Doll that's on my DA page a while ago while playing around with different styles. While Damien's appearance has gone through many, many changes in the past (One of his appearances eventually being put aside for another character in another comic idea since it didn't quite match the style of character art I was using for Devil Contract), I found one full body concept that would eventually be the one I would decide to use for the story.

Since I seem to be looking at concepts, I thought I'd look at those today. I have three, the normal mode of Hex Doll (the possessed version is technically done in colour and was my first iteration of it anyway, so just check my DA for that one), Damien and Lucy. There are, of course, other characters, but those three were most predominant, especially since I was sketching ideas for the pilot/prologue/set up chapter. In the prologue, the story revolved around Lucy and her situation, and how and why she would make a contract with the devil known as Damien. The word 'devil' not referring to The Devil, but more like a race, like demons. Admittedly that would have also included scenes with the 'mother' and 'Son/brother' as well, but since I decided on Dreamwalkers first, they didn't get a full design just yet the way these three did.

So, since I mentioned Hex Doll first, I'll start with that. This was its beginning/dormant form, if one considers my DA colour picture to be its recently possessed one.

With Hex Doll, I wanted to make something that would seem somewhat innocent at first glance, but creepy. What I eventually decided on was a mix between a rag doll and a voodoo doll. The purpose of the Hex Doll was to act as the contact keeper, the 'link' between the human and the devil in the deal, hence the voodoo doll aspect. It would be like a portal, allowing the devil in question to get to their contractor when they're ready to strike the deal, but is also possessed, in a way, allowing it to always be able to follow the contractor around so they could stick to their own end of the bargain. In my mind, a possessed rag doll would be somewhat creepy, mostly in how it would move. Unlike, say, a Victorian doll (though those are creepy in their own right), there would be no real stability to the form, so how Hex Doll would move would be extremely unnatural with flopping limbs. Plus you wouldn't really expect a relatively floppy looking thing to be able to move at all.

The above picture is it at its most harmless. Just dont go tearing off those button eyes or you might see hell peak out from the holes left behind....

Next is Damien. I've shown a picture of him before, but this shows his full appearance without him being all curled up and hiding part of himself thanks to his stance.

Damien's outfit was inspired by straight jackets, though obviously he's not actually wearing one. I just wanted to not only have him in a stylised outfit (and experiment in clothing a little more complicated thanks to all the buckles) but just to give off the feeling that all is not quite normal with the character, even when he acts pleasantly. Similar to how I wanted Somnus in Dreamwalkers to have an otherworldly feel about him, so to did I want Damien. He is, after all, a devil. Admittedly, though, the outfit colour is still something I'm unsure about - white with black buckles, or the other way around, for example. But along with the 'this is not a normal person' vibe, I needed something that still fit his character when he is being....ah...less pleasant.

The pilot for this story, at least its idea, gets pretty dark at times, despite the relatively cute appearance of characters. But as we have seen in things like Higurashi, just because a character has a somewhat 'moe' or cute style doesn't mean they can't be creepy. lol

Finally, the last character was Lucy, for a while known to me only as 'the contractor', at least in the pilot before I gave her a name. The character herself is supposed to be a person who is....relatively normal, minus a few difficult home circumstances that becomes tempted by the lure of the contract to deal with her problem, something that would only come to bite her once she had grown up. As such, the appearance of Lucy here is the child version, the one that would have appeared in the pilot/prologue to the story. Also holding the dormant Hex Doll

Admittedly her expression is pretty simplified, but I was mainly looking at her clothing, hair and build when I did the image, though I imagine that she would have wide, somewhat innocent eyes. They do sometimes say that evil can come from good intentions and that there can be evil in innocence, etc. Whether or not its true, the juxtaposition felt like it would work well. Circumstance and temptations can effect people and how they might judge things and people take advantage of that at times, which is pretty much how the pilot plays out. The main story would look into other circumstances as well, not all being 'good people pushed to bad things' or 'manipulations'. The main story could be a little episodic while dealing with different contracts, depending on how the pilot went.

Her older self, of course, would probebly appear somewhat different, of course. After all, no one really wears the same things as a adult. But in the pilot, it only deals with Lucy's child form. As such, her adult self hasn't been fully conceptualised just yet.

Even so, it was great to look at the concepts again. I'd love to do some more neat ones that show full bodies and different angles and expressions. These guys were fun to draw! If nothing else, seeing full versions of Damien and Lucy would be pretty cool.

Anyways, until next time!

Tara

Look What I Found!

Hey everyone! Welcome back!

So, before I get started, I want to make a big apology. I've not really been doing all that much online recently and even skipped a blog day, so I thought I should at least explain myself a little bit. I had a slight scare, medically, and I've been to the doctors about it. Thankfully, it looks like its nothing too serious and if all goes well (and it should be since the blood test they want me to do is just precautionary) I should be back to normal soon. But either way, at the time it did have me rather preoccupied. Well that and large amounts of work at my pub job. Either way, I thought it best to just let you guys know why I've been less than active on my blogs of late.

While I've got very little in way of new stuff to really show you guys, I have found a few of my older character concepts that you guys might find interesting. Hey, I've not really done much in way of Dreamwalkers recently, so I thought I'd show off a few of those. I have, in the past, show a few concepts of the main antagonists before, but I don't believe I've ever shown some of the initial concepts of the main cast like Rem, Somnus or Ashling - though I may hold back on concepts of characters I've yet to introduce, of course. At least until they're out in the comic itself.

So, to start us off, Let's look at our main guy, James 'Rem' Remington:

While its not the initial, initial concept for Rem, this was one of the earliest ones I've found from some of my old sketchbooks, though I know that somewhere on a lined pad with my very first bullet points of Dreamwalkers is a pen doodle of Rem with curly hair - a feature that later was inherited by Somnus. Its not the best drawing, of course - my proportions are pretty off here and my style wasn't quite as set as it is these days, so it does look a bit awkward, but beyond that, the hair, at least, has remained very similar. Dunno why, but a Rem without his antenna hair just seemed odd to me, even back then. He just doesn't look like him without it. lol.

Next, we have Somnus:

I don't know about you guys, but this version of Somnus reminds me of a vampire. lol. I believe that while I did keep a few of the features in his current appearance, I did soften them somewhat. I wanted him to have a somewhat supernatural feel without outright stating him to be entirely otherworldly. As you might be able to tell, however, a lot of his design did stay true to his current one. What can I say, I love his wavy/curly hair. lol

The last is one of the concepts for Ashling:

This is one concept I didn't do much to, although I was a bit unsure at the time what age range I was actually going for with her. Initially she was about high school age, but I did eventually bump her up to collage age, if only because if she was in high school it would be difficult for her to really get involved with 'missions', plus some schools can be a bit strict about part time jobs. Not to mention that the SOS team probebly wouldn't be taken too seriously if a high school kid was one of the lead 'assistants'. Still, I had a pretty clear image for her in my head - at least where the hairstyle was concerned, though her outfit choices did change several times over the concept process. Beyond that, however, she's been pretty true to form.
I hope you enjoyed seeing some of my older pictures of Dreamwalkers characters. It might be fun at some point to look at how I used to draw them besides how I draw them now. It could be pretty fun, I think. A future project! Well, when I'm not looking at badge concepts. lol.

Until next time!

Tara