Spy Jupiter: Color, Proportions

Here's a quick color/proportion test for Spy Jupiter.



I don't like the face much at all. It seems way too flat. And the goggles are awkward when they reach the back of Spy's head. I'm pretty sure I like the colors, which was the point of the exercise anyway.

I also fiddled with Spy's body proportions, and I think I hit upon a good model for Spy Jupiter. It's a good super-deformed proportion -- right around 3.5 heads tall, super exaggerated hair, larger hands and feet. Reminds me a lot of Classic Mega Man.



The thing I've always failed at is consistency in character design. Sometimes my characters are 8 heads tall, sometimes only 2 heads tall. I'm forcing myself to make conscious decisions about Spy Jupiter, really fleshing out his anatomy (pun definitely intended). Having to think about how long his arms are in 3-dimensions and making them look good in any pose is a huge challenge for me, especially without any figure drawing under my belt. I've got a long way to go in this regard.

If I want to apply this or any of my characters to a sprite-based game, I have to get consistent proportions down right off the bat, so that different animations (walking, running, jumping, shooting) of the character can be arranged in arbitrary order and still come off as looking seemless.

I wanted to get a standing/breathing and a simple walk cycle for Spy Jupiter this weekend, but it didn't happen. It's hard to break myself free of the Wacom, but drawing on paper is refreshing. It's obviously easier to draw on paper (and the results are much better, albeit not as clean), but without a quick undo option, every pencil mark seems like a commitment I'm not ready to make.

I think my next exercise will be creating a simple flipbook animation of the 4 key frames of Spy's walk cycle. Getting those joints to look consistent will be a challenge, and I'll probably learn a lot. Then I'll flesh out the inbetween frames, think about the secondary motions (hair, the fur collar, etc).