Circles Art Book

[Joshawott 7]

So I'm hard at work on my upcoming fanfic Circles. In addition to working on the actual story, I'm also creating some nice pieces of art that I'll be releasing prior to the first chapter, like I've done with my previous stories. This includes some promo art, character designs, setting conceptions and what have you. This is where I'll be putting all of them up.

The Circles official logo. Will be watermarked on all related drawings.

The promo art. In the middle are the four main characters, and on either sides of them are two major scenes that occur.

Learn more about Circles here at my blog.

[Heir_to_Hyrule 0]

As an overall composition, it's kinda cool. The overall layout is pretty neat....

But unfortunately, most of your characters look VERY similar, with VERY little distinguishing one another. I specifically mean your Ganondorf-esque villain type character. Now while it's SUGGESTED that he's the villain here, it's not clear. For a promo piece (essentially a poster), you want to be as clear as possible. However, his facial features are SO identical to everyone else, he doesn't really have much menace to him.

This isn't an uncommon problem with people who try to imitate an anime-ish style. Hopefully, you'll take what I'm going to suggest into consideration for your future work, especially for this project.

First off, his nose is far too feminine. It's very flat, and quite honestly, not threatening. For your characters who are meant to CLEARLY be villainous, or at least, menacing, their nose should be more pronounced, more downward. It gives his face a far firmer look. Here's an example.

Look at face A and face B. While face B has very little threat to it, face A's nose gives his face more personality, and more of a unique quality. Various noses give different looks, and suggest very different things.

Also, you really want to sculpt the face as much as you can. The line at the bottom lip is one area that should be a bit more visible. It gives his chin more strength, and presence, and strong chins suggest strong characters. The same goes for cheekbones. They give a far stronger look, but you don't want to REALLY overdo it!

Be sure to consider their focal point as well. If you want to have a really threatening villain, or at least a villain who knows what he/she wants. If they're looking to the side, it's pretty generic, very stiff, and very uninteresting. But if you have a villain, particularly in this poster-like set up, who is looking right at the viewer, they appear far more direct, self-assured, and threatening. To the side, they seem more unsure of themselves and their actions.

But the most important section of the face is the gaze.... The eyes, the eyebrows, the forehead, and the top of the nose. This can be called the "center of emotion" by some. So many emotions are expressed through this section of the face. But anger, determination, and most importantly, the idea of evil is expressed by focusing all the tension to this spot. Eyebrows tell a lot, but the eyes themselves, the tension in the forehead, and the wrinkles on the top of the nose all tell so much more. Ultimately, this is where you want your audience to focus their eyes. This spot should tell them a lot of what they need to know. And that's a big reason why you should try to pull that hairline back quite so you can see that fore, and the eyebrows themselves have more room to move around.

This with the combination of another focus of tension completely explains the character's emotion.

A good way to make sure the emotion you're trying to get across will ultimately get across is to start from the simplest form.

Start with a simple oval, no defined shape, and do the ABSOLUTE SIMPLEST form of expressing that emotion. For the gaze, it's the simple V shape for the eyebrows, and the ultimate gaze. By hiding the eyes a bit, you get a more threatening look. The muscles being pulled by the jaw are expressed by lines extending from the ends of the nose. The crinkling beneath the mouth is meant to emphasize that the tension is really there as well. Now he just looks angry. Slowly but surely, give the head more shape, and slowly add more details to the overall face. Where else will tension appear? What muscles will be pulled and react to the tension? Try not changing your expression AT ALL. Place two fingers on your temples. Basically the side of your head, just above the eyeline. Now try opening and closing your jaw. You should DEFINITELY feel a movement of muscles from that action, even if it's just VERY slight! Each movement you make with your body has a much wider affect on your surrounding muscles. Even the back of your head is slightly reacting to that jaw movement. It's EVER SO SLIGHT, but it's there. Nevertheless, don't get carried away. Don't forget that muscles are still hidden under the skin.

Anyways, after slowly adding more details, if you know how to tweak your piece correctly, you can very well create an angry, threatening, short-tempered looking bad guy. Now this isn't the same drawing I started with, but it was made by the EXACT same technique I just described.

Starting with a different shape can create this very calm, seductive, yet villainous conspirer. He doesn't look straight-up rough'n'tough bad guy. He looks more calm, cool, and collected. This isn't a guy who loses much sleep. He's fine by just messing with people's heads, and letting them fall into his trap.

And this same artistic technique can create another type of villain - The Lunatic.

Now you can say that these examples don't apply to anime. But they most certainly do.

Faces like these are created in very similar fashion

Now I drew these examples JUST FOR YOU (except for the last one of course), so try to consider my suggestions. But anyways, neat idea. I hope to see what you can do.

[Joshawott 7]

The two female characters, I'm not too worried about, because they're supposed to look exactly the same. But thanks for the suggestions on everyone else.

[Joshawott 7]

These are the two main female characters (they're different, don't be fooled).

I'm not revealing either of their names just yet. But they will be in due time.

This is Link's character design. It's kind of rough, and this is the first thing I drew when the story plot came to mind.

That's his name in Katakana to the left, in Asian order (ABARON RINKU). Below is a quick character description.

Link Avalon

アバロンリンク

Born: May 29, 1975 (age 33)

Birthplace: Kokiria District, Emerald Ward, Light Prefecture

Hair color: Blonde

Eye color: Blue

Height: 5

[Joshawott 7]

Time for a character bio. This one is the lead female.

Marin Tarin

タリンマリン

Born: 1980 (age 28)

Birthplace: Mabe Village, Koholint Island

Hair color: Light brown/dark blonde

Eye color: Violet

Height: 5

[Ops 2]

why must everyone be a better artist than me?

[Heir_to_Hyrule 0]

why must everyone be a better artist than me?

because God has a cruel sense of humour

lol

i kid

practice dude. I didn't get where I was without some SERIOUS practice. I don't doubt this guy did either.

And don't just practice. You can draw superheroes or whatever all you want. But unless you actually take the time to study, and to actually improve your line quality, your perspective etc., and try different things, you'll just stay the same.

Hell, in my gallery, 90% of those drawings are big pieces. There's about 100 drawings in between each one of those in my sketchbook of practice and research.

[Joshawott 7]

why must everyone be a better artist than me?

The ability to draw in an anime/manga style is in my blood, I suppose, since I'm part Japanese. But my cousin who majored in art (and my uncle who studied architecture) in the Philippines taught me a few things. I also draw inspiration from other artists and their styles (ie, Link's outfit was based on Godot and Apollo Justice from Gyakuten Saiban, my overall style is inspired by mangaka Ken Akamatsu, etc), and that helps me along quite a bit.

I went through quite a few character designs and outfit concepts before finally settling on the ones that I did. I basically take the original designs (used in the actual Zelda games), and I apply my personal concepts.