To start, this process was rather enjoyable (if not stressful) but also extremely time consuming, especially with me deciding to draw something highly detailed which i had never previously drawn before. My original character bio make my character out to be an over sized lizard, very similar to a dragon in appearance but lacking in wings and general fire related abilities. He was going to be incredibly clumsy and fairly absent minded.
Within the original back story, i wrote about how he burst off a cliff edge in an attempt to catch a bird and suffered from a fairly major head injury, almost entirely destroying his long-term memory. This meant that all aspects of fear and doubt were entirely removed, leaving him clueless for the most part. As he would have to re-learn and experience the world.
The impact which struck him on the head also damaged his 'Medula Oblongata' which within crocodiles caused the aggressive/ violent nature. With this being damaged, a lot of the previous natural aggression brought on by instinct could be disabled or forgotten. (Don't question the logic, at least i didn't state it was via 'Magic'.) This meant that the character could quite easily develop a wide array of facial expressions and emotions that would generally be unheard of within the animal kingdom.
I spent an extremely long time looking at reference images of dogs, horses, lizards, snakes and general dragon artwork to try and learn the proportions. Annoyingly, physically drawing my own style that still looked natural took an entire A3 sketchpad away from me and left me with a huge array of failures but through a lot of trial and error, i finally drew proportions that i was happy with.
Starting with the 'Learning Experience', this was the first set of attempts with the body proportions;
Attempt No1.
I attempted to draw what i thought a dragon's body would look like without wings, using a fairly large body with a long neck protruding out from a realistic location. Using the body shape as a reference, i tried to draw legs similar to those of a dog but with much longer paws. It did not go well in the slightest, leaving me with what looks like a very round, stiff-necked giraffe, wearing high-heals. It may have failed but i refused to give up.
Attempt No 2.
These attempts felt far more promising. The lower Drawing was an attempt at drawing the skeleton of a reference image i found in an attempt to understand the general shapes and structure, similar to a day of life-drawing. After drawing it, i spent a while studying the anatomy and tried to once again draw my own style above it.
Starting with the basics such as the two circles which make up the body shape, i began defining the shape more and attempted to draw both legs and a neck with the same structure as the previous reference. At first i believed it was quite an improvement, until i took a step back from it. It had more realistic proportions but had one key problem; i had managed to draw a Shetland pony which couldn't have been any further away from what i was looking to achieve.
Attempt No 3.
For these small attempts, i tried a front view in an attempt to draw the proportions from a different angle. The vast majority of them were not too effective as i was simply trying to draw the shapes in a symmetrical view, something i am far more comfortable with. A lot of them ended up looking fairly disfigured apart from the centre one and bottom left drawing.
The centre drawing got the proportions quite decently but the bottom left drawing looks extremely out of place. I managed to draw decent canine proportions with a huge lizard's head placed on its shoulders. It was worth a laugh, looking back at it but ended up being fairly useless currently for anything beyond practise.
I gave it one more attempt at drawing the front view and managed to finally arrive at something i am mildly happy with but it looked far too much like a monkey, especially with the saw i drew its arms. One benefit to this drawing though is that i was slowly beginning to learn how to draw the proportions required, especially with the feet, neck and lower legs, increasing the chance of drawing a successful body for the character.
Attempt No 5.
This was the final sheet of attempts before i arrived at the correct proportions. Using the first drawing attempt of the bone structure, i tried to re-draw the proportions using the knowledge i had gained through trial and error previously. I was extremely happy with the outcome as it left me in a position where i could take an entire A3 sketch page and roughly draw the proportions i wished for my character to have. I also attempt a few perspective drawings of the head for more general practise . The extremely happy image in the centre was the first attempt at the front view but due to the lack of A3 paper left, i was forced to re-use this piece for further sketches.
Final Proportions.
using my previously gained knowledge, i took one last look at a few images such as the general shape of a horse and began drawing the true proportions. I starting with extremely simple shapes and then added more definition to complete the shape. Once i was happy with it, i then added some extra details to give it the dragony/ lizardy look that i was originally aiming for.
The only problem was muscle definition and i did not have a clue how to even start which would have re-started the entire concepting phase once more. On top of this, drawing the head at a slight angle took far too many attempts than i wish to count, making the concept decent by my standards but taking it any further would leave me too far in the grey and promote much larger problems and concerns later down the line, especially with the orthographic view.
Character Design Two. (A slight change in variation)
Due to the constraints and problems i encountered with the previous character design, i decided to take a more human approach with the proportions but still stayed with the original dragony/ lizardy theme. For this, i looked a lot at the argonian race from the Elder Scrolls game series where they managed to successfully combine both human and lizard characteristics which in turn made it a lot easier to create a animistic face structure with the ability to show quite extreme human emotions.
As i did not need to draw as many sketches for practise purpose due to the life drawing reference i have, i created two basic sketches to show the body. As the proportions needed to be quite humanoid, i just drew the bone structure and proportions using basic shapes. I sketched round the simple ribcage and pelvis shapes to create a near human form with a few obvious deformities such as a larger upper torso to make it look far less generic.
On top of this, i added some rough details around each join in the form of creases that i could then draw jagged spikes around to represent scales. The hands were fairly awkward to draw so i took picture of each of my hands in the desired pose and used them as a reference to get the proportions of each finger correct. I used the same rough shape for the feet as used in the previous character design but generally made them shorter and skinnier to match up with the body.
After this, all that as left to do was to add a few more defining features such as both large and small scales over the body and a jagged, spiky edge to each limb to distance it as much as possible from the human form whilst also adding some creative features. With the back of my character, i wanted to make him look fairly intimidating whilst keeping his features quite natural. I did this by adding a wide selection of large scales which are generously organised across his back, arms and legs whist avoiding joints, ensuring that movement is not effected too much and the basic dragon features are still present.
Whole Character Bio
He will be a reptile/ human combination, holding on to key features noted on humans and dragons. His skin will be extremely scaly with the odd larger scale scattered around his proportions. Bone structure wise, he will also have a very dragon like head and a long neck. With a fairly large rib-cage, his chest will look slightly out of proportion but this will make him extremely durable. He will be very spikey in general to emphasise on the reptile features and for self-defence, making it fairly hard as well as dangerous to grab him.
It would be similar to trying to hold on to rose thorns. His feet should be very dragon like with his heals raised off of the floor, allowing him to run much faster and more efficiently with a spring in his step. In terms of his hands, they should be human like to allow him to function within society but also include claws to distance this resemblance.
As his body is too rough to allow him to wear any form of armour, his should have armour-like scales scattered across his back, alongside various spines without reducing manoeuvrability if possible. He will generally look very intimidating from the back but only wishes to learn about the world, protect/ serve those that care about him and generally live a creative life.
Basic History
He lived in a secluded area of swampland with his father, near a local fishing village. His father was extremely aggressive and would often lash out at any living thing, making life extremely difficult and stressful.
The village had very rarely seen this kind of creature before, making them generally fearful. After hearing what sounded like a monstrous animal and seeing the destruction my character’s father was capable of, the village formed a hunting party. After a rather vicious encounter with my character’s father, a few villagers were injured and the father ran deep in to the swamp, abandoning my character. When my character was found by the villagers, they attempted to kill him out of fear due to what his father did previously.
He was saved by the village leatherworker who was both generally against hunting and saw that my character’s claws could be very helpful for both cutting and shaping materials in his workshop. My character then saw him as a second father, learning his trade skills and helping within the workshop. Many villagers found his appearance intimidating so he was forced to wear a leather overcoat to cover up the vast majority of his scales in public. This was both uncomfortable and demining so he eventually used his basic leather working knowledge to tear it down and turn it in to a mildly effective bag.
As he grew in age, his scales grew larger, his claw grew sharper and his face became more defined. All of these gradual changes made him look more intimidating to the villagers and more like a weapon to any of the village guards or huntsmen. When people began avoiding him or generally began to tremble when he approached, he started leaving the village for trips in to the swamp in an attempt to find salvageable materials to help his adopted father/ the leather worker. The swamps felt more homely and often brightened his facial expression.
After the guards/ huntsman began attempting to recruit him and became rather pushy, these trips in to the swampy lands became longer and happened more often as the traumatising childhood experiences alongside his adopted father’s view of violence turned him entirely away from the concept of fighting.
By this point, his old home had been destroyed by flooding water, leaving very little beyond a small mound of dirt within the swamp with the ruins of a stone house scattered across the area. This became his quite place, allowing him to simply relax and think, even about his original father at times, not because he missed him but to think of where he could have possibly gone for all these years.
Character Face/ Expression Sheet
Attempting to incorporate human emotions in to a character which has a dragons/ lizards face is an extremely difficult task so i designed the head from the ground up to display these in the most natural way possible. After looking at a fair few cartoon images due to their simple nature, i began developing an understand of what would be required.
I needed to draw the mouth in a way that it could position its jaw to both smile and frown, a nose that would look flexible enough retract slight in a similar fashion to a dog to display anger or unhappiness, a general eye shape that would be large enough to give some form of character, pupils that can increase in roundness for general emotion and translate in to more of a cats eye shape to show intimidation. The final thing required to allow it to support a wide range of emotions was eyebrows.
I found that the easiest way to do this was to make them extrude slightly with the bottom halves taking the appearance of simple semi circles which could be adapted and angled and the top halves leading towards the back of the head to support its horns, even if they are not currently display in the second/ final character concept. Taking all of these points in to consideration, i came up with a variety of natural looking emotions whilst still using the dragon/ lizard theme.
Highly Detail Character Face. (Front View)
Using what i had learnt previously, i decided to make a much larger, fully detailed drawing of my character's face to show the character in a better light, a small look at the style and end quality I'm hoping for and to generally practise my skills.
This the the basic line version of the face, similar to the expression sheet but on a much larger scale, allowing me to add detail where it previously would not have been entirely visible. My construction lines are still on the drawing, showing how i originally drew a large 'V' shape with a large box directly above. inside the large 'V', i drew a smaller one, drawing a line across the top, ensuring that it was all in level with the top edges. I then drew a dot in the centre of the smaller 'V's top line and drew a box large enough to fit the centre section of my characters snout. Offset to the left and right, above this box, i drew two more boxes for the eyes.
For the eyebrows, i then drew a semi-circle around the outside of each eye box with a rough spike shape sketched out the contain horns and the very top sides of the head. Using all this construction for reference, i could then redefine the details without any risk of having a disproportionate character face. Drawing the teeth seemed like quite a challenge as each one had to look extremely similar. As i drew the teeth on either side of the mouth to lean out slightly, mirroring them took a lot of trial and error as well as a fair few construction lines.
Once i decided that i was happy with the proportions for the face, i began to shade it. I wanted to simulate the light hitting its snout, leaving the inner mouth and sides fairly dark still. This did not go perfectly as some areas seem un-neccersarily dark or extremely light where there should be a bit of shadow. I did all the shading using the softest pencil i had available and then used a basic rubber for general highlights such as directly on the snout.
The final stage was to add the extremely tedious scales. This took an extremely long time and cost me half a pencil as i drew every single scale separately, ensuring that every one was offset in a similar pattern to the bricks on the side of building, varying in size, depending on how close or how far away each part of the face is to one another. I simply drew the shape 'n' repeatedly, ensuring that my pencil was always sharp, until the drawing was entirely complete.
To stop it from looking like a floating head and nothing else, i drew a rough neck shape below the head, leading off of the page and ensuring that details such as folds were both emphasised by distorted scales and darker/ lighter shading. Once all of this was complete, i sharpened my pencil once more and went over every single line to ensure that they all stood out beyond the scales. I believe this went extremely well but i am perceiving the light as it hits a solid object still needs a lot of work.
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