tonycliff
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Is it bad form to go with your first ideaaaarrrrr?
🕑 Added 2021-01-30 22:02:15 +0000 UTCThe design for the Pirate Captain is challenging my design discipline. At various points in my education, I was told to "never go with your first idea." Get your first idea out of the way, then keep working until you find something more interesting or innovative. Amass a panorama of options, then pick the best.
But I dunno, guys. I really like that original Pirate Captain design (including the looseness of the linework). Yes, he looks more or less like what we expect a big old patriarch of a pirate ship to look like. This one has a fun novelty as part of his concept (which I'll get into later), but otherwise, his appearance is not going to upend the status quo of What A Pirate Looks Like. And I'm not sure I want it to. When I visualize the story and all its characters acting out their roles, this is kind of what I'm looking for: big, solid, spooky, ferocious. Maybe if they were main characters, or played a more complex role, it would be worth putting a new spin on it. As it is, my gut keeps telling me to go with my first idea.
As for the other guys, well, they're just fun, like ancillary characters always are. I tried to make a few direct Howard Pyle homages, in addition to playing around with some 1790s nonsense. Then we've got The Twins—two women from Madagascar who dress as mirrored versions of each other, with big hair on one side of their head, shaved on the other. There's also my personal favourite, One Scar, who wears a blindfold to hide a facial deformity (what's better than one eyepatch? TWO) and who fights without armour to display the fact that he bears no battle wounds; he is ostensibly untouchable. I love these guys. I hope I can give them enough to do.
EDIT:
- For reasons that are not clear to me just yet, I am loving a dirt-cheap Bic ballpoint pen for roughing out drawings. Maybe because it responds to pressure better than you'd think? And it draws more smoothly than a pencil?
EDIT 2:
- Auuughh, I should have titled this, "DRAWING MY OH-SEAS." (…"Notify patrons about this change?" No, perhaps not.)
Comments
Tealin
P.S. I really like all of these, and am very much looking forward to finding out more about the Malagasy half-fro twins. And also, like, EVERYTHING.
Tealin
LOL, "It helps me hear better." I get "don't go with your first idea" from a discipline perspective, especially if you're trying to teach a rookie designer to expand their imagination. But I'm a big believer in instinct – for some people, the "first idea" is actually the product of much subconscious observation and rumination, rather than a starting place to do these things on the page. In animation, sure, you can find a better performance by trying a few different takes, but I have also seen animated scenes that would have been much clearer and more effective if the animator had trusted their instincts and gone with their first version, rather than overthinking it. And, of course, you're playing with the audience's subconscious observations and considerations here, too. We associate certain personality types with certain outward forms, and sometimes the best way to communicate a big, bristly, bearish man is to draw him big, bristly, and bearish. If you're going to explore, do it from a solid starting place – bigger? bristlier? bearier? – rather than wasting time casting around with less communicative choices. But of course, no one has ever given me the time of day as a character designer, so take with the usual RDA of salt!
Tony Cliff
Ha, I mean, that's how I'll justify it to myself. :) Re: spark: ain't that always the way.
Ben Tan
I wonder if having an immediately recognizable character makes it easier to then throw a novel concept in? For me, it's probably lack of skill, but I often lose the spark of the first sketch once I start working it...
