BA6, Spec Work

While I leapt ahead with my work in terms of collecting all my sketches and making more rough drawings of my chosen subject; LS0036's head, this isn't to say I did not have other creatures to pick from. I have in fact a huge collection and I took some time wondering what sort of head shape I specifically wanted out of all my monstrous beasties. 

This is a collection of side on 2D sketches I did of around half my designs which I felt were applicable to this project and were feasible to make within Zbrush. They are all of the monster, dinosaur, dragon, bird variety, with some having deer characteristics or the like- though I tried to stay away from fur covered animals as that would be horrendously hard to sculpt, rather then scales and feathers which are for me, more engaging.


Most of these draft images are all on the flat side on angle. 
This is a bit odd for me; I am used to drawing characters from a 3/4 angle. . . 

The Magic Angle

One of the reasons I am particularly attracted to drawing characters in a 3/4 angle is because of my attentive look on animation. Animators usually draw characters from this magical angle to avoid having two characters facing one another directly and excluding the viewer or, on the other side, having two characters facing the viewer which would exclude the character they were talking to or interacting with in the first place.

Having a pair of characters talking to each other in a flat view would allow for the viewer still to feel involved with them but without having the characters look like they are disinterested with each other.

Good examples of this can be seen within series like Futurama where these angles are used around 70% of the time.

However, in some styles this is not needed at all. Usually animations that have a lack of perspective or are stylistically indifferent. Things like South Park do not need to incorporate the characters facing each other at all as it works in a completely flat 2D style with barely any perspective work included.

In my work, which generally I draw in a derivative Disney animation type style, I use this magic angle most often when drawing my characters, human and creature alike.
However this does not mean I cannot draw them from either the side or front on- as I sometimes use these dead on angles for certain types of exaggeration or for certain types of expression that look best from one look to the other. 

Just some insight into my artwork.