Insect Concept

We had several lessons and homework's in character design. It was now time for us to put it into practise. Steve told us that we would be evolving this assignment around the idea of an insectoid. To truly understand what it was that Steve wanted us to do I went to do some research on what is an insectoid and what of our favourite T.V creatures are actually closer to insectoids than we think.

I first started off by researching what an insect is, the definition that I got when I went onto the internet was:

Any of a class of arthropods with well-defined head, thorax, and abdomen, only three pairs of legs, and typically one or two pairs of wings.

This was a very good description of what an insect was, it helped make me decided what body features I should put onto my insectoid. The "oid" that's at the end of the creature is mainly associated with human features such as arms, the hight of a character and its legs. I know that I have to create an insect creature that has human features on it, as mentioned above, in order to get the target that we are looking for.

My mind map of insectoids.

I then proceeded to create my usual mood board. This was so I could get to grips with what an insectoid was and famous examples of insectoids. When I started to research them, I discovered some pretty interesting concepts, that I didn't even realise that fell under this category. For one you can tell that they all pretty much have the same sort of features. they have two legs and two arms, much like that of a human. You can also see that they have lots of elevated positions on them, such as their head and parts of their arms.

Famous Insectoids part 1

The next thing that I did for this project was to find out out my favourite movie and video game insectoids that were actually really famous. I first kicked off this section by mentioning the soldiers for the Arachnids in Starship Troopers. These were insectoids mainly because they had the mind of a soldier, that's what they were created for. The four legs on these creatures, along with its tank-like shell, doubled the size of an average human and that one factor I need to consider, what would be the size of my version and how would it mount up when it came face to face with a human.

Another one that I would like to mention were the engineer type bugs that feature on the Mass Effect video game series. This bugs are so peaceful, that they wont even interact with other species, just so they don't cause any conflict. This is something that I could include within my final drawing, something that is so innocent, it wouldn't touch I fly. One thing that I defiantly do want to achieve, is to give my character a purpose, just like that of the engineer. It has one job and one job only.

Famous Insectoids part 2

As you can see from the images above, I have researched some pretty famous characters in my time of doing this project, The first two are some of my favourites and they are the creatures that feature throughout the Alien film series. The first one is of the actual alien that features in the film, it is the main protagonist and very much looks like that of an ant. It has lots of squares on its body and is very formidable, like some insects, it has a defence mechanism of acid blood.

The other creature that features is a face hugger. This has the body of stick insect which is very noticeable, I think I really appreciate this creature as it has an insects instinct. It lays eggs into the mouth of the of the humans so they can eat their way through and gain the hosts nutrients.

Rough designs part 1.

Here I began to sketch my ideas of what my final design looked like and I have to say, I was pretty impressed with the results. To start I had this idea in my head of a demon like bug creature. I thought that by combining the top of a distorted boatfly head with a scary demon like bottom half of the head. The results of this were actually better than I expected and was pretty proud with what I had created. This time I had really emphasised on the shading and by doing this, I was surprised with the end results. If I were to do this one again, I would add saliva to his mouth, adding more realism to the picture.

The next picture that I drew was adding the arachnid aspect to the insectoid. What I tried to do was add as much elevated shells as possible, giving a human like appearance. This one I’m a bit disappointed with as  It started off really well, the face came out nicely, but I feel that the body and the arms were way too rushed. The face I would keep the same but when it comes to body and the arms, I would have added a lot more detail to it.

My final.

The last drawing that I did for the project was something new. As I hadn't yet really delved into a female character, I wanted to move in this direction, so that I had variation in my sketches. I first started off with the head. Now looking at insects, you cannot tell one apart from another,  only specific characteristics separate them from genders and that’s something that I wanted to include in this  drawing. I first created an insect looking face, complete with pincers and deep black eyes. The next thing to do was create a body to complete the character. As mentioned before, I wanted to create a female character, so I would add human characteristics, such as the female shape and long legs. For a final design, I’m actually pretty proud of what I achieved here as the shading came out quite well and you can tell instantly that this is a female character, that’s what I was trying to achieve.

A combination of all the designs.

I also had a little try on doing a character design, this is a completely different design from character all together as I was just experimenting with  different designs. I was not happy at all with what I got, especially after my rough and final, so I'm happy to completely cut ties with this drawing.

I did enjoy this drawing session, except for the last one and really did learn a lot of  techniques when I did the assignment and I hope that long may it continue. The only thing negative I must say is that when I go into a character design, I really need to pick up the pace and start to draw a lot better.