Bat Woman in Progress

In my last post I shared a method for brainstorming ideas for creatures, and my theme was bat people. I’d made 9 thumbnail sketches, which you can see again below.

I combined these to make 7 new variants, and then narrowed it down to the following four:

I’d decided that the bat people I saw other artists make were males, and I was avoiding doing something that’s already been done. Of these four I liked the bottom right one the most, but she was pushing being too evil.

I next drew over the composite to make a more clear drawing:

It doesn’t have to be any more refined at this point, because I’m planning to redraw this creature completely at a different angle. This is just the concept, or the design of the creature. Straight on is just a bit too easy, even if nobody else cares. I find symmetry a wee bit of a cop-out for me, and so is just raising one eyebrow and tweaking out the features so they don’t match exactly. Well, I might end up doing just that, in which case you will have no memory of reading this paragraph.

However, before going easy on myself, I’m going to attempt to recreate this at a 45 degree-ish angle. It might even be easier to digitally sculpt it, in which case I could rotate it at any angle, and also apply lighting effects later on the fly, and then repaint it all. However, I want to try to go old fashioned route. I can incorporate a digital sculpting phase in future projects.

My last creature I drew at an angle, and it was a little tricky getting everything, especially his protruding mandibles, in fairly convincing perspective:

If I didn’t make those mandibles and all those bubbles look like hell to get accurate, than I passed the audition. Thanks. But it would be as difficult to try to draw this guy straight on, now, as it will be for me to rotate the bat woman. It’s a test of my traditional drawing skills, and I may do it on paper with ball point pen rather than with a drawing tablet, because it’s easier to draw difficult lines and curves when you can see your hand drawing directly on an image.

Let’s see if I can pull it off. And if I can pass that test, I want to add in a hand, with a prop (you’ll see), and perhaps put part of one of her wings in the background.

Stay tuned

~ Ends

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