In the image, you can see a model sheet for a character concept created in the style of the Netflix show Arcane, featuring four main angles of the character model that would allow for another artist to easily replicate for any future projects. I have a small bit of experience with model sheets/character turnarounds from a project that I had done before enrolling on to Game Design, featuring the character Fjord from the show Critical Role, which can be viewed on the homepage under the Gallery tab. For this project, I wanted to challenge myself to improve and incorporate the techniques that I have been learning and improving on to create works that are an upgrade from my previous work.
INSPIRATION
As this project was to create a character in the style of any video game or animated series, I quickly gathered reference material from Arcane, created by Riot Games and Fortiche (IMDb, 2021), as I enjoyed watching the show and it features a unique art style that I normally don’t practice and would like to improve on. My regular art style features black line art when creating characters, outfits and objects which can be seen in my previous works for this module and my works created before enrolment, which is a direct contrast to the art style seen in Arcane. The art style seen in the show almost appears to be painted, with the characters that are shown to the viewer not featuring any harsh black linework.
I wanted the character to look overall as though they would seemingly blend into the background of the show as an additional character, which led to the idea of creating the character to be an enforcer, which is essentially the police force of the fictional town of Piltover. The outfits that are seen on the enforcer I split into 3 key areas – the blue undershirt, the protective wear and the mask, as nearly every enforcer character that I have seen within the episodes has a combination of these elements, which I incorporated into my final design.
EXPLANATION
Once I had my reference material, I started the creation of my character model sheet. I started by creating a rough, block out form for the different angles that would be displayed for the viewer, which would help me to visualise how the character would be stood and whether there were any glaring errors with the character’s body, such as having an arm longer than the other.
I went through several variations of the characters posing as I was debating whether to have them carry an item, such as a weapon or a lantern or to carry out a small action such as a wave – to which I ended up deciding to not pursue this and just have the character stand in a neutral pose.
I did not want to overcomplicate the drawing and upon further research when looking into model sheets/turnarounds by well-known character designers such as Phil Bourassa, who is known for his work on the Young Justice series and his upcoming work on The Legend of Vox Machina, the character model is often stood with their hands relaxed rather than completing small actions.
Once I had the rough form of the character model, I wanted to refine it into a defined character model. I did this by dropping the opacity of the rough form layer in Photoshop and creating a new layer, which would allow me to build an outline of the character on the framework. As the art style of Arcane does not feature heavy linework and relies on rendering and shading, I wanted to create myself an additional guideline that would ensure that the character’s body in the final piece remained correct without the use of harsh black lines.
When I was refining the character model, I made sure to incorporate the elements of the enforcer’s outfits that I had seen in my reference material. One of the images that I included for reference material was the enforcer’s outfits that were created for the League of Legends Worlds opening sequence by Athena Lawton (Lawton, 2021), as the image gave me a full body shot of the outfit.
I included the protective wear that the enforcers are seen wearing (chestguard, shoulder guards and gauntlets) along with adding outlines for where I would be placing gold to replicate the gold trimming, attempting to replicate as much as I could from the outfits in the show and translate it across into my model sheet.
Once I had my additional guideline, I was now able to create my final piece. I reduced the opacity of the additional guideline and started creating the final character design on top of this, making use of the various lasso tools that Photoshop provides and then subsequently filling in these areas with the paint bucket tool and the brush tool to mimic Arcane‘s style.
I began this section by creating various layers, with separate layers for the skin, the blue undershirt, the protective gear and the lower half of the characters model (the character’s trousers and boots) to attempt to replicate the art style of Arcane. Additionally, this allowed me to have control of the character model as if I had rendered everything on the same layer and needed to remove a fine detail, there is the chance that more than what I intended for would be removed by the eraser. Once I had the base colours down for the character model, I decided to add subtle shading to areas to help create definition. This can be seen around the edges of the chestguard and on the blue undershirt beneath the chestguard, as I wanted to create the effect that these areas would be slightly covered by other material and limbs, such as the character’s arms casting shade on the chestguard.
A change that I did make was the decision to include a mask over the character’s face. As seen in the outline of the character model, the character originally was intended to have facial features that would be shown to the viewer, yet when I was creating the final piece this did not look how I wanted it to, which ultimately led me to replicate the enforcer’s masks that are seen in my reference material.
OUTCOME
Overall, I’m relatively happy with this piece – I was able to create a character that I feel fits the art style of Arcane and create multiple angles of their body that would allow for someone to replicate in future projects. I was able to replicate some of the key features that were seen in the show, such as the piece not featuring harsh black linework and instead created a character model that fits with the art style.
If I were to improve this piece, I would improve further on attempting to replicate Arcane‘s art style and including props that the character could interact with. For this project, I had a limited time window to create this piece and would have liked to continue it further, as I could have potentially recreated the art style better than what I have done.
Referenced Material:
Diaz, J. (2021) League Of Legends Goes 2D In This New Netflix Trailer Featuring Jinx. Android Headlines. Available online: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2021/06/league-of-legends-animated-series-netflix-trailer-arcane-jinx-riot-games.html [Accessed 16 Dec. 2021].
Hassal, M. (2021) Who is Caitlyn in Arcane? Esports.gg. Available online: https://esports.gg/news/league-of-legends/who-is-caitlyn-in-arcane/.
IMDb (2021) Arcane: League of Legends. IMDb. Available online: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11126994/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0.
Lawton, A. (2021) How we made the Enforcers for League of Legends. www.youtube.com. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5DHzWHoLVQ&list=LL&index=1 [Accessed 16 Dec. 2021].
Powell, S. and Blake, V. (2021) Arcane: Turning League of Legends into a TV show. BBC News. [online] 25 Nov. Available online: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-59388079.
Rietkerk, S. (2021) League of Legends Arcane: An Interview With the Creators And Voice-Actors. IGN Nordic. Available online: https://nordic.ign.com/league-of-legends-arcane/51193/feature/league-of-legends-arcane-an-interview-with-the-creators-and-voice-actors [Accessed 16 Dec. 2021].
Tuting, K. (2021) Arcane voice actors for all League of Legends anime characters | ONE Esports. www.oneesports.gg. Available online: https://www.oneesports.gg/lol/arcane-voice-actors-anime-characters/ [Accessed 16 Dec. 2021].