Drawing Weasels again

Getting there
I have been drawing a few Stoats/weasels, just generally playing with ideas. I've got a few heads drawn up experimenting with expression, while all of it was just playing about I learnt a lot to assist me in my shape refinement.

Playing
=D just a play around at a scene the proportions still need a tweak but i think the poses work, for the female character I just wanted to get the legs and body looking right without being to flabby or ridged.




Reshape
the weasel designs before these three below had really round mussels so I've had to change that to keep to realism, at the moment i want to keep to a more realistic weasel character, once I've got the realistic shapes down i can simplify them to keep the animals shape without distorting them.



New Shapes
This one is looking more like it keeps the weasel realistic shape and shows some character, as you can see there are more triangles in the basic shapes which I will continue to draw to keep the mussel right. proportions in this one are starting to get there as well I'm going to start experimenting with different rotations on

Drawing Weasels

the character above was drawn really without the guidelines just wanted to do a quick draw of a weasel with the splinter cell night vision goggles on.

I've gone through that character book to pick up as many tips as I can at creating a character from simple shapes, I did however know the basics but there were a few tips that really did help. I've ordered an animal anatomy book to aid me in creating decent proportions so I should be well away creating more when that arrives, at the moment I've had to rely on that character book so here's a few I've done today.

Making Shapes
this one below is a breakdown of a photo just to get the basic shapes out of it so that I could reproduce the same drawing from any angle I think it turned out well the first was drawn with this method and went well and then the guide lines next to it is like an x-ray of how it was constructed.






Practice Poses
below here are just two weird poses I drew just to see if the guidelines work, they seem to work out OK but they still need more work done just to get the shapes just right at all angles.When that book I've ordered arrives I'm going to refine these shapes so that they work perfectly.



Next Task
my next task is to refine the shapes and draw some more dynamic poses.

Creating Characters with personality

My Characters

Right well below are a few weasel characters and development bits I've been working on, some mainly just to get some practice with the body of the character, its one of my weak points. ranging from different styles and clothing I tried to create some nice looking character with a good level of finish.




as you can see from these first 5 drawings I've tried to put the characters in different positions, again this is really just practice. some of the styles stay the same but I have done a few more in different proportions and with different gear as shown below.




This one below witht the hat and monocule is a simplified version of one on the internet, I wanted to try and round it off making it more of a cartoon rather than a realistic looking weasel well apart from the cloths that is.



Next Task
my next task is to continue to produce characters, I'll make some other animal characters other than the weasel and see how they work out.

Rocket Weasel, random weasel game

http://www.freegames14.com/Rocket-Weasel.game1461.html

Changing faces

drawings from yesterday
I wanted to experiment with the face structure since it keeps looking wrong to me, it needs something to make it right, so these are two loads of facces attempting to get the face looking right.


I don't know if I'm quite there yet but these are a start.

Extra
these I found after drawing them faces but are really good for research.. once that book turns up I should beable to get it drawn perfectly.

Tasks.

Tasks:

My task for this project is to create an animated animal type character with and animation. the purpose is to create something more organic with a feeling of life. I first went about trying to think of how I would produce the character I.E. style, time frame, personality and so on let alone what animal I could create. The Initial idea was to create a weasel character but I may change that because the designs i have keep reminding me of Daxtor from the 'Jack and Daxtor series


there are a few other weasel that I can think of the weasels from 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' and the 'I Am Weasel' cartoon so it might be a good idea to create my character in between these styles. combining animals is also a good idea more that I think about it Daxter there is composed of half otter and half weasel so maybe I still could do a weasel shaped character with any other body parts I like.. maybe combined with fox ears and lion tail or something would be interesting.. more development my be done =P.



The Book

The Book 'Creating Characters with Personality' really helped in the development of my base designs, I wasn't looking for anything amazing to draw straight away I just wanted to create some nice looking animal morph characters. It really did help, taking you from a realistic drawing and simplifying it into a friendly cartoon while provide a load of tips and tricks to make it easier to produce and professional looking character ready for cartoons.

Weasel Characteristics

Weasels


After reading information and watching some video clips I've discovered that weasels are very playful, they have a huge amount of energy that seems to never end jolting from one place to the next with a brief stop to look around. Weasels are very aware of their environment similar to a meerkat in the way that they occasionally stop and look around to see if its safe, they will always kill more then they need which become problematic for poultry farmers (this is also the case of foxes). Although considered pest to farmers they are also beneficial to the land due to them killing a lot of other rodent pests.

below are a few weasel videos, the videos are quite good in showing some natural characteristics of the weasels i think they've really helped me to understand weasels more like their quick decisive movement and reactions.

Video of a weasel


Baby weasels


Weasel eating a dead chicken



Stoats



I've got a few videos of stoats which are short tailed weasels found all over the world, they exhibit the same kind of behaviour but with darker colouring. I found a lot more stoat videos than weasel primarily due to the fact of the weasel as a derogatory term which seems to be everywhere. having research on stoats doesn't really interfere with my weasel information.

The video below with the stoat playing with a dead mouse is my favorite, just the way the animal is so quick and rolling about just shows how precise they can be, the one with the dog shows how athletic stoats are with no balance issues that would otherwise cause it to fall off the dogs back.

Stoat playing with a dog

Good Video of a stoat playing with a dead mouse


I love that video so energetic

Skeleton Images

The Hunt
After much searching through weasel and stoat skeletons I've found a few skeleton images, my book has also arrived and I now see how important a skeletal frame is to creating a accurate looking animal and character.

Skull
The Weasels skull is slightly different to what i expected it to look like the strange ridged appearance of the mussel is nothing like i thought it would be seeing though with muscle and skin its more rounded.


Full Body
A few full body images.. I wish I could of found more but it was hard enough finding these I hope to get a hold of some decent images when my girlfriend Vicki comes back from holiday, (shes a Vet). the structure of the weasel is so fragile it almost seems like you could break one of their ribs just by picking one up. and their spine is very thin to what I expected also the rear legs don't bow the way the full weasel portrays it, another interesting thing I've noticed is the hips don't quite curve in the way other skeletons do, they have more of a broad plate.




Pieces
I wanted to add this because it could come in handy if there is a particular bone I can't quite see and this image gives a good all round look at individual parts, especially the top down view of the skull and side view of a piece of tail bone.




Had to add this one.. Pacman's skeleton =D

Breakdown

Weasel character
now that I've looked at some characteristics of weasels and stoats I can mold my character based on their strengths. According to the creating characters with personality book creating boundaries can be beneficial to the design process so below are my own.

Characteristics:

• high speed
• quick reaction times
• large jump height for size
• slender
• playful
• cautious
• precise killers
  
• Territorial
• rouge

character's mental attributes

• Focused
  
• takes risks
• mischievous
• bad rather than evil
• does have compassion but puts up an bad front
  
• over confident with abilities
• irrational fear of bees

Physical Attributes

• marks from previous fights due to taking risks/overconfidence
• poor condition clothing
• two different colour eyes add to corrupt look
• low muscle mass
• ranged weaponry
• bands on tail
• piercing in one ear
  

Setting

• England
• Time: --- will have to see about that
• grassland
• possibly near a chicken coop

With this in mind I could create an assassin, ninja or a sniper for a few things off the top of my head. A sniper weasel shooting chickens with deadly accuracy, i can see it now weasel character lying on a hill dressed like Sam Fisher off of the 'Splinter Cell' series of games who is a trained silent take down assassin... something I will have to experiment with.

Sam Fisher

Sam Fisher as a base for my character I think is a good idea, he has most of the characteristics of a weasel and the gear I really do like although the technology might be too advanced for my taste if I were to base my weasel on Fisher I would have to downgrade or maybe go all futuristic but again that's something I can figure out as I work out how my characteristics would be applied to my characters mental state IE the character might be a quick killer but hes also cautious so he/she might be a nervous type or anything so that's something I'll have to look into.

Altair

Altair from the 'Assassins Creed' series of games, this is more like it although I'd rather had him use a bow but that's my own personal taste. Altair is an assassin set in 1190AD, your job is to take down various people of importance, the clothing really appeals to me to me a bow and arrow for my character would seem right considering if I'm setting it in England where many bows were created again the timeline will be an issue before i concrete that idea.

Ninja

I did say ninja but as far as I know there wasn't any English ninjas =P but the idea of a ninja is still valid and 'ninja' s just a name anyway. the full clothing is good for the really evil and sneaky look just being able to see the eyes with the silhouette is always a bad guy sort of look.

Robin Hood

Similar to the Assassins Creed look, robin hood uses a bow and woodland for cover this would be a perfect base if it didn't draw me to the robin hood anthropomorphic cartoon movie. I might make the character female seeing though I'm always drawing male characters..would give me good experience at drawing the female figure.

Change
hmm some of my attributes might change if I make it a female character I suppose I could leave it how it is and see how the character works out, them boundaries aren't set in stone. more research is required..