Descendant of heroic battle-archons, yet barely able to wield the great sword he has inherited from his forebears, he lives a sheltered existence under the watchful eye of Presbyter Sypes, who rules the Temple. For despite his sense of purposelessness, Dill has a destiny about to unfold.
When first reading scar night i was not blown away with the story telling i found that characters within the first part of the book were too seperate and each chapter jumped from character to character, for example you would be with the character Dill on minite and with the character Mr Nettles the next, hich made it difficult for me to imagine the world of deep gate and the environment. One character that i did visualise rather well was dill and his spine assasin protector Rachel.
The Assignment!
After reading scar night i was given a brief asking me too think back to when i first saw and read about Rachel, i was asked to design rachel and create two character sheets, one of ideas and the other of the final idea.
So i knew it was important to go back to when i first saw her in the book and see how she was described!
" A young woman stood waiting for him by the fireplace, small, gaunt, her fair hair drawn back severely from her face and woven into a plait. She was bereft of jewellery, and wore beaten leathers bristling with weapons. A worn hilt jutted from the scabbard on her back, blue throwing knives and silver needles ran the length of her leather-sheathe forearms, while her belt held poison pouches, a blowpipe and three stubby bamboo tubes tarnished with age."
After reading this a few times i got a few ideas of what i would want her too look like, and it is very important that i take maybe not all aspects of the description on board but a lot of them i will.
My Design!
This is the design sheet that i created when thinking about designing my Rachel character, you can see that i have just quickly sketched a few poses that i believe her character would be pulling throughout the book. The first is just a stood pose, the pose is strait backed and standing tall, this pose would show the respect that she thinks she deserves from her fellow assassins and also Dill, this could be the pose from when Dill first saw her. The second pose shows how quickly she is ready for action and could be a battle pose from her, I drew a spine with a skull at the top and the reason i did this was because she is a member of the assassin group named 'Spine' and this could be a nice design for the armour that she wears or a spine design could even link all her pieces of armour.
I used a brush to add a splash of colour too my idea sheet, i have chosen colours that could be used for her armour, hair and other things such as her cape and accessories like her knives, needles and poison pouches. I know that in her description she does not have a cape however the brief was about my interpretation of Rachel, i believe that her appearance such as her hair, her posture and her accessories are all a part of who she is and need to be kept when designing her, however a cape is used in fantasy films, books and games to create a mystical feel to a character which is why i chose to at least give a cape a go for Rachel.
This is a screen shot that i took when trying too add some detail to my character, as it stated in the book along her leather sheathes she had needles and knives, i decided to split the needles and the knives on to different arms and this is just to make her look more spread out and make sure there is detail on each arm, i have chosen however to add metal armour and sheathes.
The screenshot below shows the metal knives on the other arm, they are all connected with in the armour by a connector between the metal shoulder and mid arm armour.
I then began adding in the detail onto the armour, it had come to my attention that i have been so focused on getting my pre-portions and scale correct that i have on previous characters rejected adding in detail. In my ideas sheet i came up with an idea that because Rachel was an assassin for Spine then maybe some parts of her armour could replicate that. I simply used another layer too add the detail, as you can see the shadows are coming off the detail showing not that it is raised above the armour but also the angle of the lighting that is coming from the top left corner.
The Final Set!
I think that overall my final images of Rachel are really good, i think that my pre-portions and poses are getting better, as you can see the back view is darker, the reason for this is that the light is in front of her creating shadows and darkness, i have used shading so that it gives the idea of perspective and depth to my images. I think that the detail is what needs working on the most, i think that the spine themed armour and the blood on the sword is what makes the images good but more details would be great! Just getting used to adding detail is what is important.
I also like the way that i have used a slight shadow to show where the light is on the character, but all in all i feel that my skills are getting better with each assignment.
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