Though I'd previously thought about creating an ancient mayan assassin for the Ubisoft brief, I changed my mind because its something that has been done recently or similarly in ACIV:Black Flag.
I've picked Bakamatsu era/Meiji Jidai Japan, for several reasons, most of which wouldnt be interesting to anyone other than myself.
After reviewing and re-evaluating my work for the last semester, I've located a few things about my processes, consistancy and general approach to these projects that I am endevouring to change.
First thing that was bothering me. The above is how I would normally attempt to sketch out thumbnails for characters, however they often just end up as indecipherable scribbles or generally unclear. And very often I would just get caught up with tiny pointless details and poses. To rectify this, I've looked at the artists Richard Anderson and Kekai Kotai's thumbnail and sketchwork and learned from them how they handle it. I was particularly interested in Anderson's use of negative space within the thumbnails.
I actually left these two in their previous sketchy white form as I painted the other 10 on the sheet as a reminded of what I didn't want from these. In the end, the last three are my favourites on the sheet- some elements from the others could be helpful to work into it, but so far so good.
11 because it has several visual gags in the clothing that imply a japanese origin (or so i would hope), and also the hood has the important brand image of a bird of prey. I feel like the creed symbol
should be almost like a charm or keychain off the end of the katana, or in the case of 10, a good luck charm hung on the waist band. 10 is probably lacking some layers, I think with a Happi or Haori.similar to the coat on 11 or 7. As far as greaves and armored sections, I think that the samurai's chain/plate (
yoroi) from about 100 years previous, appropriated into useable light armor.
