Alchemist sheet! (Patreon)

 Hey everyone!! I've worked hard this week and I'm doing my best to finish anything that is pending so I can start thumbnailing the pages! In the rhythm things are going, I'll start it the upcoming week. I have been so focused on doing the final material, I didn't even make commissioned artwork this month!

 As I've finished the "final" alchemist sheet (foolish me!), I wanted to share a bit on the process of making him after I resumed production on apparition, and how tricky it was to get his current look.

 A consistent thing between the iterations is the overall energy of his figure - droppy shoulders, thin limbs with muffin tops. Pretty much an average joe, right! Regarding his face, he looks more cute and childish when compared to the other two characters, but I had to experiment on how much of that I wanted to actually bring to the design.

 The first iterations were more comical oriented - his very round nose and more stylized wacky proportions bring characters like Mario to mind! As seen in this sheet, I was thinking on the shape of his hair and beard as well, I had defined the main idea for his hairstyle around here.

But I found myself with a problem - as much as he's cute and fun looking, I need him to be taken seriously when necessary. Also his emotions tend to be really restrained and inwards, so I wouldn't be able to use the ol' stretch and squish for them, which is a bummer because these toony proportions are ideal for fun wild expressions! I'll leave that to the two other boys.

 The cat-ear/horn like elements on his hair also really bummed me... I had decided this is what he'd have, but how was I supposed to make them work??? Here you can see a bit what I mean, I really feel like these look awkward. (By here I already decided I wanted to switch the bloby pompadour mass with spikiness!)

 For instance, I want the little tips to emote along with him, so I can make unique looking expressions for the character. But something regarding  how spiky the protrusions are... it still looks awkward! However here I started noticing a thing - when his hair was more voluminous he looked cooler!!

And around here I was a bit more safe on how it was supposed to look...?!

 And here... finally!! I think I have set up his overall facial proportions!!! notice how the spikes aren't contrasting that much with the overall hair mass.

 And here are the comparisons of the... three sheets variants I did.... Sigh... Yeah for each of the character I redid the whole sheet at least two times, with more for mini details such as head and etc. IT'S BEEN HARD BUT I'M DOING IT YE

 So here it is how the design evolved while I was working on these - notice how the hair spikes slowly got more voluminous! It's nice to point out that I used to do his hair with this dark shade of blueish green, but I opted to go for the reddish black that is in his clothes. The proportions got a bit less toony, but still cute...!

 Gonna be out for this weekend, which is a shame as I wanted to keep doing the final preparations.... nevertheless I'm pumped to keep going forward! Hope everyone is doing great too!