Sunday, February 3, 2013

First sketches

Today I made the first sketches and tests for Jay's miniature. I started with some studies straight from Blade Runner.
Many "traditional" 15mm and 28mm use very stylized proportions, around 4.5 to 5.5 heads tall as compared to more "realistic" 6.5-7.5 heads. OneMonk miniatures and, to a lesser extent, Sanity Studios and Darkmook follow this style and I think it makes them look closer to plastic and metal figures and thus, "blend in." I made some studies based on that proportion:
I also did a very quick and dirty coloring of this test pose to see how it would look when printed. This test version has a mirrored back but the final one will have a proper drawing for the back. The following picture should print in the correct size at 300dpi. Note that to assemble the base it is necessary to make one reverse fold in the middle.

Here is an image of the test print I did, along with Grey Matter Games' lizardman to get a sense of proportion. This one is 28mm tall from foot to eye.

Conclusion

These initial studies draw heavily on Blade Runner alone. I am also looking at references from other sci-fi movies from the 80s to get other ideas about clothing, weapons etc.

Jay, please leave a comment or send me an e-mail telling if I am going in the right direction. Note these are just studies so feel free to suggest any changes -- even complete modifications to style, clothing, equipment, pose etc.

3 comments:

Sean said...

Nice work Ricardo! I like the sketch a lot.

Jay said...

Nice work indeed, the sketches do look great.

I like where it's going, but yeah maybe look into more 80s imagery, I'm thinking a little cyberpunk, maybe a visible implant or prosthetic or something.

I'm quite happy for it to be a bit of a surprise for me, might make working out a character interesting if I don't have complete control on how he looks.

At the moment I don't know exactly how I'm going to run my little game, but I'm definitely thinking dirty tech, cyberpunk, maybe even a little of the western in space kind of style. Hopefully I can use 5150 to do that, though might need some tweaks.

Ricardo Nakamura said...

Thanks for the comments! I should have some new sketches by tuesday.