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Azzen — Blaise 25 Expressions
Published: 2009-07-30 23:18:43 +0000 UTC; Views: 2545; Favourites: 21; Downloads: 67
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Description
Okay, I couldn't resist.
I started this a while ago, then I put it to the side to work on a forum activity that requires a lot of drawing, and then I re-discovered it and finished it. Due to the forum thing, I think I outmoded myself 3/4ths into it and thus some parts look better than others, but oh well.
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Comments: 34
these expressions are awesome! great sense of humor too ^^
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Thanks, hehe. Was a bit hard with eyes only.
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I've been making a story about robots for over a year too. I like Blaise's design a lot!
To help the expression in the mouth area, I was planning to let the area stretch like it does in cartoons. Depends on the design though for this trick to work. You seemed to have done fine on the eyes and steam.
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Thank you!
For your method, it all depends on the aesthetic you want. Judging by the way you've constructed your robots -- that is, cartoony parts and faces -- some stretching here and there is perfectly fine. I'm going for a more grounded approach here, and have thusly tried to minimize distortions and limit them to the face.
The real decider of a character's mood is more in their posture and body language than in their face. Tilting the head side to side, making the face look up or down, whether the stance is slouchy or bolt-upright...these can all drastically change the expression of the exact same face. For example, if you were to take Blaise's "Tired" face without the tilt to the side, he'd look like he's concentrating or squinting. If you were to take his Confident face and make him look down instead of up, he'd appear to be snickering or plotting. Other factors like the direction the character's looking (In relation to the turn of the whole face) and pose-extending objects (revolvers in one case, but it could be anything, really) also apply.
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Yeah I was figuring you were doing a more serious approach, and what with them looking western, they'd be perfect for a comic like you said in one of the pictures. Is there a reason these characters are robots or is it just because?
My robots are going to be put into an animation, so my designs were made to be more simplistic. 24 frames a second can take an awful while otherwise XD. Makes them look like toons, but I like toons. I just miss details, usually I drown characters in them ._. ...
Oh yeeeah body language is fun! It's just no cool having the face do all the work. (Now I'm thinking of a single character only moving his head... that would look weird) I still laugh at your Enraged shot. Be sure to use a lot of foreshortening when you do that comic. It really helps drag the viewers in if you stop thinking each panel is separate.
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The comic, at the most basic level, explores the nature of interaction between human (or non-human) beings, as well as the role of technology. The robots were intended to represent a non-human aspect and to bridge the gap between two factions of humans; since they were basically built with fresh slates, they also provide an outsider's view on the entire situation, though that develops into something else. I want them to retain sympathy from the audience, but ultimately the robots are just that -- tools created to serve a purpose, a point which will be played off of (Isaac Asimov himself grew tired of the "please feel sorry for the robot developing emotions" stories). It's a bit more nuanced than that, but that's the gist...though, to be honest, robots are pretty awesome just being robots.
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I didn't know robots gaining sympathy was such a popular concept. Most of what I've seen are either mindless housemaids or killer deathbots of doom (I'm more towards housemaids in my story). I liked how the book I Robot showed how rules can be interpreted, which inspired me partly to make my story.
It's pretty much my story is how I see the world handling robots with emotions. Asimo is great, but once they become more free spirited things could get more complicated. The concept of a robot is to serve the human race, the story has to do with how some robots feel about that. The main two are Jake, an older model that's lived in the system for quite a while, and Beta, a brand new unit that's just getting started. I don't think I'm writing about feeling sorry for machines, but I'm sure some people will interpret it like that. Everyone has problems after all.
Haha, yeah. Robots are badarse XD. I would love to hear more about your story, but I figure I'd have to wait until the comic to see about that!
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Oop, disregard the other one, I was replying to the wrong comment.
Yep, it's actually quite common due to the impact Asimov made. Right now, both extremes of the spectrum are represented (That is, both killer deathbots and just-about-human ones), and sometimes both are in the same story. I'm not well versed with your story, but from the impression I get it seems good that you're not sentimentalizing or condemning anything; just observing.
Thank you for the watch and faves, by the way.
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Silly person! Hide Comment for the win! <.< I hate doing that.
It depends on the character speaking. It's supposed to show machines as second-class citizens, and some robots support it while others are against it. Some think robots should have equal rights with humans, others are perfectly fine with how things are. Meanwhile others think humans should be wiped out entirely. It's just a system as far as I'm concerned.
No problem, I figured I might as well since I haven't met many other robotic story writers XD
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I was addressing the story as a whole; I meant that, as the writer, you are providing a variety of viewpoints and seem to stop your own opinion from getting into the mix.
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Yeah, that's the plan at least. I don't like straight answers. I have much more fun letting people decide on things XD.
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One obama two obama tree obama four obama
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Make him open his face when he's enraged!!!
That would be sooooooooooooo cool![link]
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That would be a bit too evangelion-beserk, eh?
Thanks for the comment.
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haha i love the strip of him going "yes?" "no" "yes" "no" "yus?" lol
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Huh, I can tell this was probably quite a challenge -- to do expressions for a robot. This guy especially doesn't have many discernible facial features, so the challenge becomes to use more body language and emotion through the eyes.
You did a pretty good job on a number of them, like confident, sad, enraged, and WTF hahah.
Some of the ones I'm a little confused on are ones like Fierce. Honestly when I step back and look at that expression, it almost looks like... spiteful jealousy. Like, he's looking away in the other direction, going "tch..." to himself. This is at least in this specific drawing, without the body language to suggest being fierce.
What confuses me on a couple of them are the shapes for his eye sockets. I know that he's a robot, and he can't easily change his face hahaha, but, I think being able to change the shape of his eye sockets more expressively could really change the dynamics of his character. Like the WTF face -- how the eye sockets are flat on the bottom. And like Shocked, how they're completely round, suggesting a "wide open O__O"
This also means that the little brow lines on the tops of his eye sockets, [that make him look slightly mad all the time,] should come and go as needed. A good example of this is on Blank. Those little brow marks make him look still ... mad somehow, aside from being blank and expressionless. You removed them for Silly, and that expression reads better for it. Yet, some times, those brow marks work oddly well -- like in Flirty and Sad. But I think for most cases, changing how the brow marks look as well can make or break an expression.
Lastly, it would also be interesting to see how color can be applied. Do his eyes change color with certain expressions or modes of activity? [Content versus enraged. At rest versus attacking, etc.]
Overall though, very nice drawings. You sure can draw this guy very consistently, and I have to say, I still really really like him as a character.
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Thanks for the critique (And fave, too!).
Yeah, Fierce was kind of an especially tough one because I couldn't find a way to put the right body language there (I had the idea that he'd be holding his sword up to the camera, but that would obscure everything) and keep the face different from Angry.
As for the shapes of the eye sockets, I tried to vary them a bit from their usual rounded hexagon-ish form, but I guess I should make that more apparent. Since mouth movements cause cheek muscles to move, and those in turn change the shape of the eye, I tried to use the eye socket shape to compensate for the lack of a mouth.
A friend of mine gave a similar comment to the brow marks...I should probably make their angle with the top of the eye socket a bit less intense in that case. Most of the variation here was in their length and tapering angle, but evidently they still look a bit stressed.
To color, that would be an interesting mechanic. I don't want to go too far with color variations (I want to reserve red for the other robot), but I get the idea that perhaps I can use the white tinge in the eyes. With more focused/intense emotions, the white could get sharper and more specular to show it.
Thanks again!
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Its all in the eyes, or in enraged's case its all in the eyes and revolvers.
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It should be mostly in the body language, though.
And as a result of me failing terribly the first 9000 times I tried to draw a revolver, I now have the shape of a Colt Python tattooed onto my brain.
(Thanks for the fave, too!)
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