Reflection

Time to take a step back and reflect on how things are going.

Well. So far, things are going okay. Not great, or brilliant, but okay. I've thought hard about what I want to design in terms of a character, but to be honest, I've not got that much pre-existing material in terms of research from other artists to influence my own.

Yeah, I looked at 'The Incredibles', but that's pretty much it. Due to a few things (using old laptop that can't handle anything apart from the research stuff, and sickness) I am slightly behind on schedule. I haven't even finalised my character yet.

Why? A combination of the above. Simple as that really, also, I need to look into the characteristics of the insects / creepy crawlies I'm using, what how I can use that apply them to the character of which I am creating.






Chimera:
"A chimera is an animal that has two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells that originated in different zygotes involved with sexual reproduction; if the different cells emerged from the same zygote, it is called a mosaicism."

As the quote says, it is infact, CLEARLY, DIFFERENT, cells from different species, combined.

"In biological research, chimeras are artificially produced by physically mixing cells from two different organisms. Chimeras are not hybrids, which form from the fusion of gametes from two species (like a donkey and a horse) that form a single zygote that will develop as much as it can (in this case into a live mule if the parents are jackass and mare, or a hinny if the parents are stallion and jenny); in comparison, chimeras are the physical mixing of cells from two independent zygotes: for example, one from the donkey and one from the horse. "Chimera" is a broad term and is often applied to many different types of mixing of cells from two different species."

In reference to my comment above, and as the quote says, this does NOT mean that the two animals will fuse together, merging the characteristics and physical form of the two species as one. Instead, the separate genes from the individual species both grow as much as possible how they should, as if they were a single gene.

Snake: Agile, quiet, stealthy.
Ant: Insanely strong, organized.
Spider: Venomous,6 to 8 legs.
Dragonfly: Wings! (pretty up close actually), scaled slender body, ability to fly.
Beetle: Hard shell.

I began with trying to think of what my characters face would look like, as in why would he look like what he looked like. Why did he look like the way he did? Evil? Good?

Synopsis.

AN EVIL GENIUS who has a crazy obsession with trying to fuse different genes together, to create the ultimate chimera / homunculus failed miserably for years. It wasn't until he had a son that he managed to perfect his creation. As evil geniuses do (F*cked up sh*t) he experimented on his son and successfully combined genes. Because of this, the boy has had a weird childhood, and has strange fascination with creepy crawlies as they have scales / features with he does.

But like most 9 year old boys, he is hyperactive, and still, a boy.

This guy now has a storyline. He is a creation. A hybrid of all these different insects/lizards. Why does he have a fascination with creepy crawlies? Because they have similar parts to he does, and it makes him very excited to see that. Naturally, he's just like every other child his age, except for this unique aspect. I decided that characters 4 and 6 were the ones I liked the most in terms of what I could progress with.



I then took this characters head, an started playin around with features of the face, taking parts from his 'interests' Played around with the eyes, the mouth..etc. Antennae.



Narrowed it down to these two. Next was to decide a general full body look.



Hence, I came up with this.

Please note, none of these are subject to a FINAL phase, they're just sketches with ideas, yet to be finalised. However, I think generally I'm going to play around with this figure.

Due to my previous post about how kids like to dress up as something they're not, mainly superheroes, I began to think about how I could dress my character up, starting to look at, why, would a hyperactive person interested in creepy crawlies, dress the way he does? Went along with the scientific approach..
Diving more into the actual creation. I went with the evil menacing looking approach. I felt personally that this was probably too far deep, not creative enough, and too old.
Just to compare height, landscape view.

Deciding on the height of my character. Obviously it's not going to be a full size human at the age of 9, but just to push the boundary a bit, my character is going to be 9 and 11 months! HA!. Anyway, this guy isn't going to be a standard human boy, he is going to be a mix of creepy crawlies, with human characteristics / intelligence. I want this boy to look older than he is supposed to be, but not to be mistaken for a 12-15 year old, as I think a suitable heigh of around 6 heads (body height) would convey this.
Yeah, random character. Aim? Too look as confused and messed up as possible. Why? If I was a chimera I'd look messed up and confused.

Ugh

Illness, how inconvenient. Took me off schedule for about a week. Now I've got things to catch up on, mainly character design, which begins now. ;p

Children love to dress up as things / super heroes don't they? Only, my characters costume is going to be partly real. He is going to be a hybrid.

Bugs, spiders, and snakes. Creepy Crawlies right thar! I could use these... Quite easily actually.
Insect wings are actually quite pretty close up. Still not sure on my final character design yet, but I guess you actually have to design to come to that conclusion. As I said before, It's most likely going to be a hybrid of it's interests, in the form of a human chimera, or something else. Either way, he's going to have wings, cause he's awesome, and he can fly. :D

Refined - Character design

Wings! Wings are pretty. Even though they're on GENERALLY ugly looking creatures. And as found on most characters, this is the approach that I'm going to take. Start with a human boy, make him into a sort of, cuddly fuzzy chimera.

So, besides the fact that this guy is obviously interested in creepy crawlies and is a hyperactive 9 year old, what other traits is this character going to have?

OK. It seems that I can pretty much have whatever I want, in terms of going crazy.

Wings

Antlers

Massive strength - ant characteristic

Hyperactive - random facial expression