Anthropomorphic Character Design

For this assignment, we looked at anthropomorphic character design. We had to design an anthropomorphic exotic frog. 

I wanted to do something interesting with this because although I am not well practiced in drawing animals and other creatures, I really love to design characters. Originally, I thought of designing a frog witch of some kind. However, after researching different types of frogs, I found poisonous tree frogs. I thought that one who was also an alchemist, as alchemists in games are usually associated with poisons and potions, would be very cool and would make a lot of sense visually. 

I started by making a moodboard. 

After this, I tried to study some real frogs, as I have never drawn them before. 

I got started on my character by blocking out the silhouette and beginning to paint on top of it. 

Once I was happy with the proportions, I added some clothes and accessories.

Above, you can see how I struggled a bit with the shoulder area. I made the sleeves on the coat too low, forgetting where his shoulders should be. I fixed this after noticing the mistake.

Here I used some adjustment layers to make the whole image lighter. I am getting used to painting first in grayscale but I still struggle with values and my paintings end up being too dark. I thought that the adjustment layers would help here.

Next, I started adding some hues on a colour and a multiply layer.

After painting in the smoke, I used a gradient map to make the lightest values pink and the darker values purple. I purposefully painted the smoke from light to dark so that I could do this.

I added in the colours for the potions, cleaned it up and added a few strokes on very low opacity on the bottom to add to the smoke.

There is a spotless version of the frog and a spotted version. The spotted version is more accurate to the reference images I used, as I was directly inspired by the blue spotted frog. However, I feel that the spotless one looks better. I was not sure which version I liked more, so I included both.

I had so much fun with this assignment. I am glad that I tried to come up with a role for the frog, as I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it as much. I learnt that anthropomorphic designs are usually as if the animal has a human skeleton, so the arms and legs act similarly to a human's.They are still recognisable as the animal but can function like a human. If I could change or add anything though, it would be the frog's shadow. I forgot it.

I also learnt about gradient maps along the way and adjustment layers. I feel much more confident in my own paintings after this assignment.