Hey Guys.
No doubt you're all wondering why I've been so silent these last few months, but needless to say it's all been worked out now. I'm sure most of you already know, but in case you didn't, everything went off without a hitch (we picked up the package and got the HELL out of there).
Anyway, here are some of the concept designs I've been working on for Wolf's final stage. I'm too lazy to spend time carefully setting up these drawings, so I'm just going to copy and paste the explanation I already sent to Ricky.
Basically by this point Wolf's been worked on so much that any notion of subtlety (or consistency) has gone out the window, so instead of giving him one consistent model, and then pushing and pulling that around as we need it, I've been working on the concept that his model is now constantly in flux - with major parts like his hands, feet, and facial features now morphing from one look or style to another with every movement. Did you ever see that episode of Batman TAS with Clayface? At the end Batman shows him various images of his former acting roles and, unable to control himself, Clayface starts shifting from one character to another. That's along the lines of what I'm thinking for Final Wolf.
He would still have familiar cues from his original style - the hair, the jacket, the general 70's/80's-saturday-morning-cartoon feel, but the overload of style leaves him shifting uncontrollably, with each feature taken from a different genre or technique. Just about the only piece of design I've kept consistent is a distorted body shape (running with the surgery theme I reasoned that most men who opt for plastic surgery tend to want to enlarge their pecks and upper body), with a comedicly bulbous chest and bizarrely underdeveloped lower body, not taught and well rendered, but like a Stretch Armstrong that somebody's put in a vice.
So what do you guys think?
This was actually done last week, but the rough colours I put on it caused me such embarrassment (ask Ricky or Tegan. And no, you can't see it) that I've spent the intervening time trying to come up with something better. Unfortunately my digital painting skills aren't what you'd call fast, so I'm leaving this here for anyone who is better than me and fancies taking a crack at it.
I tried to model this one after type of saturday morning cartoon ads you used to see in old comics. The prototype Wolf Team shown here are just placeholder, as is Wolf's Trident thing (he looked like he needed to be holding something, in case you were wondering).
This one is an attempt at irregular composition, where all the elements are slightly off (Wolf being off center, two members of Wolf team randomly floating behind him, etc). You used to see it on a lot of 60's and 70's movie posters. Not sure how well it works here. Wolf's also heavily off-model (tried to make him look older and tougher).
Basically by this point Wolf's been worked on so much that any notion of subtlety (or consistency) has gone out the window, so instead of giving him one consistent model, and then pushing and pulling that around as we need it, I've been working on the concept that his model is now constantly in flux - with major parts like his hands, feet, and facial features now morphing from one look or style to another with every movement. Did you ever see that episode of Batman TAS with Clayface? At the end Batman shows him various images of his former acting roles and, unable to control himself, Clayface starts shifting from one character to another. That's along the lines of what I'm thinking for Final Wolf.
So what do you guys think?