Theriss

[The Dark Chronicler]

A character of mine from the BZPRPG.

I'm not much of an artist, and my camera skills are even worse, but here's a picture.

It took about four hours to get it looking right. I decided to try to mix the pieces and aesthetics of a creation of mine with more human-like dimensions. It turned out acceptably, I suppose.

Theriss is one of my characters from the BZPRPG.

[Chro]

I don't know much about the character, so I'm not sure if it's part of his design, but he seems quite overdetailed and cluttered. Detail and greebling can be nice sometimes, but it's also a good idea to have some simpler areas resembling plating or whatnot, in my opinion.

[The Dark Chronicler]

She's supposed to wear rather highly decorated armor, but I really just based her design on something I had built. Most pieces don't really have much in the way of smooth surfaces, mostly being fairly covered in design.

 

I can see how its cluttered, maybe I should actually do less detail than the pieces next time. XD

[Onyx.5]

Hey, if you don't usually draw stuff, then I have to congratulate you on stepping out of your comfort zone. It's obvious that you've really focused on getting human proportions - and the basic human proportions are there. Although, the feet are a bit wonky, mainly because from our viewing perspective you should only see the front, and very little of the side. But, I have yet to meet an artist who found feet easy to learn. Keep going, the more you do and the more proportions you memorize, the easier and faster it gets to draw people.As for detailing, that's one of the nice things about Bionicle - when you're building, the pieces tend to make nice detailed structures for you. But you're going to have to be much more intentional when drawing. There are two main things to master when it comes to detail vs. simplicity;First, as Chro said, you have to pick your battles. Not everything needs to be of equal complexity, and having some large armor plates and simplified areas alongside more detailed sections will make for a nice effect. I mean, you can go super detailed everywhere, just like you can make a very minimalist design, but be aware of what you're doing.Second, there's an underlying issue here, which personally I think is more important. It's one I dealt with when I started drawing bionicle characters, and if I were you I wouldn't worry about it too much right now. But, it's something to think on. You're sticking too close to the figure you drew, and you're adding details by drawing them on to the figure, almost like body paint, rather than drawing them as three-dimensional objects around and attached to the figure. With Theriss here you break away from this a bit with the lower arms and lower legs, which have more of the shape of the original pieces. But for best effect, you need to imagine taking a 3-dimensional shape, and sticking it to what you've drawn. You should make parts jut out, and you should add things that will drastically change the character's silhouette. That's how you make an interesting armored figure, and how to make your details look better.Anyway, don't think too hard about this stuff, just keep drawing characters, and I hope to see you again on this subforum.p.s. the picture looks fine, don't worry about your camera skills.