These are a few of my background concepts for my bible, i did like the layouts i chose but i think i need some more practice with perspective of the buildings. I liked the way the layouts lended themselves to the characters design but the background colour is quite overpowering compared to the characters. I tried to fiddle with this in photoshop but due to my lack of skills in this area i found i couldnt really do much. I think if i had some more photoshop experience with digital paintings this could help.
The background above i started to work into using photoshop which i liked but found it wasnt in keeping with my characters and i didnt have enough time to work into it properly and grasp using the graphics tablet as said above. If i had managed my time better i would have worked on the shadows in the street more and depth of field more and a little bit of perspective.

guuuaaaards! and Lucius the grumpy one armed pomper

The roman guards i quite enjoyed conceptualising, i used a site called elm street guard for reference for uniforms and equipment and such like and the general attitude they seemed to have on there faces was quite filling for the character i had in mind as the people on the site take there re-enactments quite seriously. I found the amount of detail on a roman soldiers uniford quite significant so i went through a process of drawing different variations of the uniform to end up with the simplified version you see above which i think worked quite well. As before with the other characters i found the drawing of the hands difficult especially in this pose.


For the turnaround of the character i found it difficult to get the positioning of the legs and waist right on the turn, and trying to keep all the accessorys in the right proportion and volume as the body turned was a nightmare for me. I think i could benefit from drawing the body out more fully in the pose before adding clothes over the top.

Lucius what can i say i didnt do as much work on him but i just love his look its so epically grumpy and he's got that bossy pose about him in the coloured pose above. I did do some facial expressions for him which helped me grasp his character but they where only development work so i didnt want to put them in the bible. I think i nailed the face on the this one but again im let down by my feet and hand drawing skills which i think i will need to focus on drawing from different angles in my sketch book.

The turnaround for lucius i think works well but thats because his design is so simple, but again foot work needs to be done, i drew that foot about 10 times in the middle but i just couldnt get the forshortening right. I think maybe if i had made the sandle design a bit simpler that may have helped me.

fancy a donna anyone, yea il have lots of burger sauce on it please

For donna im happy with the overall look of he character and her costume is what i was aiming for prity much bar maybe roughing it up a bit similar to the doctors. As the same with the doctor i feel the shading could be worked on and i also think if i had more time i would have spent more time developing her character and draw her in a variety of poses to get a better feel for the character.

For the facial expressions sheet of donna i didn't do as many facial poses, i feel now that if i had done more i could have got a better grasp for drawing the character in the turnarounds.


The turnaround i think works in respect to the proportions of the body but i do feel i could have put a bit more life into the poses as she does feel a bit stiff. The face from the side angle i found very difficult to get my head round excuse the pun, even though i tried drawing it about 20 times no joke i still didnt think it looked right. I still need a lot of practice at drawing heads which is part the reason why i did this over the visual effects project as i wanted to inprove my drawing of the head, face, hands and feet, i feel i still need more practice but i do think i have improved especially in the life drawing sessions which i will upload some pictures of at some point.

the bible

Below is in short some images from my design bible for the doctor in the doctor who project, which i enjoyed doing at times but found it quite stressful trying to get the proportions right for some of the characters and i think i achieved a interesting colour pallet for the characters but i feel if i had spent more time on the backgrounds i could have toned them down a bit especially with a bit more photoshop experience would have helped.

The first image below is the coloured image of the doctor with the description of his character, i like the colour pallet i chose for the doctor, but i do feel that the colour of the coat could have been a bit darker and had a few more worn in features like visible stritching in one area and a patch maybe. Also i think i needed to work on the shading a bit more to give a more solid outline of the characters shape.

In the turnaround I think I just needed to work on the proportions of the face and the positioning of the bodys outline in relation to each pose.

Below is the character expressions sheet i did of the doctor to show him in a variety of different moods and to show his face from different angles, this version is a slightly altered version of the original with the faces changed to keep the continuity up.

concept work

Below are some of the concept drawings i did for props and such like to go into my background work and a possible escape pod idea for the aliens. I looked at roman styled chairs for the villa, sacks for the street stalls, benches, urns for the street stalls and ones that could be more detailed art pieces in the villa.

Below are some ideas for central art pieces like statues and fountains that would be located in the center of the villa or in the gardens, i decided not to use these as i didn't want to crowd my villa concept.

Below are some concept drawings for my backgrounds one of which i tried working into with a little bit on colour using the intuos tablet but i have only just started using them so i still need to practice lots, i enjoy using the graphics tablet and i think i will get round to trying to doing a tutorial in digital painting just to get a better understanding of it. The bottom right i worked into with colour pencils which i didn't like so decided not to solely use this technique. The rest are rough sketch layouts of ideas for scenes in the episode and one detailed one the middle left which has a few proportion problems which is the only reason why i didn't use it as a final concept image.

more character development

I then started to develop donna's character in the same way, but after a lot of trial and error with the doctor i found it much easier to nail the character of donna down. I knew i wanted her figure to be slim but a little bit masculine, like a bit of a extreme sports junkie. I worked towards a bit of a tom boyish look with spikey medium length hair and a more manly face i think i managed to pull a different look to the norm. I think if i had more time i would have worked on the face of the character more but i feel i got the body down as i wanted and the outfit.


For the charcter of the roman guard i used a website called elmestreetguard for reference which was a re-enactment website of people acting out life in the roman army. I found this website very helpful in getting the feeling of a roman soldier and what the uniforms looked like. using this site i managed to get many facial expressions down in an animated form to help me get a feel for the guards character.i had one poser that reminded me very much of comic characters from the horible historys roman book but i wanted a character who was a bit more serious looking. I think despite how little of the roman guard i got down designing i think i nailed the kind of character i was going for a young bored guard, and i think i achieved that quite well.


The final character i designed was the lucius character who was a old grumpy one armed man, i decided that i wanted to go with the one armed aspect because i thought it would add a certain pirate captain feel to the character. Of a bit of an aggressive grumpy character which i think i achieved quite well, jotting down some facial expressions to get a feel for the character as i did before. I found this character quite easy to develop and found this character to be one of my favourite but this i think is due his grumpy looking nature.

more character development doctor

some more doctor development images of some rough turnarounds i did of the doctor to get a feel of the character which i found helpful, the first front and side view i did wasnt in proportion but i felt it helped me get a better understanding of the character and i needed to think about his size and shape accordingly.

character development doctor who?

For the doctor I went through quite a lot of development, I wanted him to be a exploring medicine man kind of character but to still have some features of the doctor who played by Christopher Eccleston like the big nose and jutting chin. So i firstly looked at characters from different animation and comic sorces who had big chins and noses and played around doing some rough sketches. At first i wanted to give my character a beard but then i later decided against it as i thought it would make him a little to rugged looking for the character and outfits i had in mind.



I started to draw up the rough shape of the doctor i wanted him to be tall like most of the other doctors but i wanted to be a bit bigger build. I then started to look at marvel comic book styles of drawing faces and that of "making faces" a book about drawing cartoon characters. As i didnt have much skill before this project at drawing faces these 2 books really helped me a lot. I started to generate ideas of what i wanted the doctor to look like face wise drawing his face from different angles and in different facial expressions and changing certain features of the face. I found this part quite enjoyable and i think i did a good job of achieving some interestingly different facial expressions.



This face drawing exercise helped me to settle on the look for my doctor who character. I went with a big long coat with a fluffy neck giving him this winter explorer kind of look and long hair and a roman nose. I also gave him some big boots to compliment his outdoor nature and a polo neck scalf. I really liked this look on the doctor as in my mind it gave him a well travelled look about him. I was quite happy with the way the doctor turned out but i think if i had more time i would have liked to work on refining his outfit a bit more.

research sketching

Below are some sketches i did for the research for the chino planet script and the shakespear script.