Wooden marionettes

Clown dolls? What was I thinking. There is no question mark there because I know exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking "I have no fucking clue how to make these interesting. maybe a delicate touch of paint as decoration? And.... now they look like clowns. Fuck it."

Well I went back to them. Improved the lineart and vastly improved the colours. Wooden colours work much better. I stalled for a while, but these magnificent clock-girls gave me the necessary kick in the behind. I  shamelessly sampled their colours for use on these guys.

I love those clock-girls so much. I tried to copy the idea of cut-outs in the legs, but I couldn't make it work here. Might bear it in mind if I do another puppet set.

Clown dolls

Finally got me my generic marionettes. They weren't intended as clowns; it just happened as I was colouring them. It gives them a bit of identity at least. I might change my mind later and recolour them in various light and dark wood colours. That could be pretty cool, but for now they're clowns.

The more productive I am with the drawings, the less I have to say about them. Also have a bit of a headache.

Poe Dolls

So I did go and make some variants after all. Also they got a better name - Poe dolls - because #3's blades made me think of The Pit And The Pendulum. It has that same quirky sound as snickerdolls, which is nice.


Didn't end up putting distinctive seams on the wood, just changing blades and heads. I tried differences in the "spine", but I couldn't come up with two more that lived up to the (current) spiky mode.

The large blank areas did give me room to do differing paint patterns though, which adds a lot more variety after the colouring stage.

#2's blades were intended as guillotine blades. You know, that lovely distinctive rectangle with an angled blade? Well I tried, but they just looked like boring square blades with a little perspective, no matter how I arranged them. A shame I couldn't take advantage of that powerful shape. Maybe I'll get a chance later on.

I don't like how un-puppet-like this pose is. I want a puppet with its arms and limbs dangling. It's cool that they have weight, and that works for them, but I don't feel they represent the puppet idea very well. Another reason to do a third puppet type - providing proper context. And I should probably make another puppeteer.

Plant elementals and Guillotine doll

 Another puppet/doll. I doodled a few of them and this was the other promising-looking one. It turned out as a bulkier-looking thing. No variants obviously - didn't seem to be much potential for them, though I may try different arm-blades and masks at some point. Maybe play with the joints or give it seams in the wood? That's not a bad idea actually. But maybe later.

The spinal-looking connection between hips and torso reminds me a lot of the safeguard from Blame!, which isn't a bad thing since they were one of my major inspirations for the puppet look. For the record, the others are Naruto ninja puppets, Devil May Cry's early enemies and the character Puppet from the Amiga game Body Blows Galactic. That guy's been stuck in my head for years.

The worn-away paint on the legs and feet was very effective here. Makes it obvious that it's a wooden puppet without too much detail, and makes it seem heavier on its feet than the snickerdolls.

 I think I want to make one or two more kinds of puppet. I have a design for one that's stalled at the linework stage because of a dodgy neck, and I feel like I don't yet have a generic or baseline puppet. The snickerdolls seem a touch too characterful to fill that role at the moment. I want something in ruffle-y clothing, a skirt perhaps and floofy sleeves.

Getting away from dolls but not abandoning wood. Plant elementals. Intended for the witches, though flower-guy would also fit in with the jungle island. I'm glad I've been able to do more with this technique for depicting plant masses. As I've said before, monsters tend to lack superficial details that I can swap about to make variants. Too much of their shape comes from basic structural elements.

Anyway. I have issues with both of them. Starting with the ore tree-like, his pose is weird. I wanted an awkward and not-right pose, but this is a bit too far. I can see an easy alteration that might fix it but I'm leaving it for now.

I drew tree-guy without a head, but he seemed to need something there so I added the apple. I think this was a particularly good idea, since it gives him a sense of identity distinct from a generic tree-man. Perhaps Applechild as a name? Ambiguous whether the apple is the brain or just the prize. I imagine that his kind are something the witches summon from apple pips.

Flower guy's right hip is my favourite feature. Also the uneven "eyes" on the mask. I worried a lot that the flower drew too much attention from his mask/head. I've been staring at the whole, and now I'm wondering if it would look cooler if I removed the head entirely. The pose would be reinterpreted with the flower as the head and the result looks like it will be quirky.

However I did all this thinking after I'd coloured it, so I wasn't going to muck about back at the linework stage. So I'll note the possibility here to come back to one day.

Snickerdolls

Their "official" placeholder name is "blade dolls", but I really wanted to call them snickerdolls. See it's snicker as in Jabberwocky, or "snick" like the sound of scissors. A little more merry in tone, and more suited to the carnival/performance feel. I may yet decide to regress. On that topic, I'd have liked to give the green one blades that were as characterful as the other two, not just wolverine-claws. They're nice and shiny at least.

I changed the background colour for these because I was fed up with doing colour jobs that blended into it. The white lining only does so much.

In case it's not obvious, these are puppets/mannequins/dolls. I tried putting strings on them, but the lines stood out way, way too much. I wanted to try using the whites for strings, but if I start using the white layer for actual content rather than just framing that's a can of worms I'm not sure I want to open. I bet I could some cool things with it, but I'm scared I'll be upping my standards again.  The more I try to talk myself out of it, the more possibilities suggest themselves. I'm almost certainly going to do this at some point. But not here.

I'm happy with the colour detail. Pattern on the head was necessary to draw attention there. A little something elsewhere on each of them to give them that garish circus look. #1's fans came naturally. #2 was a pain in the ass because I kept trying to do her gloves/boots as wrinkled fabric - it looked like leg warmers and mittens. Her linework was a little dodgy in black and white, but the colour makes it work. #3's shiny ball-joints weren't something I had in mind when doing the lines - golden joints on #2 gave me the idea, and giving them some kind of glossy lacquer gave that one both spot colour and some detail.

I'm a little sorry that I didn't put coloured shapes on their chests like the masks, but I deliberately restrained myself. I don't want them too busy, and I wanted the wooden surfaces to be dominating and obvious.

Grimm

More for the university. Librarians. Or possibly teachers (or even students!) with a textbook. They're very tall and with little dynamism. I wondered whether I should give them cats to fill out the frame - both as wizardly familiars and because everyone knows that libraries like to have a pet cat. I may yet.

I apologise for how boring the colouring job is here. I don't dislike these bookmen, but they don't particularly inspire me either. Filler again I suppose.

I'm glad that I was able to get three different book-holding poses. Especially #2's. Since it's really the book that is the focus, I used the simplistic wand technique I described before. Which reminds me - turns out I was wrong about how exciting eyebrows were. One of the woodsmen had them, albeit single lines with no volume.

Maybe if I use the house colour schemes method I'll be able to approach these a bit more vigorously. As is they're really rather mundane. The puppeteers were far more fun. Flamboyant costumes, cute puppet poses and bright colours.

Somehow the colours left #3 looking like Revolver Ocelot from MGS3. The effect is not entirely unpleasant, if not exactly what I had in mind when I did the linework.

These seem too fun to be dismissed as generics, but I don't yet have a proper home for them. i suppose if I had enough ideas i could do a carnival or circus set. I have a juggler I could wheel out, and a jester/fool type would be easy. Lion tamer too maybe? But evil clowns is not a trope that has ever gained any traction with me. Perhaps I'll stay away from anything circus-like and have them - along with the juggler - be street performers as part of a "city" set along with the thugs and thieves. That might work. I'd still want to do a fool though - he could be part of the chivalry/joust set to provide a bit of contrast with all those knights.