Enter stage two: Sketching in class. Ehehehehe…. A lot of my notebooks’ margins are filled with half-inch-tall sketches. Not paying attention in class aside, these are extremely good for gathering your thoughts.
In this example, you can see the thought progression. These are really the only sketches I did for this set of armor, since I came up with an idea that I liked so quickly.
At this point, I could have sat down and painted some more off of these sketches, but I wanted something bigger and better drawn to work off of. So, I pulled out an actual sketchbook (le gasp!) and drew a character design.
I made notes, as you can see, on points that I still wasn’t sure on, as well as thoughts on the texture and such. It’s not set in stone yet, but it’s much more solid than it was when I started.
As I said before, this is just how I plan my skins. If you’re having trouble organizing your thoughts, you can give it a try. But it’s certainly not a guide that says that it’s the only way to go. For a most basic example, if you’re just planning to recolor some armor…don’t do this. Please. You’ll make me worry about your sanity. If you like to keep ideas in your head, by all means do that. This is just a few suggestions to help you get organized, or to come up with ideas.
To be continued in Guide #2: Painting, or “You really didn’t need your eyes, anyway.”