Welcome to the forums and the critique section specifically.
That's great! I can definitely help you with that. It looks like you put a lot of work into this character adding and removing elements of their design.
Okay that is pretty radical – and probably the most important part of how he solves his problems with destruction/creation green lantern style....ish – where he can make almost anything he needs for a situation.
So for a dark anti hero he has a lot of yellow – and in black and white that translates to white. And with the ratio of dark values to light ones it rather translates to good if we are designing with mood for the char.
All of this is a great place to get our brain cells pumping for character generation– so lets get started.
GENERAL CRITIQUE
Overall I can see this is an important character to you and you have put a lot of work into the design. So lets set him – as an idea – aside for one moment, and look at him with the intent that you originally laid down.
Make sure to take everything I say with a grain of salt as no two persons Ideas are alike and design by committee can lead to some real trash. So take what you want from this critique and leave what you don't.
First thing – When I saw this character at a glance after reading your description – I immediately forgot what you said and just thought – “...that's Scorpion... from Mortal Kombat.”
And if I did that, then I bet a lot of other people will do that.
When a person's brain does that – generalizes – it makes all the decisions for them and keeps them from looking at further details. That is a feature of our humanity to let us save brain power and survive – we are shape and color oriented creatures first. Detail oriented second
That being said – I've helped enough people to look closer at what artists are trying to imply with the detail supplied to their drawings and designs to get what the person was trying to do. Because a lot of love goes into the details. But sweet sweet love is not good design.
I see your guys' cool lava arms, (which we will get back to later) His emote page, his fire emblem and sick helmet. Not to mention his fantastic cape drip. Looks great.
CHARACTER DESIGN
However – we need to maybe get away from Lava Scorpion, and get closer to your intent that you set out for yourself. “Any way to make him more iconic.” Yes absolutely. But to make it "stand out" iconic, we cannot be mistaken for another intellectual properties' iconography. Your dude probably has his own sense of justice or personal code.
dark,
anti-hero,
knight,
Lava-mancer
sorcerer/superhero,
Knights have 'knightly' weapons, and armor. Evil ones have darker armor maybe, or lava infused weapons. Rogue Knights could be someone who left oppressive order to seek their own path. Giving some hidden motivation. Knights also ruled through emblems and symbology. A weakness could be that since he can spawn his own weapons or material – it takes more energy and concentration to make something more permanent. He looks like a martial artist, but I don't get “lava mancer” from your design.
Now sorcerers can use area of effect spells, funnel rooms full of enemies with lava or obsidian, summon lava minions and cast these spells without intensive rituals.
I like to use the DND alignment system to categorize my characters into iconic and digestible shapes. Your character best fits the Chaotic Neutral status I think. The free spirit – value personal freedom above all and can be unpredictable. They act based on whim and fancy, without regard for rules or moral codes.
If we combine lava-mancer and knight, and sorcerer – then just like when we design character shapes based off of ratios – big little or small – we can design their character type like that. Knight, Lava mancer, Sorcerer, is going to look significantly different than a – Sorcerer, Lava-Mancer, Knight AS WELL AS effect their play style or distinct characteristic design, and applicable traits. Just like the athletes of the Olympics looking different.
Think Big Medium Small for almost every aspect of the design that you are going to apply. Shape – Value – and Color. And when we look at iconic designs – we get simplicity. So lets simplify the process, the character – and add some of your flair from your design into the mix so its not entirely moot.
Think about this too– comics, especially manga – utilized their application and design for tighter deadlines. But if you don't have deadlines then you don't have to adhere to the style choices that manga artists of the past did. You have more time to draw – but I bet the 100th time you have to draw that helmet, or arms and cape and helmet combo you might be sick of it. So you might be relieved if you went with more iconic design. Your design has a lot of busy areas and we need some areas to be calm and empty of information, so we make the viewers look at the focal points, and easily identify them – like a chest emblem, head or a few small details and points of interest along the way.
So how and what the heck do we simplify to get more iconic bad guy? Great question me
Time to stop talking and put the theory to process.
Open the picture in a new tab to see full image.
Sorry I dont have time to talk about colors and stuff that takes a lot of time and examples to explain.
This is not a redesign of your character, but an attempt to "show a man how to fish he'll eat the rest of his life." situation. Take what you like from this and apply it to your character.
Keep working hard. Love the passion, love the effort. Great stuff. Keep lurking, like some posts -- means a lot to the artists around here. Start a blog and join the slog.
Laters
