Karma Chameleon: Start to Finish

I took my very first Skillshare class recently. I recommend it for its breadth of courses, good teachers, community feedback and low cost. This particular course was taught by Charlie Bowater, a talented concept artist with a very charming British accent. What follows was my progress for the month:

Karma Chameleon

Updated Fri, Nov 22nd 2013

Greetings and salutations beautiful peeps!

This is my first Skillshare class and I'm really blown away and humbled by the talent here. As someone who's always loved character design and dabbled in it, I relish the chance to be able to delve into it more seriously.

My main theme here concerns an ancient civiliization that combines animal spirits and a synthesis of Mayan, Chinese and Japanese mythology. The characters here are all following paths that lead to the same destination, but have different motivations for getting there. The world they live in is out of harmony and it's reflected in the weapons, magic and strengths/weaknesses they possess.

Here is my first round of thumbnails. It's probably more detailed than it needs to be, but I love erasing just as much as I love laying down brushstrokes. I would like to do another round when I have a breather, then onwards to the selection process! I welome any comments and feedback meanwhile.

10-21-13
As promised, here is my second round of thumbnails from the same universe. I feel like it took a slightly different direction, perhaps more sword n' sorcery, but I still wanted to have this frailty and subjugation aspect of it that these characters are trying to break free from.

10-31-13
Happy Halloween everyone! I feel like this is the perfect community to share our little monsters with :) Here are the choices I went with for refinement. Thank you everyone for weighing in. With so many beautiful projects here, I'm appreciate any time you give me and will do the same for you.

I think I mainly went for these puppies because they have the most opportunity for something dynamic, strange yet familiar all at once. I'm now vascillating between the bookend characters. What do you think?

11/4/13
I definitely made some choices here with the Variation stage. Hopefully, one of them jives more than the others. Influence wise, I think the classic, beautiful Thai stylings of the Mandarin Spawn action figurefrom the late 90's came through for the middle figure. For the gender swap, I was channeling some kind of anime couture, or perhaps a more down to earth Bayonetta.

11/21
Due to some great community encouragement and feedback, I finally have this finished character to show. In the end, he comes out to be both an angel and demon. I decided to meld attributes from the first two variations that seem to resonate best with the character in terms of gesture, clothing and silhouette. I hope I made good choices!
I also included some closeup detail on the face for you to see as well.

Thank you all once again for the great critiques and helping me with the forward momentum. I hope to do more of these and continue to share progress with you. I look forward to seeing all your great works as well!