Bear Necessities

My male character model was stressing me out, so I thought I'd get the bear out of the way as a) I knew it would be easier, and b) I actually enjoy modelling anything that isn't human. It needs a rig still but for a days work, meet: the bear.





It's not looking too fearsome at the moment but I put that down to it's stance. And besides, who said it had to be fearsome, the bear's the victim here!

Character Inspiration - Girl

I've always had an idea of what direction I wanted my male protagonist to go in, design wise - but the girl has been a bit of a grey area. I started collecting together some images that I found inspiring and threw together this quick board: (I numbered groups of pictures to discuss below..)

1. These are looking at the costume, I love the wrap around garment that these 2 girls are wearing, and think I could really take something from these. Thinking about the girl character, I hadn't really thought on a set age for her as of yet - I don't think she should be too young, as she needs a level of maturity in order to engage with the bear; at the same time she shouldn't be too old i.e. late teens as that comes with an arrogance and a wishing to disassociate with parents, and so it might be unbelievable that the girl would want to follow her dad out on a hunt. I think a middle grounds of between 12 - 14 would be realistic. With this in mind she would be starting to develop a bit more of a curved figure which would lend itself nicely to these garment ideas - as opposed to having a draped material like those seen in the next set of images, which would completely cover her figure.

2. Taken from the film 10,000BC, I just really like this girls style, there's a lot of embellishment which dates the scenes nicely, and the materials used are a lot more realistic than the cliché leopard print number that cave-people are sometimes adorned in. Although as mentioned before I wouldn't like to make anything too intrusive to the girl's shape, I think there are still some elements of design here that I could borrow. I really like the idea of the dreaded hair as well, as it seems plausible that hair would naturally develop into this kind of matted style.

3. Which leads us on to the last set of images. The guys hair here is the more typical style of dreaded hair - I really like the rustic feel to it, along with the beads and the way it's tied, I think it's a great aesthetic. However for the girl, I felt perhaps something a bit shorter might be more suitable - to add to a sense of youth and inexperience. I love Brea Grant's hair in the other image here.. she looks hot! There's a great kind of messy.. but still considered style going on; it's too thought out to work on a guy, but on her it looks great, and adds a cute factor to her. I'll definitely play with these ideas.

Character Thoughts...

Ok it took me bloody ages to get this picture, and once I'd found it.. it wasn't what I'd remembered it being. Never-the-less, here goes, I was thinking about my main character today and exactly how I want him to come across. The guys gonna be a tank, a huge and powerful upper body with smaller scaled legs. So he looks almost like one of those triangle guys you see coming out of the gym who work purely on their triceps and chest. His legs will still be muscular from chasing the animals that he hunts - but just not as much, really he's such a good hunter that there's not much of a chase involved. He'll stand tall, confident, with an arrogance about him.


I imagined him being almost golem/troll like (as illustrated above, from the Discworld animated series, "Soul Music") and being as he's from the stone age, I wanted him to have this almost 'stone like' quality about him, like he'd been carved from the rock itself. Perhaps a greyish tint to his skin? I don't know, we'll come to that later. But I do like the idea of him having a chiselled appearance, not only in his facial structure but an overall sharp edged outline. I'll have a play with some designs of my own..