So I tried an impossible art task recently, and I'd like to think I didn't totally fail, so here's my result. Feel free to praise or knock it as you wish. Ignore the text, though, please.

My goal was to draw a female protagonist that was 1) "racially neutral" (not really, but I didn't want people to say "hey, she's white" or "hey, she's Asian") and 2) looked "almost boring" -- neither hot nor ugly. I was lazy and scanned the two pictures in one scan, and one of them is crooked, but oh well. The head was a redesign of a previous sketch, and my attempt to nail down mostly #1 (though making her face rounder seemed to help with #2) and the rough sketch of the body was my attempt to tackle #2, as well as to get an idea of an outfit she'd wear.

Well, Geb has my feedback I'm to lazy to rehash.

Geb also made me draw this.
crooked glasses are the new 'In' >_>

Well, you definitely made her look more Asian, and she might look less boring too, which in this case is bad... >.>

Regardless, thanks for your rendition, Phantom Seraph!

Comments from anyone else?

ASIAN!

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

Uh-oh, I think Phantom-Seraph's verison of my character has seduced Ruthven...

I'd say you succeeded at #1 due to a lack of real detail.

Will there be more? I'd like to see it progress.

Probably. I'm trying to think of more outfits, and I'd like to have some more "finished" stuff (not really finished, but moreso than this), but it'll probably be a while yet. I may, however, do some other characters for the story sooner. We'll see.

While it's far from perfect, I decided to scan character sketch #2, which was surprisingly difficult.

The only official name she has right now is "X" which, yes, is showing of her character, or lack-there-of. She's meant to be something of a Mary Sue type, a cookie-cutter perfectly beautiful bad-*** (though not necessarily bad-*** as much as just "powerful") who is "16...or 26 years old." While part of the main cast of 5 protagonist-types in my story, X will serve as something of an antithesis for Yulee -- she'll be "a fourth of a foot taller" and definitely be a chatterbox (unwittingly about how great she is, a "prinecss" type).

I took a lot of the same things I used to try and define Yulee's appearance and, instead of subverting those "beautiful" attributes, I embraced them -- thinner face, waist, and figure in general, larger head, eyes and bust, smaller nose, longer legs, a 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio (well, I only took that so much into account for the sketch), etc. I tried to make her pseudo-young too, with the larger head and lower facial features.

However, my main goal was designing her outfit -- a form-fitting, revealing two-piece bodysuit underneath a transparent, flowy shirt and pants. Not unlike River (*coughMarySuecough*), X will be the subject of some experiment, so her outfit is allowed to have that gratuitous high-tech underwear and hospital gown look.

Again, let me know your thoughts, and if you feel so inspired, draw a version of your own.

A friend, who goes by "The Dragon Girl" from a community based around a webcomic called Gaming Guardians, took a quick stab at a rough sketch of her own based off the last sketch I posted. Even this is far superior-looking than my own attempt, hence why I'm posting it here.

Another version of X, drawn by Phantom Seraph after I told him to draw it...:ninja: His browser was acting up, hence why I'm posting it.

I like.

Though, phantom, the legs look a little.. scrawny.

So my sketch of X was bothering me for some time, especially after the superior sketches I posted after, and I stumbled across a picture of a model online, so I used her torso as a basis for my revision, and while it still lacks the depth/motion (since the model was standing perfectly straight forward and I feared messing it up), I think it turned out very well. I may go back and shade/color/etc. this, but for now, I'm quite happy. Sketch of character #3 to come soon.

Character #3! Kamil Kazimir Karl, Codename: Zero.

He's going to be the stereotypical anti-hero bad-*** bad guy who "sort of turns good/joins your party" type. He's something of a poster boy for the nation of Axistanya (all of America's past and present enemies all rolled up into one giant X that runs from Russia to Iraq to Germany to North Korea ). In this, he's meant to look like something of a mix of "Eastern world" ethnicities, though I was only so successful at that, and I tacked on a long, pointed nose to try and make him look more "evil" and yet I've seemed to retain some level of attractiveness in his face, which isn't bad.

As for outfits, I had two in mind. The one I scratched in this sketch is a white, Middle-Eastern-ish head-dress and shawl-thing over a dark, "terrorist" outfit (black, and/or brown, grey and greens). It's meant to go with the America's enemy-shtick I talked about before. The other outfit is something more "European suave" -- black, button-down dress shirt and black pants.

As always, comments, suggestions, and contributions of your own in the art dept. are welcomed.

Character #4: William Die, or as his hero name goes, Will Die

This character will not be unlike Geb of NeS fame, in that Will will be a professional hero with a blue-collar feel -- something of a half-cop, half-plumber style. He's part of the Heroes Union and is out to make a name for himself, following in the footsteps of his father and his father's father and so on who all lived up to their name. He's got a fairly strong Mid-West lower-middle class morality -- there's good and bad, and it takes hard work to do the right thing. A good guy, if a bit rough.

Physically, he's going to be the tallest and largest of the main 5 characters -- probably ~6'0" with a questionably fit build (I probably gave him just a slight bit more of a pronounced stomach than intended -- he's meant to be not-muscular and not-fat and not-a-stick). I felt he should have some sort of facial hair, so I fashioned something of a circle beard, with a straighter moustache and the rest above the chin... it seems fine here, but it might not in other renditions. Ideally, his outfit is supposed to be something of a blend between this and this.

As always, comments, suggestions, and your own renditions are more than welcomed.

Looking good! Some of the anatomy doesnt look right (arms and such) but its nice!

I like his name too

Will Die is by far my favorite.

Character #5 -- Vincent Allard

You know how, when a story has a prominent child role in it, that child tends to talk, think, and/or act a lot more complex than a child that age usually acts? That's this kid. He's particularly good with logic in a variety of applications. It's debatable whether he'd be the kid every overlord should have to check over their plans of world domination with or not as suggested by the Evil Overlord List, but he could likely hack into their highly-encrypted supercomputers all the same. His intelligence is meant to act as something of a foil to Yulee's more humanities-based intelligence (as none of the other 3 are meant to be as much of "thinkers" as Yulee).

Physically, there's not much interesting here. I think I've managed to capture both "boring book-smart" and "stereotypical kid" with the hair being flat at the top and more messy at the sides/tips, though that'll only work in conjunction with the proper outfits and personality. As far as outfit, I wanted something predominantly gray, but also with a warm-colored, horizontal stripe of some sort. The kids I can think of (Charlie Brown, Calvin and Hobbes, etc.) seem to wear warm-colored shirts with horizontal stripes. I don't know if this particular style is what I'm going for, but it seems a place to start.

I think the blend of "boring/smart" and "stereotypical kid" will come across better when I figure out how to blend a mix of past, present and "future" styles into one outfit -- the kid is first met in his home town of Levart Emit, a remote French village that is isolated in its own sort of temporal bubble, where its past, present and future residents have intermingled in distinct-yet-"unchanging" styles.

As always, comments, suggestions, and renditions of your own are more than welcomed. I may draw some of the prominent bad guys in this story next, but more than likely I won't. There's still a lot more important things I should figure out and do...like write the story. We'll see, though -- I may productively procrastinate s'more yet.

Yeah, sure. "Stumbled".

The kids cool, but his body is so boxy. I suggest redo everything except his head

Haha, it's actually pretty true -- I visit another site that has a bunch of random pictures, some normal and some NSFW or offensive, and some have links. One of them was a link to some online store like Victoria's Secret, where they actually had a flash thing of 3 different models that you could chose and see them walk in their different products. I found the more fluid, 3-D aspect (yet still "model" and not a random video) helpful.

Also, mb: thanks! I'm too lazy to go redo-ing anything now, but should I get super-inspired for a new outfit, or should someone else inspire me through their own renditions, I may go back and attempt to make him less blocky. We'll see.

Glass eye, lol

Uberslug: Huh?

Another rendition done of Karl a.k.a. Zero (drawn by someone else). The outfit looks way better!

I don't know, I was rather attached to the "serenity: operative" look from the last version

I prefer simplicity myself, which can be a problem sometimes. I think I agree with you, at least in that an attempt to combine mine and Phantom's would probably be better.

If I am going to do any more character sketches for my project anytime soon, here's some of the characters you could expect:

• The agent (plays the Navi role for Yulee from the start)
• Yulee's boss
• Zero's #1 (and other associates)
• giant monster design like Cthulhu or Godzilla (it's meant to be too big to ever be "seen on camera")
• Napoleon Bonaparte clone (one that time-travels, of course )
• Don a.k.a. Tune-man (Poseidon)
• a "glitch witch"

If any of you want to take a stab at any of these and/or just curious about them and/or really want me to try tackling one or more of them, let me know and I'll do what I can to help you out or reply or attempt the request or what-have-you.