Hey guys, I found it quite fun and relaxing to do some more reference sheets, besides them being quite necessary for characters involved in a story, so here's another bunch.
The first is the last main character of the upcoming CBM batch, the host Leomon, which I found slightly easier than Weregarurumon to research to come up with a coherent design. Bandai and Toei can't agree on him, and if I can comprehend the choice of Toei to give him slightly more proportioned hands and feet, it's very weird and off-putting how they decided in the more recent iteration to give him a pinkish body color that extends to his lips like his body is all smooth human skin except the mane. Yuk.
Double yuk considering that it's done because Japanese people have still very racist beauty standards and consider pale skin more appropriate for a heroic warrior.
So I've decided that my Leomon will keep the original orange skintone from the original material and anime, which can be also interpreted as very short fur.
With the second one I decided to stay true to the project with some plot going on: Skyhorn, the Bastoro character, and the military outfit he will be shown wearing in the flashbacks. I liked to lay out some aspects of his background, like the fact that he swore loyalty to Immortal Emperor but his kind can wear their traditional tunic under the uniform.
Another thing that will become a challenge in the future will be to have more characters of the same species on display and give them different facial features so you can tell them apart without recurring relying on colors and hairstyles.
Bastoro is the "basic bitch" type of bull design, the one I can draw from my memory. The other ones will require more creativity.
The last one is a new character, Roual, that I want to use as a model for my animation, which will be huge and I want to splice in several mini loops I will post with some regularity, once I will have advanced enough with the 3D modeling course I've bought.
I don't want to do that in 3D but use a 3D mannequin as a reference, a sort of rotoscope I will use to keep track of the more delicate elements like tattoos and body hair.
3D animation can be more effective, but 2D has still a ton of charm and I'm studying all the shortcuts that classic anime uses to convey movement without drawing too many frames.
Oh yeah, I've realized that this character looked just like a human with tusks so I decided to turn it into an Orcan, which means that a human topped an orc in order to make him. I've also decided that in my world orcs get their green skin from a double layer of dark and yellow pigments like reptiles, so Orcan will skew more towards the yellows and their counterparts, the Hurks (human carrier, orc seeder) more towards blue skin.
I'm having so much fun guys.