Moe Anthropormorphic Tank Character Designs

Questions, skill improvement, and respectful critique involving art assets.
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Nymbryxion
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Moe Anthropormorphic Tank Character Designs

#1 Post by Nymbryxion »

Hi everyone, I'm working on a moe anthropomroprhic WWII tank game project called Armor Blitz and I'm trying to improve my character art. I feel my biggest weakness is to make a more dynamic poses and the color but I can't seem to put my finger on how to improve on the coloring issue while maintaining the cel shade look.

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Sherman

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T-50

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Crusader

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M3 Lee

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Maus

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Hetzer

Any feedback and suggestions on designs and if there is any new techniques I could apply to future characters?

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RotGtIE
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Re: Moe Anthropormorphic Tank Character Designs

#2 Post by RotGtIE »

You're certainly satisfying the conventions of mecha musume. The only thing I can add is my own personal preference which heavily favors the kind of mecha musume who are apparently functional, rather than being only cosmetically mecha.

Using your designs as examples to demonstrate my point, I would classify your Maus as a high-apparent-functionality mecha musume, whereas your Sherman is very low in the apparent-functionality department. Maus is wearing her turret as an arm cannon, her armored plates form her skirt and pauldron, and her mouse-ears are evidently used for either communication or sensory input. Sherman, by contrast, appears to have no interface with her turret, which simply hangs at her side like a purse, and the chassis on her other side doesn't appear to have much functionality, either. She's wearing VOX equipment, but without the Sherman parts strapped to her, it would be hard to tell that she was purposefully designed as a Sherman-based girl by the rest of her equipment - she would just appear to be a radio operative in a WWII or Vietnam-era setting. So, this is just down to my taste, but I personally prefer the kind of mecha musume who, when geared out, appear to be wearing functional power armor which is themed according to the model of military machine they are being designed to emulate.

But that's just me, and I get that a more functional appearance would take away your ability to give all the girls some delicious zettai ryouiki - all of them with the exception of Maus, actually, now that I think about it. It's an almost ubiquitous feature on their designs. Might want to look into other fashion options for mixing it up in future designs. Spats come immediately to mind for sporty, speedy characters - might be a fair choice for any light tanks or scout cars.

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Re: Moe Anthropormorphic Tank Character Designs

#3 Post by Nymbryxion »

Yeah I do agree with the issue between mechanical functionality and aesthetics of the character. Personally I wanted to go the more power armor style but a lot of my partners want me to go the more cute girls direction and feel too much armor takes away from the moe character design. I'll have to play around with it to get a better balance or perhaps mix it with the style of vehicle (such as heavy tanks are more heavy armored and lighter ones just carry a turret gun and a oil tank).

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Re: Moe Anthropormorphic Tank Character Designs

#4 Post by truefaiterman »

Design-wise you seem to be well covered by RotGtIE, who will definetely help you more than I could.

About the colouring, it's actually possible to make a really detailed shading while keeping the cel-shaded look. My advice is:

- Keep the lineart, and make sure you keep it alive with a good variety of thicknesses (you seem to be doing well in that regard).
- This entirely depends on how cel-shaded or realistic you want this, but try to keep a clean palette, with as little gradations as possible in the colouring.
- At the same time, elaborate the most detailed and meticulous shading, almost as if working realism. Just while keeping the palette simple.

You may like Shinkiro's art from Tatsunoko vs Capcom and Marvel vs Capcom 3:

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This is a REALLY extreme version of what I told you (both in the realism AND in the cel-shading), but it may inspire you quite a bit. It may even help you with the poses, which are extremely dynamic (of course, those ARE fighting poses).

With this said, about poses:

-Make sure to convey an attitude (you're doing this really well, I can feel their personality just by how they "move").
-Try and exaggerate some more their movement (for example, rotating just a little T-50's torso towards the "camera" may create more tension, and a more intense pose).
-Use their clothes, and it's wrinkles (more exaggerated wrinkles usually imply more tension, and thus, more movement. Use this specially on joints).
-Be careful with proportions, if you don't keep the character well proportioned, every exaggeration will just look broken (Hetzer seems a little too "flattened" even if it's a more loli-type character, for example).

I hope it's useful, and keep up the good work, I like how the character looks and the idea is interesting.
Artist and voice actor, trying to actually write stuff.

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Nymbryxion
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Re: Moe Anthropormorphic Tank Character Designs

#5 Post by Nymbryxion »

hmm it is using more gradients as combination. I'll play around with it. That said it may be a bit of an issue from a consistency purpose. I also feel my color design is a bit lacking... perhaps I should steer a bit further away from more realistic military colors and have something more colorful.

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