Familiar Faces

More or less, anyway. Something I've been doodling in between commissions, ironing out some of those character headcanons of mine. Some have evolved quite a bit, others maybe not so much.

I try not to get too attached to some of ways I've grown used to drawing things. As my skills improve I want to avoid having my character designs lag behind, so I often freely and consciously change some traits I used to think were good ideas at the time but are now just baggage. With most characters I have the basic idea of what they look like in my head, but putting that on paper often isn't as straightforward as one might think. A pro character artist might be able to nail down a character's look in one or two sketches but for me it usually takes some time to find the "right" way to portray a character. That, and I'm always very iterative with pretty much everything else as well. I rarely settle down on a particular design as final.

Some notes:

• Mark's changed a fair bit over time. The shaved head was his only description in GoO and I've sort of built him up from there, originally with a leaner facial profile that's gone a bit back and forth over time. Last Light kind of helped establish a more solid picture of him for me despite not containing a bit of physical description for him (I think).
• Ash I'm pretty happy with as is. As is the case with many of my other interpretations, the changes over time are less in my internal idea of the character but how that idea translates on paper. I always thought Ash's over regulation length hair was an interesting bit of personality that helps conceptualize his overall character as well. I've gone a bit back and forth on how long and how flowing his hair should be, but I think this style works satisfactorily. It's longer than military norm without being impractically long, and the tousled look is more personable than just flowing curls. As an artist one might be tempted to latch onto that one mention of long hair and go overboard with it, but I wanted to find a balance between style and practicality.
  
• I had the scratch patterns in Holly's hair inverted for a while before deciding this look made more sense.
  
• Lucy's been fairly consistent for a while now, sans minor tweaks in details and facial structure. With both her and Tom I've wanted to try and find a balance between fresh-faced youth and professionalism befitting their job as Kurt's attaches. I wish that aspect of their characters got acknowledged and expanded on more, the idea that these two should have a certain air of maturity and authority to them because of their years of training Gamma Company. Over time I've tried to play up the contrast between the two -- not making them opposites per se but still clearly distinct in not just height.
  
• As for Tom, at least I'm getting there if nothing else. I've been further defining his facial profile and making him a bit sharper looking than I used to. I did some quick research to make sure the ribbons on their uniforms weren't too outrageously out of place (though I'm eagerly awaiting for some military buff to come along and educate me on how off the mark they are). While it occurred to me that it's possible the IIIs may not have even been awarded any official medals or decorations because of how secret they were, one could say this is after the war (in my headcanon, Lucy & Tom act as administrative liaisons between the Navy and the new Spartan... thing.)
• Kurt got a fair bit of technical redefinition after my previous attempt at depicting him. Nonetheless, the basic idea of him in my head has stayed more or less the same. It struck me that he probably wouldn't wear too many ribbons on his uniform given his cover, definitely not the ones he earned as an active duty Spartan, so I just ended up giving him my interpretation of the UNSC Logistics Corps patch.
• I'm not a fan of the TFoR animation version of Mendez. Too cool and streetwise, too much facial hair, and far younger looking than I've always pictured him. I've always seen him as grumpier and more hardened looking, even when he was younger. He's never described with a mustache but I've always imagined him as having one, even before his depiction in the Blood Line comics.
• Halsey's Halsey, but with her hairstyle and glasses from the books. I think the bun suits her character better than the Cortana-style hair. I'd imagine this is her somewhere around the middle of the war, maybe in her 40's.
• Jai, Adriana and Mike I chose to depict in their teens for this one. There's not much change from my last portrayal of them aside from some improvement on how I portray expression and hair texture, along with some expected change in hairstyles (my previous depiction of them is supposed to be a decade or two later).

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