Character Design: Toothless

Today was our first Character Design class, we were each given a character and then asked to make changes to it (ex. more realistic, more cartoon-like, changing its basic shapes). I was given Toothless from 'How to Train Your Dragon'. It probably would have been 'easier' to make Toothless more cartoon-like with more basic shapes, however I decided to challenge myself and try to make him look slightly more realistic. I shrunk his eyes and made his wings larger so they could carry his weight. Unfortunately, the image showed toothless with most of his body covered in shadow so I had to imagine what his chest, wings, and parts of his legs would look like. I'm unsure if it looks awkward or not, it's not perfect but I thought it was a good start.

For the next exercise, I decided to give Toothless more triangular shapes to make him look more sinister and evil. I made two attempts at this, I think the second one is much more successful than the first. The first one I stayed relatively close to the picture, only making minor changes and I also added the same shadows that were in the original image but I feel it covers up too much of the dragon's body. However, my second drawing I feel looks much more interesting, evil-looking and cat-like.

Version #1

Version #2