Cartoon Warriors

[vlad_flyzzz]

Hello, everybody!

I'm working on an animation project that focuses on the travels of a handful of vikings from the Byzantine Varangian Guard as they make their way across the world and finally end up in Japan.

The animation is supposed to be funny and anachronistic.

The visual style is extremely cartoony (with mostly 2D painted backdrops).

The fight scenes will be incredibly realistic and gory in order to create a stark contrast with the cutesy-cartoon style.

Below are a few renders of some of the character concepts I've done so far.

The cartoon / vector look is a must, and since I'll be rendering the animation on a single and rather outdated machine, I tried to keep the complex shaders to a minimum and find a fast, easy to render solution.

Would love some feedback on the visual style and character design.


Japanese Ashigaru

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/2055/ashigaru.jpg


Samurai

http://img863.imageshack.us/img863/1382/samurait.jpg



Ninja

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/2883/ninjakn.jpg



Huscarl Erik

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/7376/huscarli.jpg




Viking Olaf

http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/2029/vikingx.jpg



Gothic knight

http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/8214/gothicknight.jpg




English BIllman

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3079/billman.jpg

[poopipe]

hard specular values do not work with toon shading - this is fact rather than opinion ;)