Spearheaded Fool

 FOREWORD

 

Last April, I hosted a poll in which I asked AA members to vote on which selected Foolish Hero I should draw. The original poll was actually surprisingly balanced, with Gourry of The Slayers tied with Motoyasu of The Rising of the Shield Hero. In the tie breaker, Motoyasu won by a landslide.

 

 

I meant to get this finished last April, but it fell wayside to other priorities. However, I did get it done. So here we go!

 

ABOUT THE CHARACTER

 

Motoyasu was chosen an option for the April Fools poll as he is an egotistical leader who can't recognize the manipulative nature of Myne / Malty. This is an unpopular opinion, but I think the narrative is too harsh towards him.

 

I actually appreciate that this series had a hero character that has a chivalrous "women can do no wrong" attitude. It's an old fashioned idea that needs confronted if we aspire for equality between the sexes. I'm for him being slow to recognize that Myne / Malty is not the innocent maiden she claims to be, and has emotionally manipulated him and the other members of his traveling party, not to mention what she did to Naofumi. But going so far as to make him a lolicon creep in the series, a "polyamorous" loverboy in his past life, and the effects of him being cursed later on in series, really strikes me as a tasteless way to vilify him.

 

Still, I'm interested in how he develops as a character. I hope that in the end, he comes to understand that women are human, capable of cruelty, and that he acknowledges that his own actions can be harmful, even if he intended to do good. I think he has the potential to be a true hero, his hearts in the right place, he just needs to improve his emotional intelligence.

 

MY PROCESS

 

The first step is to find reference and use it as a guide to get the proportions and pose right. I was able to find quite a bit of good "model posing with staff" stock images on DeviantART before it became Eclipse (I already miss the old dA). Though, since I've been focusing on portraits, it's not really dynamic.

 

 

As with most of my previous "What should I draw" pieces, I again am using Bristol board. To fill in the base color I'm using chalk pastels.

 

 

I then overlay it with color pencils, which provide vivid colors and more control for details.

 

 

With him being a current anime character, his design has many details. If anything, what I hope to take away from this is practice in symmetry. Hopefully, with more practice and better draftsmanship, I'll be able to better recreate symmetrical details that takes account spatial differences.

 

 

And there we are. A portrait of the foolish Spear Hero, Motoyasu.

 

 

Personally, I'm not too happy with the final result. It's a simple portrait, but it's a lot more archaic than I feel it should be.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

Feel free to leave criticism.