With all of my characters now in some stage of development, I wanted to start development on another prop design, this time a spear for my main character to use. I decided to give my main character a spear as I thought it would be a good weapon to reflect his defensive nature, a weapon that doesn't particularly need to be used in an aggressive way, but for holding enemies and potential assailants back.
To start this process, I iterated on four blade designs. Using reference, I sketched out four potential ideas, based on reference of real spears from the 19th century, that in themselves wouldn't give of an overly aggressive feeling (by avoiding longer, thinner blades or more aggressive tapers).
Once I had this, I wanted to explore potential decorations or etchings on the blade as my reference had shown a lot of the weapons and tools were engraved with some sort of designs. The design I wanted to reflect was a repetition of the diamond motifs I had already developed for my main character so that the weapon would be an extension of his design.
Initially with these designs, I struggled to find a balanced design, my first few either looked too simple or out of place with the rest of the blade and lacked the flow I was looking for. The design I ended up moving forward with, and the one I thought was most successful, was the 8th design as I thought this design flowed nicely with the rest of the blade, supporting its taper while also creating a rhythm with the two prongs that stuck out beneath the blade.
After these iterations, I could move on to the rest of the spear. I wanted to explore different values and colour here that would work well together while also not taking too much focus away from the main points of focus. In the end, the main points of focus I created were the blade, the area where the spear would primarily be gripped, and the opposite end of the spear, where I had chosen to place a carving of a buffalo (to reflect my main characters headdress design as well as his overall personality of a supporting, defensive leader).
One struggle I had with my initial iterations here was having a degree of complexity as they looked quite basic (especially for a main character). After consulting my peers, and more reference, I explored some ideas of accessories or extra, attached elements to the spear (starting with the buffalo carving 3rd from the bottom). I felt this exploration led me to more successful and interesting design.
At the end of this process so far, the last thing I want to iterate through design wise is the decorative, beaded grip. As the picture shows below, I intend to explore this design in an orthographic view to aid in its use in a 3D workflow. The thought process for this will be quite similar to the carving iterations I did for the spears blade, namely to create a balanced design that flowed nicely with the rest of the spear and reflected the same shape language I have already developed for my character/s.
