PvZ REBOOT: Facepalm Tree and My Proportions

As I’d had the idea to create a literal Facepalm tree for my Plants vs Zombies REBOOT project ( seen here and here), I’d sketched one out quickly last spring. Lots of dramatic life events took place and kept me from working on it further and it was shelved. However, I decided to resume work on it and was going to just do a drawing of the tree in the same fashion as the Chomper, Pea Shooter and Sunflower. Then, I had this wonderful idea of doing a fully realized scene with the three plants I’d redesigned, the Facepalm, and of course some aquatic zombies out there in the water somewhere (not designed yet). The above left image was just an initial “thumb” if you will to start generating ideas. Out on the water will likely be a bone ship of some sort with zombies in floaties and on porpoises in the water.

Also, I’ve begun reading Figure Drawing For All It’s Worth by Andrew Loomis as a bit of refresher and to simply generate more ideas for my work as it’s been literally years since my last bent of figure drawing practice and life drawing classes. Part of this of course includes Loomis’ “ideal proportions” for the human body. In order to better apply this knowledge I used my own most accessible reference material – myself – and applied some of the basic proportions as seen above.

Loomis’ “ideal proportions” for women include:

• 8 heads tall in heels
• 2 heads across at the shoulders
• 1 head across at the waist
• 1.5 heads across at the hips

I am shorter and thicker in the midsection than his “ideal” but am not all that far off really, which is nifty. But what this means is that now that I have these proportions for myself in my head, should I practice figure drawing using self-portraiture I will have these measurements available from a literal cut and paste in Photoshop. This won’t be of immediate use as I have so many projects I’m in the midst of presently, but it is a good bit of reference for the future.

I also also scrapped the first round of base color I applied to The Old Man, and performed a bit of Lasso surgery on his face after flipping the canvas horizontally in Photoshop as he was a bit too angular. The result is the above adjusted base color (first image) with the intention of the line work going away as I continue to build the Old Man up. Present state of the Old Man is as on the right (second image).