Ooo, I really like Percy. Nice job on the foreshortening and perspective, and his feet look great. Good that you give his chest more definition, but the comic-book-style 'side muscles' seem a little weird. Interesting choice to have his neck set into his body more, it makes more sense, really. Also makes his neck look a little more like Ben's, so it's easier to envision where his head would have been. Can't see the apron from this angle, but I'm sure that's just because his foot is blocking it, and not because it was BURNED and then the ashes thrown into a sewer. ;)
One thing we should probably figure out is how Percy actually takes in sensory information. Obviously his head was built as a decoy; it had eye-looking things and a mouth, but whatever makes his voice is in his chest, not his neck, and anything he's seeing with is somewhere else on his body
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Thank you! Yeah, not sure what to do about the groin area. That foot placement and foreshortening were subconscious (no, really!) to waylay that decision.
I wanted him to look more athletic to emphasize the fact that he's just a body. He looks like a roughly-hewn block of soap in the early strips, and I really don't like it.
Not to be really blunt, but to be really blunt - you're way overthinking it. If we want to resolve the question, "But - how do you SEE, Percy?", he can answer saucily, just like questions about his head - "Omni-directional sonar, of course. The bats taught me." Will altering his design to show the location of his sensory organs add to the story, or is it basically busywork? I like world-building plenty, but it's tiring to map out absolutely everything. We would have no sense of parsimony, no focus to guide the reader's attention, when the intriguing highlights of the plot are what we should lead them to focus on. If we're spending time reworking Percy's chest to know exactly what his eye-nipples look like, that's time we could have spent doing additional character sketches or page scripts. I just realized that sounded harsh; the "eye-nipples" line was meant to make you laugh. I'm not trying to criticize, but this may be another change of course we need to take in this telling of the story. Do you see what I mean?
Two things: we want to know far more about the characters and setting than we tell in the story. Spending time storytelling minute details would be a waste, but there's good reasons why knowing those details helps us.
You're right, some of those details would be pointless, like Ben's favorite color. But we must tackle questions that affect how we tell the story, and we should know the answers to questions that the reader is pretty obviously going to ask.
I think the question of how Percy sees fits the bill for both. People are going to wonder how he can see or even if he can, if he's a Daredevil-esque character that works off other input, or what. We don't need to tell them, but we should know the answer ourselves
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His outer shell could be carbon-fiber reinforced but have a solid covering like the hoods on the cars here. Photoreceptors could be incorporated into the weave while being protected by the hard plastic on the outside.
Such body armor would make him very durable and bullet-resistant; he'd basically have kevlar covering his whole body. This would also mean that he'd be much lighter-weight than if his body were metal, meaning he could be agile and move quickly.
Now we know a lot more about what he'd be like in combat; he's very hard to stop but doesn't have as much mass as a robot made of metal. He'd fight very differently from Kim, who doesn't really have much protection, comparatively.
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I wanted him to look more athletic to emphasize the fact that he's just a body. He looks like a roughly-hewn block of soap in the early strips, and I really don't like it.
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Will altering his design to show the location of his sensory organs add to the story, or is it basically busywork? I like world-building plenty, but it's tiring to map out absolutely everything. We would have no sense of parsimony, no focus to guide the reader's attention, when the intriguing highlights of the plot are what we should lead them to focus on. If we're spending time reworking Percy's chest to know exactly what his eye-nipples look like, that's time we could have spent doing additional character sketches or page scripts.
I just realized that sounded harsh; the "eye-nipples" line was meant to make you laugh. I'm not trying to criticize, but this may be another change of course we need to take in this telling of the story. Do you see what I mean?
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You're right, some of those details would be pointless, like Ben's favorite color. But we must tackle questions that affect how we tell the story, and we should know the answers to questions that the reader is pretty obviously going to ask.
I think the question of how Percy sees fits the bill for both. People are going to wonder how he can see or even if he can, if he's a Daredevil-esque character that works off other input, or what. We don't need to tell them, but we should know the answer ourselves ( ... )
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http://www.deftracing.com/carbon_fiber_hoods/color_carbon_fiber_hood_color_cf.htm
His outer shell could be carbon-fiber reinforced but have a solid covering like the hoods on the cars here. Photoreceptors could be incorporated into the weave while being protected by the hard plastic on the outside.
Such body armor would make him very durable and bullet-resistant; he'd basically have kevlar covering his whole body. This would also mean that he'd be much lighter-weight than if his body were metal, meaning he could be agile and move quickly.
Now we know a lot more about what he'd be like in combat; he's very hard to stop but doesn't have as much mass as a robot made of metal. He'd fight very differently from Kim, who doesn't really have much protection, comparatively.
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