Darn it, Hudson, your design is terrible.
- GenreChowderStudios
- Aug 17, 2017
- 2 min read
Ignore the bright green everywhere, I'm flatting right now, and I just had to get this out...
I've brought this up several times before, and I just realized why I hate coloring Hudson Stone.
He has a subpar design.
Hudson is a series of elements put onto a figure, but they don't actually work together as well as they could. It's always confusing, trying to shade him. I don't know what any of the planes on his face are doing. Why? Because they're not built on anything! They're just thrown together like some kind of leftover surprise.
Jay's design works because she IS circles! She can be simplified down from a stylized illustration to a goofily exaggerated cartoon and still look like her because the principle of her design scales!
Sheriff's design works because he has an immediately identifiable body type that works well with his equally immediately identifiable personality type: muscular, chest-out man in body, glasses-wearing stick in the mud in persona. That package can be distilled into a few shapes, a glower, and BOOM! Bob's your uncle.
What the heck is Hudson? What's his basis? What's his main theme? I know he's a laid-back, sociable, and down-to-earth kind of guy mixed with the look an army man gone slightly to seed, but do you know that? Well, I mean, you know now, but would you? No, because nothing about his design communicates that well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, not everyone looks like their personality, even in cartooning, but for these three main characters, having two of them present fairly solid design and one just barely fart past "acceptable" is sad. And it is also a bad. He's dressed like a... something from... an armed militia, so that part kind of comes through, but my God.
I am by no means a fabulous artist, but I am competent. In the hands of a master, Jay and Sheriff could look even better or maybe they are actually bad designs, but in my hands, they at least work well enough to have a driving idea behind their design. And because I'm competent, I can make the mess that is Hudson Stone look amazingly okay. Maybe even slightly alright! But I'm just making it work. I'm not executing a plan. I am just making it work. Maybe that used to be good enough, but right now, that is not acceptable for my standards anymore.
Found my new project next time I get a break.
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