Initial designs for the Robo Samurai helmet...

 After designing the main upper body for the Robo Samurai I then decided to move on to the head which is mainly made up of the helmet and face mask. At this stage the plan was to design each part separately so I chose to start with the helmet as this would give me the overall shape of the head which I could then use to give me an indication of of how big to make the face.

I looked at my Samurai mood boards for reference and inspiration and drew the follow page of initial sketches shown below...


Here I tried to vary as many aspects as I could, starting top left I altered the width and angle of the sides of the helmet as well as the shape and placement of the horns, the shape of the ridge/edge of the helmet above the eyes and the texture of the surface of the helmet.

From this selection of designs I decided to develop the design bottom right and experiment with trying different shaped horns. The results are below...



I'm really happy with the variation in these designs and was intending to use/develop the top-left or top -middle design for my character and move on to working on the face however although I think these are strong drawings they are also quite common and a bit cliche which concerned me. I want to create a strong character that is recognisable as a Samurai however I also want to try and give it my own spin, so baring this in mind and thinking about how I've already decided to replace the legs with a motorbike wheel I thought it might be worth looking at motorcycle helmets for inspiration to see if I could fuse some design aspects with the ones above. So, now I plan to draw up some more helmet designs and work on the face at the same time creating a single unit. I'll share my progress in the next post.


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