Sketches for Action Figures

I have a couple simple drawings done so far of two of my characters.

Yes, they are boring and naked, but I have a good reason... So that I can turn them into armatures to make action figures! (Also known as posable dolls...) My hope is that once I have posable sculptures of my key characters it will be easier to draw the fun images with foreshortening and such. They just don't make those wooden drawing armatures in goblin proportions!

Plus I get to sew them little outfits, which sounds like fun now before I try it...

I'm going to try making them from paperclay, because I hear good things about it and it's often fun to try something new. More on that later.

Trouble with simplification

I'm having difficulty with my story. Not with writing it, that is coming along swimmingly. It is a mixture of science fiction, fantasy, realism, and cheese. Hopefully it won't suck, but writing it is fun. It works for Simon R. Green!

The difficulty oddly enough is in the drawing. Most of my work is photo-realistic, I obsess over the tinniest of details. Which is fine on a painting I can take my time with and intend to display in my living room until I die... But if I take that long on each panel of my comic it will take a very long time to tell the story I already have written, and who wants to wait a month for the next panel of an online comic?

Stylizing and simplification come difficult to me, so I find myself looking at other comics and cartoons for inspiration. That worries me too, because I don't want to copy someone else's work...

I had to stylize my little fairydragon ear cuffs to make them faster so that the price could be lower, and it took me years to really be happy with them. But I am now, and it occurs to me that the way I did that was not by working from my drawings, which were far too complex, but by manipulating polymer clay. I'm not having trouble with the fairydragon sketches, just the hominid characters... So I think I'm going to put down my drawing tablet, and my pencil and paper, and start sketching the characters with polymer. I won't be doing the comic in polymer, but perhaps my character sketches will be able to find the right mix of simplification and personal style, which I can then transfer to 2D.

I'll add photos if they don't come out terrible...