My attempt at drawing Daleks

[Ilya Muromets]

The cleaned up sketches of my attempt at drawing Daleks from the Doctor Who franchise. I drew a new series Dalek (right) along with one of my favorite classic series designs, a Special Weapons Dalek (left). I used Googled pics as references, but since I didn't bother printing said pics out I had to keep jumping back and forth from the computer and the table where I was doing my sketching. As a consequence, the designs and proportions may be off. In fact, I think I really screwed up the Special Weapons Dalek.

Also, those hemispheres on their skirts are extremely hard to get right. Well, for me anyway since I suck at drawing spheroids freehand. In fact, I'm pretty sure the hemispheres are the worst part of the sketches.

[Themightytom]

The foreshortening of the weapon on the one on the left looks a little flat, you might want to consider using different line weights or stippling to ad some depth.

They look pretty good though!

[Feil]

It might help you to lay out your perspective points and lightly draw some guidelines before beginning. All your mistakes are errors in perspective or measurement - which is understandable, given that you are drawing complex geometric objects, which are a real pain to get right. A few magic people have the innate ability to draw 3d geometry freehand, but the rest of us need to rely on guidelines, straight edges, measurement, and calculation. When you put in those spheres, for instance, you should freehand the first one until you're satisfied with it, then go in with a ruler and draw three straight lines: one for the left edge, one for the right edge, one for the center. Then draw a dot at the start of the first one, a dot at the end of the first one, a dot at the beginning of the second one, and so on, all the way down the center line. Once you have your guides in place, you can freehand the curvature.

[TheMuffinKing]

I'll echo what the others have said, and ad in a cool looking Dalek for good measure! I like them!

[Ford Prefect]

Get that goddamn mutant off the page. Goddamn.

[Ilya Muromets]

More cleaned up sketches of Daleks. This time, I chose to go with some classic designs. The one on the left is a clawed variant of the Dalek design seen in the AU movies starring Peter Cushing as a human Dr. Who (movies I've admittedly never seen, but I like the look of movie Daleks for some reason). The Dalek on the left is the Dalek Supreme from the classic Planet of the Daleks serial which, if the Doc Who Wiki is to be believed, was actually a modified movie Dalek prop. I drew them so it'd look like the Dalek Supreme is pointing at something elevated while the movie Dalek awaits instructions.

Unlike my previous Dalek pics, where (as noted by the previous posters) I half-assed the perspective, I paid more attention to perspective here. Also, I put a little more effort into the skirt hemispheres. Although, I still think I fudged the foreshortening of the Dalek Supreme's "plunger" arm. Still, these guys were fun to draw. Especially since they don't have the insane amount of detail the new series Daleks have.

[Feil]

I'm assuming you want criticism - if you don't, let me know and I'll duly shut up.

A note - I've only watched a few episodes that had Daleks in them, so some criticism may be a result of incorrectly interpreting the things that look odd in correct Dalek geometry as mistakes.

Better, but still problematic.

Issues for left Dalek only:
top and bottom half of the alien have different apparent verticality (shown in purple and green)

Top and bottom of the front of the bottom coaster piece diverge in stead of converging on the left hand vanishing point (shown in green)

Stacked concentric parallel rings on a radially symmetric solid do not display parallelism: the points at which they are parallel are not on the line of symmetry (shown in red)

[Havok]

Get that goddamn mutant off the page. Goddamn.

You lost me...

[Ilya Muromets]

I'm assuming you want criticism - if you don't, let me know and I'll duly shut up.

A note - I've only watched a few episodes that had Daleks in them, so some criticism may be a result of incorrectly interpreting the things that look odd in correct Dalek geometry as mistakes.

Better, but still problematic.

Issues for left Dalek only:
top and bottom half of the alien have different apparent verticality (shown in purple and green)

No, I don't mind criticism at all. In fact, they're welcome since I'm still grappling with perspective.

On the different apparent verticality, though, I think that's due top the geometry of the Daleks. The fronts of their skirts usually angle away from the centerline greater than their backs. Here's a side view of a movie Dalek render.



This can make them look bent when see from an angle. Here's a quick example. It's not exactly the same angle as my pic, but I think it illustrates the point.

Top and bottom of the front of the bottom coaster piece diverge in stead of converging on the left hand vanishing point (shown in green)

Stacked concentric parallel rings on a radially symmetric solid do not display parallelism: the points at which they are parallel are not on the line of symmetry (shown in red)

As for these issues, though, I likely did screw them up.

[Ford Prefect]

Get that goddamn mutant off the page. Goddamn.

You lost me...

It's a joke based on the normal Daleks' opinion of the Special Weapons Dalek. They even call it 'the abomination', if I recall Rememberance of the Daleks correctly.

[Ilya Muromets]

While I got the joke, Ford, I only now just noticed that you used mutant instead of abomination or something to the same effect. This makes it funnier since pretty much all Daleks' biological components consist of some horribly mutated flesh lump. They're ALL mutants, which makes their discrimination of the SWD for being one ironic.