Tinker Knight

First appearance: Shovel Knight (2014)

Tinker Knight from ”Shovel Knight”. He is one of the eight knights of "The Order of No Quarter", and constructs gadgets from inside his Clockwork Tower. This knight is the smallest of the bunch, and a weak fighter, but a brilliant mechanical engineer who builds his own contraptions to keep intruders out of his lair. His accessory of choice is his characteristic wrench, every mech-head’s best friend.

In terms of designs, Tinker Knight’s is probably my least favourite out of the knights, but he makes up for it with his amusing and intellectual character. It’s very charming how he’s a technobabbling gadgeteer who also happens to be rather unskilled in combat, and a complete klutz too. Also, his boss battle is…interesting, to say the least.
Despite all this, I’d actually say that Tinker Knight is one of the scariest characters in ”Shovel Knight”. Yes, you heard it right. Play the game, and you’ll understand why…

The biggest problem I had while drawing him was the straight, angular shapes found in the metallic parts. It really put my perspective skills on trial, and I had to use many of MediBang’s (the program I’m currently using) tools to make it. Also, shading on flat, metallic surfaces was harder than I thought, and I’m still not sure if I really got them right. However, I’m quite happy with the added dirt patches on his attire, to get some extra detailing and character into the picture.
For a background detail, I was first thinking of just cogs and gears, but then decided to do some kind of a overly complicated coffee widget. I’m not used to drawing machinery, so it’s kind of an odd design, plus the problems mentioned above. But still, few things represents a mechanical mind as good as a, well, overly complicated coffee widget. I guess.

In retrospect, I could have done Tinker Knight’s pose a bit better, especially regarding the right hand and non-visible arm, but I still like it. So despite the designs being way out of my skill zone, it was still an interesting challenge, and turned out as a decent picture in the end.