Character Design - Facial Expressions and Experimenting

After my initial sketches for my character design, I did some further sketches on the ideas I liked. I really liked my character 'Love Ito', so I moved onto the next stage for me to get to know her. I didn't have much for her backstory, except for the fact that she loves fashion and the renaissance era, so I wanted her to create herself. I've always struggled with the story element of my characters, so I did these sketches for a story to come out of her personality, as I was very stuck on what to write. I had already designed her as quite a confident person, who is also very 'done' with everything, so I took these ideas forward when doing these drawings.

I started off with facial expressions, to let me explore how her face worked and how I could show her personality through it. I found that despite making her very closed off, I also had big intentions on her having a softer side. I used the facial expressions to try out different emotions, and how it would suit her character. Some of the sketches didn't work out, whether that be the drawing or that it didn't suit her character. I found I could use a straight line and bend it in many ways to create her eye-line and shape, which really helped me keep her looking like herself in different expressions - something I struggle with a lot.

Facial Expression Sheet 1 - I am planning on doing a second expressions sheet to explore how I can push the shapes to make them more dramatic.

I then realised I wasn't sure how to draw her body properly, and if I was happy with her original design. I designed her body using simple shapes stacked on top of each other (a square, then a trapezium, and a semi circle for the skirt) so she can be easily animated, with a big emphasis on squash and stretch. On this page I also explored other outfits she could wear, since I was still struggling with combining Renaissance fashion and Mode. However, I found the poofy sleeves would be to much of a hassle when it came to animating, so I scrapped them. I also was unsure about her height. I didn't want to fall into the trap of my character being a copy of Edna Mode, so I made sure my character had lots of differences in personality and appearance.

Exploring squash and stretch in body shapes

After I was happy with the body shape, and how I could move it for animation, I drew some revisions for the outfit. I really liked the top, but I was still unsure on the sleeves and skirt. I found in my research that women in the Renaissance wore long draped sleeves, whereas the men had thinner sleeves with large poofy accents. My character is a rebel, so I wanted her to bend some of the gendered clothing rules of the Renaissance, However, I felt the draped sleeves suited her personality better, so I made her draped sleeves much shorter than the original design. Moving on to the skirt, I again didn't know whether to do the big circular skirt or the triangular skirt that was was seen more on men. In the end I chose the circular skirt, but I made it a lot shorter to make it more modern.

Final Outfit Design