Character Design - Initial Sketches

To start off the Character Design module, I did some quick sketches of ideas for my character. I was very unsure of what direction I wanted to go in. To start getting ideas, I drew lots of shapes and made a character out of them. The first of these was this cat character, and I loved the curves and squash and stretch I could achieve with it. However, I wanted to push myself further and I didn't want to stay on my first idea.

My next idea was more of a human figure, however I swapped the head for a heart. At this point I started thinking about the backstory being about 'an old soul in a pop world' and the character being in love with classical music. But this caused problems with this design as I had no idea how to link it to the backstory, and I wanted to use that backstory. I had the idea of the heart head being the character's passion, and it could slowly lose his passion when he has to conform to the pop world. I still really like this idea, and I'm between this character and the one I came up with in the end. I may combine the two for the final character.

I did some further sketches of this character, and added some colour to show how his head would fill up or lose his 'passion'. I really love the idea, but again I just didn't know how to make it work with the story I had planned.

So after those sketches, I did some new sketches of my character. I loved the form of the heart head character, so I kept this in the new character. I struggled a lot with trying to make my character look interesting, which also making them fit my story and research. I added some unique features, like the upside-down w hairline, blush on the nose, cheeks and ears. I did two initial sketches as I was unsure for the skin tone and clothes. I wanted the character to fit the Renaissance aesthetic, so I chose the lighter colour scheme. The blush is to replicate the overuse of blush in Renaissance paintings. I had to combine Mode fashion with Renaissance fashion, which was one of the hardest elements of this design. I first came up with very long large sleeves, since this was very prominent in Mode and the women in Renaissance. I also added a collar, and lace details. I found the design too basic, so in the next design I made the collar larger and more obvious. I also used the male 'skirts' in Renaissance paintings as inspiration for the lower half of the outfit. I really struggled with the colours, as I wanted to keep with the Mode black and white theme, but I also wanted to show the royalty from the rich colours in the paintings. I did a refined drawing of one of the designs to see if I liked it better, but I still found it rather boring and dull.

I kind of hit a wall at this point, so I did some quick expression sketches to work out what my character is like. Is she grumpy? Sassy? Down to earth? I had already created her as a character who gets on with her life, and she'll do whatever she wants. I think doing these quick sketches really helped, because instead of creating a generic person who likes classical music and Renaissance, she now has likes and dislikes and passions and behaviours.

So after this I got back to sketching her out, and I finally came up with a design I was happy with. I kept the long legs and the very 'jelly-like' style, but I added more shapes to her body to make it more unique and interesting. Her body is essentially a cube stacked on top of a trapezium, and this not only adds a nice shape to her body but it also makes it easier to animate her. After getting down the basic figure, I struggled with hair and clothes (again!). I did so much research on Renaissance and Mode fashion, but it proved difficult to combine the two. Therefore, I did a few versions of hair and clothes, paying close attention to my research and story.

So here is my final design! I'm thinking of re-doing the clothes a little, but I'm happy with the body and face and how I incorporated Renaissance, Classical music, and Harajuku street fashion - it was quite a handful! I have to admit, I'm not the best at storytelling, so I am still working it out. I wish I had done the story before I designed the character, but I can always adapt the character design to the story.