Character Design

In producing the practical work that tied into the written work of my dissertation, I produced several characters from different initial character ideas, and I liked the way I approached it and thought I'd share the thought processes behind it and how I think it has lead to me improving.

Knowing at the beginning only that I wanted a female character in a dress, I started out with a rough silhouette. I basically erased line-art where necessary to make changes to test ideas in the clothing. This went from having puffy sleeves, to elbow length gloves, to shortened sleeves - and by this point I decided I liked the long sleeves the most. I also toyed around with the general trim and design of the dress - as each design gives a different aesthetic and appeal.

After I had settled on that it was a matter of playing around quickly. Because I was working efficiently with layers, it meant it was an easy case of selecting the colour and opening up the colour editor to make it brighter, or darker, or to change the colour entirely. I could produce several different versions and stack them next to each other to compare. Ultimately, because I was using a brush with a lower opacity in order to get the colours I wanted in the first place earlier, it means you can see the other versions of the character behind the one at the front, but that is an easy fix to remember for next time.

I took the design I was happiest with and added additional detail - creases, additional line art and shading, more colour for depth, and then finally add facial features. I could take it even further by experimenting with facial features too, but I was quite happy with the results I had and didn't feel the need to experiment further as I had captured the essence and soul of the character I wanted already.

This became an easy and quick way to design characters for me which I think I will carry on into the future - in fact, I think some of the things I have learned in producing designs this way can be applied to environments, too. I could change the colour of the sky to reflect the time of day or the weather, or the colour of the water in a lake or an ocean setting, and many other variables.