To start off the rotation for Character Design, we had to do a couple of mini exercises before delving into the main task. The first exercise was to draw up a few character designs based on the concept of giving them identify in form of a shape to fit the character’s personality.
I’ve draft up five different designs. Swavy having the body posing with their arms at the hips and their chest point upwards, Firece being more intimidating with its more rounded posture like a bouncer at a night club, Cheeky being more curvy at the hips, Scary having this vampiric yet menacing appearance, and Hunch being posed as an elderly person.
The next mini exercise was to create a character out of the shapes from the variety of objects that our lecturer has provided. From a doorknob, I’ve drawn out a small yet sinful businessman with a pointy nose and a small of hair on the top, I’ve drawn a Queen’s guard from a part of a garden hose and lastly, a big woman from a tea cup.
The final exercise was to create a character out the objects, giving them a personality. I’ve drawn a dog/cat toy, a doorknob again and my own trainer shoe. Out of the three, I really like how I’ve used the reflection of light show the doorknob’s face, it was a well thought out concept I’ve utilised.
After the exercise were done, we were giving the task of the week for this rotation which is to create a character out of the three themes, either an object, a song, or the winter season, whilst also producing sketches, colour palettes, front and 3/4 turnaround view of the character. I had an idea for a song themed character based on “Killer Queen” by Queen, however the character I had in mind seemed to be too complex to draw, which encouraged me to provide myself with concept designs for each of the themes.
For each of the character themes, I’ve used a water bottle and the song “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac for the two themes and the winter character was drawn up based on hiking gear. The design that stands out to me the most was the song themed character design as based on appearance only, I felt I can do a lot more with the design and adjust it to fit under the shape feeling that we’ve been encouraged to feature within our characters.
Using the lyrics from “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac as reference to develop and reflect on them around the lone and explorative nature of my character, “Now there you go again, you say you want your freedom”, “But listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness”, “When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know”.
For her shape, I’ve done a simple doodle of how her appearance should look, top to bottom, a circle for the head, a triangular torso (which is only in reference to her poncho where if it would to be animated, it’ll express the character’s body language further with movement of her clothing) with trapeziums illustrating the legs and feet.
After drawing up concept art in my sketchbook, I’ve later imported the sketch into Photoshop, where I would overline the character in one layer, then duplicated it 5 times so I can experiment with different colour palettes. For some of them, I’ve changed the hue and saturation of the first colour palette, experimented with colour chosen of my own and using coolors.co to randomly generate a colour palette for me. Using these colours, I’ve sampled the ones that I’ve liked the most to be used in the character’s final design.
Here’s the finalised design of my character below with labels which colour goes with each asset from hair colour, eye colour, skin tone, and clothing.