#character design process

Hey, sorry, I sort of answered the wrong ask when I first posted this. (My bad.)

For most of the designs I just took the character’s personalities, my knowledge of kid fashion/children in general, and their Akkuma designs and went from there—For example, Princess Ladybug is a mixture of her Puppeteer design, a ladybug dress that my five-year-old sister has, and the idea that she likes magical girls and just wants to be one. :)

Hope that helps.

*Edit

I realize I should probably talk about my process for the adult designs some, since those are a bit more complex. Let’s go one by one:

Lady Luck—Her design was probably harder than any of the others, because I had to balance a lot of different ideas—I wanted her to look mature, competent and inviting, while also incorporating some more Chinese elements into the design. In her case, I sort of started with one design and worked off of it until it reached a point where I was happy with it. Here’s each of those in order (top left to bottom right.)

Elements of each made it into the final design.

Matagot—This was a lot easier, since all I had to do was work off of his canon design for the most part. The trick was making him look more like an antihero than a villain, since his canon design is at the height of his corruption. Really, all I changed from the first version of the design was to have his hair showing. Made him a bit more inviting. Here’s some bonus concept art from back when I was feeling out his character:

Not gonna lie, I still kind of vibe with the hair covered version, but I had to go with what felt right. If you want to see my first posted design for him, click here.

Vixen—So she was actually one I knew almost immediately what I wanted for. She only took a couple passes before I was happy with her. Basically I knew I wanted her to look like a mature version of Alya, with a sort of professional look mixed with a playful nature. Once I had the first sketches done, it was just a matter of streamlining the design.

Queen Bee—Audrey was easy—She just kinda came into existence pretty much perfect the first time. I just thought Chloe but older, and there she was. A couple tweaks to her original design and she was ready to go.

Venadrone—Easiest design by far. I don’t think I even changed anything from my first pass. I was just thinking I needed him to look a little like a bumbling fool while also trying to imitate Queen Bee’s charisma and commanding personality. Like a peon, basically. So yeah.

Bombshell—Here’s where I got stuck. I knew what vibes I wanted, (Reckless and Iconic, like a big name streamer but if they were a superhero,) but I was having trouble translating that into an actual character design. The first rendition was passable, but it wasn’t really giving enough sass for me, and it felt way to tame for a hero named Bombshell.

So I had to sleep on it for a while. Then I finally figured out what vibes I was going for—Deadpool vibes. That made everything so much easier. I just referenced a bunch of images of Deadpool and Deathstroke, then Incorporated it into a new design. It took a couple passes for me to get it right still, but the end result landed close enough to what I wanted that I was ready to post it.

That last one was almost the final design, but the chest part was too thin and looked too much like a snake, so I redid it one last time.

Violeon—Not as hard as I expected him to be. Honestly, his design came pretty naturally to me. (It helped that I had previously worked on a Chat Noir/Butterfly fusion design as a concept.) really I just took Gabriel’s design, made it more childish and… Adrienish I guess? And I had what I wanted more or less.

Anyways, the final result is good.

Foulette—this one took a bit longer, not because the concept was hard to come up with (Once I thought Swan Lake tragic heroine the design for that pretty much made itself,) but because I was struggling to balance the colors. Color balancing is easier in some ways with traditional art than digital art thanks to having a more unified and limited pallet to work with, but that doesn’t mean color placement is easy. In particular I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to be lighter or darker. So yeah. Anyways, here’s how that went.

Eventually my design landed closest to the last image. I tried giving that version light blue gloves at one point, but in the end I decided dark was the way to go.

Gorgana—She was pretty darn easy once I had enough references to work off of—it was just a matter of compiling a bunch of the right ones—snake fangs, that one KDA rapper girl’s light up mask (can’t remember her name, but it was from their first music video “Popstars,”) and couple of killer gorgon ladies and a whole bunch of rocker fashion from before I was alive. After that the rest was just simplifying all that into a super-suit, and there she was. :)

Soooo I’m working on a character design project on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and was encouraged to share the work in progress!

[ID: 2 copies of the same digital drawing, left one in grayscale and right one in color. 12 headshot thumbnails of the same character with the same face and hairstyle, but variations in value and hue, each head is labelled a number one to six, and A or B. : end ID]

more info on the character design under the cut, mostly airing my problems and desperately begging for advice on how to get references. if you don't wanna read ahead that's fine, but pls lmk your thoughts on the headshots and tell me your fave!

Some shape language work and silhouettes,,

And some ideas for props :)

okay soo huh...

This post is a little bit different!

I wanted to showcase a bit of my character design process-

Soooooo

These were my first sketches, I made them to mostly get a feel for how I wanted her to look

I didn't really factor her personality much with the outfits, I was mostly just testing out what looked good on her body type

This one was more of a color test+ me narrowing down her personality and refining her feature's

And this is my "final" draft (kinda- the clothes are always fated to change! BUT! Still)

And I finally named her!

Meet Ken :)

Andddddd

This is basically how I design characters usually-

some design practice(featuring notes)! trying to be better about going through more iterations before settling on things to push myself, since i can be a bit lazy and throw in the towel after just one or two drafts.