#character design process

For example my OC Ai used to look something like this

He looked serious, and his clothes were gonna be a modified kinich outfit. Not to mention that Ai used to have a red rope tied to his neck and wrists, a detail i've stopped using cause i don't like it anymore. It makes sense for other timelines but not for this one or the ones that ramify from natlan.

Some shape language work and silhouettes,,

And some ideas for props :)

How do you get inspired by their supersuits?

Because they look super cute

Ooh, yeah. So for Princess Ladybug, I actually based her design of of a kiddie style Ladybug dress my little sister's have with puffy sleeves and a princess cut. I have three younger sisters, and work with kids a lot, so I just thought--"what would a spoiled little girl want to turn into when she becomes a superhero" and I came up with magical girl princess hero. So that's her.

Fuzzy and Buzzy were designed to look like each other, which was pretty hard to pull off. I initially considered giving them matching animal onesies, but then I remembered their hats from the Sapotis and thought I'd give them matching hats instead. Also, I decided to give Fuzzy a stuffed tail because kids love those things.

For Cat Man, I basically thought, "what would a kid boy think a superhero looks like," and I came up with the PJ masks? So he looks like cat boy--I'm not apologizing for that. Oh, and his tail is like a bathrobe tie, because that was what me and my siblings always did when we were pretending to be cats. I thought it would be kinda low-key funny.

Then there's Wonder Kid--I designed her with the idea in mind that A, she was an artist, and B, I didn't know anything about her. Honestly the Goat is like, the hardest miraculous for me to design for. Idk why. Anyways, I decided to go with animal pajamas with paint splatter spots all over, and an asymmetrical color scheme. I thought about giving her a hood, but it didn't look good, and besides, her hair already kind of imitates both paint-brushes and goat ears, so it was something I had to keep in the end. The fur at the top was just to make sure she didn't look like a moo cow.

Miss Terra wasn't too hard--I kind of just went with my instincts with her, and went for the most straightforward version of the turtle miraculous I could think of. Sub Terrain was a bit trickier--I wasn't sure what to do with his chest area and I tried giving him shoulder pads at one point, which didn't look good--but I was kinda just picturing Geoforce from DC's young justice, and that's where I stole his vibe from a little bit.

have some notes I made

yep indeed these are the beta designs where it all started

I'll edit this post every once in a while with changes I've made to their designs + potential design changes, and I'll eventually make a post with their Official Finalized Designs once I'm completely satisfied with their designs

Changes made so far:

as of July 1st 2024

Redesigned Chooch to look more like OG Chooch and Reanimated Chooch (both of which were peak Chooch design)

Fixed up Brain + gave him hearing aids

Spook has been given back his big-ass claw privileges

Fancy moved his CGM further up his arm underneath his shirt sleeve

T.C. has shaved the mullet and his hair will in fact switch between the baby hairs and long luxurious locks depending on how he feels

Spook is now officially the tallest and actually looks like he is too

Spook's toof has been embiggened

Redesigned Brain to look better + he shaved, got hearing aids, and looks like he got into a fight with a tree and lost

Chooch has polydactyl and now has 5 toes on each of his peets

Brain went to the hair salon n got a haircut (picture to be added)

Chooch now has an extra pinkie on each paw and his eyes are now green like in Reanimated and in the scrapped reboot concept

Changes that WILL be made:

as of July 1st 2024

Spook's arms WILL IN FACT GET BIGGER

Fancy's gunna hit the gym to get some muscle underneath that chub to become ✨peak Italian physique ✨

T.C. and Dibble actually need a pelvis

Fix up Dibble a big

Brain's head needs to be bigger because rn it looks miniscule compared to everyone else's

T.C.'s upper right canine will now be his gold tooth

Changes that might be made:

as of July 1st 2024

Might put Dibble in his original police uniform

Might give Spook another piercing but it depends on if the lore allows it

Might tell T.C. to shave the goatee

Well they start with a thought, most of the time it's a "there's something missing here. There's a gap" so then I set out to fill the gap

After that I contemplate a vibe, what's that character gonna be like? I settle on personality first before anything else, personality dictates the clothing style, the age, the hairstyle etc

Then I do research for the actual design. Especially when I know little of the vibe I want, let's say I wanna design a tall punk character. I'd do research on common punk behaviors, clothes, hairstyles, types of places to be frequented all that. To me the most important thing is knowing stuff and being respectful about it. If I don't know let's say idk uhh Ghanaian table manners but wanna make a character that's from Ghana its my duty to learn about the culture and be respectful about it.

After all the research the brainstorming phase begins where I just throw everything I can onto the pages of my sketchbook and see what I like or don't like. I'll sketch the character in different variations until I have something I like.

The most fun part of sketching out a character is when I design the clothes. I love drawing clothes and they say so much about a person so I put a lot of care into that step

Digitizing it is the next step where I draw the character digitally and give them a color scheme. Remember that colors tell a lot about a character so they gotta fit with the vibe from above