#design practice

The DDs are big with a little more bio/fleshy things in them

J’s squad is the only DD squad wearing clothes and wigs. In her words it’s to “trick the workers” (it is absolutely not for that reason). DDs generally don’t care for clothes, the common consensus among them being it’s a human thing and it gets in the way.

The audio receptor’s inner glowing circle matches eye color in workers. For DDs, it acts like the headlights/“real eyes” in canon. If they don’t match the eye color and are a particular red, it means there’s a malfunction or injury. The darker the red, the worse the condition. At a certain point, it becomes permanent damage.

I've frequently struggled with shape when designing characters in the past -- or lack thereof lol. I tend to stick to realistic designs, in that I didn't ever make character designs that couldn't conceivably exist in real life, which meant that a lot of storytelling potential was sort of lost in their design.

This isn't to say that character designs that could realistically exist are bad in any way -- but I feel that my own personal style definitely benefits from more vivid and not necessarily as realistic designs!

I really tried to push myself with this design (as can be seen the last time I posted a ref of the dark lord, though I've slightly updated that design to better reflect her since then) and I'm really really happy with the results