Design Process: King
(NOTE: King is not the design I did first. I will explain later why I am documenting/reflecting on it first)
I begun the designing process for King by first trying to see if I could come up with anything design wise that I think would work for it. Anything that inspired me to come up with different looks. Hence I turned to some of my favourite shows.
On the inspiration page I put for King on my Milanote, I included different references from Gravity Falls and My Little Pony. I chose these as I wanted to keep the simplicity that King's design has, hence I believed the minimal changes that these designs had fit best.
Looking at it now, I definitely could have looked for more references. I was sadly limited to my knowledge from the shows I have seen, as I was unsure what to even search for when describing the designs, as it is a unique genre within cartoons that I believe deserve more attention.
When making the different concepts for King, I decided to also use different styles. This is because over the course of time I spent making the other concept designs, I have been experimenting with my style alot. Both colour and line art wise. Hence I decided I would include the other styles so that Talisman can also choose which they would prefer.
Description of each style:
1: a "Kawaii" chibi style. A style that uses for the most part pastel colours, and doesn't use black. Instead using often a purple instead. Also ,like in most chibi styles, features are simplified, such as the eyes, hands and feet.
2: a monochrome slightly "textured" style. A style using the original character's render's tones to colour in the flat colours, and used a brush with a default Clip Studio texture for the line art.
3: a sketch-y warm style. The colours are simply the same as the render but with a warm overtone, and the brush used is one made to replicate the calligraphy pen from Toonboom Storyboard Pro.
4: A scratch-y style. A style meant to be a little more grogy, meant to look very scratch-y and rough. Used only the basic render colours on this one.
I do wish I tried to experiment more with how I actually drew the character, however I still like the final result. I mainly wish I spent more time on each of the examples, as a few look like I didn't try much.
I asked Tali which design, and which style she prefers. I specified I can mix parts of styles just like the designs. Talisman decided she likes the first one the most, both art style wise and design wise.
To expand upon the chosen style:
It is a style often found within japanese or japanese inspired art. It is often used for either cute art or to be a contrast to something more graphic. The type that has contrast, is often call "candy-gore" as the colours of the piece make the guts/blood look like candy.
Some examples of the inspirations I used when using the style:
This example is a more stylised version of the style, as most often the "candy" style focuses on more pastel/lighter less saturated colours.
These two examples are from "sir fluff" on Youtube.
The last two examples are from "ladynkno" on Twitter/X.
After the concepts for both the design and style was confirmed, I then moved on to do the full reference sheet of the concept design.
I had to turn the final timelapse into a GIF, apologies.
I decided to make the reference sheet a simple one, as I am not making an animation, I believe a full turn around won't be needed. Hence I decided simply the from and back alongside the colours would be fine enough.
I overall like how it turned out, however I wish I spent more time on the back of the skull and the back-view of the tail as it looks a little wonky to me.
Talisman is happy with the final result, which made me very happy. They love how fluffy King turned out.
Overall I'm happy with how the design turned out. I do wish I played with the proportions a bit as King is a small character.
For the whole process of this I used only :
Clip Studio Paint EX for drawing (and recording the timelapse)
Google for gathering references
Milanote for collecting my references all in one place
Youtube and Twitter for style references.
