Category: 7. Character development

I started listing my references and attempting to categorise the different characters into groups.

I brainstormed an original character, deciding roughly on coming up with some kind of adventuring hero.

I had an idea for a kind of wandering mechanic character in one of these fantasy/post-apocalypse worlds.

It was fun to repeat the drawings, as the more I drew her the more personality she ended up with. Initially I thought of a kind of stoic wanderer, but I came around to a more sassy, fun character. Happy with the outline, I made a character sheet.

For my second character I wanted to really go in a totally different direction. I came up with what I thought was a pretty fun idea. I wanted to make a humanoid cow who was also a necromancer, who wanted to take revenge on humans for farming and slaughtering her fellow cows. She reanimates the skeletons of dead cows to make an army to enact her retribution.

It was a lot of fun to brainstorm this character. It was interesting to try and develop the head and how it would move and pull off expressions. For the body I looked at pictures of gorillas to come up with this kind of knuckle-walker thing, which I thought would work well for the character.

I’m really pleased with this one. It’s such a fun idea, and I think it turned out well.

I think this was one of my favourite exercises to research and draw, and I think the end results are pretty good.

I was very excited to do this exercise. Character design is something I’m very interested in and see as a future career path so I wanted to really give this exercise my all.

The first part of the exercise asks me to collect “as many examples as possible of different characters”. Well, I thought “as many as possible” was an ambitious ask so I tried to at least keep the examples loosely from the same reference pool.

For sources I took it as an opportunity to pull from some of my many artbooks I have lying around. When I really enjoy something I often look to see if an artbook is available. I love to see the creative process and design stages of different fantasy worlds. I tried to choose books that represented a variety of styles, but a commonality in theme. I ended up deciding on a loose fantasy/sci-fi/horror coalition.

The first book I looked at was The Art of Ooo, the artbook for the Adventure Time animated series. It’s ostensibly a children’s show full of zany fantasy creatures and environments, but it’s gained mainstream popularity for its adult themes. The setting is a sort of hidden post-apocalyptic landscape, taking place after the cleverly named “Mushroom Wars”. Amidst the goofy anthropomorphic “Candy people” are many eldritch horrors and Lovecraftian demons, and the show has this really charming fusion of cutesy and horror, making it thematically mature but fun and enjoyable for children. I love this approach and it’s something I’d love to work on myself.

Particularly useful are some of the character sheets and guidelines building the visual aesthetic of the world. There are also some early concept sketches showcasing some of the more macabre ideas.

Next I looked at a new book, Creating a Champion, an artbook for the most recent game in The Legend of Zelda game series, Breath of the Wild. The minute I saw the concept art for this game I fell in love with it. The promotional imagery is done digitally but rendered trying to emulate traditional media. They’ve created something really unique and beautiful. Like Adventure Time, the game takes place in a twee fantasy environment, but in the shadow of an apocalyptic war.

The book also features useful character sheets. It features animal-like races and also a sort of steampunk mechanical dimension, at times venturing almost into soft sci-fi.

Usagi Yojimbo is a comics series by Stan Sakai recreating the world of feudal Japan with anthropomorphic animals. The titular hero is a wandering samurai swordsman, and a rabbit. One of the many things I love about this series is the expressive characters, the myriad facial expressions convey such depth of character.

Ultimania Archive is a book for the Final Fantasy series that I’ve brought up before in a previous exercise. Much of the early games were designed by seminal concept artist Yoshitaka Amano, and he helped pioneer an interesting sort of fantasy/sci-fi fusion.

One of my favourite video game series is the Dark Souls franchise. Notoriously challenging, it features a very deep and well-developed game world. The world of Dark Souls is categorised by unsettling, gory fantasy horror characters and locales. It’s disturbing and unsettling, but has such depth and intrigue that it’s hard not to get sucked in. Every character and location contributes to a greater narrative that begs further exploration.

The recent Mad Max: Fury Road is often identified as one of the greatest action films of all time. It’s pure post-apocalypse. The artbook shows some interesting early designs for many of the characters.

Appleseed is a manga series by famed artist Shirow Masamune, famous for his brilliantly inventive and technical mechanical designs.

---

 

Hopefully this body of reference material is enough for the “as much as possible” requirement! I think based on the books I looked through, while showcasing many different styles, there is a sort of through-line tying them loosely together. I think I have enough ideas and references to start coming up with my characters for the exercise.

 

References

Dark Souls: Design Works. (2012) Japan: Kadokawa.

Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive: Volume 1. (2018) USA: Dark Horse.

Masamune, S. (2007) Appleseed: The Promethean Challenge. 3rd ed. USA: Dark Horse.

McDonnell, C. (2014). Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo. London: Titan Books.

Sakai, S. (2014) The Usagi Yojimbo Saga. USA: Dark Horse.

The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road. (2015) London: Titan Books.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Creating a Champion. (2017) USA: Dark Horse.