Character Design: Meet Melanie, the Little W*tch
It Takes a Lot of Iteration to Create Even Basic Character Designs
As you can probably tell from my character pages, I’ve been having a lot of fun lately coming up with simple character concepts, drawing them in Photoshop, and then animating them with some special powers in After Effects. This is a hint into one way that I go about my character creation process.
I’ve been creating a universe of characters, heroes, villains, for some years now, but after learning more about digital art and animation I’ve been able to create some of the characters and animations that I’ve always imagined when doodling in a sketchbook. I actually dreamt of a woman with a big dramatic ponytail shooting balls of light out of her fingertips and VOILA: Citrine.
Pencil & Paper Drawing
As a gamer, I love to immerse myself in a new universe where every little piece is feels both carefully constructed and organic. The drawing on the left is a sketch I made years ago. It killed me a little to upload it - a bit embarrassing to see the strange lips, eyes, hair, that tricep (what’s happening there?)
At this point in my development as an artist, I never once considered doing multiple iterations of the same drawing to perfect it. Through laziness and a lack of understanding, I really thought that artists could freehand a perfect face without a reference drawing. And if you mess up - my first thought was to start over!
Digital Drawing
On the right is another pass I took at the same character. I created this after I had started working on digital art. It was my first real digital art piece. I was so proud.
I spent a lot of time fussing over the colors, but small details in the process defined the character for me in a lot of ways.
Big, bright eyes: she feels super aware of the viewer.
Blue and Purple Hair: she cares about her appearance and self expression.
She’s OBVIOUSLY a witch or something because this is MAKE BELIEVE AM I RIGHT?
She feels clever - like she’s one step ahead of you.
It felt like that was all I could really pull out of this drawing - it’s lacking emotion and only shows a portion of the character, so the next step was to amplify those elements.
Here’s the New Melanie!
There were some changes that had to be made to fit her into my new style.
That hairstyle above? Felt too short. Besides that, not many people have hair that grows horizontally away from their head. Her hair’s now a little softer and falls gently, tucked neatly behind her ear.
What is she wearing above? I don’t know, but since I was thinking she was very into self expression, I decided a simple dress in her favorite color would work best for an outfit. The necklace is a hint at her magical abilities, which I’ll showcase once I begin animating.
There are several decisions and finishing touches that I’ll have to make before she’s ready be animated. Always remember that everything can always be improved upon!
What to improve before drawing frames for animation:
Hands and arms are not even close to anatomically correct (where is that elbow anyway?). Shouldn’t she have jewelry or something?
Shading on her chest looks like a soft, round Photoshop brush and doesn’t feel unbelievable.
The necklace is glowing, but what would the object look like if it were depowered? It needs a shape of it’s own.
Shoelaces - DOH!
There will definitely be a lot of refinement of Melanie, which I’ll likely do at the same time as a few key frames for some basic attack animations. All in time.