Concept Art of Rapunzel (Disney’s Tangled) – Glen Keane – Image Source

When researching for this project I made a pinterest board and saved many different examples of character design and concept art. I looked at everything from disney movies to video games – there are many examples of facial expressions, clothing and weapons. It really was very vast and I did feel a little intimidated heading into this brief but I just followed the instructions in the brief and everything worked out luckily!

Soldier 76 Concept Art (Overwatch) – Blizzard – Image Source 

I found the video game concept really interesting, we are used to seeing these characters fully fledged as though they are real people. Something I found very interesting was looking at the development for the characters from Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us 2. You really see the characters go through all sorts of different appearances but how they build upon each stage working towards the final design. I printed some of these images out to place in my sketch book along side my mindmap.

Pinterest Board on Character Development and Character Design

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After completing my artist research I got started in my sketch book. I made a mind map – the project for this was quite a loose brief in regards to instruction. I would be creating my own characters but I did feel like a mind map was a good opportunity to sit down and jot down some ideas and notes.

On the next pages in my sketch book I jotted down some ideas of types of people I could draw. I was inspired by the suggestions in the brief and thought of a few more. After this i spent some time sketching peoples faces and making notes. I practices eyes, and looking at how face shape and eyes can affect the character. When I did this I particularly noticed the way you could make a face appear feminine or masculine through the shapes/features. I haven’t spent a lot of time drawing men before so this was really very helpful for me.  I wrote in my sketchbook
Men – Blockier Jaw + Features
Women – Rounder/Softer Features.
I have definitley found my self more comfortable exploring ideas in my sketchbook in part four, I feel like since I have been on the Key Steps in illustration I have finally got to grips with exploring thoughts/ideas and techniques with in my sketchbook.

I started working on 3 ideas for characters. I wanted to do one man, one woman and one child as I wanted to push myself. One day I would like to have a very diverse portfolio so I think now is a good place to start!

First up I started working on an illustration of a man. He is a refuse worker – I decided to draw him as he is a key worker. No matter what, during lock down our key workers have been out working non stop. When I started designing him, I looked up images on google for ‘refuse worker’ and ‘bin man’. I wanted to get a good idea of the clothing used on the job, I also wanted to make sure that the high visibility vest he was wearing was accurate too.

As I started sketching his character started to develop, and I was coming up with more ideas about his story. He’s a dad and he works very early mornings so he always takes a coffee out with him. He wears a big jacket because it’s always cold so early in the morning. He loves sports and because he’s so busy he listens to his sports podcasts when he’s driving his lorry. This sort of led to him having some ‘equipment’ that he takes out to work with him. His ear phones, his coffee cup and his keys. I ended up deciding his name was ‘Andy’. I wish I had a creative story as for why but my husband said that the character looked just like someone he knew called Andy and it just stuck!

I did the same with the other characters I drew, initial sketches and ideas and developed them further in procreate. As I was drawing the characters came to life again.

I started drawing my school girl. I explored in my sketchbook whether I wanted her to be older or younger. I settled on younger because I knew I wanted her to have a bit more naivety and attitude. I wanted her to be a be a big football fan and player – I will be honest in saying that I took inspiration from my younger self on that!

I also did with the bee emblem on her shirt, that was my school badge as a child. She has an attitude – the boys won’t tell her she can’t play football with them again! This also led to inspiration for some of the items that would go a long side her character – a football, a sports bottle and her school book bag. I called her amber after her red hair.

The next character I decided to work on is an ‘influencer’/fashion blogger. Quite literally the opposite of a key worker. I worked the same way again, in my sketchbook before further developing on procreate.

She has attitude and seems to live her life for instagram – what people actually don’t realise is she actually has a marketing degree! I based her clothing on popular social media trends – including sheer fabric, hair dye and lip fillers. Her items were her ‘#gifted’ jewellery, her mobile phone with social media and a designer bag. I called her ‘Sara’ – a lot of people online give themselves names that sound more interesting than their own, it made it as though her name was actually Sarah but she wanted to be more interesting.

After I made the characters and their profiles, I made some sheets showing them with different facial expressions. This was a challenge but I really enjoyed it, the small differences really made a big difference to the overall feel of an image.

Please view the finished character sheets below;

ANDY;

AMBER;

SARA;

I enjoyed working on this project. I feel like now I understand how to make a character and understand how the development of a character is a process. Because of this I think that if I were to do anything like this again I could potentially push it further, maybe with something a little more fantasy based or maybe even video game inspired. I enjoyed drawing the child the most – I think it was most fun as you can be really expressive with it and it still fits with how a child would act. I would like to draw more characters like this, I think they could be fitting for a children’s book or something a long those lines.