Character Design/Concept

There's more to a character than just their appearance. Here's a look at the ideas and process behind characters I've made up for various projects.

Initial Drawing for game concept.

How to Change the World: Player Character

Concept drawing of the player character for an unfinished game project from 2023.

They have no mouth because they are a silent protagonist, a pure vessel for the player to express themselves through. The game was my attempt at making sense of how to get closer to the way I want my life to be through daily choices in a world that felt very restricting, like it was constantly asking me not to do what I really wanted at every turn. The color scheme is somewhat reminiscent of an ice cream cone.

Do Cherries Grow in Space?: Hudson Knight

Hudson is the main character of my short film, Do Cherries Grow in Space?. This film was my graduate thesis project and the culmination of many of my ideas from 2021 to 2024. Here I'll walk you through each phase that led to the character from the final film.

In December of 2022 I was considering the idea of making a webcomic during my winter break from grad school. I didn't end up with a finished comic by the end of the break but I did have a rough outline for the story and this design idea. I name many of my protagonists after fruit and flesh out their stories and themes based on that concept. So here I was trying to come up with a design that would communicate "cherry".

Early 2023 I did this doodle as another character idea for an illustration I was working on. Short afro, white T-shirt, black hoodie, jean shorts, black sneakers. Simple.

By the end of May 2023 I once again had plans to make a comic, upon suggestion from one of my professors. I wanted to try a different take on the cherry story I had written in December and the first thing I did to establish the themes and main character was write down the central ideas and character traits. I was also keeping a log of notes at this time and would record story ideas as I came up with them throughout the summer.

Some ideas based on the description above. Black hoodie from the previous design makes an appearance.

I made this sort of expression sheet based on the story I had in mind at this point. It was a long journey where we would see the main character grow his hair out over time.

Did this drawing in my sketchbook elaborating on the hoodie concept with a cool skateboard design too.

A sprint of character poses and expressions to help me narrow down how I want to draw him, what I think looks good and what dowsn't.

This was the turning point where he really started to emerge. I'd left behind the idea of making his hair resemble a cherry and just made his hair red. This look was very much inspired by the music I was listening to at the time, often while skateboarding.

Another page of character poses. I did this one in my thesis class in September 2023.

I was starting to play with the idea of the story taking place in the future or in space, some kind of sci-fi feeling thing like that. This is an vision of Hudson with his board that better reflects that kind of setting. Also seen in previous image.

This was a concept sketch for the comic that I was making for my comic class. The plot of the story was going through a lot of changes ever since the summer. There was a part at this point where Hudson would've been dressed for an office job. (This was November 2023, before the Jujutsu Kaisen meme!)

A page from the 10 page comic that I made for my comic class, This iteration of Hudson wore simply a big T-shirt and shorts. Learn more about the comic here.

Something very close to the final design. I spent a lot of time tweaking small details and testing variations of colors here.

Here is an animation test I made featureing the design of Hudson from the previous sketchbook page. I was deliberating whether I still wanted to make a comic or maybe some other form of visual narrative. I think this means I must've decided I wanted to do an animated film.

Hudson and his sister who had not yet been named Shirley. We're nearly at the finished Design. He has an earring here and his sleeve stripes are still a very light pink, not white like I have them now.

A style frame of what the film should look like to give me a standard to aim for with the animation.

After the fall semester I was still working out the story and by the time I was back to school at the end of January 2024 I had settled on a story that included Hudson's foil character, Dark Hudson, who first appears in the comic.

A fun drawing I did celebrating the first anniversary of the premiere of the film. Features Hudson and Shirley with new clothes and hair!

Finally the most recent update to Hudson's design is this time skip version of him for the sequel I'm working on, set a year or two after the original film. His hair has grown longer and he's wearing different clothes, but I've maintained the color scheme, the oversized T-shirt, and the way his hair hangs in the front.

Fun fact: His hair is naturally red. It is the distant future after all. Who knows what's going on with humans at that point.

Moon Game Concept: Levi Tate

Levi is a character from a game project that never made it to development. The idea was kind of scrapped and became the How to Change the World project and greatly inspired the film Do Cherries Grow in Space?, both seen above. I really enjoyed this character and story though.

Levi is a girl who runs track in school. Lately she's been feeling an inexplicable compulsion upward and away from the land she was born on. One fateful night a path up to the moon opens up to her. It's time for a run. The game idea was basically Sin and Punishment but it looks great and the player character is 2D. There aren't enough games like that.

This was first page of sketches I did of the character. It was pretty easy to settle on what I wanted her to look like because she was based on a photo of a woman on an album cover. She's also got clip on headphones.

Next, some action poses to see what makes the design look best. I mainly wanted to work out the silhouette of her running pose. Starting to think about her weapon too.

Here I was doing some more sketching to figure out how to pose her while she's running since that's how we'd see her most of the time. I also began musing about details like what shoes she wears and whether she's the type to wear wired headphones with the wire inside her shirt.

In the game that my idea was modeled after, Sin and Punishment, its sequel, and its closest imitator have the player shooting at monsters and obstacles with a gun that also doubles as some kind of sword. I wanted my weapon designs to be a little bit easier to recognize as a gun and sword for audiences. Given the outer space themes of the story, I made a laser gun that can quickly transform into a lightsaber and back at a moment's notice. I even thought of how it changes forms. Maybe you can see how they fold and unfold into one another.

I started imagining what a scene from the game would look like. Here I did a little drawing of Levi running toward a stairway to the moon with ocean waves crashing against both sides of the flight of steps.

As mentioned above, this project didn't get much further than design and research but I do hope to come back to it as soon as I'm able.

Finally, here are some monster designs from the game. They're all fish. I was thinking about the speculation that aquatic creatures live inside the moon. My favorite is the blob of blobfish called Ethics. Ethics are kind of like group think, no?

All of the enemies have their names written beside them. Each enemy is another reason why you don't do the things you really want to. Stay in School swims across the screen in groups, hense the name.

Get in touch at blckmgx@gmail.com

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