Designing

Character ideas

List of actors/actresses as inspiration

Men

Tom Hardy
John Bernathal
Ian Sommerhalder

Women

Carrie Fisher
Anna Kendrick
Natalie Portman
Nina Dobrev
Candice King

Candice King, one of my favourite female actresses and originally wanted to use her as inspiration for my character design but ultimately decided not to.

My first idea was just to make a "good looking woman" which is obviously very basic and doesn't really have much to go on. Although I looked up/wrote down some names and looked around for some inspirational images I only picked a couple and was unsure where to go from here.

Some initial sketches as I was searching images to use as inspiration, just a couple to get some thoughts on the proportions and some poses.

After a session where we all showed where we are at I admitted that I had almost no experience creating a character "from scratch". I am used to being given something to work with like for example with Game Art; I was told to at least create a game world first, and then creating characters that would fit into that world. And even then I did very minimal research before I started drawing the character.

I was given feedback where I should "explore" different themes more, like give the character a little background before setting out to create the character itself. So I didn't think too much past what I was already thinking about. I still searched for some "good looking" women, some Korean fashion to get an idea of what is fashionable for them, I looked up some dancers and ballerinas for elegant poses and to see what their bodies look like (most are very thin) to inspire me.

Since my initial idea was just making a "good looking" woman, based on actresses, I was looking for some references to stylish/fashionable clothing (mostly Korean fashion) for models as well. I wanted to see if there was any outfits that stood out to me that would be relatively easy to sculpt as well as look good.

But when my first set of sketches were just a skinny long legged model I realised I really hadn't thought through my design properly and that she needed something more to her. Like a personality, hobby, job etc, or anything similar to make her more fleshed out and interesting. Not to mention getting a design made for a character who has a personality and hobby already is much simpler than thinking "I want to make a good looking woman".

Models;

Hourglass figure
Very skinny
Long legs / Tall

Even though for a time (and still to a large degree) models have been seen as super skinny, tall with long legs. I needed to stylise my character more. Even an hourglass figure is very generalised among "good looking" women in media. This can be stretched to varying degrees such as extremely small torsos (left picture, middle sketch) and bigger thighs (most left), to even sized torso and bottom (in width). Although just a character model design isn't quite enough by itself, as she needs clothing and personality. Whilst still being hung up on the whole actress/goood looking woman idea, I randomly started writing down some sentences that came to mind at the time.

Some notes;

A very athletic, outgoing and fashionable woman. She likes to make people smile but will also do her best to avoid confrontations this way. While she may brush off any harsh comments on the outside, these are things that may stick with her forever.

More normalised "hourglass figure" but doesn't stand out too well?

Very slim waist.

Very tall, slim take on hourglass figure.

Decided to see what a more bulkier version would look like, but for now it's been a bit difficult to stylise this design without going too "overboard" with the proportions or muscles.

It was at least a nice look on how I could've pivoted the character into a more athletic design instead of an actress/model.

A new idea

Some of my iPad files became corrupted so I was never able to open them after an update... But this was some of the sketches that made it through and explores about 3 variations that I wanted for my "sugary sweet" character. At the beginning I thought of using some braided bread for her "buns" instead, but after I did a couple of sketches with the "normal" buns instead it just appealed to me more.

I went away from the whole "fashionista" concept because it was nothing concrete and not easy to work with. It was too"broad" in a sense, and in a way - the design could've been anything and anyone and that much freedom really made it difficult to narrow it down.

So I started thinking about what I like and i made it very simple.

Sweets & snacks
Happy outgoing characters
Bright colours
Dresses

In general when I watch any type of cartoon, anime or even just films - I tend to like the very "happy" and outgoing characters in general. Characters who go out of their way to stay positive, helpful to their friends, and maybe they are designed in a way that makes you automatically think they are the positive and outgoing character in the group/series over all. Instead of just going for professions (scientist, muscician, fashion designer etc) I decided to (as said above) go for inspiration from physical things to see if that helps me more.

Character examples/inspiration

Olaf from Disney's Frozen is a very optimistic, happy and outgoing character. For a character made out of snow his dream is to live a life in the sun, where he would obviously melt. When faced with danger, especially fire, he said "Some people are worth melting for" as long as it meant helping/protecting his friends.

He wears a big smile, big carrot nose, with couple of strands (sticks) for hair and his over all feature is very round which makes him look really soft, childish and kind.

Ugly Betty - it is a television show about a girl with a dream of having a career within the magazine industry but keeps being held back, bullied and blocked by her company co workers. No matter how harsh and horrible she is treated she always manages to shed a light on any situation with help from her family and friends.

These might just be 2 examples froma sea of optimistic fictional characters out there, but it's two that first came to my mind when thinking about designing a character with similar trait.

Now I want to go in a little bit of a different direction where I want my character to be brightly coloured, and "sweet" just from looking at her, I would like to imagine that if she was really in an animated film that she would share the same traits as the two characters mentioned here.

Life is harsh and a lot of people learn it the hard way, so to me it is incredibly inspiring when good written characters in animation or live action, get to show that as long as you push through and keep strong, there's always light at the end of the tunnel!

I have essentially designed a character from looking at sweet and snacks that I like, but also with some of my favourite character traits in mind.

Colour exploration

Initial colour tryout

Pink hair - strawberry ice cream

Red ribbons to stand out

Blue dress to contrast the other colours

Strawberry shortcake inspired

Blonde hair to represent the cake dough, with white as the cream filling. And red/pink to represent the strawberries. Before my final decision this was my favourite one out of the few. Bright colours that also are made up of warm colours as well was going to go really well together with the character idea that I had in mind.

But the hair was my main idea point anyway, which was inspired by ice cream. Although there is a banana flavoured ice cream, it didn't sit right with me to have her hair blonde when ideally I wanted it to be pink and represent strawberries. So I eventually decided on another colour combination.

Mint inspired

Mint coloured hair, blue ribbons for them to pop out, lime green dress???

This was some colours that I used hue/saturation/exposure changes to get and didn't really plan much of other than the hair colour to represent "minty". Although I really liked the hair and the ribbons, the more I looked at the dress the more I despised the almost lime green colour together with the rest. Just did not mesh together well.

I showed the character I was creating to some friends and they suggested a colour palette, and this was the outcome. Albeit being an interesting set of colours it didn't feel as bright as the others to me.

Final Design / Choice

Turnaround

In the final turnaround I changed the colours of the "lollipops" to make them stand out more and to have a little bit more of a colour variation to my model. Whilst I was completely fine keeping it to a minimal amount of colours I still wanted to add that little bit more to it. I simplified the model a little bit to make it an easier time to sculpt, with the hair being more simple but still the same shape, I attached the "lollipops" on the dress directly to the "apron" and I also simplified the look of the dress frills at the bottom.

Modeling

Google Sites

Report abuse