Designing Young Protagonist and Supporting Characters

Now that we have come to final design for the main protagonist, it is time to create designs for the character when she is still only a young child. My aim with this design is to make it easily identifiable as still, the same character, so certain aspects of the design must stay the exact same. The key features of the character I identified were the hair, the colour of the hair and eyes, and the soft features. It wouldn't make sense for the character to have different coloured eyes, skin tone, or suddenly harsh features, as it would not add a sense of continuity. Once these features were identified, I created a design for the head of the character.

One thing I am happy with is that the character remains the same, and is easily recognizable as the same character. Many of her features are softened and simplified to help sell the character as a very young version of the same character. The hairstyle and colour I kept the same to help with recognition.

Once I was happy with the design, it was time to work on the rest of the body and the clothing design. I knew that the clothing could be shaken up and change in aesthetic as the core of the character was the same. However, the character will be based in a school setting, so I had some guidelines for what I had to achieve with this design. The design I came up I feel is reminiscent of a school uniform, with its muted colours. The boots were added to help give an inkling of the characters personality.

The body of the character was also simplified and references human child anatomy in order to give a believable Character. I am happy with the final design as it clearly looks like a simplified version of my original character design, with the same core features of the design that help convey the characters personality effectively.

Moving onto the 2 main support characters of the story, the parents.

I started with the mother, as she will take more of an active role in the story than the father. the goal of this character was to create a character, who although differed visually to Robyn, had a similar vibe to her while utilizing different shapes in the design. I began with the face of the character, things that rolled over from Robyn's design (or I guess rather the other way around if it were real life) were the eyes, eyebrows and basic face shape. It would have been easy to just essentially create just an older version of Robyn for the mother, so I wanted to avoid this if possible, to help create a more unique and interesting character. The easiest way to do this was to change the hair and also alter the hair colour. I kept the hair in the same colour palette as Robyn's to help with believability. Another thing I had to achieve was creating a character that looked visually older while keeping the same facial structure to help tie the characters together, as mother and daughter. I am pleased with the final design.

Once the face was done, like all my other designs we then moved onto the Bod. I tried to use softer shapes in the creation of this character, to help differ her from Robyn, but also sell her age. To do this I made the character slightly larger, using ovals as my base. The character is a working professional, so I wanted to reflect that in the clothing, I didn't want the clothing to be too bold or vibrant so as to create a violent colour palette that didn't fit the character. Below is the final Turnaround of the character design.

The next character to tackle was the father. I had a little more freedom in the character design here, with being a male character, and a less influential character overall. There had to be some connection to Robyn however in design, This ended up being in the hair, eyes and body proportions. The character design incorporates various  Squares and triangles in the design. in contrast to the previous character designs. while still have certain soft edges. The colour palette is also a departure to the previous designs. This is somewhat on purpose to show the distance between the other characters and the Father.

Overall i am happy with the outcome of these characters. I feel that they follow the fundementals of good character design, and dont rely soley of their aesthetic to sell the characters personality. The outcomes have been layed out in a professional manner, that can translate well to the professional workplace, and will look good in a portfolio of work.