Designing the Protagonist (Head, Hair and Colour Palette)

(All work on this page is my own)

The Protagonist of this story will be a young female, during the dream state this character will be a young adult in the age range of 16-25. Because of this, this character should have Realistic proportions with only certain areas stylised to help with expression. I want this character to have a distinctive colour palette and distinctive silhouette. One way of getting this silhouette was through a quirky hairstyle. I drew up some initial hairstyle designs and selected my favourites.

I picked these 3 hairstyles for a few reasons. The first being the distinctive silhouette making it easy to identify in a crowd. Another reason I picked these styles, is because, in the script, she will be facing off against an opponent. Having short hair will help her keep the upper hand, as it is less likely to get in her face, and will minimise her opponent's chances of grabbing her hair. Once I had decided the factors which the hair will be designed on, it narrowed down the selection, and then I proceeded to pick my 3 favourites on an aesthetic level that fit the brief.

One I had come to a final decision on the hair, I created a series of sketches on how the hair would look and flow from different angles, giving me a good idea of how this character will look when animated. In order to keep a distinctive appearance, I made the hair messy from the side, breaking up the silhouette from the side, making it more visually interesting.

Once the Design for the Hair was complete, I worked on the face shape, as it will be important in helping the character look the age they are, as well as giving them a base to emote from. Being a young female, I wanted to keep away from hard edges and hyper detail, to give the impression of a soft, hopeful and young face. Once I came to a design that I was happy with, I created a Head turn to help me draw the character consistently time and time again, from any position. It will also help me when I create the Animatic and 3D models Next semester.

Now that the head design has been completed, I began to work on a colour palette. I wanted it to Contrast the antagonist quite a bit, who consists of blues, red and very de-saturated colours. So for this character, I use bright colours that will stand out when she is in a crowd of people. I wanted the character to have an inviting and friendly vibe to them, with also the ability to stand out in the crowd. To do this, I experimented with bright hair colours. I ended up giving her green hair to give her a unique look and make her easy to identify. This, coupled with her quirky and distinct hairstyle, helps makes the character identifiable and unique, and therefore subjectively a good character design that meets the production aims that i set out to acheieve.

Once the character design had been completed. I began to work on a character expression sheet, to showcase how the character emotes, and give a sense to their personality. I want this character to be light-hearted, fun and innocent, so I wanted the character sheet to reflect this, despite still only being in the concept stage.

Once i was happy with the Sheet, I turned it into a full colour sheet, complete with a colour swatch, while also labelling the expressions. Overall i am very happy with how this character design turned out. The Silhouette and colour palette are distinctive and unique, and the overall design gives us a good idea of the personality of the character that fits the self directed brief. I plan to use the techniques i have employed and learnt in this process in the future when i am in the industry.

During this character design process, i would often forget to label my work, which meant when compiling and organising my work for self evaluation, I found it took longer than anticipated, which would be unacceptable in the industry, so in the coming days and weeks i plan on improving my organisational skills in order to increase my productivity and employability.