Development and Iteration 3

I knew I was getting close to the design I wanted, though in hindsight I should have probably put a lot more effort into the iteration stage. This was the final stages, however, and I needed to move on to producing the model and character sheet relatively soon.

I started to produce a more refined picture of my character to get more of a feel for her. I struggled with the fabric even though I used a lot of references and eventually I moved on as I knew I would spend too much time on it otherwise, when I could have been focusing on something more important.

I also did a few more final iterations, such as for her hair comb. Although, I wasn't terribly concerned about the detail on the hair comb as if I were to visualise the final model, it would not be very visible on the character herself compared to more important parts, such as the pattern on her kimono. Either way, I did not want to leave it completely plain.

I then began work on the model sheet. I bounced for a while on the consideration of how I would draw her model, but eventually I settled on the idea of using flat colours and line-art to create her form, as painting her in would take too long considering the overall complexity of her kimono design. However, the line-art itself was very tedious, even though it helped to define the pattern on the kimono clearly. I made sure as well to define the vital parts of where her body lines up, at the top of her hair, bottom of the head, shoulders, where the arms appear out of the sleeves, bottom of the hands, bottom of the kimono and the bottom of her shoes.

I also created a separate model sheet to show the detail of the hair comb. I drew it from all orthographic angles so that the modeler would have a clear idea of what it looks like on all sides.

I then began work on the character sheet. At this point I wasn't terribly good with poses so I used references to try and get the walk style correct. However, when I showed these to the group crit session the overall consensus was that the walk style was too wide for her clothing. I wasn't overly happy with this character sheet so I scrapped it and started over.

Eventually I ended up with this. I considered more about the clothing that she was wearing and what poses she may end up doing throughout the course of the game. I wanted to capture an aloof character who, whilst looking formal, has a quirky side. I also wanted to capture her foxy nature through the small faces on the full body poses on the left. The poses go as follow from the left along the row, then onto the next row - walking, bowing, sitting, sitting and laughing, holding something, looking concernedly away, and angry. The faces on the right are just a few of the expressions she would make, going from normal, to shocked, to laughing and then angry. Since her hair is shaped to look similar to a fox's ears, I wanted to create the appearance of hackles raising when she is angry. 

Next is the environment and final character pieces, which will probably take a lot of time considering the amount of detail that should be put into them.