Now that we’re through with the formalities, let me make something clear: it’s ten PM, my desk is covered in trash, and my eyes are wrought with an inexplicable and somewhat concerning stinging sensation. Yeah, baby—it’s time to draw.
I’ll run the rules by you right quick. I’m gonna generate three random objects and one random descriptor, and I’ll design a character based on whatever I get. That’s it. The intention is for that character to clearly convey, through visual design alone, the qualities that I’ve assigned to it.
¿Comprende? Let’s spin the ol’ wheel, then! Luck, be a lady.
OBJECTS: mirror, shoes, sandpaper
Okay! There’s something nefarious about this specific combination, but I can work with this!
ADJECTIVE: alcoholic
Part of me was pulling for this.
So there are our words. Time to embarrass myself!
Invariably, the first step in designing anything, let alone a character, is visualizing it in your mind’s eye. Mirror, shoes, sandpaper—these words invoke a certain connotation. It’s tempting to run with the first thing that comes to mind, but artists like Mark Crilley advocate a thoughtful approach to concocting the initial design. Keep reiterating on the idea. Experiment. Give your noodle time to warm up. Odds are you’ll one-up yourself.
I’m inspired by the idea, morbid as it is, of combining an alligator with a boot, so I decide to make that the main motif. I’m not cool with actual alligator boots, by the by. Alligators are just doin’ their thing.
Anyway, when it’s time to sketch, I start with the basic shape I want our character to take—kinda like an outline to help me place the features. Sculpting characters around basic shapes—squares, triangles, and circles —can help subtly imply their personalities. I go for a bottom-heavy ciruloid thing to imbue our new friend with a lumbering, non-threatening mien. I plop his little face right in the middle. Maybe he’s a bit of a PINHEAD.
I think about how to implement the three objects. I want to meld them with the character; that’s why I thought of making the alligator into the shoe. Luckily, the shape of his head lends itself nicely to the form of a cowboy boot. It makes him look like some kind of king, so I figure I’ll just roll with it, pop a furry cape on him to seal the deal.
While I’m at it, I want to exhibit the key adjective, “alcoholic,” in the alligator’s expression. It involves his posture just as much as it does his face. He’s slumped and droopy-eyed, ensconced perhaps a little too thoroughly in his inebriation as he wipes nast off on his cloak and reveals a crooked grin. It seems obligatory to stick a big ol’ bottle of the Devil’s Ale in his bootleg.
Already, our beer-chuggin’ boy is coming together. It’s good to be able to discern a character’s disposition just by looking at him. His facial expression, posture, and even his clothes can all work to tell a wordless story. Ideally, the alligator’s drunkenness would be communicated even without the presence of a giant bottle, but I couldn’t resist. The guy’s a monster for ethanol.
“Sandpaper” is a difficult element to place, but following a random psychedelic fit, I have the idea to give the alligator a cloak made of the stuff. A cloak is an object of opulence and comfort, but I turned it into just the opposite. That’s kinda cool, right? The layers, though? Let me be proud of myself. It’s an increasingly rare sensation.
And now the “mirror” element. I thought I’d turn all of the king’s scales into a pattern of reflective plates, like on a disco ball, but A) that’s hard, and B) I’m lazy. On top of that, I feel like I’m not experienced enough to cover this character in reflective surfaces without sacrificing visual clarity. He might end up looking like a disaster. I’ll settle for a few patches of mirrored scales. This is a battle for another day.
Once the lineart is finished, it’s time to color. Coloring is a part of the process that, depending on my mood, is either super cathartic or super tedious. Sometimes it’s fun and wacky, like putting together a cute outfit; other times, it’s futile and soul-rending, like trying to color match at Home Depot.
Like shapes, hues can imbue a character with a specific set of implicit qualities: cool blues for somber moods, warm yellows for happy times, the works. That’s why it’s useful to think about which colors to use on your character. I’d be lying if I said the chief motivation in this case wasn’t just “ALLIGATOR = GWEEN,” but I did want to color with purpose in some regards.
The red cloak, specifically, was a sticking point for me. I considered the traditional route—royal blue—but red just gelled better with the warmth of the yellowish-green and bright orange. It also afforded the character a bolder, gaudier aura. Blue’s really regal, but red is a bit more visceral, isn’t it?
And there he is! One of the funnest parts of making a character is naming it. I try to give my characters a name that actually alludes to one of their qualities. After a cursory but very scholarly search on behindthename.com, I’ve decided on the name “Calixtus,” from the Latin for “wine cup.” It was also the name of three popes. I hope their ghosts won’t come and slap the indulgences outta me.
With all said and done, coming up with this character wasn’t as simple as I may have made it out to be. I’m pretty bad at translating mental images into actual images, so it helped to break things down into shapes and give myself a road map. Let me show you what happens when you don’t have a plan.
Ew. Here’s my initial sketch. He ended up looking too true-to-life, and some of the elements didn’t mesh. It’s probably because I just started laying lines down without thinking about the overall product, or maybe because I was leaning way too hard on my reference images. There’s not much imagination here. He looks…uncanny, doesn’t he? Like there’s legitimate desecration taking place. Let us anoint ourselves, then, and cast this tragic homunculus to the Chalk Zone. Dorime.
This post was much lengthier than I intended for it to be, but there was so much I wanted to say. It’s probably because this is like an introductory, catch-all sort of post; I’m just skimming over broad topics of character design that I’ll tackle more thoroughly and individually in the future. Next time, I’ll break down an existing character design that has rocketed to relevance in recent weeks. Deuces.
JJ's Character Design Blog 