Exploring the basics of character design.

My idea is to have a character that takes his spirit form until the track is restored, at which point he may switch to his normal form with the life of the track rejuvenating him. I started some basic sketches exploring both of these forms

A brief study on the spirit form
A brief study on the human form

I then skimmed through the book Alive Character Design (Su and Zhao, 2012), before beginning sketching digitally in Photoshop and attempting to work in some details.

Initial sketch
Drawing in the lineart
Blocking in colours
Adding basic lighting
Painting in the spirits' glow

The most frustrating thing about this process is the lack of line smoothing. I used to working in Illustrator with a mouse and producing perfect lines, so I had to adopt a slightly different mindset for this workflow accepting a less refined piece. I will redraw it in Illustrator to produce a higher quality image.

In discussions with my younger Sister, it came to light that she also became frustrated with Photoshops’ line smoothing, and instead now works using Paint Tool SAI which is more suitable for this type of workflow. Let’s not forget that Photoshop is designed for photo editing.

Going back to my chosen form, I would like to highlight again the ‘tricks’ employed to improve efficiency:

  • removal of limbs (and indeed the lower half of the body)
  • hidden face (may need to employ the helmet to convey expressions)
  • limited details on the hands

Update - Paint Tool SAI

Having installed Paint Tool SAI and had a brief 5 minute tutorial from my Sister, I tried to sketch my character. I can say that it is instantly more satisfying working with line-smoothing - especially during the early stages - as it allows you to create much better looking artwork rapidly. The screenshot below was taken after about 2 minutes of work, I used the marker tool after drawing in the lineart to quickly create a colour scheme.

A screenshot of my working setup in Paint Tool SAI

I’m sure there exists a Photoshop plugin which replicates this behaviour that will allow me to work this freely with all the benefits of that software, such as the TOYO94 colour swatches.

References
Su, H. and Zhao, V. (2012). Alive character design. Harrow, England: CYPI Press.