Character Design: Project 2

on

 Week 8 - Week 13
26/5/2023 - 30/7/2023
Leong Jiahui / 0353469
Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media
GCD 61704 / CHARACTER DESIGN
Project 2: Character Design Development

Instructions

Project 2: Character Design Development

Project brief: 

WEEK 8 (26/5/2023)
To-dos:
  • poses study 
  • expression study 
  • 4 selected poses and expression
Over the ILW, we are required to work on poses and expressions study. This helps in developing the hero pose design in Project 3. For the poses, I scrolled through Pinterest and did very rough and quick sketches of various poses. I didn't want to use too much time on making them look detailed so I could make more variations. I focused on giving each pose the 'S' shape so the stance looks more fluid and natural. I also explored poses with and without the weapon. 

fig 1.1 poses studies

For expression studies, I tried out as many expressions as I could think of. It unfortunately did not turn out very good, as many of them looked similar at first glance. Though it could also be largely affected by the fact that i did not give my character pupils. The feedback mentioned that I could play with the size of the eyes more to give the expression more life. 
fig 1.2 Expression studies 

WEEK 9 (2/6/2023)
To-dos:
  • 4 selected poses and expression
Continuing from the previous week, I picked 4 poses to work on, adding in the details of my character. With the vibe I wanted to achieve with each pose, I was, unfortunately, unable to experiment with many expressions because it wouldn't make sense. To fix that, I added a few expressions on the side. Take it as a bonus, if you must. I focused more on the gem mining exploration aspect of my character for each pose instead of giving her a combat-based stance. I like to think that she's a miner and accessory maker first, a fighter second. I want her to give a relaxed, elegant and curious vibe. Quoting miss anis, shes a lady but could kick your ass.  
fig 2.1 character poses & expression study 


WEEK 10 (9/6/2023)
To-dos:
  • weapon studies
  • alternate clothing (skin) sketches 
Moving on to the weapons. Her whole deal in the mountains is to mine, not fight monsters. But when encountering them, her mining tools will act as her weapon. I really wanted her to have a dual blade at first, but then thought I should stick with the existing weapon types in Genshin to make it authentic. Dual blades reminded me of my guy Childe, and how his bow could transform and all. With that concept in mind, i thought it would be cool if her weapon could split in the middle and become dual blades during her E skill or something.

Hence, I made her start out as a polearm, that can split into two different weapons when her skill is activated. Now everyone is happy. 
fig 3.1 weapons explorations
fig 3.2 Final weapon design 

I gave the weapon as many chunky details as possible to kind of mimic the style of Genshin Impact. No genshin weapon is complete without gold detailing and tassels. My character's deal with Jade made the colour choice a no-brainer. 


WEEK 11 (16/6/2023)
To-dos:
  • alternate clothing (skin) sketches 
  • colour scheme 
Moving on to character skins. I had a design from the previous silhouette sketches that I really liked and thought would make a decent alt outfit. It gave off the kind of cool and fresh street dance vibe. However, I also wanted to try making an elegant orchestra outfit for my character, because 1)she's elegant and would totally slay that fit, and 2) I really loved the orchestra-themed outfits from the official genshin concert poster.
fig 4.1 Genshin Impact Concert poster
So naturally, I made both. No, I don't actually have a lot of time on my hands and am struggling to keep my academics afloat. 
fig 4.2 Alt outfit silhouette sketches 
The street dance (upper row) is clearly favoured compared to the orchestra ones (lower row), because I was feeling inspired in the beginning and not so much towards the end. It's a shame that the orchestra outfits had to be scrapped, but at least I tried i suppose. My character can have different skins in the future I guess. 
Here is how it turned out after refinements:
fig 4.3 Alternate outfit outlines 

Now the dreaded process - colours. I have no colours in mind when sketching this so I just went in blind and applied any colour regardless of whether they made sense or not. 

fig 4.4 Alt outfit colours 
I wanted to give her a fluorescent graffiti vibe in addition to her street dance swag, hence the attempt. Not a good attempt, but an attempt nevertheless. 
Finally, I settled for a good enough colour palette and gave her a rough render. 
fig 4.5 Final Alternate outfit 

WEEK 12 (23/6/2023)
To-dos:
  • colour scheme 
Now the real deal - colours for the main design. I STRUGGLED big time with this one. I had a total of 12 different colour variations, and that's just the ones I decided was good enough to keep. My indecisiveness is becoming a problem, so I made my friends and family pick for me. 

fig 5.1 colour variations 1

fig 5.2 colour variations 2

fig 5.3 colour variations 3
The first one was just a sham of generic colour palettes, and then the following ones I focused more on her design in relation to jade, which gave her more prominent green shades. The final version and outcome of my labours can be viewed below :D.

Final Outcome



Feedback

Expressions & Poses
Try experimenting with more expression variations by changing the size of the eyes. Elegant poses suit my character more than sexy poses.

Weapons
Good attempt. The designs capture the Genshin Impact aesthetics well.

Alternate Outfits
Good attempt. 

Colour scheme
Miss Anis liked all of them (a fellow indecisive member) She told me to just trust my guts and follow the one I like most because at the end of the day, it's my character and it should be built of the things I liked most. 


Reflection

Confession: the dates and weeks stated above are not accurate. This blog post is overdue and I'm writing this as a backlog task, and this project felt like it took forever to finish, so I just wrote everything in the most organised manner, by category. I did in fact work on multiple things at once so it's a jumbled mess. However, I still view this module as my go-to module whenever I felt like I needed to procrastinate on my other modules but didn't want to waste my time on useless stuff. I learned a lot about concept art through this project and got me looking and learning a lot about different aspects of game character design. Applying and choosing colours was never my forte, but being forced to do it here did push me out of my comfort zone and force me to make decisions when it comes to my design work. It's overall a satisfying journey seeing everything starting to take shape over the weeks.  

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