Animated Self: Character Designs Part 2

I used Robert Valley's designs again as reference, to keep the character style consistent.

I got feedback that the body shape looked a little bit strange at times which I think is because the top proportions are very short, or at least wider than what usually works. I tested out a couple of other shapes changing the proportions around, and while I liked the one with thinner proportions, I thought that deciding on the actual character/clothing design would be more important, and the proportions could be changed to fit whatever style my character is.

Before I started developing any designs, I got invited to join a tabletop game of Rogue Trader - similar to Dungeons and Dragons, but with pirates in space. I thought that this could be a good idea to base my design off - I could create character, or give my choice of a few characters that would work well in this setting, meaning that instead of just being a flat design I could also think of the job ad purpose of the character. I set out looking for naval/pirate themed idea, helped by the research I had already done for my earlier sketches in Part 1, and started developing some designs for my space pirate pilot.

I tried to keep certain elements consistent throughout my designs, using the same sort of shapes/accessories (circles, lining of the clothes, buttons and/or buckles) to make them all fit into the same sort of setting in case I decided to use more than one design. This also keeps in with the theme of Rogue Trader and Warhammer 40K, a similar game, so that the design would be relevant to my character.

I definitely liked the pirate theme and wanted to keep it firmly in my designs. I also took inspiration from Disney's Treasure Planet which has quite a similar setting, and the show Firefly which is more of a Western but set in space, still combining sci-fi elements with other style of dress. At first I felt that the third image in the above page looked good but a little bit too dramatic; on doing some research into other player created characters, I realised that it actually wasn't that dramatic in comparison, so that was definitely one to think about using.

I thought that maybe looking more at layers could be a good idea as well, so I started experimenting above but they weren't quite as interesting as my previous designs, and didn't really capture the theme of the game too well. I decided that for now I would go with the design on the second page that really stood out to me, and on completing the turnaround, I could look back and decide if I wanted to take that further or have another look at my other designs.