Ima keep it real with you, chief, I wrote several writing posts for today and just wasn’t satisfied with them. But since I’ve been on an art kick, it feels appropriate to share that this week instead. That said, behold, concepts of characters from my attempts at a visual novel. I’ve had some idea of what these three look like for a while now but only now am finally getting into drawing up proper references of them to refer to.
I’m doing my best to have their designs communicate a lot about their personalities at a glance and keep them distinct. While I’m still very much trying to figure out the specifics of their wardrobes, I feel confident about their faces and body types. The following sketches that I have are minimal on details but thanks to the key traits I’ve given them I think they can still be told apart as I try to work out expressions/body language.
This is mostly just messing around with figuring out Paisley; I did some math on how much variance in body poses/expressions would be reasonable to expect and am still working out what would be unique to each character and what would have overlap, e.g., Zack is more likely to have an over the top happy face than the other two.
As far as I am imagining right now, Paisley tends to err on the side of closed-off, often faced away and with his arms held close to him. Ren and Zack will tend to face forward but Ren’s gestures will communicate being condescending while Zack’s is more confident but kind.
This last one is very much just scratching the surface of trying to work out their clothes. If you can decipher my handwriting, you may notice that I’m “officially nixing pointy ears.” I had them in their designs for MONTHS, but unfortunately it just wasn’t working out with how I want them to come across. The overall vibe that I’m attempting to communicate is “semi-normal people that also happen to be bloodthirsty vampires.” I don’t want it to be immediately obvious until they open their mouths and reveal their fangs, you know?
It’s so cool to see your process with these characters. I can’t wait to see more.
Thank you! I’m starting to really get them down to a science now and will be posting more refined sketches of them sometime soon. 🙂