Character, Grit, and Determination

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a lovely Valentine’s Day this past weekend, however you may have celebrated. This week, I am going to be doing something a little different and will be showing some of the work that I have been working on!

I am currently taking Digital Illustration with Professor Kevin O’Neill, and boy, has this class been both fun and challenging. The way the class is set up, students are tasked with creating a story that is the narrative used for every project in the class. Because of the nature of this setup, our very first project was to create a set of characters to star in these projects. I was absolutely thrilled!

Finding an idea for my narrative was tricky. I wanted to make sure that whatever story I chose, I would be passionate about. After all, this story would be the fuel for my drive to get through this class all semester. I experimented with a lot of character ideas, but I eventually settled on dual-protagonists, Dorian Sparrow and Avania Paxton, and the antagonist, King Pierre of Charcova. My protagonists each represent a different form of art; Dorian represents the performing arts like music, dance, and theater, while Avania represents more of the visual arts. Dorian and Avania are wandering artists who bring art and music to the various villages of the world. One day, they come across the kingdom of Charcova, and are surprised when their art and music does nothing to lift the spirits of the seemingly blank and dazed citizens. After multiple failed attempts to bring back the color and creativity to the kingdom, the pair seek out the King. There, they learn that long ago a curse was put on the kingdom: everyone in the kingdom has had their heart turned to stone. With such a heart, they are incapable of expression and creativity — a dulled version of themselves. Dorian and Avania set out to break the curse, and find out that a special amulet — the Amulet of Corundum — is responsible for such a powerful curse. The only way to break the curse is to force the user to surrender the amulet, or to break the user’s stone heart and restore their creativity. Little do Avania and Dorian know that the very person who used the amulet was King Pierre himself.

My narrative is not perfect, and definitely needs a few issues to be resolved, but I think that they will hopefully do. If anything, many of the characters were inspired by people in my life, so that will at least make the creation a bit more personal to me.

From there, I had to bring these projects to life in the first project: Character Designs!

To create these initial sketches, I used a lot of references for posing. Each character has a fantasy-inspired, medieval look to them as well. I really wanted each character to be expressive in their poses. Dorian, the actor, would have to be more dramatic. Avania is a more reserved character, so she is more static. Finally, Pierre is supposed to be a twist villain; he’s the jovial Dad-like character that feels like a trusted individual. In reality, he really is just a good guy who got caught up in the wrong things. Because of this, I wanted to give him a very approachable appearance.

After critique, I had a lot to fix up. Among other issues, I have a very bad habit of drawing my heads too small for anatomical accuracy. I cannot tell you how many times I had to resize these heads. I probably resized them a million and one times — and I’m still not sure that they are sized correctly. It has truly been the bane of my existence.

Once the sketches were done, I had to buckle in and roll up my sleeves. A “cool” artist trait of mine is that I take forever to draw anything. My process is slow. I usually make my sketch, refine my sketch, lay down base colors, shade, and add details. It sounds like a simple process, and it probably is, but for whatever reason, I get very stuck and simple things seem to take twice as long as it should. Drawing faster is a skill that I had hoped I would develop here at college, and I think this class might force me to.

Knowing this, I should have allotted more time to this project. I gave myself estimates of how long I thought I would need to finish these projects, and I was extraordinarily off. Despite my efforts to manage my time correctly, I ended up pulling an all-nighter the night before the final character designs were due. Even at the end of the night (or perhaps at the break of dawn?) my project was still not done. I had managed to put down the base coats for all of my characters, but had only just started the sketches of my expression sheets that were also required of the project. At this point, I had about 38 hours logged on this project.

To say I was unhappy is an understatement. How had I gotten to this point?! I hate not finishing my projects on time; having to admit that I had done this was a huge struggle for me. I was beyond frustrated and disappointed with myself. Thankfully, my professor was incredible and gave us until Friday to finalize any designs: which for me, meant to finish them. It was time to get down to business.

By the end of Friday, I had logged 52 hours: a 15 hour increase since my last checkpoint. Unfortunately, I did end up pulling a second all-nighter that week just to finish the designs. I ended up giving up on a lot of details that I had wanted to include, and I’m not sure it is really my best work. However, I am proud of myself for working through the disappointment, never giving up, and still trying to hold my head high when things were not going the way I wanted them to. I am never going to be perfect, and I can only do what I can. I certainly did a lot of things wrong — time management, chief among these problems — but now I know areas to improve on this next project. I think it is important to focus on the future and what I can do better than to dwell in my mistakes.

Anyway, the final character designs are here!