I’ve been using the few weeks since I wrapped up my Amelia pages to take on a number of tasks, among them getting back to work on Oyster War. One of the first things I wanted to address was my character designs. I really want to move away from the level of visual literalism that I’ve been using in things like Midnight Sun and Ameila and, for lack of a better word, get more “cartoony.” But, man is it hard…. and it really shouldn’t be. If you were to look at most of my free drawing in my sketchbook, you’d see things that are far looser and less realistic than what’s become my “house style” of late.
Anyway, here are a few old characters revamped ( one, in ink there, left exactly the same) and a few new ones. I’m reasonably satisfied with these, although I seem to have real difficulty moving beyond my standard egg/oval for a head shape. One reason I put my characters together in a single image like this is to establish the relative heights of each, but more important at the design level is also to make sure that each character has a distinctive shape. I try to imagine them all in silhouette and then ask myself if I’d be able to tell them apart even drawn relatively small. I think these satisfy that reasonably well at least…
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