For this brief, we had a lot of freedom over what we were creating. We could choose any genre and professional for our characters. We needed 3 characters:

• A character who sneaks in and steals something (known as the player)
• A tradesman/ worker who is stolen from
• A sidekick for the tradesperson (could be human or inhuman)
• A prop

Initially, I struggled to find a setting I wanted to explore, or even an atmosphere. Perhaps I should try to make something light or maybe I should do something medieval, as that’s not something I draw often. In the end, I decided that I should do something that would appeal to me to give me the motivation to keep designing these characters. Inspired by all the medical dramas I watched this year, I chose a medical theme with a twisted edge, combining historical elements with futuristic ones.

I started making a mood board for the styles of the characters/ the atmosphere/ initial clothing ideas.

My plan was to go into designing the silhouettes of the characters straight away but Isobel encouraged us to try and get a feel of the characters first, which was helpful because without knowing who we’re making it would have been difficult to have their designs reflect them. In these sketches, I tried to capture how the characters would move and stand without any initial designs. I think this might be something I bring into my workflow in future projects.

I decided to start with silhouettes for these characters. I prefer doing this as I think that the silhouette and base of a character is one of the most striking parts of a character, and is what should make the character stand out from others around it. I made sure to use a variety of shapes and proportions so I could explore more avenues for how the characters could look.

The first silhouettes I picked out for the protagonist and the doctor felt right at the time but as I drew on top of them, I started getting the sense that they weren’t the ones for them. The protagonist felt too generic and didn’t have enough liveliness while the doctor’s inverted triangle body shape was more reminiscent of superhero-esque body than an ominous, shady fellow so I changed them. Isobel also appreciated the new change, especially for the doctor.

Using the new silhouettes, I designed four outfits for the protagonist and doctor, and three for the nurse. I used very different style inspirations for the nurse and the doctors compared two the protagonist. For the little girl I was inspired by 90s and early 2000s cyber-style clothes, as I thought the colours would work well with her childlike nature as well as complement her mechanical tinkering skills. On the other hand, I wanted the early 20th century style of medical uniform would be a bit unnerving, and play into our preconceived ideas of historic medical malpractice. I was originally going to use the the last outfit idea as I liked the dropped waist look but upon showing it to Isobel and others, people generally tended to like the second outfit more- especially the coat so I combined elements I liked from both.

At first, I was going to go fully historical with the nurse uniform, but I ended up really liking the shape of the shorter dress as it was a bit less matronly and had a nice pointier silhouette, as well as enforcing the idea that she’s not a proper nurse but instead just dressed for the role. For the doctor, I liked the look of the second outfit as the bands around the arm and the waste as well as the asymmetrical buttons were really interesting to look at, but Isobel and I both felt that it didn’t feel doctory enough. Hence, I went with the first design as it showed his profession clearly while being less orthodox than the last two. Isobel really liked the bandages on his head, so I decided to keep them unless I found a hairstyle that would better suit the character.

The entire time I was designing these characters, Isobel kept asking me why they didn’t have any faces and wondered whether I didn’t like drawing faces. This was quite funny, because I tend to be the opposite- I love drawing faces! But I wanted to wait so I could properly explore them. I drew a selection of faces, some looked too kind some didn’t fit the vibe and chose one for each character. I really enjoyed playing around with the hair, I think there were a lot of good results.

First look at the completed characters:

Once I had the body, face and clothing for the characters, I turned my attention to colouring them. Colour is something I struggle with in some regards so this was a helpful exercise in trying to create a cohesive colour palette, though I wanted the little girl to look visually distinct from the other two. My favourite colour palette was the second one, I liked the first two but the nurse looked more like a sous chef than a medical worker. The second one gave the medical team a sickly, sallow look which was very off-putting. However, Isobel and others I showed these to weren’t the biggest fan of the girl’s colour palette and much preferred the first one which was more saturates and fit her more.

Now I had finished the designs and concepts, I started creating turnarounds. While I had tried to keep the designs anatomically correct, doing the turnarounds made me realise that there were elements that needed to be changed to be either more anatomically correct or to keep everything on model. I did realise I had trouble keeping the face on model in the turn around which I didn’t expect as I’m usually better at it but when it comes to keeping the front, 3/4 and profile the same was a real challenge.

Hands