MLeeLunsford
patreon
SotD Concepts - Part 1: Sunday Blackburne
🕑 Added 2017-04-21 00:39:25 +0000 UTCI haven't talked about this yet on Patreon, so if you haven't heard yet: I'm building up concepts for a new comic that I'll be doing once Supernormal Step is finished called Speak of the Devil! I've posted concept art for it elsewhere (Like at speakdevil.com ), but I wanted to talk about it in more detail for you all here as a bonus!
For this part, I'm going to go over the main character Sunday Blackburne, and my thought process while designing her. Let's get started!
Initial Concept: I wasn't sure what the story would be yet when I drew this one. My first thought was that I wanted to do a story in a futuristic/fantasy city with a character that was kind of a Knight for hire. Like a detective story about a star wars character. That's all I had really, the design turned out kind of boring for me, and really didn't feel like it had my personality in it. So I knew immediately there would need to be changes to the very core of my idea.
Getting the Ball Rolling: The changes I made were to lean into the detective and fantasy sides a bit more. So now the main character was more of an investigator for hire and less a knight (still had an energy sword though? I dunno...) and had some horns and color around her eyes to make her a little less human. This is also when I came up with the title Speak of the Devil!
The first image in the upper left corner I did all with painted shapes, because I really felt I needed to work on the blocks of color that make up the character. Those are really important to help your character stand out. I think I succeeded for the most part.
The other two images were done afterward to get a cleaner look at the character, and to get her personality down more. She was less stoic, more rough around the edges, a lot more like a protagonist I would want to write about.
Something still was off to me though. The design wasn't quite where I wanted it yet. maybe all the sci-fi aspects aren't my thing...
Add a Dash of Punk: Since the aesthetic just wasn't working for me before I decided to get scrappy. I took the overall shapes of the character I had established, but added a bit of punk flavor to it. I tried to make her a character with a fashion sense I would enjoy drawing. On top of that, I made her coat more like one you would see a Noir detective wear, to really sell that idea more.
Also in previous designs I said to myself "A tail would just be going too far, no way." But as you can see here, I went "Wait why not?" and I liked the result.
I felt like I almost had it. She wasn't quite there yet, but I felt more like I was getting into my comfort zone. From here on I knew it would at least be a lot more fun for me.
So Close: I actually thought I was done when I drew that first design in the upper left of the image above. So I began developing the world and the story! Once I had some ideas of what kinds of things Sunday would be doing, I designed some wardrobe changes for her. A lot of work went into researching clothes and trying to figure out what would fit her, and ways to make her design a bit cooler.
This is where the struggle began. The character fit the story just fine, but I struggled with fitting her into the situations I wanted to write about. The design was good, but something was still wrong, it took me a while to figure that out too.
I still like this design mostly, but she clearly needed some things tweaked to get her both meshed with the story better and to look a bit more striking. I just knew that I could push her design over the top if I worked on it more.
Few Steps Forward, Few Steps Back: I still wasn't quite sure what the problem was, but I knew I had to change something. This design was just kind of a stepping stone. I tried to draw Sunday without looking at the previous design, and just changed some bits and pieces from my memory.
The result is... okay? It's not great, I liked the previous one better. The upside is that It helped me figure out what I liked about the previous design and what I didn't like.
I immediately knew this wasn't what I wanted. It was important to experiment a bit though.
Everything I Like, and Some Changes: I went into this one to start with as just a face study to figure things out while looking at photos of real people. This resulted in trying out a new hairstyle for Sunday. That sparked something.
I began working on an all new design for her incorporating the new haircut and all the things I liked about previous designs, while tweaking a few things that didn't quite excite me.
I really like how this one looks, but who knows? I might find more things I need to tweak in the future. I've yet to try and design a wardrobe for this version, so we'll see!
-
I hope you enjoyed looking at the evolution of Sunday Blackburne!
Is this something you'd like to see more of? I have a bunch of design work to do with Speak of the Devil, and other characters I'm developing. Let me know if you'd like to hear my thoughts on them!
Comments
Kaigakoi
This was hella fun and informative! Definitely taught me new ways to improve on designs. Thanks for this =) more is totally welcomed!
crufl
fascinating to see the process laid out like this!
Elfangor
I found it very interesting, so I wouldn't mind more of this.
kou32
I'm really looking forward to this. I'm curious about her personality? Does she have friends, enemies, lover(s), reluctant allies? I'm curious to see how this world works. I like her design with her in suspenders. She looked casual but Suave, it's a very good look for her. Also, I'm diggin her coat.
Moz
Not just characters! I have the different types of people and cultures, government, and maps with district descriptions I could talk about if that sounds interesting!
Joanha
Seeing more of your design process is something i'd definitely enjoy. If you do more, would it be just limited to specific characters? or would we also see some of the setting and species of this world? the concepts for the races you posted looked pretty interesting, and learning more about them would be cool.
James Schweitzer
Very informative. It definitely piques my interest regarding the character and series!
