Production Diaries #1 30.04.18 Sorceress Planning

I think I have a good amount of research and planning to start drawing designs for my characters so today I started with the mage/sorcerer.

I will be inserting scans of what I did then explaining my thought process behind it.

I first started sketching a few faces and eyes. I drew them in anime style as that is the style I decided on, but even so I can adjust it to how I like. For the mage, I want her to have flowing, wavy, graceful hair to get across her calm personality. I wasn't sure if a fringe made her look too young or disrupted the flow of her hair but hair is definitely something I need to explore more of.

I experimented with different variations of eye styles, the common theme being heart and/or stars in the iris which stand as light reflecting in the eyes.

I used this picture to the left for inspiration with eyes, but I have been drawing anime style eyes for a long time so I knew what I was doing. The heart in the eyes is going to symbolise that they're magical girls. Their eyes change into the "magical girl eyes" which is easily recognized by the heart detailing. My favourite eye that I drew for sure is the more realistic looking eye (as realistic as anime eyes can get) the reason being that it does look more realistic and I prefer that. But this is not about what I would prefer, this is about creating good characters. Even taking that into consideration, I still think the more realistic eyes look the best. I want to do some more eye drawings and face drawings as I feel like I have't done enough here. Also hair drawings. I need to gather inspiration and examples for this and work from there.

I next drew some ideas for outfits, but before that I gathered some outfit pictures to inspire me. I used Pinterest for this, which I have used in the past, and gathered lots of pictures to inspire me. I will post the link to the specific board here:

The first one is my favourite out of these three as I really liked the idea of having a "galaxy cloak". I got the inspiration from this picture to thew right. It gives a magical, mystical vibe which I think would work well with this character being a sorceress. I began to play with colour too, making the robe purple and some details on the robe gold. Purple can symbolise magic and having shiny gold detailing adds more to the magical vibe I want this character to have. The waistband gives off a middle-ages feel. Do I want my character to be the typical magical girl? No, I want my characters to be my own version of magical girls. There will still be magical girl elements of course but perhaps not crazy, complicated costumes. (I could change my mind completely on this but my reasoning for now is that I want my characters to be as likeable as possible for the audience I've chosen, not just magical girl anime fans, so making my characters look like an RPG character that suits my game idea is, in my opinion, important for my idea to be successful)

I next tried to make a more "kawaii magical girl" style outfit. (Left) I do love this though I'm not sure it comes across as "sorceress". With a staff it would, but without it just doesn't seem to get across what I'm trying to get across, even with purples added in. I do love the sheer fabric however, as it is very flowing, which is what I wanted the hair of this character to be like. On the right is more experimenting, which I do not like as it doesn't really come together as an outfit therefore looks just a bit weird.

On the left I tried to recreate the first outfit idera I drew but adding a few changes such as the heart keeping the cloak together. I added this as I thought it would be nice to match the eyes (which are going to have small hearts in). On the right I started something and had no idea where I was going with it therefore I left it at that. I didn't just throw it away though as it's important to reflect on all pieces of work so I can improve.

After looking what I'd already created, I decided to take the bits I liked most to improve my ideas. The for the first idea, I decided to recreate the first outfit I designed again but with a few changes. I first changed the skirt into a three layered skirt. (Excuse my terminology, I am new with describing clothing garments) I kept the belt, though I felt that it looked slightly out of place so my next step would be to recreate it with a different style belt. I Incorporated the idea of having a galaxy pattern onto one of the layers of clothing which I thought worked well. I could experiment with having the pattern across different places. It made the outfit look more exciting whilst symbolising magic. The hood I do like as many mages wear hoods (As I discovered in my Mage research) but if I decide to have my rogue character wearing a hood I will take the hood away (if i decided to go with this design) as I don't any two characters being too similar. I want to be able to tell them apart from their silhouette as that will make memorable characters that are easy to tell apart.

The second outfit idea was based on a previous one which i made more "kawaii magical girl" style. I improved this by adding some magical looking patterns along the top, and skirt, and getting rid of sleeves to expose the arms as I had an idea. Instead of having the galaxy magical pattern on a piece of clothing, why not see what it looks like to have them as body marking? The result looks awesome. I can just imagine them glowing gold and it would really emphasise that this character is all about magic. Maybe this outfit shows off a bit too much of her body but I can adjust that. I really like the flow of the sheer skirt overtop. It gives diversity in materials and keeps things interesting, and would also match my characters flowing hair.

The third idea didn't come out how I'd hoped and I think I was in need of a break as my ideas were not as great. This made me learn the importance of having a break.

Conclusion

I think I made good progress today. I started designing outfits mostly and have a few outfits that I would like to work on some more. I feel like I did things a bit randomly, going from hair to eyes to face, then before I'd finished each right on to outfits. In the future I could plan out exactly what I'm going to do in what order, but in this case I'm glad I did that otherwise I might not of come up with the outfit ideas I did.

I'm glad I did research into different mages that exist (Mage Character Analysis) because I feel like it's helped me to develop this character. By looking at the elements of different mages in detail, it has helped me to come up with ideas and designs. Also pinterest has been extremely useful. It lets me make a giant mood board of all sorts of things, like fashion, excising artwork, real life armour and so on. I am trying to gather as much inspiration as I can, following the advice from the "Drawing for Fantasy Artists".

Next Steps

Find flowing hair inspiration and sketch out some hair ideas

Decide on an eye style to use

Find examples of faces and use them to inspire what face this character is going to have

Experiment more with the outfits. Scan outfits into photoshop and experiment with colour.