Deciding on Character Design

Today I've been using tall athletic women as reference to draw the figure of my character. It's been quite enjoyable and I've felt comfortable doing this from the development of my confidence through the life drawings lessons. It was fun to exaggerate and manipulate the normal human figure into any shape I wanted; an image I used was fantastic due to the huge variation of body shapes and sizes within it.

I then began to experiment with different designs of clothing and hair for my character. Again I found this really enjoyable.



From these drawings I asked the opinion of others and eventually decided on which design to develop.

My favourite costume was the first one; the design is striking, the clothes leave the woman free to run and move well whilst maintaining a certain visual appeal. The second was quite traditional but perhaps too cliche; like Pocahontas.

The hair was a little more difficult to decide on. The buns were too out-of-place and modern.The braids were again traditional and would work well, but I liked the idea of hair hair flowing freely during battle and wondered whether I could do something with a striking pose and her hair in mid-movement. I then decided to go with hair down with a block fringe - slight modern twist.